Softwar, Cyberwar, Education, Propaganda, S&T
2016
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Return to S&T indexpage This page includes:

• Softwar, Propaganda, Information Operations (IO)
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• Mobile phones
• Education and educational institutions such as Pyongyang University of Science and Technology

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DECEMBER 2016

• Statistics in the Information War: an Instructive Example from Hama, 1982
  by Dina Jadallah December 23, 2016 Statistics have a persuasive power. They are often perceived as unassailable and indisputable facts. By implying an aura of authority to particular narratives, they can serve particular causes as well as damage opposing agendas by misleading the public. The war in Syria is as much an information war waged in the media as a military struggle on the battle field. The recent liberation of Aleppo from the grip of foreign-backed armed militants which the United States insists are “moderate” even as it acknowledged their cooperation with Jabhat al-Nusra/al-Qa‘eda is no exception. Take, for example, the breathless and hyperbolic commentary on Aleppo whereby Secretary of State John Kerry described the situation as “Another Srebrenica .?.?. nothing short of a massacre,” and a newscaster called the evacuation of Aleppo as “nothing short of a Holocaust.” In addition to these statements, media outlets have disseminated a barrage of images, videos, and news stories about the war, the majority of which relies on second-hand accounts relayed by activists with their own political agendas and by sources supported by states that are themselves party to the conflict. Such hyperbole is part and parcel of coordinated propaganda efforts to use humanitarian concerns as a means of arousing public sympathy and support for what is essentially a geopolitical regime change agenda that targets an adversarial government. As always, context is vitally important. [US Syria policy] [Muslim Brotherhood] [Propaganda]
• Foreigners must provide social media accounts to enter U.S.
  By Teresa Welsh Foreign travelers will now be asked to provide links to their social media accounts before they enter the U.S. after the government implemented a new policy designed to identify “potential threats” on Tuesday. The request to provide links to accounts on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Google+ and LinkedIn is optional. But privacy advocates and some technology companies oppose the move on the grounds it violates civil liberties and freedom of expression. The new policy, which was originally proposed this summer, was adopted Dec. 19 for people arriving via the visa waiver program. That program allows travelers from 38 countries to enter in the country without a visa. They apply through the Electronic System for Travel Authorization, which now asks about social media accounts in its online form. [Surveillance]
• British Govt-Funded Outlet Offered Journalist $17,000 a Month to Produce Propaganda for Syrian Rebels
  by Rania Khalek, via AlterNet Emails reveal that a popular source for mainstream Western media is a U.K.-backed propaganda outlet. The Revolutionary Forces of Syria (RFS) media office, a major Syrian opposition media outfit and frequent source of information for Western media, is funded by the British government and is managed by Westerners operating out of Turkey, according to emails provided to AlterNet by a Middle East reporter RFS tried to recruit. The outlet stirred controversy this November when it released a video at the height of the Mannequin Challenge, a pop culture craze in which people compete for how long they can freeze in place on video. The RFS video depicted a staged rescue by the White Helmets, the Western-funded rescue group that operates exclusively in rebel-held territory. RFS quickly removed the video and issued an apology out of apparent concern that the staged rescue could raise questions about the authenticity of other videos by the White Helmets. Over the summer, the Middle East reporter, who asked not to be named, was contacted by an American acquaintance and former colleague about working for RFS. “I’m currently in Istanbul, working on a media project for the HMG [the British government],” wrote the acquaintance in an email time-stamped June 23. “We’re working on media surrounding the Syrian conflict, as one of their three partners.” The email included links to RFS Media’s English website and SMO Media, an Arabic website that covers the Southern Front, a Western-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) group. “[W]e’re looking for a managing editor/production manager to head up our team here in Istanbul, and I thought you’d be a great fit. I was wondering if you had any interest, or knew of anyone looking to move out to Istanbul for an opportunity,” the acquaintance added. In a followup phone conversation, the acquaintance explained to the reporter what the job would entail. “I would have been talking to opposition people on the ground and writing news pieces based on statements from media activists who are affiliated with the armed groups in places like Aleppo,” the reporter later explained. The salary offered for this task was an eye-popping $17,000 a month. The reporter ultimately decided not to pursue the RFS position because he felt it would be journalistically unethical. [Media] [Front][Syria] [UK]
• An al Qaeda Christmas: the Touching Tale of How Hate Figures Became American Heroes
  by Chris Floyd You’re al Qaeda. You’re being supported by the United States in your jihad to impose extremist rule on Syria, but you still have a PR problem; too many people remember all that unpleasant business from so long ago when you blew up a few buildings in the US. What can you do? Well, first you change the name of your Syrian branch two or three times. You make sure your spokesmen — who actually get respectfully quoted in the US media! — say moderate things in English but speak with genocidal sectarian fury in Arabic. So far, so good. But what if your new US media buddies actually got a peek at how you operate on the ground in Syria — cutting off heads, hoarding food aid, colluding with ISIS, slaughtering religious minorities, oppressing women, etc.? That’s easy: as Patrick Cockburn noted this week, you simply make the zones you control so dangerous for reporters – killing them, kidnapping them, etc. — that they don’t go there anymore. Instead they “report” on your activities from far away, relying on you to provide their information, telling the story you want told. And presto chango, that’s how those who murdered Americans have become America’s newest heroes, the brave defenders of freedom in Syria. What’s more, anyone who dares point out the true nature of your organization, and how you operate, are now denounced as apologists for the loathsome Assad regime, or as Putin-lovers, even as traitors! Think of it; just a few years ago, you were the most reviled and hated group Americans had ever known — and now Americans across the media and political spectrum hail you as heroes and defend you from all attacks! [Al Qaeda] [Media]
• Ten Massive Fake News Stories Western Media Has Been Feeding You On Aleppo
  By Baran Hines Global Research, December 20, 2016 The Free Thought Project 18 December 2016 The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) has secured control of Aleppo city after more than 4 years of fighting in what is Syria’s most strategically important city, second to the capital Damascus. Western media has chosen to explain this victory to the world as bad news for the interests of peace and humanity in Syria, claiming that thousands of civilians will now die from government retaliation. The reason the battle for Aleppo is so significant in the Syrian proxy war is because of its strategic importance to the country of Syria as a whole. Controlling Aleppo would give opposition groups leverage in a situation where Syria is broken into pieces. It is also part of the geopolitical concerns over competing natural gas pipelines which would be built partially in Syria. The battle for Aleppo has been described inaccurately for years and what follows is an explanation of 10 common lies or omissions which still continue today. [Aleppo] [Propaganda]
• More Propaganda Than News Coming Out of Aleppo
  by Patrick Cockburn It has just become more dangerous to be a foreign correspondent reporting on the civil war in Syria. This is because the jihadis holding power in east Aleppo were able to exclude Western journalists, who would be abducted and very likely killed if they went there, and replace them as news sources with highly partisan “local activists” who cannot escape being under jihadi control. The foreign media has allowed – through naivety or self-interest – people who could only operate with the permission of al-Qaeda-type groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham to dominate the news agenda. The precedent set in Aleppo means that participants in any future conflict will have an interest in deterring foreign journalists who might report objectively. [Aleppo] [Media] [Complicity] [Propaganda]
• YouTube blocks North Korean channel
  By Anna Fifield December 14 at 3:15 AM ? SEOUL — YouTube has blocked North Korea’s state television channel, which broadcasts news on everything from nuclear tests to Kim Jong Un’s outings, to avoid breaching U.S. sanctions against the regime. The action was apparently taken not because of the content in the channel but because the North Korean government could earn money from YouTube through advertising. “This account has been terminated for violating YouTube’s Community Guidelines,” a message on the Korean Central Television channel’s page reads. YouTube’s community guidelines ban videos that include violent, sexual or harmful content, or breach copyright. Google, YouTube’s parent company, also asks users to flag content that may violate the law. Google apparently blocked the channel last month to avoid violating sanctions, but the company has declined to comment. [Censorship] [Sanctions] [Double standards] [Extraterritoriality] [US dominance]
• The widespread phenomenon of modern Propaganda
  With thousands of advertisements seen by Americans everyday, and a corporate media that reinforces the needs of Empire, propaganda in the U.S. is more pervasive and effective than ever before. The manipulation of public opinion through suggestion can be traced back to the father of modern propaganda, Edward Bernays, who discovered that preying on the subconscious mind was the best way to sell products people don't need, and wars people don't want. To get a deeper understanding of how propaganda functions in today's society, Abby Martin interviews Dr. Mark Crispin Miller, professor of Media Studies at New York University. [Propaganda] [Bernays]
• Military computer network left exposed to malicious code for 46 days
  Posted on : Dec.7,2016 15:50 KST Investigation finds that network was not kept disconnected from the internet, resulting in leaks of confidential information The first exclusive military computer network in the history of South Korea’s military was exposed to malicious code for at least 46 days in August and September, resulting in the leaking of a number of military secrets. An investigation found the system’s vulnerabilities were exposed to external hacking after military authorities failed to observe the rule of keeping the defense network for confidential storage disconnected from the internet and running it separately. “On Sep. 23, evidence was detected of malicious code having spread to the internet server used by the military by means of an anti-virus program,” a military official explained to reporters on Dec. 5, speaking on condition of anonymity. “On Sep. 30, a joint investigation team was put together, which found that some military materials had been leaked, including some confidential information.” [Cyber security]
• The Orwellian War on Skepticism. Battling “Fake News”
  By Robert Parry Under the cover of battling “fake news,” the mainstream U.S. news media and officialdom are taking aim at journalistic skepticism when it is directed at the pronouncements of the U.S. government and its allies. One might have hoped that the alarm about “fake news” would remind major U.S. news outlets, such as The Washington Post and The New York Times, about the value of journalistic skepticism. However, instead, it seems to have done the opposite. The idea of questioning the claims by the West’s officialdom now brings calumny down upon the heads of those who dare do it. “Truth” is being redefined as whatever the U.S. government, NATO and other Western interests say is true. Disagreement with the West’s “group thinks,” no matter how fact-based the dissent is, becomes “fake news.” So, we have the case of Washington Post columnist David Ignatius having a starry-eyed interview with Richard Stengel, the State Department’s Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy, the principal arm of U.S. government propaganda. Entitled “The truth is losing,” the column laments that the official narratives as deigned by the State Department and The Washington Post are losing traction with Americans and the world’s public. Stengel, a former managing editor at Time magazine, seems to take aim at Russia’s RT network’s slogan, “question more,” as some sinister message seeking to inject cynicism toward the West’s official narratives. “They’re not trying to say that their version of events is the true one. They’re saying: ‘Everybody’s lying! Nobody’s telling you the truth!’,” Stengel said. “They don’t have a candidate, per se. But they want to undermine faith in democracy, faith in the West.” [Media] [[Weaponizing information] [Propaganda]

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NOVEMBER 2016

• Foreign Media into North Korea: Finding Synergy Between Pop Culture and Tailored Content
  By Yonho Kim 29 November 2016 Foreign radio broadcasting into North Korea has reached a turning point as technological developments, the inflow of inexpensive Chinese media devices, and thriving markets transform the nation’s media landscape. North Koreans’ methods of accessing external information have expanded from radio and television broadcasts to DVD and MP3 players, computers and the Chinese-made portable media player, Notetel. Mobile phones and tablets also have grown in popularity among North Koreans, and USB drives and SD cards have gained recent recognition as essential tools for delivering outside information into the country. North Koreans have increasingly consumed foreign video content through these new high-tech channels, and their access to outside information has expanded with the spread of South Korean popular culture across much of Asia, known as the “Korean Wave” or hallyu. Consumers of imported media include a growing number of ordinary North Koreans in addition to the country’s high-ranking intelligentsia, and the demand for information is increasingly tilting away from news and towards entertainment.[1] [Subversion] [Hallyu] [social media]
• HRW conducted a biased investigation for the school “bombing” in Idlib?
  by Mehmet Ersoy On November 6, Human Rights Watch published a report in which the Syrian government and its allies were accused of carrying out an airstrike on a school in Idlib province in late October, 2016. According to the report, on October 26, the school was hit by two Su-24 jets used by the Syrian and Russian AFs. Citing some witnesses, the organization claims the jets dropped from 7 to 9 parachute bombs on the school and nearby road. It says no military facilities were in school or by it and all the casualties were among civilians. It should be noted that, basing on HRW’s report, the Western media went off blaming Assad and his allies for murdering civilians. The artificial information hysteria even forced UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon make a hasty loud statement on military crimes in Idlib. In its turn, the next day only the Russian side could provide sound evidence of the fact that the Syrian aviation and its allies had nothing to do with the attack on the school in Hassa. Inside Syria Media Center would like to look into the matter. In its report, HRW quotes some phone interviews with the witnesses. We attempted to contact the organization’s press desk but the human rights activists refused to provide details on the persons involved in the report. [Syria] [Propaganda] [HRW] [NGO]
• Just How Gray Are the White Helmets of Syria?
  by Jan Oberg While thousands of humanitarian organisations around the world are struggling fiercely with diminishing support from governments and the public, one has achieved a surprising amount of support from Western governments in a surprisingly short period of time and gained a surprising attention from mainstream media and ditto political elites: The Syrian Civil Defence or White Helmets. Their name of course makes you think of the UN’s Blue Helmet and white is the colour of those who should be protected in harm’s way – and the colour of innocence. However, for many years there has been an Argentinian relief organisation with the same name. The SCD or White Helmets counts nearly 3.000 rescue workers who operate in very dangerous areas in rebel-held territories in Syria and claims that it has, in three years, rescued about 70.000 lives according to its Twitter account (or 65 per day). Contrary to what you might think, it isn’t a Syrian organisation because Syria has its own organisation, incidentally also called Syria Civil Defence, which was established in 1953 and is registered with ICDO, the International Civil Defence Organisation, since 1972. The White Helmets seems to have an annual budget of US$ 30 million and has raised a total support of well over US$ 100 million. And it seems that they operate exclusively in war zones in which the fighting against the Syrian government and the Syrian Arab Army takes place, i.e. in ‘liberated’ areas where hundreds of groups and some 80 countries, mainly NATO members, Gulf states and Saudi-Arabia, operate. On the White Helmets’ briefing page it is stated that “funding for their humanitarian relief work is received from the aid budgets of Japan, Denmark, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States.” Here is how the Foreign Ministry in Copenhagen explains the roughly US$ 9 million to the White helmets from Denmark, a country that bombs in both Iraq and Syria. Other civil society and humanitarian organisations inside Syria have not been so fortunate. You’ve probably not heard that much about the Syrian Arab Red Crescent and its work? How much/little support have they received from Western humanitarian-concerned governments? And in general, civil society organisations in Syria – women, peace, human rights, culture, etc. – have received nothing like US$ 100 million in a few years and no one has such a flashy media appearance as the White Helmets. The White Helmets was started in 2013 by James Le Mesurier who seems to have tried a little of everything everywhere, including the grey zones of special forces and intelligence in virtually all NATO wars, Yugoslavia in particular. He later set up a foundation in Holland to gather the funds. Here is a recent account by Scott Ritter, former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and weapons inspector in Iraq with tremendous knowledge of things Middle East: “The organizational underpinnings of the White Helmets can be sourced to a March 2013 meeting in Istanbul between a retired British military officer, James Le Mesurier—who had experience in the murky world of private security companies and the shadowy confluence between national security and intelligence operations and international organizations—and representatives of the Syrian National Council (SNC) and the Qatari Red Crescent Society. Earlier that month, the SNC was given Syria’s seat in the Arab League at a meeting of the league held in Qatar. [Hybrid warfare] [Syria] [White Helmets] [NGO] [Front]
• On Reading North Korean Media: The Curse of the Web
  By Martin Weiser | October 31, 2016 >North Korea has a conflicted relationship with media content and the internet, as Martin Weiser explains. | Image: KCNA Over the last decade, a number of North Korean publications have gone digital, providing quick and easy access to North Korean media. This naturally raises questions: How do these sites operate and how reliable are they and the texts they publish? What might changes in official translations mean? How important is individual authorship of North Korean texts? And last but not least, how do translators and eventually editors shape the texts that we read? Martin Weiser has written a multi-part series for Sino-NK in which he explores North Korean digital media and media practices in more depth. Based on evidence derived from more than two years spent mapping North Korea’s online presence, he highlights significant patterns in how North Korean organizations operate but also how human error and unchecked individual inputs can shape what we come to read. In this, the first part, Weiser explores how changes made to North Korean websites reveal both intentional editing of texts and instances of blatant, undiluted amateurism. — Christopher Green, Co-editor On Reading North Korean Media: The Curse of the Web by Martin Weiser Like every other online source, North Korean websites are subject to change, update or simple changes in layout. Accordingly, material might be deleted, slightly revised, or completely rewritten. While researchers may wish to embark individually on the task of mapping how North Korean online content changes over time, three institutions already do so. [Media]

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OCTOBER 2016

• N. Korea has 3.24 mln mobile phones: research
  Updated : 2016-10-26 14:49 The number of mobile phones being used in North Korea came to 3.24 million as of July last year, a U.S. broadcaster reported Wednesday, citing the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's recently updated version of the World Factbook. The Voice of America (VOA) said the North's mobile phone subscriptions per 100 residents came to 13, securing 142nd place on the list of the 217 countries surveyed in the factbook. South Korea, ranked 27th in the world, has 58.93 million mobile phones and 120 subscriptions per 100 residents, about 20 times more than North Korea, the VOA said. [Mobiles]
• Big debate about Shakespeare finally settled by big data: Marlowe gets his due
  By Travis M. Andrews October 25 at 6:30 AM ? For many, many years, scholars have wondered whether William Shakespeare’s plays were actually written by Shakespeare, or at least if they were written solely by the man we now colloquially refer to as the Bard. Although the arguments about his authorship have raged for two centuries, his plays have been printed and reprinted and reprinted again, bearing his name. Now, for the first time and with a bit of help from computers and big data, the Oxford University Press will add Christopher Marlowe as a co-author in all three “Henry VI” plays (Parts 1, 2 and 3). Marlowe was a contemporary and, some say, rival of Shakespeare’s. As the Poetry Foundation put it, “The achievement of Christopher Marlowe, poet and dramatist, was enormous — surpassed only by that of his exact contemporary, Shakespeare.” Rivals though they may have been, scholars have long thought Shakespeare might have collaborated with Marlowe, among other contemporary writers. After all, as the New York Times noted, playwriting then was structured much the way scriptwriting is today — an author received an advance to write an outline, then the theater that owned the outline would hire different writers to fill in different parts, depending on what they wrote well (the way comedian Patton Oswalt, for example, might be called in to add jokes to a finished script). [Marlowe] [Shakespeare] [Big data]
• White Helmets: Instrument for regime change in Syria?
  By Christina Lin| October 24, 2016 The increasing US trend of weaponizing human rights is threatening a rules-based liberal order. The systematic corrosion of these international norms with attendant disastrous consequences has been demonstrated in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Somalia. Ironically in Libya, after US/NATO invoked Responsibility to Protect to violently overthrow Muammar Qaddafi’s government, it was Qaddafi loyalists that rescued US embassy personnel while suspected extremists affiliated with US-backed rebels that were not thoroughly vetted murdered Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in a tragic illustration of “blowback.” Former head of Defense Intelligence Agency General Michael T. Flynn revealed then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arranged for Qatar to ship arms to al Qaeda-aligned Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) as the rebel opposition, which later attacked the West. [WHR] [White Helmets] [NGO]
• Compare the Coverage of Mosul and East Aleppo and It Reveals a Lot
  Patrick Cockburn • October 22, 2016 I was in Iran in early 2011 when there were reports from opposition sources in exile saying that protests were sweeping the country. There was some substance in this. There had been a demonstration of 30,000 protesters in north Tehran on 14 February – recalling the mass protests against the allegedly fixed presidential election of 2009 – that had caught the authorities by surprise. There was hopeful commentary from Western pundits suggesting that the Arab Spring uprisings might be spreading to Iran. But, by the time I got to Tehran a few days later, nothing much appeared to be going on, though there were plenty of bored looking riot police standing around in the rain doing nothing. It looked as if the protests had dwindled away, but when I checked the internet I found this was not so. Opposition spokesmen were claiming that protests were taking place every week not just in north Tehran but in other Iranian cities. This account appeared to be confirmed by videos running online showing protesters resisting baton-wielding riot police and militiamen. [Media] [Mosul] [Aleppo] [Propaganda]
• N.Korea Wises Up to Social Media
  By Yang Seung-sik October 14, 2016 12:41 North Korean propaganda website Uriminzokkiri has started using the photo and video sharing site Tumblr even as Internet access remains blocked for nearly all North Koreans. The accounts have been used to post photos of official events surrounding the founding anniversary of the Workers Party on Monday and visits to a statue of regime founder Kim Il-sung. Later on Monday there were some fetching night views of Pyongyang. But the accounts also shows off the caring side of the murderous regime, like officials releasing pheasants and roe deer into the wild in Hwanghae Province. .
• Potboiler Press: British Media and North Korea
  By James E. Hoare 05 October 2016 British news coverage of North Korea suffers for two primary reasons: an insular attitude toward the outside world and the British public’s relative lack of interest in Korean affairs. The result is a trivia-dominated approach that emphasizes the weirdest stories over substantive issues. This state of affairs seems unlikely to change as British media are addicted to this style. Falling customer numbers and revenues mean that there is less money available to provide more informed coverage. The rest of the world is of little interest compared with the success of British sports or the antics of celebrities. Korea, little known in Britain except to those with a direct interest, is unlikely to displace such stories. [Media]
• 'Propagandising For War' - Gareth Porter Responds To The BBC Today Programme On Syria
  In Alerts 2016 Post 25 August 2016 Last Updated on 25 August 2016 By Editor Hits: 4447 . A report published by the London School of Economics last month found extreme levels of bias in BBC reporting. The 'impartial' BBC's early evening news was almost five times more likely to depict Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in a negative light. In the time period studied (September 1 - November 1, 2015), no headlines on this key news programme presented Corbyn in a positive light. But this is a mere drop in the ocean of the corporation's pro-establishment bias. It could hardly be more obvious that BBC news reports, comment pieces and discussions are overwhelmingly hostile to US-UK government enemies like Russia, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea and Syria, and overwhelmingly favourable to the United States and Israel. It has long been clear to us that BBC journalists perceive this, not as bias, but as an accurate depiction of a world that really is divided into well-intentioned Western 'good guys' and their enemies, the 'bad guys'. On August 20, the BBC website featured a Radio 4 Today programme discussion hosted by former political editor Nick Robinson interviewing BBC World Affairs Editor John Cody Fidler-Simpson and Dr. Karin von Hippel, a former State Department official dealing with US strategy against Islamic State. The discussion was introduced with the following written text, which was repeated in slightly altered form in Robinson's spoken introduction: 'Exactly five years ago President Obama called on the Syrian President Bashir-Al-Assad to step down but today he is still in power.' The prominence and repetition of the observation of course conferred great significance. The implication: for the BBC, Obama is not just the leader of another country, he is a kind of World President with the authority to call on other leaders to 'step down'. In reality, Obama made his demand, not in the name of the United Nations, or of the Syrian people, but because, as President George H.W. Bush once declared: 'what we say goes'. [US Syria policy] [Media] [BBC]
• Intl. Civil Defence Org.: “The White Helmets are not even civil defence” in Syria
  Published on October 9, 2016 Mike Robinson writes in the UK Column: “ Later today [October 7] the Nobel Committee will announce the winner of the Peace Prize. One of the organisations in the running is the so-called White Helmets, darlings of the British Foreign Office and the BBC. Should the White Helmets win, it would only be the latest effort by governments, NGOs and the media to promote terrorism. The fact that it is the Nobel Committee is perhaps the ultimate irony, or it would be if they hadn’t already awarded the Peace Prize to the most warlike US President in history. Yet while it comes as no surprise that the British and US governments, the BBC and Netflix think its quite alright to promote terrorism, it did come as a shock to many that the International Civil Defence Organisation would choose to do so too. The International Civil Defence Organisation (ICDO) exists to support civil defence and first responders right around the world. One of its founder members was Syria, and Syria’s Civil Defence organisation has historically been held in the highest regard, involved in training similar organisations in many other countries. On Wednesday this week, it was noticed that the ICDO had made an update to their website and had linked the Syrian entry on their membership page to the White Helmets rather than the real Syrian Civil Defence. This despite being well aware that it is the real Syrian Civil Defence which continues to pay its membership fee to the ICDO, the White Helmets having contributed nothing. So yesterday morning Vanessa Beeley spoke to an ICDO representative in Geneva, to ask how and why this had happened. [Syria] [IO] {White Helmets]
• Syria: Doctors in Aleppo refute Western media lies
  Doctors in government-controlled Aleppo protest against armed groups after an attack on maternity hospital Al-Dabit on May 3 2016. Canadian freelance journalist and justice activist Eva Bartlett writes: “ […] In Aleppo, I met with doctors from the Aleppo Medical Association (established in 1959), including Dr. Zahar Buttal, Dr. Tony Sayegh, and Dr. Nabil Antaki. One question I posed to the doctors was regarding the other oft-repeated lie of the “last pediatrician” in Aleppo, a startling allegation designed to shock western readers and rally them against the Syrian government. And one which has no basis in truth. Dr. Zahar Buttal, Chairman of the Aleppo Medical Association, refuted such allegations, noting that Aleppo has 180 pediatricians still working in the city. Of one of the alleged lone pediatricians he said: “The media says the only pediatrician in Aleppo was killed in a hospital called Quds. In reality, it was a field hospital, not registered.” As for the pediatrician, “We checked the name of the doctor and didn’t find him registered in Aleppo Medical Association records.” [Syria] [Aleppo] [Propaganda]
• Inside the Shadowy PR Firm That’s Lobbying for Regime Change in Syria
  by Max Blumenthal at Alternet Posing as a non-political solidarity organization, the Syria Campaign leverages local partners and media contacts to push the U.S. into toppling another Middle Eastern government. On September 30, demonstrators gathered in city squares across the West for a “weekend of action” to “stop the bombs” raining down from Syrian government and Russian warplanes on rebel-held eastern Aleppo. Thousands joined the protests, holding signs that read “Topple Assad” and declaring, “Enough With Assad.” Few participants likely knew that the actions were organized under the auspices of an opposition-funded public relations company called the Syria Campaign. By partnering with local groups like the Syrian civil defense workers popularly known as the White Helmets, and through a vast network of connections in media and centers of political influence, The Syria Campaign has played a crucial role in disseminating images and stories of the horrors visited this month on eastern Aleppo. The group is able to operate within the halls of power in Washington and has the power to mobilize thousands of demonstrators into the streets. Despite its outsized role in shaping how the West sees Syria’s civil war, which is now in its sixth year and entering one of its grisliest phases, this outfit remains virtually unknown to the general public. The Syria Campaign presents itself as an impartial, non-political voice for ordinary Syrian citizens that is dedicated to civilian protection. “We see ourselves as a solidarity organization,” The Syria Campaign strategy director James Sadri told me. “We’re not being paid by anybody to pursue a particular line. We feel like we’ve done a really good job about finding out who the frontline activists, doctors, humanitarians are and trying to get their word out to the international community.” Yet behind the lofty rhetoric about solidarity and the images of heroic rescuers rushing in to save lives is an agenda that aligns closely with the forces from Riyadh to Washington clamoring for regime change. [Syria] [IO] [NGO] [Syria Campaign] [White Helmets]
• Only SEVEN people BTL support Guardian’s fact-free White Helmets editorial
  by BlackCatte The Guardian’s comments are the now standard disaster-zone. Open for less than an hour and with a full one-third (18 of the 55) comments censored. Of the 37 remaining, only 15 support the ATL position. And those fifteen comments are all made by the same seven people. This is less about propaganda and more about cultist reality-denial October 4’s WaPo was casually discussing the possibilities of the US escalating the situation in Syria by directly attacking the Syrian army without a UN mandate. The fact that it inverts reality by claiming such illegality would be “humanitarian” while simultaneously accusing the Syrian governmnt and its ally Russia of “war crimes” is not that surprising. But its absolute refusal to recognise the fact that any such move by the US would be a likely introduction to WW3 is a deeper kind of madness. [Syria] [Media]
• Almost every Asian stereotype you can think of, in one Fox News segment
  By Callum Borchers October 5 ? This post has been updated with a statement from the Asian American Journalists Association and tweets by Watters. On the eve of the first general-election debate moderated by an Asian American journalist, the “O'Reilly Factor” on Fox News aired a segment so full of Asian stereotypes and jokes that fitting them all into five minutes was a true act of TV magic. But there was nothing magical about Jesse Watters's man-on-the-street report from New York's Chinatown neighborhood, in the eyes of many journalists who watched it. [Racism] [Media] [China bashing]
• “White Helmet” “Save Aleppo” Protest Proves How Easy It Is to Dress up Actors As “War Victims”
  By Tony Cartalucci Global Research, October 03, 2016 Recent protests held across North America and Europe staged by supporters of armed militants in Syria have staged scenes in Western streets eerily similar to those featured in the photos and videos of the US-European funded “Syrian Civil Defence” also known as the “White Helmets.” Saudi state media, Al Arabiya English would report in an October 1, 2016 article titled, “Worldwide protest against Assad, Russia to ‘save Aleppo’,” that: The stalling talks between international powers on Syria – with Russia ramping up its air raid campaign – has ignited worldwide protests calling for an end to the horror in Aleppo. Protestors in Turkey, France, Netherlands, America and Canada took to the streets opposing Bashar al-Assad’s and Russia’s crimes in Aleppo, carrying posters that read “Stop bombing Aleppo” and “Save Aleppo”. Image: This is not Aleppo, Syria, but rather the streets of Europe where a recent “save Aleppo” protest was staged. Actors posing in fake dust and blood proved just how easy it is for anyone to create “war victims” anytime, anywhere. Al Arabiya’s ironic hand-wringing over Syria as Riyadh devastates Yemen with its own aerial bombardment and ground incursion, attempts to portray eastern Aleppo as a horrific cauldron where“where more than 250,000 civilians are trapped without food or clean water.” And while undoubtedly war is raging in eastern Aleppo, it should be noted that the vast majority of Aleppo’s population – 1.75 million in fact – live in the government-controlled majority of Aleppo. But despite this reality, the West and its allies – including Saudi Arabia – have attempted to use their sway over international public opinion to exaggerate Syrian security operations and fabricate a “humanitarian catastrophe” to serve as yet another pretext for wider Western intervention. [Syria] [Hypocrisy] [Saudi Arabia] [NGO] [IO]
• Exclusive: Yahoo secretly scanned customer emails for U.S. intelligence - sources
  By Joseph Menn | SAN FRANCISCO Yahoo Inc last year secretly built a custom software program to search all of its customers' incoming emails for specific information provided by U.S. intelligence officials, according to people familiar with the matter. The company complied with a classified U.S. government directive, scanning hundreds of millions of Yahoo Mail accounts at the behest of the National Security Agency or FBI, said two former employees and a third person apprised of the events. Some surveillance experts said this represents the first case to surface of a U.S. Internet company agreeing to a spy agency's demand by searching all arriving messages, as opposed to examining stored messages or scanning a small number of accounts in real time. It is not known what information intelligence officials were looking for, only that they wanted Yahoo to search for a set of characters. That could mean a phrase in an email or an attachment, said the sources, who did not want to be identified. [Surveillance] [NSA]
• Fact-sheet on the White Helmets
  by Simon Wood The White Helmets – here are a few facts that you need to know. Share this to your family and friends who subsist on Western corporate media: * The White Helmets, also called Syria Civil Defence, are not who they claim to be. The group is not Syrian; it was created with USA/UK funding under the supervision of a British military contractor in 2013 in Turkey. * The name “Syria Civil Defence” was stolen from the legitimate Syrian organization of the same name. The authentic Syria Civil Defence was founded in 1953 and is a founding member of the International Civil Defense Organization (1958). * The name “White Helmets” was inappropriately taken from the legitimate Argentinian relief organization Cascos Blancos / White Helmets. In 2014, Cascos Blancos / White Helmets was honored at the United Nations for 20 years of international humanitarian assistance. * The NATO White Helmets are primarily a media campaign to support the ‘regime change’ goals of the USA and allies. After being founded by security contractor James LeMesurier, the group was “branded” as the White Helmets in 2014 by a marketing company called “The Syria Campaign” managed out of New York by non-Syrians such as Anna Nolan. “The Syria Campaign” was itself “incubated” by another marketing company named “Purpose”. * The White Helmets claim to be “neutral, impartial and humanitarian” and to “serve all the people of Syria” is untrue. In reality, they only work in areas controlled by the violent opposition, primarily terrorists associated with Nusra/AlQaeda (recently renamed Jabhat Fath al Sham). * The White Helmets claim to be unarmed is untrue. There are photos which show their members carrying arms and celebrating Nusra/AlQaeda military victories. * The White Helmets claim to be apolitical and non-aligned is untrue. In reality they actively promote and lobby for US/NATO intervention in violation of the norms of authentic humanitarian work. * The Right Livelihood description that “Syria Civil Defence” saved over 60,000 people and “support in the provision of medical services to nearly 7 million people” is untrue. In reality the zones controlled by terrorists in Syria have few civilians remaining. That is why we see “cat” video/media stunts featuring the White Helmets. * The NATO White Helmets actually undermine and detract from the work of authentic organizations such as the REAL Syria Civil Defense and Syrian Arab Red Crescent. * The recent Neflix movie about the White Helmets is not a documentary; it is a self promotional advertisement. The directors never set foot in Syria. The Syrian video, real or staged, was provided by the White Helmets themselves. From the beginning scenes showing a White Helmet actor telling his little boy not to give mommy a hard time until the end, the video is contrived and manipulative. The video was produced by a commercial marketing company Violet Films/Ultra Violet Consulting which advertises its services as “social media management”, “crowd building” and “campaign implementation”. [NGO] [Front] [US Syria policy]
• N. Korea leader orders Kim Il Sung Univ. to receive many foreign students
  North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has instructed the country's top university to regularly hold international academic symposiums and attract as many foreign students as possible to demonstrate its fame to the world, state-run media reported Friday. [Education] [Opening]

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SEPTEMBER 2016

• Guardian sells space to war-profiteers to promote war
  by Kit It seems like all I do these days is skim through the “about” pages of an endless list of NGOs with countless varieties of the same name, looking for the same half-a-dozen funds, endowments, organisations, slogans, mottos and buzzwords that always appear. It’s got to the point where it’s simply a matter of ticking off the items on a shopping list. The National Endowment for Democracy…check. The International Monetary Fund…check. George Soros…check. It’s always the same. It has come to the point where, if the “Our Partners” section of an organization with a vaguely benign-sounding name, along the lines of Middle East Fund for Democracy and Liberty or somethingorother, DIDN’T contain a reference to George Soros’ Open Society Foundation or the World Bank…I just wouldn’t be able to contain my shock. [NGO] [Front] [Shill]
• How “The Syrian Campaign” Faked Its “70% Fleeing Assad” Refugee Poll
  By Prof. Tim Anderson Global Research, September 17, 2016 As one might expect, during a war, misunderstandings are often driven by interested parties. In the case of Syrian refugees in Europe a US based organisation called ‘The Syria Campaign’ has helped drive some of these, including a claim that most of the refugees are ‘Fleeing Assad’. ‘The Syria Campaign’ is a Wall Street Public Relations creation and one of several interlocked, US-based groups (Avaaz, Purpose, the White Helmets) which have campaigned for a Libyan-style ‘no fly zone’ in Syria. That is, they work for NATO intervention on the side of the jihadist groups (see Sterling 2015). In any case, a careful look at the evidence allows us to see through this ‘refugees fleeing Assad’ scam. The Syria Campaign (2015) commissioned a poll in Germany which was apparently carried out by German academic Heiko Giebler. In it, 889 Syrian refugees were said to have been interviewed in Berlin, Hanover, Bremen, Leipzig and Eisenhüttenstadt. Candidates ‘were approached on entering or leaving registration centers’. However the survey does not specify how sampling choices were made (TSC 2015). This is important because sampling error can easily undermine the representative nature of a poll. Indeed if there is no sampling error, as in this case, there is no way to assert to what extent the survey represents a broader population. The results are then almost useless, except as anecdotes. The poll cover note, headline and graphics highlight a claim that ‘70% of refugees are fleeing Assad’. To begin with, this is a false characterisation of the actual survey (TSC 2015). It had no question at all about fleeing Assad, nor anyone else. It did have questions on whom the respondents blamed for the violence and of whom they were afraid. Of the 30 survey questions the three relevant ones seem to be number 9 (‘Who was responsible for the fighting?), number 14 (‘Who did you fear getting arrested or kidnapped by?’), and number 18 (‘What was the main reason for you to leave Syria?’). Observe that question 18 does not specify any particular threat while in questions 9 and 14 (as is made clear in the survey report) there were multiple options, so results in both cases tally to much more than 100. The Syrian Campaign’s cover note, headline and graphics have drawn, very loosely, on some combination of those three questions. In response to question 18 69% said that ‘the main reason’ for leaving Syria was an ‘imminent threat’ to life, but without an identified source of that threat. In Question 9, 70% identified ‘Syrian Army and allied groups’ as ‘responsible for the fighting’. However as this was a multiple option question we also see that 82% have identified other armed groups (ISIS, al Nusra, FSA, YPG, other rebels). If we remove the Kurdish YPG, which has generally fought in coordination with the Syrian Army, the total is 74% anti-government armed groups. Question 14 shares the ‘multiple option’ structure of Question 9. Here 77% said they feared ‘getting arrested or kidnapped by’ the ‘Syrian Army and its allied groups’. However the combined total of anti-government groups is 82% and, if we add the YPG, 90%. The answers to both questions suggest these respondents feared the anti-government armed groups slightly more than they feared the Syrian Army. Most likely, many feared getting caught in the crossfire. So, even before we examine the representative validity of the poll, there is no basis in any of those three questions – or anywhere else in the poll – for saying that ‘70% of refugees are fleeing Assad’. To the contrary, the poll shows that more are fleeing anti-government, jihadist armed groups. This contradicts The Syrian Campaign’s quite dishonest headline, underlined by its lead in: ‘the results are crystal clear’. A Deutsche Welle report faithfully noted: ‘Survey leaves no doubt: Syrians are fleeing Assad’ (Fuchs 2015). Apparently this reporter did not read the survey. [Syria] [IO] [Propaganda]
• NK media use disaster movies to criticize Seoul
  By Choi Sung-jin A North Korean media outlet has recently used the popularity of some disaster films in South Korea to attack the Park Geun-hye administration. "In South Korea these days, a couple of disaster movies are enjoying unusual popularity, drawing the attention of experts," said "Meari (Echo)," an Internet propaganda media outlet in North Korea, Thursday. "It is necessary to examine the cause of this unprecedented popularity of South Korean disaster films, which had been crowded out of the market by similar films produced in Hollywood." The North Korea propaganda machine then introduced the story of one such South Korean disaster film, "Train to Busan," which drew audiences totaling 11.55 million people. "In this movie, the hero, when attacked by zombies during his ride on a high-speed train to Busan, fights a desperate battle to get out of the horrible misfortune," it said. The media outlet also commented on another film, "Tunnel," saying it is the story of a man trapped in a tunnel that abruptly crumbles because of shoddy construction, and rescuers' efforts to save him. "Experts attribute the popularity of these films to the fact they reflected the situations of South Korean society as they really are," Meari said. "They acidly exposed the inability of the conservative South Korean government as seen in their poor handling of the ferry Sewol's sinking and MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome)."
• US elections and the media: How did we get here?
  We explore how a lack of regulation and absence of a strong public broadcaster has impacted the coverage of US politics. 17 Sep 2016 12:29 GMT In this special edition of The Listening Post from New York City we explore how a lack of regulation and absence of a strong public broadcaster in America has impacted the coverage of US politics. As the 2016 presidential election campaign heads into the home stretch, many Americans are accusing their news outlets, particularly on the broadcast side, of not just reporting on the race for the White House - but actually affecting the outcome, through their commercial agendas, prioritising ratings and revenues over journalism and responsible reporting. So how did we get here? Measuring the totality of media coverage over the entire presidential campaign - the content, the tone, the ideology - is near impossible. But what we can do is examine structural issues in the broadcasting landscape that are unique to the US. First, America's regulatory requirement for editorial fairness is almost non existent. Broadcasters in the US can be editorially and ideologically biased whether Fox News on the right, MSNBC on the left. The second thing that sets the US media apart is that unlike every other advanced country in the world, America does not have a publicly-owned broadcaster provided with the resources - the budgets - to actually compete with privately-owned media outlets. So broadcasting in the US is almost entirely corporate-controlled. [Media] [US_election16]
• Neo-McCarthyism in the Media: Donald Trump, Larry King and RT
  by Kit Larry King is an old man now, 82, and has been doing interviews for decades, including 25 years doing his nightly show “Larry King Live” on CNN. He has interviewed actors, politicians, athletes, moguls, singers, soldiers and scientists, won countless awards, received half a dozen honorary degrees and done charity work all over the United States. And now he broadcasts on RT. This has always been a sticky issue for the MSM, who try so desperately to portray RT as some kind of neo-pravda propaganda mouthpiece, as opposed to a state funded news service akin to the BBC. He is a respected figure in the industry, and by the general public, and to attack him for his presence on RT would only draw attention it. So, for the most part, they don’t mention it. But now he has interviewed Donald Trump (see above video), and the Clinton campaign’s bizarrely desperate need to paint Trump as some kind of Manchurian Candidate means that Larry King’s and Donald Trump’s presence on RT is now centre-stage in the MSM. [Media]
• Inside Menwith Hill: The NSA’s British Base at the Heart of U.S. Targeted Killing
  Ryan Gallagher Sep. 6 2016, 9:05 p.m. The narrow roads are quiet and winding, surrounded by rolling green fields and few visible signs of life beyond the occasional herd of sheep. But on the horizon, massive white golf ball-like domes protrude from the earth, protected behind a perimeter fence that is topped with piercing razor wire. Here, in the heart of the tranquil English countryside, is the National Security Agency’s largest overseas spying base. Once known only by the code name Field Station 8613, the secret base — now called Menwith Hill Station — is located about nine miles west of the small town of Harrogate in North Yorkshire. Originally used to monitor Soviet communications through the Cold War, its focus has since dramatically shifted, and today it is a vital part of the NSA’s sprawling global surveillance network. For years, journalists and researchers have speculated about what really goes on inside Menwith Hill, while human rights groups and some politicians have campaigned for more transparency about its activities. Yet the British government has steadfastly refused to comment, citing a longstanding policy not to discuss matters related to national security. [NSA]
• Larry King and Donald Trump Follow-up: The Guardian keeps on lying
  Following our story regarding The Guardian’s coverage of Donald Trump’s interview with Larry King on RT, we feel the need to point out the increased dishonesty on this issue. From this article in The Guardian this morning [our emphasis]: “ Trump’s comments followed a series of embarrassing links to the Kremlin, including an appearance by Trump on a Russian state propaganda television channel, where Trump defended Putin and criticized US foreign policy. Trump’s campaign later said television personality Larry King had somehow tricked the candidate into accidentally appearing on the Russian channel The fact is that, in the interview (which you can watch in its entirety here), neither man mentions Putin’s name once, let alone “defends” him. Nobody who’d seen the brief interview (it’s only 9 minutes long) could possibly make that mistake. So either the Guardian writers/editors are publishing stories about videos they have not even bothered to watch, or they are simply straight lying to try to paint Trump as some kind of Russian spy. Either is ethically indefensible for a “proper” news outlet. [Trump] [Guardian]
• Watching TV in the DPRK
  Choson Exchange · August 24, 2016 OK, I can see how that might seem weird: you've traveled a long way to run a workshop for Choson Exchange in an exotic country - are you really going to watch TV? Well, TV is a unique experience in North Korea, too, and this past there was a huge upsurge of interest in DPRK television as the country unveiled its own netflix-style IPTV streaming service, called Manbang. This led to some good analysis but also literally thousands of "Manbang and Chill" jokes. Much is unknown about Manbang - we looked on the Chinese web to see if the hanja characters for "Manbang" mean "10,000 directions", "10,000 broadcasts" or "10,000 nations" - all possibilities - but Chinese news sites didn't know and were just using Roman letters. We also don't know if new apartment, leisure or entertainment buildings will be wired for the kind of data that is needed for streaming television. What we do know a bit about is the four TV channels that will offer on-demand services. [ICT] [Manbang]
• Sidewalk Labs, a Start-Up Created by Google, Has Bold Aims to Improve City Living
  By Steve Lohr June 10, 2015 Google’s ambitions and investments have increasingly broadened beyond its digital origins in Internet search and online advertising into the arena of physical objects: self-driving cars, Internet-connected eyeglasses, smart thermostats and a biotech venture to develop life-extending treatments. Now Google is getting into the ultimate manifestation of the messy real world: cities. The Silicon Valley giant is starting and funding an independent company dedicated to coming up with new technologies to improve urban life. The start-up, Sidewalk Labs, will be headed by Daniel L. Doctoroff, former deputy mayor of New York City for economic development and former chief executive of Bloomberg L.P. Mr. Doctoroff jointly conceived the idea for the company, which will be based in New York, with a team at Google, led by its chief executive, Larry Page. The founders describe Sidewalk Labs as an “urban innovation company” that will pursue technologies to cut pollution, curb energy use, streamline transportation and reduce the cost of city living. To achieve that goal, Mr. Doctoroff said Sidewalk Labs planned to build technology itself, buy it and invest in partnerships. “It’s going to evolve and we’re just starting up,” he said in an interview. Neither Mr. Doctoroff nor Google would say how much Google intended to invest in Sidewalk Labs, but it could be sizable eventually. A model for Sidewalk Labs, they said, is Calico, a company backed by Google, established in 2013 and run by Arthur D. Levinson, a former Genentech chief executive. Last September, Calico and AbbVie, a pharmaceutical company, announced that they would build a research center in the San Francisco Bay Area for diseases that affect the elderly, like dementia, with an initial investment, split evenly, of $500 million. [Google]
• The Gossip Mill: How To (SP)Read a Rumor About North Korea
  By Andray Abrahamian 02 September 2016 NK headlinesThis week, Seoul’s Joongang Daily reported that Kim Jong Un executed two top officials: Hwang Min, former agricultural minister, and Ri Yong Jin, who had a “senior position in the education ministry, possibly as high as minister level.” These high level executions were said to have been for such crimes as “nodding off during a meeting with Kim Jong Un.”[1] The article even cited anti-aircraft guns being used to conduct the execution. The South Korean Ministry of Unification (MoU) then announced the following day that Kim Yong Jin, the vice premier for education, was executed, giving the reports more credence. (“Ri Yong-jin” was an error, according to a statement given to the press by the MoU.[2]) Is this new report of elite executions true? Who knows. But in trying to distinguish truth from fiction about rumored happenings in North Korea, it is worth taking a moment to consider how news about the North is produced in South Korea and picked up by global news organizations [Execution] [Canard] [Propaganda]
• Bob Kerrey, Fulbright University, and the Neoliberal Erasure of History
  by Paul Street Truth is stranger than dystopian fiction. Last May, for example, United States President Barack Obama announced the opening of the U.S.-sponsored Fulbright University of Vietnam (FUV), the first private university in a small nation the U.S. tried to “bomb back to the Stone Age” half a century ago. Intended to be “a U.S.-style university not under control of the Communist Party of Vietnam,” FUV hopes to begin teaching students about how to be good global-era capitalists and world capitalist citizens in the fall of 2017. It’s a collaboration between the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and the U.S. State Department. The U.S. government has so far invested roughly$20 million in the project. Bronze Star Butcher The chair of FUV’s board of trustees is Bob Kerrey, a man with an interesting resume. It’s a curiously Orwellian choice. He is a former governor of Nebraska (1983-1987), a former U.S. Senator from the same state (1988-2000), and the former president of the New School University (a curious position for a man whose “higher” educational credentials stopped with a 1966 bachelors’ degree in Pharmacy at the University of Nebraska) in New York City (2001-2010). He is also a highly decorated war criminal in the “crucifixion of Southeast Asia” (as Noam Chomsky once aptly described the U.S. War on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia) that was planned by the “best and the brightest” from Harvard and other Ivy League institutions. [Vietnam] [War crimes] [Softpower] [Eduction]
• US “Cultural Colonisation” in Asia Pacific
  By Joseph Thomas Global Research, August 30, 2016 New Eastern Outlook Ancient Roman historian Tacitus (c. AD 56 – after 117) would adeptly describe the systematic manner in which Rome pacified foreign peoples and the manner in which it would extend its sociocultural and institutional influence over conquered lands. In chapter 21 of his book Agricola, named so after his father-in-law whose methods of conquest were the subject of the text, Tacitus would explain: His object was to accustom them to a life of peace and quiet by the provision of amenities. He therefore gave official assistance to the building of temples, public squares and good houses. He educated the sons of the chiefs in the liberal arts, and expressed a preference for British ability as compared to the trained skills of the Gauls. The result was that instead of loathing the Latin language they became eager to speak it effectively. In the same way, our national dress came into favour and the toga was everywhere to be seen. And so the population was gradually led into the demoralizing temptation of arcades, baths and sumptuous banquets. The unsuspecting Britons spoke of such novelties as ‘civilization’, when in fact they were only a feature of their enslavement. (Modern day “chief’s sons (and now daughters) being recruited by the empire, indoctrinated in their ways, and sent back home to culturally colonise their homelands, just as Tacitus described nearly 2,000 years ago.) Far from simple military conquest, the Romans engaged in sophisticated cultural colonisation. [Colonisation] [Softpower]

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AUGUST 2016

• Panama Papers: The big game’s in Africa, but safari companies are offshore
  By Will Fitzgibbon International Consortium of Investigative Journalists WASHINGTON — Each year, tourists cross the plains of central Zimbabwe to sleep near the roar of Victoria Falls, track elephants, cheetahs and pangolins, and dine under the stars. The visitors are accompanied every step of the way by John Stevens, a man who has been called “perhaps the finest guide to come out of Zimbabwe.” And while Stevens’ safari business is very much Zimbabwean, his financial universe is a classic creation of offshore globetrotting. Stevens’ financial affairs, outlined in years of correspondence with Mossack Fonseca, the law firm at the center of the Panama Papers leak, reveal how the poetry of Africa’s savannahs mixes with the day-to-day paper-pushing of offshore management. [Panama Papers]
• Children, the Media, and Political Agendas
  By Chandra Muzaffar Global Research, August 29, 2016 The image of 5 year-old Omran Daqneesh rescued from the rubble in the aftermath of a devastating airstrike in Aleppo on 17 August 2016 has reverberated around the globe. Every major media outlet— from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal to the BBC and Al-Jazeera — has highlighted the picture. It shows a little boy “sitting in an ambulance after the attack, his face, arms and legs caked in blood and dust…” It has become “a symbol for the suffering of children in Syria’s brutal five-year conflict.” However, Chinese State broadcaster, CCTV, has suggested that “the video may have been partially staged and criticized the way it was used to stir pro-rebel sympathies.” The footage of Omran was released by a group called the White Helmets which, it is alleged, is closely linked to the British military. The author of the footage Mahmoud Rslan, who describes himself as a war journalist and activist has ties to the Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zenki, a rebel group which in July circulated a video showing the beheading of a 12 year-old Palestinian boy. It is said that the group had also conducted kidnappings and torture of journalists, aid workers and civilians in Aleppo. It was considered a “moderate” rebel group by the United States and received weapons from it. [Syria] [Propaganda] [Manipulation]
• How far will they go to propagandise for war?
  by Catte Yesterday (August 26) marked the third anniversary of the alleged incendiary attack on the alleged school in Urm al-Kubra. The news of this event was broadcast on the BBC 10 O’Clock News on August 29, just as MPs were voting on whether the UK would begin airstrikes against the Syrian government. On that occasion the push for war ultimately failed for various reasons, not least of which was the unexpected rebellion of a large portion of the House of Commons. But given that the propaganda for (more) Western intervention is still ongoing, and indeed has ratcheted up recently to a point of potential direct war between the US and Russia, it’s never been more important to remind ourselves about the nature of war-propaganda and indeed of the reality sold to us through the corporate media. We can all agree that such reporting is deliberately timed, a co-ordinated promo intended to win a surge of easily-directed emotional outrage. Omran’s alleged rescue was selected out of the numerous un-reported stories of child-suffering in Aleppo, and publicised without investigation, because it told the right story at the right time. But people are less willing to think it might go further than that, into outright fakery of atrocities. That a casus belli might not be merely manipulated, but entirely fabricated, from the ground up, as a completely imaginary, fictional event [Syria] [Propaganda]
• Making the Hangzhou G20 summit relevant
  29 August 2016 Author: Editors, East Asia Forum Among all the summit-babble about inclusive and sustainable growth and a myriad other agendas that have attached themselves to the G20, it’s still far from clear that when leaders gather in Hangzhou in China next weekend they will add strategic value to the world’s premier economic dialogue. A man rides an electronic bike past a billboard for the upcoming G20 summit in Hangzhou, China. It’s not the divisions over objectives and values that are the problem. It is that the process has been hijacked and side-tracked from the main strategic tasks that face the global economy and international community today. Printing and spending government money in various ways to pump up the global economy after the global financial crisis was relatively easy compared to addressing the present malaise. Reliance on monetary policy to stoke the global economy is no longer a practical option. The global economy is in serious trouble, with problems that run even deeper than the global financial crisis. Though they are less immediately discernible, their destructive power will be more long-lasting if they are not addressed now.
  The world is at a major turning point, with Brexit and the political mood in the United States, still the largest economy on earth, leading industrial countries decisively away from globalisation and into retreat from trade and economic expansion. The trends are already clear, with shrinking global trade and stagnation gnawing at the heartland of the industrial world. These are harbingers of longer term structural decline in the industrial world unless there is collective global choice to reverse the malaise. [Globalisation]
• A Crooked Mile
  Israel Shamir • August 24, 2016 The “crooked mile” from the Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes (There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile etc) is Fleet Street, which is well known to London journalists. So I was told when I joined the BBC at Bush House, at the very end of Fleet Street. Not only is the street itself crooked, but so are many of its occupants. Crookedness is a professional problem for the media. However, in older times (let us drop a hint of nostalgia) a journalist had a choice. He could work in a newspaper supporting Tories or Labour or Liberals. Now there is no difference: all British newspapers including the Guardian hate Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader. In the US, all the media hates Trump. There is simply no choice for a reader or a writer! The only-one-opinion media is the worst thing you can find. Look at what it did to the Russians! I do not mean now, when they have the whole supermarket of ideas, but in 1991. Exactly 25 years ago, in August 1991, I witnessed Russia’s Mother of All Colour Revolutions, as an Arab poet might call it. It lasted for three days. The Media Masters produced and broadcast a wonderful show of people rising against their tyrants, braving tanks and kicking down a statue or two of their oppressors. You’ve seen such shows broadcast by the same team from Kiev’s Maidan or Cairo’s Tahrir or indeed Baghdad. The results were equally dismal. [Media] [Soviet Union] [Collapse]
• Provoking Nuclear War by Media
  By John Pilger Global Research, August 23, 2016 The exoneration of a man accused of the worst of crimes, genocide, made no headlines. Neither the BBC nor CNN covered it. The Guardian allowed a brief commentary. Such a rare official admission was buried or suppressed, understandably. It would explain too much about how the rulers of the world rule. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague has quietly cleared the late Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, of war crimes committed during the 1992-95 Bosnian war, including the massacre at Srebrenica. Far from conspiring with the convicted Bosnian-Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, Milosevic actually “condemned ethnic cleansing”, opposed Karadzic and tried to stop the war that dismembered Yugoslavia. Buried near the end of a 2,590- page judgement on Karadzic last February, this truth further demolishes the propaganda that justified Nato’s illegal onslaught on Serbia in 1999. Milosevic died of a heart attack in 2006, alone in his cell in The Hague, during what amounted to a bogus trial by an American-invented “international tribunal”. Denied heart surgery that might have saved his life, his condition worsened and was monitored and kept secret by US officials, as WikiLeaks has since revealed. Milosevic was the victim of war propaganda that today runs like a torrent across our screens and newspapers and beckons great danger for us all. He was the prototype demon, vilified by the western media as the “butcher of the Balkans” who was responsible for “genocide”, especially in the secessionist Yugoslav province of Kosovo. Prime Minister Tony Blair said so, invoked the Holocaust and demanded action against “this new Hitler”. David Scheffer, the US ambassador-at-large for war crimes [sic], declared that as many as “225,000 ethnic Albanian men aged between 14 and 59” may have been murdered by Milocevic’s forces. This was the justification for Nato’s bombing, led by Bill Clinton and Blair, that killed hundreds of civilians in hospitals, schools, churches, parks and television studios and destroyed Serbia’s economic infrastructure. It was blatantly ideological; at a notorious “peace conference” in Rambouillet in France, Milosevic was confronted by Madeleine Albright, the US secretary of state, who was to achieve infamy with her remark that the deaths of half a million Iraqi children were “worth it”. Albright delivered an “offer” to Milosevic that no national leader could accept. Unless he agreed to the foreign military occupation of his country, with the occupying forces “outside the legal process”, and to the imposition of a neo-liberal “free market”, Serbia would be bombed. This was contained in an “Appendix B”, which the media failed to read or suppressed. The aim was to crush Europe’s last independent “socialist” state. Once Nato began bombing, there was a stampede of Kosovar refugees “fleeing a holocaust”. When it was over, international police teams descended on Kosovo to exhume the victims of the “holocaust”. The FBI failed to find a single mass grave and went home. The Spanish forensic team did the same, its leader angrily denouncing “a semantic pirouette by the war propaganda machines”. The final count of the dead in Kosovo was 2,788. This included combatants on both sides and Serbs and Roma murdered by the pro-Nato Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). There was no genocide. The Nato attack was both a fraud and a war crime. [Media] [Russia confrontation] [Yugoslavia] [Milosevic]
• BBC, CNN, Guardian et al need to face the agenda they are being used to serve
  by Catte
  After the recent revelation that almost every major news site has been promoting unverified video and eye-witness testimony originating in some of the most extreme, violent and debauched terrorist elements currently operating in Syria, we have to ask – is there any longer even a minimum of verification or investigative process required before news agencies and publications endorse a breaking story? In the case of that notorious “Omran rescue vid”, for example, AP broke the story, but of the three journalists credited, one was in Beirut, one in Geneva and one in Moscow. None of them were in Aleppo, or even in Syria. Given what’s now transpired about the discredited and even criminal nature of the source, we need to ask – how did they get word of this event and how did they verify it? Did AP talk to ordinary people on the spot, and directly interview the witnesses? Did they get this video direct from the terrorist-supporting “Aleppo Media Center”, or via an intermediary? Did they know about the terrorist-connections of both the AMC and the “photo-journalist” Mahmoud Raslan, and just not inform their readers, or did they genuinely not know who their sources were? [Media] [Syria][Propaganda]
• The "Wounded Boy In Orange Seat" - Another Staged "White Helmets" Stunt
  This pic is making the rounds in "western" media together with a tearful story from "activists" in a neighborhood in al-Qaeda occupied east-Aleppo. A boy, seemingly wounded, sits quietly in a brand new, very well equipped ambulance. At a point he touches what looks like a wound on his left temple. He shows no reaction to that touch. The two minute video (also here), from which the pic is taken, shows the boy being handed from the dark above to some person in a rescue jacket and carried into the ambulance. There he sits quietly, unattended, while several people take videos and pictures of him. One other kids, not obviously wounded, is then carried to the ambulance. As the story is told: Mahmoud Raslan, a photojournalist who captured the image, told the Associated Press that emergency workers and journalists tried to help the child, identified as 5-year-old Omran Daqneesh, along with his parents and his three siblings, who are 1, 6 and 11 years old. "We were passing them from one balcony to the other," Raslan said, adding: "We sent the younger children immediately to the ambulance, but the 11-year-old girl waited for her mother to be rescued. Her ankle was pinned beneath the rubble." An internet search for "Mahmoud Raslan", the claimed "photojournalist", finds no other pictures or videos attributed to that name. There are about 15 men standing around the scene and doing nothing. (Next to a "just bombed" site in a warzone? No fear of a double-tap strike?) At least two more men, besides the videographer, are taking pictures or videos. [Syria] [Media] [Propaganda]
• Tesla removes 'self-driving' saying after Beijing crash
  China Daily, August 17, 2016 Tesla Motors Inc removed the term "self-driving" from its China website after a driver in Beijing who crashed in "autopilot" mode complained that the carmaker overplayed the function's capability and misled buyers. The Tesla driver crashed earlier this month while on a Beijing commuter highway after the car failed to avoid a vehicle parked on the left side but partially in the roadway, damaging both cars, but causing no injuries. It was the first known such crash in China, although it follows a fatal accident in Florida earlier this year that put pressure on auto executives and regulators to tighten rules for automated driving. A check of Tesla's Chinese website showed that the word "autopilot" had also been removed. But that term was subsequently reinstated on Monday. [Tesla]
• Now Streaming: Intranet Protocol TV Service Arrives in North Korea
  By Martyn Williams 17 August 2016 TV viewers in North Korea are no longer tied to watching shows at the time they air. The country has begun an “Intranet” Protocol Television (IPTV) service providing access to live and catch-up TV, according to a report carried by Korean Central Television on Tuesday, August 16. The IPTV service demonstrates greater media accessibility to the DPRK’s four TV channels, previously available only through a simple, one-time over-the-air broadcast. North Korea’s state TV appears likely to expand its potential reach by making programming available outside of its traditional 3pm to 11pm broadcast time, and free up viewers to tune in at their convenience. The DPRK’s new streaming service demonstrates a technological advancement for the country, as it is run off North Korea’s Kwangmyong intranet, and could become an indicator of intranet accessibility in North Korean households. [ICT]
• With Anonymous' latest attacks in Rio, the digital games have begun
  Robert Muggah and Nathan B.Thompson 12 August 2016 The hacktivist group has significantly ramped up its cyber attacks for the Olympic Games. But could a heavy-handed response put everyone’s digital liberties at risk? “Olá, Rio de Janeiro.” So began the August 5 Facebook posting of Anonymous Brasil hours before the opening ceremony of the Olympics. The hacktivist collective then proceeded to take the Brazilian government to task for hiding the city´s widespread poverty, vicious evictions, police violence and the suppression of protesters behind the glitter of the Games. ? A wave of denial of service (DDoS) attacks on state and city websites followed immediately after Anonymous delivered their statement. The group boasted taking down at least five sites, including www.brasil2016.gov.br, www.rio2016.com, www.esporte.gov.br, www.cob.org.br and www.rj.gov.br. They broadcast their exploits using the hashtags #OpOlympicHacking, #Leaked and #TangoDown, some of which were set up months ago.?? Since then, website take-downs have been coming hard and fast. [Cyberactivism] [Olympics]
• U.S. weighs dangers, benefits of naming Russia in cyber hack
  Washington | By Warren Strobel and John Walcott Wary of a global confrontation with Russia, U.S. President Barack Obama must carefully weigh how to respond to what security experts believe was Moscow's involvement in the hacking of Democratic Party organizations, U.S. officials said. Publicly blaming Russian President Vladimir Putin's intelligence services would bring instant pressure on Washington to divulge its evidence, which relies on highly classified sources and methods, U.S. intelligence officials said. One option for Washington is to retaliate against Russia in cyberspace. But the intelligence officials said they fear a rapid escalation in which, under a worst-case scenario, Moscow's sophisticated cyber warriors could attack power grids, financial systems and other critical infrastructure. [Russia confrontation] [Emails] [Attribution]
• Russia: Spyware Attack Hits Multitude Of Networks
  Russia is suspected in hacks targeting the DNC and a Democratic fundraising group. Russia’s intelligence service said on Saturday that the computer networks of 20 organizations, including state agencies and defense companies, have been infected with spyware in what it described as a targeted and coordinated attack. The Federal Security Service, the FSB, said the malware and the way the networks were infected were similar to those used in previous cases of cyber espionage found in Russia and other countries. The agency did not say who it suspected of being behind the attacks. “Information technology resources of government agencies, scientific and military institutions, defense industry companies and other entities involved in crucial infrastructure have been infected,” the FSB said in a statement on its website. The FSB’s announcement follows reports of cyber attacks on the U.S. Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the fundraising committee for Democratic candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives. Cyber security experts and U.S. officials have said there was evidence that Russia engineered the DNC hack to release sensitive party emails in order to influence the U.S. presidential election. The Kremlin has denied any involvement in the incident. [Cyberwar] [Media]
• Overseas N.Korean Officials 'Use S.Korean Smartphones'
  North Korean officials posted overseas secretly use smartphones made in South Korea, the Daily NK reported Monday quoting a source in China. The news outlet said North Korean officials and security agents who act as minders of overseas workers use Samsung or LG smartphones although they ban their charges from using any smartphones. Some of them are keenly trawl the web without permission from their superiors. [Mobiles]
• S.Korean Officials Fall for N.Korean Phishing Scam
  North Korean hackers stole the e-mail passwords of 56 officials in the South Korean foreign, unification and defense ministries as well as staffers of defense companies, prosecutors here said Monday. Most of the officials handle intelligence on the North, many of them in senior positions. Yang Seok-jo at the Supreme Prosecutors' Office said further investigation is needed since the officials exchanged work-related messages via the hacked email accounts. The hackers sent phishing e-mails to 90-plus South Korean officials claiming their passwords had been hacked. If they opened the e-mail and changed their passwords, the new passwords were then known to the hackers. Further phishing attacks using this leak as a pretext are likely, he added. [Phishing] [Attribution]

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JULY 2016

• N. Korea ranks middle in world academic standard: study
  By Lee Jin-a North Korea's academic standard is middle rank in the world, according to a U.S.-based media outlet Thursday. Voice of America said an international database analyzed studies published from 1994 to last year in 239 countries and designated North Korea 126th for publishing thesis papers. Among the "H-index," which represents the quality of the research, the communist state was 105th. Scopus is the world's largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature, managed by Dutch publisher Elsevier. More than 20,000 journals are recorded in the database. According to the Scopus research, North Korea showed its strength in fields such as engineering (85th), computers (86th) and material science (88th). The state ranked 63rd in space engineering. Meanwhile, South Korea was 12th in the world for publishing studies. In space engineering, the country was 49 places ahead of North Korea. Scopus said the U.S. has topped its chart for the past 20 years. [S&T]
• WikiLeaks suffers ‘sustained attack’ after announcing megaleak of Turkey govt docs
  Published time: 19 Jul, 2016 02:21 WikiLeaks reported suffering a “sustained attack” after it announced the upcoming release of hundreds of thousands of documents relating to Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the wake of a failed military coup. “Our infrastructure is under sustained attack,” WikiLeaks said on Twitter. “We are unsure of the true origin of the attack. The timing suggests a Turkish state power faction or its allies.” Despite the attack, the famous whistleblowing site promised to “prevail & publish” the first batch of documents on Tuesday. Earlier WikiLeaks announced that the release of documents, which could expose the Turkish “political power structure”, will contain 300,000 emails and 500,000 documents. [WikiLeaks] [Turkey]

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JUNE 2016

• [Reporter’s notebook] What Google’s real intention in seeking S. Korean map data?
  Posted on : Jun.28,2016 17:47 KST Company is currently in a struggle with the South Korean government over releasing data overseas Debate is heating up about Google’s request to the South Korean government to allow it to take South Korean map data outside the country. In some corners of the industry, charges are being made that Google is waging a “war of the maps” with South Korea while hiding behind the US government. Map data refers to the information that goes into a map, including addresses and the names of places and buildings. South Korea prohibits detailed map data from being taken overseas for reasons of national security. In line with government directions, South Korean businesses have to hide the locations and names of the Blue House and major military facilities in the map and navigation services that they provide. Considering that satellite images of the Blue House and major military facilities are available online, questions have been raised about whether it really makes sense to ban map data from being exported for national security reasons, but the government directions have not changed. On June 2, Google became the first foreign company to request the export of map data, with the goal of accommodating foreign tourists and promoting the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. “Since in the cloud method data is stored in data centers around the world, our service requires that data be taken overseas. The ban on exporting map data prevents us from providing our direction service in South Korea, which creates an inconvenience for people who use Google services when they visit South Korea,” Google said. But South Korean companies in the industry contend that Google’s attempts to legalize map data exports are connected with its preparations for the self-driving car service that it plans to put on the market around 2020. Self-driving cars are vehicles that are steered by software and sensors without being controlled by a driver. [Google]
• Panama Papers are available. Why hasn’t U.S. asked to see them?
  Highlights Panamanian government has received 3 requests from countries, but not U.S. Little action apparent on Capitol Hill, other than questions from a committee The Obama administration announced plans in May, but nothing has come of them By Marisa Taylor and Kevin G. Hall McClatchy Washington Bureau WASHINGTON — Nearly three months after the revelations from the Panama Papers exposed politicians, drug cartels and the wealthy hiding millions behind offshore companies, the U.S. Justice Department has yet to ask its Panamanian counterpart for access to seized records. The inaction raises questions about the response by Congress and the Obama administration to the unprecedented leak that rocked governments in Iceland, Pakistan and the United Kingdom and prompted investigations worldwide. “The biggest financial scandal involving offshores is greeted with a yawn by U.S. law enforcement officials?” said Charles Intriago, a former federal prosecutor and money-laundering expert in Miami. “It doesn’t make any sense that a pot of evidentiary gold is going unpursued by the U.S. Department of Justice.” In the weeks following the April 3 publication of stories across the globe about hidden offshore fortunes, President Barack Obama vowed to work with Congress to tackle reform aimed at offshore companies. His Justice Department declared that it “takes very seriously all credible allegations of high-level, foreign corruption that might have a link to the United States or the U.S. financial system.” Yet as of June 23, Panama said it had not received a single request from the United States for access to the data seized by Panamanian authorities from Mossack Fonseca, the law firm at the heart of the Panama Papers, said Sandra Sotillo, spokeswoman for Panamanian Attorney General Kenia Porcell. [Panama Papers]
• DPRK: Isolated, Demonized, and Dehumanized by the West
  by Andre Vltchek / March 18th, 2016 Soon, most likely, there will be new brutal sanctions imposed against North Korea. And there will be massive provocative military exercises held, involving the US and South Korea (ROK). In brief, it is all ‘business as usual’: the West continues to torture DPRK; it is provoking it, isolating, demonizing and dehumanizing it, making sure that it wouldn’t function normally, let alone thrive. The submissive Western public keeps obediently swallowing all the shameless lies it is being served by its mainstream media. It is not really surprising; people of Europe and North America already stopped questioning official dogmas a long time ago. [Softwar] [US NK policy]
• Aleppo Doctor Attacks Western Media for Bias, Censorship and Lies
  By Silvia Cattori Dr Nabil Antaki could have abandoned Aleppo to ensure his own safety. Instead he decided to remain and to serve the besieged people of his City, working with various local charities. Above all, he wanted to bear witness to the destruction caused by Western support for the foreign armed groups who have been systematically destroying Syria and terrorising its people for the last 5 years. Yesterday Silvia Cattori recorded this report from Dr Antaki on the recent amplification of propaganda surrounding events in Aleppo. It has been translated from the French by Vanessa Beeley. “With regards to recent events in Aleppo, I state very clearly that the mainstream media are lying by omission. Since the beginning of the war in Aleppo that began 4 years ago, they have consistently failed to report all the facts. [Syria] [Jihadist] [Media]
• NATO may counter cyber attacks with conventional weapons - Stoltenberg
  NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg briefs the media during a NATO defence ministers meeting at the Alliance headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, June 14, 2016. Reuters/Francois Lenoir NATO may react to future cyber attacks by deploying conventional weapons, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said in an interview published by Germany's Bild newspaper on Thursday. "A severe cyber attack may be classified as a case for the alliance. Then NATO can and must react," the newspaper quoted Stoltenberg as saying. "How, that will depend on the severity of the attack." The NATO chief told the newspaper that the alliance needed to adjust to the increasingly complex series of threats it faces, which is why NATO members have agreed to defend against attacks in cyberspace just as they do against attacks launched against targets on land, in the air and at sea. NATO members are expected to agree at their upcoming summit in Warsaw to designate cyber as an official operational domain of warfare, along with air, sea, land and space. Individual members have already made similar announcements, including the United States, which said in 2011 that it would respond to hostile attacks in cyberspace as it would to any other threat. [NATO] [Cyberwar] [Pretext] [MISCOM]
• N.Korean Hackers Steal Fighter Jet Blueprints
  North Korean hackers have broken into the computer systems of Korean Air and other defense firms since July 2014 and stolen more than 40,000 documents, police said Monday. The operatives hacked Korean Air's computer system and apparently stole designs for the wings of the F-15 fighter jet wing as well as information on medium-altitude drones currently in development. The hackers, who were traced to an IP address in Pyongyang's Ryugyong district, hacked into the PC management programs of a South Korean Internet security company and spread 33 different malicious codes into some computers. They also infiltrated the computer systems at private businesses using the security company's programs, stole documents and deleted them. Some 160 public and private agencies and businesses use the programs. The hacking attacks targeted 17 SK affiliates, 10 Hanjin subsidiaries including Korean Air, and KT, police said. Police monitored North Korean hacking attacks after the North's latest nuclear test in January of this year and spotted the malicious codes in February. Police found that a total of 46,208 documents were leaked including 26,000 with military information, but none of the military documents were classified. [Hacking] [Canard]
• How The Guardian told me to steer clear of Palestine
  by David Cronin When I started out as a journalist in the 1980s, I asked an experienced Irish reporter for advice. “Read The Guardian,” he told me. The message that there was no better newspaper had a lasting effect. For years, I wanted to write for The Guardian. Eventually, this desire was realized after I emailed the late Georgina Henry, then editor of its Comment is Free section, in 2007. Henry was immediately receptive to my idea of tackling the European Union from a critical, left-wing perspective. I very much enjoyed contributing to The Guardian. Having previously worked for quite a stuffy publication, it felt liberating to be able to express opinions. There was one issue, however, on which I felt my freedom curtailed: Palestine. Although The Guardian did publish a few of my articles denouncing Israeli atrocities, I began to encounter obstacles in 2009. [Israel] [Media] [Censor]
• Military info leaked in N. Korea's cyberattack: Seoul policy
  South Korean police said Monday North Korea had penetrated into the internal networks of the affiliates of two local conglomerates and stole and subsequently deleted some 42,000 documents, including some containing military information. According to the National Police Agency (NPA), in July 2014 the North started hacking the networks of South Korean telecoms giant SK Group and the Hanjin Group which has the country's top flag carrier Korean Air Lines Co. under its wing. Korean Air makes parts for military jets. [Hacking] [Canard]
• Google's demand for uncensored map ignores Korean situation
  By Choi Sung-jin A tug-of-war is continuing between the Korean government and Google over the company's demand to use the nation's geographic data abroad for commercial purposes. The world's largest Internet company insists it needs an uncensored map to expand map-related services covering all of Korea. The Seoul government says it cannot let all location information on national security facilities be shown abroad. Google asked the National Geographic Information Institute (NGII) to approve its plan to provide Korea's geographic data services overseas, on June 1. The company made a similar request to National Intelligence Service in January 2007 but was turned down. The government plans to decide whether to allow it by Aug. 25. The government has maintained that it could provide the data only if Google deleted information related to national security facilities or agreed to Korea managing the use of personal data and national security-related information. "All other Internet businesses, including Naver, Kakao and SK Planet, have done so," an official said. "We cannot provide the privilege of using data with no such strings attached only for Google." Google wants access to undeleted geographic images of Korea to enhance services related to Google Maps, including location-based advertisements and automobile navigation services. Global map data are also indispensable in developing autonomous vehicles and operating systems for automobiles, both of which are among Google's future growth engines, according to industry experts. According to Google, however, these services are impossible in Korea because the map Google uses now is inaccurate and has no regional information on streets and stores. "We want the same map as that used by Naver and other Korean companies," a company official said. But the government's stance on this request appears to be firm. "In the satellite photos already provided by Google, all the facilities of national security, including Cheong Wa Dae and military installations, are exposed," said Choe Byong-nam, director general of NGII. "If they combine satellite photos and large-scale maps, exact locations and outlooks of security facilities are exposed on the Internet, and we cannot let this happen."
• How slow is Kim Jong-un's smartphone?
  By Lee Han-soo Wherever you go in South Korea -- by subway, bullet train or even to remote islands -- high-speed Internet is ubiquitous, like air. The average connection speed is the world's fastest at 26.7 megabits per second, at which a full-length Hollywood film can be downloaded in just minutes. But things are starkly different on the other side of the inter-Korean border. The speed in North Korea is just one-13th of its southern rival, a speed at which downloading a movie would take nearly half a day. So with such poor speed, why do North Koreans use smartphones? Is it just a show of privilege given to those with proven loyalty to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un? And what does Kim do with his smartphone? Of course, it is unknown if Kim's Internet connection is as slow as that allowed to his people. Experts do not rule out the possibility that Kim and his confidants may have a fast, unfettered high-speed Internet connection. "What they (North Korea's smartphone users) can do may be surfing text-based websites or sending/receiving emails," an Internet expert said. "Downloading films or watching TV, as most South Koreans do with their smartphones, is absolutely impossible." U.S. content delivery network company Akamai recently published a report about the world's Internet speeds, highlighting the North's poor service. Noting the snail-like speed of two megabits per second, the report said a quick browse of text-heavy websites or viewing low-resolution photos might be all North Koreans can do on the Internet. This is largely because North Korea has only one Internet provider (ISP) and lacks IP addresses, experts said. Star Joint Venture is the only ISP company in the North, using a fiber-optic cable that runs between Pyongyang and Dandong in China. The reclusive state also has only 1,024 IP addresses while other countries that have high Internet speeds and access have more than 123 million addresses. Fewer IP addresses means there is little space to be explored on the North Korean Internet. In 2003, North Korea secured a satellite connection with Germany to bolster commercial Internet access. [ICT] [Internet] [Broadband] [N-S Comparison]
• Nevada confirms it hasn’t questioned who owns Panama Papers companies
  Highlights Facing June 3 deadline, Nevada responds to Senate request for information Confirms it hasn’t probed a company since 2013, says law enforcement hasn’t asked Nobody answers door at Panama Papers firm in Las Vegas The Wyoming State Capitol building framed by downtown Cheyenne, Wyo. on March 8, 2016. Wyoming is the least populous and the second least densely populated of the 50 United States but, like Nevada, it has been a very popular location for the formation of offshore corporations. ? LAS VEGAS — Foreign-owned companies registered in Nevada increasingly have been ensnared in political scandals abroad, yet the state has made no recent attempt to determine who owns the hundreds of thousands of companies operating from the state, officials confirm. The firms largely are so-called limited liability companies, a common form of incorporation, but hundreds of them in Nevada have shareholders or directors listing addresses in places like Panama, the British Virgin Islands and even the Seychelles off East Africa in the Indian Ocean. Nevada and Wyoming became the focus of attention in the past two months after leaked documents from the archives of the Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca showed that the two Western states were frequently used to set up secret shell companies, often to allow owners to sidestep taxes or squirrel assets out of the sight of prying investigators, including law enforcement. In the wake of the publication of the archives, known as the Panama Papers, Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, wrote to officials in Wyoming and Nevada demanding answers to six questions by June 3. [Panama Papers]
• Another Resurrected General and Other “Pyongyang canards”
  Konstantin Asmolov In February 2016, the list of repressed DPRK officials included the Chief of North Korea’s General Staff, Lee Yong-Guillem, who, as was reported by South Korean media with reference to sources in the South Korean government, had been accused of corruption and factionalism and executed.To explain a reason behind his execution, a story was made up of the General’s conflict with the party officials in connection with his discontent about the attempts to put the army under the party’s control or his denunciation by Kim Jong-un on the allegation that Lee was critical of the leader. Indeed, Lee initially “disappeared from the TV screens”, followed by the North Korean government newspaper “Rodong Sinmun” reporting that the chief of staff was in fact not him, but Lee Myung-soo, who was present at the military exercises together with Kim Jong-un. [Canard] {Media
• Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca email shows how it used foreign trusts in NZ
  2:31 pm today RNZ's Gyles Beckford, Patrick O'Meara, Jane Patterson, One News' Lee Taylor, Jessica Mutch, Andrea Vance, & Nicky Hager* no metadata Panama Papers NZ - A 2014 email sent by Mossack Fonseca's New Zealand representative lays out exactly how the company uses foreign trusts in this country. An investigation into the Panama Papers - an unprecedented leak of 11.5 million files from the database of the world's fourth largest offshore law firm, Mossack Fonseca - by RNZ, One News and investigative journalist Nicky Hager has lifted the lid on how New Zealand is part of a tangled web of secretive shelf companies and obscure trusts. It has also raised questions over the country's foreign tax rules, including its disclosure requirements. Now, an email sent by Mossack Fonseca New Zealand's Daniel Leon has revealed - in his own words - the measures clients can take if they do not want their names to appear on the public paperwork. The email was in response to an enquiry on behalf of Juan Fernandez Methol from Studio Damiani, a Uruguayan firm offering legal and accountancy services to provide inheritance and tax "financial solutions". Panama Papers NZ - click here for full coverage In the 2014 email, Mr Leon responded to a query from one of his colleagues, a Mossack Fonseca lawyer in Panama, about how the company used New Zealand look-through companies (LTCs) and foreign trusts. Mr Leon noted in his email if the client did not "wish to appear as a registered shareholder", Mossack Fonseca could "offer the constitution of a foreign Trust NZ to be the holder of the shares of the LTC". View of the facade of the building where Panama-based Mossack Fonseca law firm offices are in Panama City, on May 9, 2016. Signage outside one of Mossack Fonseca's offices. Photo: RODRIGO ARANGUA / AFP He went on to say that, provided the trustee was not an Australian resident (because New Zealand and Australia have automatic disclosure), there were "minimum requirements for disclosure of foreign trusts in New Zealand". Mossack Fonseca would set up an LTC for $US2850, which would also include the provision of a "registered office" and a "NZ resident director" - often these would be New Zealand-based lawyers, and the addresses would be those of their law offices. A foreign trust cost $US2800 to set up through Mossack Fonseca New Zealand. For customers interested in a "combo", ie an LTC and a trust, the cost of the trust would be reduced to $US1500. [Panama Papers]
• Scottish teen hacks N. Korean 'Facebook'
  North Korea launches its own version of Facebook called "Best Korea's Social Network" on Friday. /Courtesy of Twitter By Lee Jin-a North Korea launched its own version of Facebook - "Best Korea's Social Network" - on Friday but shut it down soon after a Scottish teenager hacked into it. According to CNN Money, Doug Madory, the director of Internet analysis firm Dyn DNS, found the website on a North Korean server and told the media it was available to people outside the isolated country at www.starcon.net.kp. But within hours of its launch, Scottish teenager Andrew McKean hacked the website by using "admin" and "password" for the login details. He said he could "delete and suspend users, change the site's name, censor certain words, manage the ads and see everyone's emails." The website not only looked like Facebook, but had similar functions such as uploading a cover photo and profile picture, finding friends, sending messages and posting a status message. Madory said: "[I'm] not sure this was an official North Korean government project. But someone inside the country had to have done this." He said the website was hosted in North Korea, unlike other North Korean websites, which were hosted in China. [Hacking] [Legality] [Double standards]

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MAY 2016

• The art of storytelling in times of war
  by Pål Steigan English translation by Anne Merethe Erstad “…In 1990 a young girl offered a heart wrenching testimony to how Iraqi soldiers had forced their way into a maternity ward in Kuwait, how they’d destroyed the islolettes and left newborn and premature infants to die. She called herself Nayira. Her testimony made a tremendous impression and it had a huge emotionally impact in the first Gulf War against Iraq. The problem was, though: the story was a hoax. Nayira was the daughter of Kuwait’s ambassador to USA. Her testimony was produced by a PR agency, and what she told had no root in reality…” — Wikipedia. This story has everything. Young, crying girl, premature infants, barbarian soldiers. As Frank Zappa would have said: It is carefully designed to suck the twelve year old listeners into our camp. As it turned out, the PR agency Hill & Knowlton, the oldest PR firm in the world, had created the manuscript, directed, styled and rehearsed the girl prior to her avowal. The testimony was designed to make Christian pacifists support the war against Iraq. (Hill & Knowlton used to work for the tobacco industry to undermine research proving damages caused by smoking. Currently they’re assigned by oil companies to undermine criticism of fracking and the dangers involved.) A far more prominent case is of course the US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s presentation in the UN Security Council, where he submitted false “evidence” of Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction. That too, was a fraud from one end to the other, but was reported by all major media more or less as the holy gospel. [Propaganda]
• How RNZ, TVNZ and Nicky Hager joined forces to tackle the Panama Papers
  11:26 am today Alex van Wel, Digital News Editor First Person - Two weeks after RNZ, One News and Nicky Hager joined forces to tackle the Panama Papers, Alex van Wel looks back at how and why the collaboration came about. RNZ and TVNZ aren't natural bed-fellows. We at RNZ float in a delightfully non-commercial world, guided by our Charter's public interest. Audience size is critical to us, of course, but we sometimes pretend it isn't. TVNZ, on the other hand, openly fights it out in the battle for ratings. [Panama papers]
• Panama Papers include dozens of Americans tied to financial frauds
  By Michael Hudson, Jake Bernstein, Ryan Chittum, Will Fitzgibbon and Catherine Dunn May 9 at 2:00 PM Len Gotshalk, an Atlanta Falcons football player turned Oregon businessman, had a history of legal issues by the time he went looking to buy an offshore company in 2010. Lawsuits and criminal filings had accused the former NFL offensive lineman of fraud and racketeering. Mossack Fonseca, a Panama-based law firm that specializes in selling offshore companies, initially told Gotshalk that it couldn’t do business with him, because of “negative information” that its researchers had found. Gotshalk persuaded the law firm to reconsider, noting in an email that he had “held offshore accounts in the past in Europe and Bahamas and Belize” without problems. Three months later — on May 21, 2010 — federal prosecutors in Philadelphia unsealed an indictment charging that Gotshalk was a key player in a scheme that used kickbacks and other tactics to inflate the prices of tech-company stocks. Three days later — on May 24 — Mossack Fonseca recorded a $3,055 wire transfer from Gotshalk, the firm’s internal records show. The money bought Gotshalk a British Virgin Islands shell company that Mossack Fonseca had set up earlier called Irishmyst Consultants Ltd. [Panama Papers]
• NZ law firms that lobbied government did business with Mossack Fonseca
  RNZ's Gyles Beckford, Patrick O'Meara, Jane Patterson, TVNZ's Lee Taylor, Jessica Mutch, Andrea Vance, & Nicky Hager* EXCLUSIVE - Panama Papers NZ - New Zealand law firms that lobbied the government in 2014 against shutting down the foreign trust industry in this country had extensive links to Mossack Fonseca. Four of the five firms that met with and lobbied the then Revenue Minister Todd McClay have done a varying amount of business with the controversial Panamanian law firm, with Auckland-based firm Cone Marshall featuring most prominently. The Panama Papers also show the man who has long handled Prime Minister John Key's personal legal matters, Ken Whitney, had links to Mossack Fonseca through two companies - registered in the British Virgin Islands, with Mossack Fonseca as their agent. Mr Whitney also acted as a referee for Karen Marshall of Cone Marshall in 2009. Foreign trusts and New Zealand's rules have been under the spotlight since the release of the Panama Papers, which revealed how the Panamanian law firm orchestrated a worldwide web of companies designed to let people hide money and avoid taxes. A collaborative team of reporters from RNZ, One News and the investigative reporter Nicky Hager has been working together, examining a database of 11 million leaked documents and identifying stories linked to New Zealand. [Panama papers]
• Panama Papers NZ
  Radio NZ website on Panama Papers [Panama Papers]
• Panama Papers report alleges New Zealand prime place for rich to hide money
  Mossack Fonseca law firm sign is pictured in Panama City, in this April 4, 2016 file photo. Reuters/Carlos Jasso/Files New Zealand is at the heart of a tangled web of shelf companies and trusts that are being used by wealthy Latin Americans to channel funds around the world, according to a report on Monday based on leaks of the so-called Panama Papers. Local media has analyzed more than 61,000 documents relating to New Zealand that are part of the massive leak of offshore data from Mossack Fonseca, a Panama-based law firm. The papers have shone spotlight on how the world's rich take advantage of offshore tax regimes. Mossack Fonseca ramped up its interest in using New Zealand as one of its new jurisdictions in 2013, actively promoting the South Pacific nation as a good place to do business due to its tax-free status, high levels of confidentiality and legal security, according to a joint report by Radio New Zealand, TVNZ and investigative journalist Nicky Hager. Mossack Fonseca's main contact in New Zealand was allegedly Robert Thompson, co-founder and director of accountant firm Bentleys New Zealand, the registered office of Mossack Fonseca New Zealand, according to the report. Thompson was listed in more than 4,500 Panama paper documents, the report said. Thompson said in his experience, the use of trusts for tax evasion was not common and his firm did not assist people to illegally hide assets. "I think the assumption that all New Zealand foreign trusts are being used for illegitimate purposes is unfounded and based largely on ignorance," Thompson was quoted as saying by Radio New Zealand. When contacted by Reuters, Bentleys New Zealand said Thompson was not in the office. The New Zealand government said last month it would begin a review of its foreign trust laws after the Panama Papers highlighted vulnerabilities in its legal framework that made it a possible link in international tax avoidance structures because its foreign trusts are not subject to tax. Prime Minister John Key dismissed concerns that international tax avoidance was rife in New Zealand. "New Zealand is barely ever mentioned, it's a footnote," Key told TVNZ in reference to the Panama Papers. Governments across the world have begun investigating possible financial wrongdoing by the rich and powerful after the leak of more than 11.5 million documents from Mossack Fonseca. The papers have revealed financial arrangements of prominent figures, including friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin, relatives of the prime ministers of Britain and Pakistan and of China's President Xi Jinping, and the president of Ukraine. The Consortium of Investigative Journalists and German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, which broke the original story, gave Radio New Zealand, TVNZ access to the leaked papers. (Reporting by Rebecca Howard, editing by Jane Wardell and Lincoln Feast) [Panama Papers]
• Panama Papers leaker says shell companies hide more than tax evasion
  Highlights In 1,800-word statement, source of largest leak in history explains motive Says offshore companies may be legal, but they hide serious crimes; governments too feckless to prosecute Denies government connection, says WikiLeaks didn’t answer its tip line By Marisa Taylor WASHINGTON — The person who gave the Panama Papers to reporters offered the first detailed explanation of the motive behind the largest leak of financial data ever. In an 1,800-word statement, the leaker, identified by journalists as “John Doe,” assailed the world of offshore companies as fueled by “massive, pervasive corruption.” “Shell companies are often associated with the crime of tax evasion, but the Panama Papers show beyond a shadow of a doubt that although shell companies are not illegal by definition, they are used to carry out a wide array of serious crimes,” the leaker wrote. The person – whose identity has been kept under wraps since the leak was made public April 3 – called on authorities worldwide to investigate the Panamanian law firm of Mossack Fonseca and offered to help in the effort. The source accused authorities, including those in the United States, of being “spineless,” said they were too conflicted by political interests to take action in the past, and said offshore activity has contributed to income disparity. [Panama papers]
• Panama Papers source breaks silence, denies being a spy - Sueddeutsche Zeitung
  Sueddeutsche Zeitung said on Friday that the source of millions of documents leaked to the German newspaper from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca had sent them a manifesto, saying his motivation was the "scale of injustices" the papers revealed. The source had never before publicly stated why he leaked the documents, now known as the Panama Papers, said Sueddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), one of Germany's most reputable newspapers. [Panama papers]
• Panama Papers leaker targets John Key
  By Patrick Gower Saturday 7 May 2016 7:42 a.m. The Panama Papers leaker has gone public, singling out New Zealand Prime Minister John Key. Calling themself "John Doe", the person behind the biggest leak or hack of all time has released an 1800 word statement. They refer to "issues that need fixing", and say: "Prime Minister John Key of New Zealand has been curiously quiet about his country's role in enabling the financial fraud Mecca that is the Cook Islands." SEE MORE: Government had to know about Pacific tax havens -- Peters The statement refers to just one international leader - Mr Key. It does not include any details of direct personal involvement by Mr Key. Titled "The Revolution Will Be Digitized" the statement gives justification for the leak, saying that "income inequality is one of the defining issues of our time" and says that government authorities need to do more to address it. The leak is mostly believed to be a hack. "John Doe" says that there is no link with any international spy agency and offers to cooperate with the relevant authorities. The statement was issued to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists -- and the source's identity has been verified by them. The Panama Papers are due to be released in a searchable database on Tuesday at 6am. [Panama Papers] [NZ] [John Key]
• Panama Papers Source Offers Documents To Governments, Hints At More To Come
  Source known only as John Doe says income inequality "one of the defining issues of our time" and calls on governments to address it. May 6, 2016 The anonymous whistleblower behind the Panama Papers has conditionally offered to make the documents available to government authorities. In a statement issued to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the so-called “John Doe” behind the biggest information leak in history cites the need for better whistleblower protection and has hinted at even more revelations to come. Titled “The Revolution Will Be Digitized” the 1800-word statement gives justification for the leak, saying that “income inequality is one of the defining issues of our time” and says that government authorities need to do more to address it. Süddeutsche Zeitung has authenticated that the statement came from the Panama Papers source. The statement in full: The Revolution Will Be Digitized John Doe Income inequality is one of the defining issues of our time. It affects all of us, the world over. The debate over its sudden acceleration has raged for years, with politicians, academics and activists alike helpless to stop its steady growth despite countless speeches, statistical analyses, a few meagre protests, and the occasional documentary. Still, questions remain: why? And why now?
  Of course, those are hardly the only issues that need fixing. Prime Minister John Key of New Zealand has been curiously quiet about his country’s role in enabling the financial fraud Mecca that is the Cook Islands. In Britain, the Tories have been shameless about concealing their own practices involving offshore companies, while Jennifer Shasky Calvery, the director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network at the United States Treasury, just announced her resignation to work instead for HSBC, one of the most notorious banks on the planet (not coincidentally headquartered in London). And so the familiar swish of America’s revolving door echoes amidst deafening global silence from thousands of yet-to-be-discovered ultimate beneficial owners who are likely praying that her replacement is equally spineless. In the face of political cowardice, it’s tempting to yield to defeatism, to argue that the status quo remains fundamentally unchanged, while the Panama Papers are, if nothing else, a glaring symptom of our society’s progressively diseased and decaying moral fabric. [Panama Papers] [John Key]

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APRIL 2016

• The First Draft of History: Dispatches From the Frontline of War
  by Patrick Cockburn This is an extract from ‘Chaos and Caliphate: Jihadis and the West in the Struggle for the Middle East’ by Patrick Cockburn, published by OR books. War reporting is easy to do but very difficult to do really well. There is great demand for a reporter’s output during the fighting because it is melodramatic and appeals to readers and viewers. This is what I used to label in my own mind as “twixt shot and shell” reporting, and there is nothing wrong with it. The first newspapers were published during the Dutch Wars with Spain, the Thirty Years War and the English Civil War at the beginning of the 17th century. People rightly want to know the latest news about momentous and interesting events such as wars, natural calamities and crime. But single-minded preoccupation with combat may be deceptive, because such exciting events are not necessarily typical; neither do they always tell one who is winning or losing the war. I covered the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001 and the beginning of 2002, which was largely reported as a military victory by the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, supported by US air strikes. Television viewers would have seen impressive pictures of exploding bombs and lines of dejected prisoners. But I followed the Taliban from Kabul to Kandahar and their villages outside the city and saw their forces retreating and breaking up without really being defeated. There was little serious fighting, but a lot of giving up and going home by Taliban fighters who had been told to do so by their commanders and who knew that they were bound to lose the war anyway.51ENHNq+inL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_ At one moment, south of Ghazni, I accidentally drove through the Taliban front line, which had disintegrated. I nervously had to tell my driver to turn the car around and get back as quickly as possible without attracting attention to Northern Alliance positions. I kept thinking that I must have unaccountably missed the real fighting, but finally decided that there had not been much of it. This was important because if the Taliban had not been truly beaten, it meant they could make a comeback in the years to come – as indeed they did, with spectacular success. There is a risk here of saying “I told you so” too vociferously, which does no good to the writer or reader. There is also an implied criticism of other reporters as shallow fellows who were caught up in the drama of war and failed to take the longer view. In practical terms, the journalist who spends so much time explaining the whys and wherefores of a conflict and neglects to cover the actual fighting will not hold his or her job for very long. War reporters are occasionally belittled in two wholly opposite ways: as either “hotel journalists,” cowering in their rooms while covering the action second-hand, or “war junkies,” tragic figures addicted to the excitement of armed conflict. The first accusation is easily disposed of since those reporters averse to being caught up in a conflict in which they might be killed – not an unreasonable attitude – take the elementary precaution of staying out of dangerous places such as Baghdad, Kabul, Beirut, Damascus, Tripoli and the like. As for the allegation that some reporters are “war junkies,” an intense interest in any professional speciality risks giving the impression that one is nursing an unhealthy obsession. But in fact few correspondents are so enamoured with combat that they believe nothing else matters. A surprising aspect of wars since 2001 is that the journalists have often spent a much longer period of time in these countries than Western diplomats or officials. When Isis captured Mosul in 2014, the political section of the British embassy in Baghdad had just three junior diplomats on short-term deployment. [Media]
• Panama Papers reveal New Zealand is a tax haven for world’s elites
  By John Braddock 15 April 2016 New Zealand’s National Party government is attempting to contain the damage from revelations in the Panama Papers that the country is a tax haven for the world’s super-rich. While denying New Zealand is involved in enabling tax avoidance, Prime Minister John Key announced on Monday the appointment of an “independent” expert to review the laws governing foreign trusts. [Panama Papers] [New Zealand]
• US corporate tax cheats hiding $1.4 trillion in profits in offshore accounts
  By Patrick Martin 15 April 2016 A report issued Thursday by the British charity Oxfam found that the 50 largest US corporations are hiding $1.4 trillion in profits in overseas accounts to avoid US income taxes, much of it in tax havens like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. The biggest tax dodger is technology giant Apple, with $181 billion held offshore. General Electric had the second-largest stash, at $119 billion, enough to repay four times over the $28 billion GE received in federal guarantees during the 2008 Wall Street crash. Microsoft had $108 billion in overseas accounts, with companies like Exxon Mobil, Pfizer, IBM, Cisco Systems, Google, Merck, and Johnson & Johnson rounding out the top ten. Overseas tax havens have been the focus of recent revelations about tax scams by wealthy individuals, based on the leak of the “Panama Papers,” documents from a single Panama-based law firm, Mossack Fonseca, involving 214,000 offshore shell companies. The firm’s clients included 29 billionaires and 140 top politicians worldwide, among them a dozen heads of government. But the sums involved in corporate tax scams dwarf those hidden away by individuals. According to the Oxfam report, the offshore manipulations by the 50 largest US corporations cost the US taxpayer $111 billion each year, while robbing another $100 billion annually from countries overseas, many of them desperately poor. [Tax] [Panama papers] [Corporate power]
• Once Again on the Mysterious North Korean Hackers
  Konstantin Asmolov A statement delivered by President of the Republic of Korea (ROK) Park Geun-hye in April, confirming that ROK is getting ready to launch an anti-cyberterrorism program, compels to turn to the topic of “the North Korean hackers” once again. (For the record, “the North Korean hackers” is a mythical phenomenon ROK traditionally resorts to whenever it falls a victim to a cyberattack or whenever there is a trivial safety violation). Most probably, the first thing that would come to mind whenever one hears about cyberattacks is a recent scandal involving Hillary Clinton where she used her private email for service duties. Or it might also be Fred Kaplan’s Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War where this American journalist provides an insight into the 2014 cyberattack on Sony Pictures Entertainment. (It turns out that users of the company’s intranet had to key in something as simple as 12345, ABCDE or just ‘password’ to gain access). This article, however, will be dedicated to other “cybercrimes” allegedly committed by the hackers from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). http://journal-neo.org/2016/04/15/once-again-on-the-mysterious-north-korean-hackers/ [Hacking]
• Are the Russians actually behind the Panama Papers?
  The “Panama Papers”—does this strike anyone else as a very fishy story? It’s like something out of a cheap spy movie. In early 2015, “John Doe” sends (out of the blue) an email to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), offering 11.5 million documents from a Panamanian law firm relating to offshore shell companies. SZ accepts. Under the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), some 400 journalists from 80 countries spend a year sifting through the documents. Then, in a coordinated launch, they present their first findings: With nearly identical language in all media (down to the local TV station in Washington that I happened to watch this week), they talk about the grand new revelations of corruption, money laundering, and financial secrecy by over 140 world leaders. Most reports, no matter where, feature Russian President Vladimir Putin as the headliner. But that might obscure a much bigger and more twisted story. [Panama papers] [Bizarre] [Russia confrontation]
• Putin Leaked ‘Panama Papers’ as Part of Plan to Smear Himself, Blackmail Western Leaders, Says US Think Tank
  by Rudy Panko, from Russia Insider The Brookings Institution says that Putin is behind ‘Panama Papers’ leak. Sure, why not? We have to tip our proverbial shapka-ushanka to the Brookings Institution, the only American think tank brave enough to admit that Vladimir Putin is not connected in any way to the financial shenanigans documented in the “Panama Papers”: “ Despite the headlines, there is no evidence of Putin’s direct involvement — not in any company involved in the leak, much less in criminal activity, theft, tax evasion, or money laundering. There are documents showing that some of his “friends” have moved “up to two billion dollars” through these Panama-based shell companies. Of course, since it’s the Brookings Institution, the fact that there is no evidence of Putin’s direct involvement in this scandal likely shows that Putin is directly involved in this scandal: [Panama papers] [Bizarre] [Russia confrontation]
• The War on Savings: The Panama Papers, Bail-Ins, and the Push to Go Cashless
  By Ellen Brown Global Research, April 11, 2016 Web of Debt Exposing tax dodgers is a worthy endeavor, but the “limited hangout” of the Panama Papers may have less noble ends, dovetailing with the War on Cash and the imminent threat of massive bail-ins of depositor funds. The bombshell publication of the “Panama Papers,” leaked from a Panama law firm specializing in shell companies, has triggered both outrage and skepticism. In an April 3 article titled “Corporate Media Gatekeepers Protect Western 1% From Panama Leak,” UK blogger Craig Murray writes that the whistleblower no doubt had good intentions; but he made the mistake of leaking his 11.5 million documents to the corporate-controlled Western media, which released only those few documents incriminating opponents of Western financial interests. Murray writes: Do not expect a genuine expose of western capitalism. The dirty secrets of western corporations will remain unpublished. Expect hits at Russia, Iran and Syria and some tiny “balancing” western country like Iceland. Iceland, of course, was the only country to refuse to bail out its banks, instead throwing its offending bankers in jail. Pepe Escobar calls the released Panama Papers a “limited hangout.” The leak dovetails with the attempt of Transparency International to create a Global Public Beneficial Ownership Registry, which can collect ownership information from governments around the world; and with UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s global anti-corruption summit next month. According to The Economist, “The Panama papers give him just the platform he needs to persuade other governments, and his own, to turn their tough talk of recent years into action.” The Daily Bell suspects a coordinated global effort linked to the push to go cashless. It’s all about knowing where the money is and who owns it, in order to tax it, regulate it, “sanction” it, or confiscate it: Without privacy, authoritarianism flourishes because it is impossible to build and expand private networks that would act as a deterrent . . . . A worldwide transparency regime virtually guarantees abuses and corruption from those in power. This is a reason why the “cashless society” idea is such a bad one. When no one is able to use cash, financial histories will be easily available via electronic bank records. [Panama papers] [Surveillance]
• US Government Partially Funded the Panama Papers’ Leak
  By Telesur Global Research, April 11, 2016 USAID partially funds the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, one of the core journalism organizations involved in reporting the Panama Papers. In the wake of damning claims by WikiLeaks that the United States government was behind the Panama Papers as part of a ploy to smear Russian President Vladimir Putin, a U.S. State Department spokesperson has confirmed that the government funds one of the organizations involved in reporting the leak and that supporting initiatives that root out corruption around the world is part of U.S. foreign policy. Responding to a question about WikiLeaks allegations, State Department spokesperson Mark Toner said Thursday that the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, one of the core journalism organizations that reported the Panama Papers, has “received support from various donors, including the U.S. government,” specifically USAID. OCCRP clearly list USAID as one of its donors on its website. Other funders include the Swiss Romanian Contribution Programme and the Open Society Institute, founded by U.S. business mogul George Soros. Toner continued by saying that USAID “has and continues to fund” organizations like OCCRP to conduct “independent, investigative journalism” to uncover corruption, which figures into U.S. foreign policy. [Panama papers] [Front] [USAID}
• Those Who Are (and Are Not) Sheltered From the Panama Papers
  Analysis April 8, 2016 | 22:56 GMT On April 3, the Panama Papers hit media outlets around the world, and the fallout was swift. A prime minister lost his job, and other global leaders are under mounting pressure to account for their actions. But the effects of the leaks are not evenly spread; the documents contained far more information about the offshore activities of individuals in the developing world than in the developed world. Whatever the reasons for the imbalance, it will likely limit the papers' impact. In the developing world, long histories of corruption have dulled the public's sensitivity to scandal, and repressive governments leave little room for popular backlash. So although less information was released on Western leaders, it is already doing more damage. Iceland's leader has left his post, and relatively minor revelations have had a disporportionately large impact in the United Kingdom and France. Meanwhile, in the developing world, the Panama Papers' effects have been most strongly felt in the former Soviet Union, a region in which political tensions were already high. The leaks' results have been more mixed in China, where they have provided new targets for the anti-corruption drive already underway but have also implicated figures close to the administration's upper ranks. [Panama papers]
• A Key Similarity Between Snowden Leak and Panama Papers: Scandal Is What’s Been Legalized
  Glenn Greenwald Apr. 5 2016, 12:52 a.m. FROM THE START of the reporting based on Edward Snowden’s leaked document archive, government defenders insisted that no illegal behavior was revealed. That was always false: Multiple courts have now found the domestic metadata spying program in violation of the Constitution and relevant statutes and have issued similar rulings for other mass surveillance programs; numerous articles on NSA and GCHQ documented the targeting of people and groups for blatantly political or legally impermissible purposes; and the leak revealed that President Obama’s top national security official (still), James Clapper, blatantly lied when testifying before Congress about the NSA’s activities — a felony. But illegality was never the crux of the scandal triggered by those NSA revelations. Instead, what was most shocking was what had been legalized: the secret construction of the largest system of suspicionless spying in human history. What was scandalous was not that most of this spying was against the law, but rather that the law — at least as applied and interpreted by the Justice Department and secret, one-sided FISA “courts” — now permitted the U.S. government and its partners to engage in mass surveillance of entire populations, including their own. As the ACLU’s Jameel Jaffer put it after the Washington Post’s publication of documents showing NSA analysts engaged in illegal spying: “The ‘non-compliance’ angle is important, but don’t get carried away. The deeper scandal is what’s legal, not what’s not.” [Panama papers] [Legality]
• For U.S. tax cheats, Panama Papers reveal a perilous new world
  Mossack Fonseca & Co. in Panama City is at the center of the Panama Papers scandal. The law firm maintains it has broken no laws and that all its operations were legal. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images) By Scott Higham April 8 at 9:31 PM ? For wealthy Americans trying to conceal their cash, stashing millions of dollars away in secret offshore shell companies is not as simple as it used to be. International laws, whistleblower bounties and embarrassing data breaches such as the one being dubbed the Panama Papers have made the lives of would-be U.S. tax cheats increasingly perilous, according to tax lawyers and former government prosecutors and investigators. “If you are someone with serious money and you want to hide it from the government, you have a good reason to be nervous,” said Daniel Reeves, who founded the offshore compliance division of the Internal Revenue Service and now works as a tax compliance consultant. “Today, there are many different ways people can find out about your activities. It’s not the same world of secrecy.” Reeves and other offshore experts say they are not surprised by the paucity of Americans in the massive data leak of 11.5 million records that has unmasked accounts belonging to world leaders and a rogues’ gallery of international criminals. Panama, the base of operations for the law firm at the center of the unfolding financial scandal, has never been a favorite place for Americans to hide their money. The nation’s reputation for bank fraud and drug smuggling has prompted U.S. citizens to send their money to more stable shores and nations, including the Isle of Man, the Cayman Islands and Switzerland, according to the offshore experts. [Panama papers]
• Spies and shadowy allies lurk in secret, thanks to firm’s bag of tricks
  Highlights Panama Papers reveal how spies and CIA gun-runners use offshore companies to stay hidden Offshore world blurs the line between legitimate business and the world of espionage ‘You can’t exactly walk around saying that you’re a spy’ Offshore corporations have one main purpose - to create anonymity. Recently leaked documents reveal that some of these shell companies, cloaked in secrecy, provide cover for dictators, politicians and tax evaders. Sohail Al-Jamea and Ali Rizvi / McClatchy By Will Fitzgibbon International Consortium of Investigative Journalists One day during his presidential re-election campaign in September 1996, Bill Clinton walked into a room in Westin Crown Center hotel in Kansas City, Mo. At stake was a quarter-million dollars in campaign fundraising. Clinton turned to his generous host, Farhad Azima, and led the guests in song. “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you....” Azima, an Iranian-born American charter airline executive, had long donated to both Democratic and Republican administrations. He visited the Clinton White House 10 times between October 1995 and December 1996, including private afternoon coffees with the president. Years later, as Hillary Clinton stood for election to the Senate in December 1999, Azima hosted her and 40 guests for a private dinner that raised $2,500 a head. Azima’s Democratic fundraising activities provided an interesting twist in the career of a man who has found himself in a media storm of one of America’s major political scandals, the Iran-Contra affair, during the Republican Reagan Administration. [Panama papers] [ICIJ]
• The Panama Papers Problem
  by Margaret Kimberley The Panama tax haven leaks reveal a lot about the lawlessness of the rich, as well as the ideological bias of the western press. “Vladimir Putin’s name appears nowhere, but the corporate media used his image repeatedly to drum up interest in what is an otherwise newsworthy story.” Americans are conspicuous by their absence from the story. That’s because rich people in the U.S. can avoid taxes “legally in Wyoming, Delaware or Nevada.” The worst criminals on earth are not the poor who sit behind bars in jails and prisons. The biggest thieves are found among the rich. The 1% can buy legislation, politicians and the media to carry out and hide their dirty work. If they can’t change the laws to benefit themselves in their homelands they simply send their money elsewhere through shell holding companies. This transfer of wealth, much of it diverted from what ought to be tax payments, is an open secret. Panama, the Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, Luxembourg and Switzerland are known for securing the money and secrets of the rich and the well connected. [Panama papers]
• Shots Fired: Wikileaks Accuses Panama Papers' Leaker Of Being "Soros-Funded, Soft-Power Tax Dodge"
  Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/05/2016 23:44 -0400 Earlier today, for the first time we got a glimpse into some of the American names allegedly contained in the "Panama Papers", largest ever leak. "Some", not all, and "allegedly" because as we said yesterday, "one can't help but wonder: why not do a Wikileaks type data dump, one which reveals if not all the 2.6 terabytes of data due to security concerns, then at least the identities of these 441 US-based clients. After all, with the rest of the world has already been extensively shamed, it's only fair to open US books as well." The exact same question appeared in an interview conducted between Wired magazine and the director of the organization that released the Panama Papers, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, or ICIJ, Gerard Ryle. This is what Ryle said: Ryle says that the media organizations have no plans to release the full dataset, WikiLeaks-style, which he argues would expose the sensitive information of innocent private individuals along with the public figures on which the group’s reporting has focused. “We’re not WikiLeaks. We’re trying to show that journalism can be done responsibly,” Ryle says. He says he advised the reporters from all the participating media outlets to “go crazy, but tell us what’s in the public interest for your country.” Question aside about who it is that gets to decide which "innocent private individuals" are to be left alone, Wikileaks clearly did not like being characterized as conducting "irresponsible" journalism - and to the contrary, many in the public arena have called for another massive, distributed effort to get to the bottom of a 2.4TB treasure trove of data which a handful of journalists will simply be unable to dig through - and moments ago, on Twitter, accused the ICIJ of being a "Washington DC based Ford, Soros funded soft-power tax-dodge" which "has a WikiLeaks problem." [Panama papers] [WikiLeaks]
• ‘Hello. This is John Doe’: The mysterious message that launched the Panama Papers
  Sueddeutsche Zeitung reporters Bastian Obermayer, left, and Frederik Obermaier. (Schmidt/Hase/European Pressphoto Agency) By Paul Farhi April 6 at 5:50 PM ? It began with a message — anonymous, of course: “Hello. This is John Doe. Interested in data?” The recipient, German newspaper reporter Bastian Obermayer , promptly responded that he was. What followed was almost unimaginable: “Doe” began forwarding files that ultimately contained 11.5 million documents, four decades’ worth of digitized records from a Panamanian law firm that specializes in setting up offshore companies for wealthy clients. The Doe data dump to Obermayer and his colleague Frederik Obermaier in 2014 eventually triggered a unique cooperative project among journalists around the world. The effort culminated on Sunday when, in a coordinated release, dozens of news organizations began publishing stories about the Panama Papers. The vast cache outlines how world leaders, celebrities and individuals have used offshore companies to shield their wealth from public disclosure, and in some cases possibly to avoid taxes or mask illegal activity. The first wave of stories — the disclosures could go on for years — has already led Iceland’s prime minister to tender his resignation over revelations of his offshore holdings. Among the thousands of people named in the documents are Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, King Salman of Saudi Arabia, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s family members, close associates of Russian President Vladi­mir Putin, British Prime Minister David Cameron’s late father, Ian, and soccer superstar Lionel Messi. The news reports prompted President Obama, among others, to call for international tax reform. More than a year after Doe first contacted them at their Munich-based newspaper, Suddeutsche Zeitung, Obermayer, 38, and Obermaier, 32, still have no idea who their source is or why he or she (or possibly they) came to them. [Panama papers]
• Holier Than Thou: The Guardian View on The Panama Papers
  by Frank Capture of the Guardian's totally accidentally misleading headline. “ We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.” —?Leona Hemsley, American business woman and socialite 2007 The revelations contained in the Panama Papers are nothing new, except perhaps the scale of the problem. Even back in 2012 we had the tax scandal of the Barclay Bros, British media tycoons and proprietors of the Telegraph Media group, who lived the high life avoiding tax payments in the UK tax havens in the Channel Islands and also spending their time in Monaco, another tax haven. Then in 2014 there was the case of right-wing US billionaires the Koch Bros. A leak of confidential documents expands the list of big companies seeking secret tax deals in Luxembourg, exposing tax-saving manoeuvres by American entertainment icon The Walt Disney Co., politically controversial Koch Industries Inc. and 33 other companies. Disney and Koch Industries, a U.S.-based energy and chemical conglomerate, both created tangles of interlocking corporations in Luxembourg that may have helped them slash the taxes they pay in the U.S. and Europe, according to the documents obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Widespread corporate use of tax manoeuvres akin to these, in tax shelters the world over, are estimated to cost the U.S. treasury billions annually. t [Tax avoidance] [Money Laundering] [Panama Papers] [Russia Confrontation] [Media]
• Iceland prime minister offers to resign amid Panama Papers fallout
  Iceland’s prime minister, Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, resigned Tuesday amid fallout from the Panama Papers disclosures detailing an offshore company held by his wife. (Birgir Por Hardarson/EPA) By Brian Murphy and William Branigin April 5 at 4:27 PM ? Iceland’s prime minister, faced with street protests and public outrage over offshore holdings, offered to resign Tuesday, becoming the first major political leader to fall amid global reverberations from millions of leaked documents detailing secret financial transactions. Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson tendered his resignation and asked Iceland’s president to dissolve Parliament after leaked files from a Panama law firm showed that his wife owned an offshore company with links to some of the country’s collapsed banks. The moves appeared likely to lead to new elections in the Nordic island nation, a NATO member. [Panama Papers]
• Panama Papers Point to N.Korea's Shady Western Banker
  North Korea set up a paper company in the British Virgin Islands in 2006 to raise money for its nuclear weapons program, a massive leak of money-laundering papers from Panama reveals. The paper company was called DCB Finance and a British financier named Nigel Cowie played a key role in setting it up. The Guardian on Monday published the story based on files leaked from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. They show that clients included individuals and companies blacklisted by the U.S. Department of Commerce, including DCB Finance. [Panama papers] [Banking]
• British banker set up firm ‘used by North Korea to sell weapons’
  Juliette Garside and Luke Harding A British banker who spent two decades living in communist North Korea set up a secret offshore finance company allegedly used by the Pyongyang regime to help sell arms and expand its nuclear weapons programme. Nigel Cowie – a fluent Korean and Chinese speaker, who studied at Edinburgh University – was behind a Pyongyang front company, DCB Finance Limited, registered in the British Virgin Islands, papers show. [Panama Papers] [Canard] [Arms sales]
• U.S. scolds others about offshores, but looks other way at home
  Highlights Little difference between Cayman Islands, Wyoming Russians find something to love in Cowboy State Few questions asked, and few details given Bison graze underneath a cross on a hillside just outside of Cheyenne, Wyo. on March 8, 2016. Wyoming is the least populous and the second least densely populated of the 50 United States but a very popular location for the formation of offshore corporations because one can set up a LLC in Wyoming without one's name having to be in the State Register. By Kevin G. Hall and Marisa Taylor McClatchy Washington Bureau BUFFALO, Wyo. — The U.S. government has publicly and privately pressured countries that act as offshore havens for hiding money, while this barren, sparsely populated state offers the same secrecy. The Cowboy State isn’t as notorious as the Cayman Islands for cloaking millions. But, like Nevada and Delaware, this unlikely haven offers the same anonymity the federal government has been trying to end abroad. America and Americans are part of the offshore problem. A massive leak of documents from the global law firm Mossack Fonseca & Co., which has offices in Wyoming and Nevada, exposes how two Western U.S. states are tied to foreign scandals, and how middlemen in far-flung places are taking advantage of the anonymity they provide. Through this law firm, Wyoming, a state that has twice as many head of cattle as it has people, and Nevada, a state known to embrace a gamble, are tied to a scandal that threatens the government in Brazil, and to Russian middlemen who establish paper-thin companies called shells? for the wealthy. [Panama papers] [Double standards] [Tax avoidance]
• After Panama papers leak: U.S., Britain are eager for names
  Highlights After leak of Panama papers, thousands demand Iceland leader step down Names in Panama law firm’s secret database to be disclosed in May Kremlin defends Putin and friends, who have offshores By Tim Johnson and Marisa Taylor WASHINGTON — The U.S. and British governments Monday vowed to examine more closely foreign politicians and tycoons who hide fortunes in secret offshore accounts even as governments across the globe felt a wave of public anger over leaders with hidden assets. Thousands of protesters gathered in Iceland’s capital of Reykjavik to demand the ouster of that nation’s leader over revelations of his offshore holdings. Riot police stood nearby, but the protest remained peaceful. Inside Iceland’s parliament, opposition legislators considered a no-confidence vote of Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, a move that would lead to fresh elections, over news that he did not properly disclose his ties to Wintris Inc., a British Virgin Islands company with money tied to the nation’s collapsed banks. Gunnlaugsson denied that his ownership was a conflict of interest, insisted he’d broken no laws and said he would not resign. From the White House to the Kremlin, and on to Panama City, Vienna and London, governments reacted to the disclosure of the so-called Panama Papers, a law firm’s once-secret database that details the offshore interests of 12 current or former world leaders, as well as 128 other politicians and public officials.
  No U.S. politicians of note were found in the archives of the Mossack Fonseca law firm, a global leader in setting up offshore corporations. The U.S. Justice Department signaled that it could focus its gaze more intently on political corruption even when it occurs outside of U.S. borders. [Panama papers] [Media]
• Corporate Media Gatekeepers Protect Western 1% From Panama Leak 612
  3 Apr, 2016 in Uncategorized by craig Whoever leaked the Mossack Fonseca papers appears motivated by a genuine desire to expose the system that enables the ultra wealthy to hide their massive stashes, often corruptly obtained and all involved in tax avoidance. These Panamanian lawyers hide the wealth of a significant proportion of the 1%, and the massive leak of their documents ought to be a wonderful thing. Unfortunately the leaker has made the dreadful mistake of turning to the western corporate media to publicise the results. In consequence the first major story, published today by the Guardian, is all about Vladimir Putin and a cellist on the fiddle. As it happens I believe the story and have no doubt Putin is bent. But why focus on Russia? Russian wealth is only a tiny minority of the money hidden away with the aid of Mossack Fonseca. In fact, it soon becomes obvious that the selective reporting is going to stink. [Panama Papers] [IO]
• Selective Leaks Of The #PanamaPapers Create Huge Blackmail Potential
  A real leak of data from a law firm in Panama would be very interesting. Many rich people and/or politicians hide money in shell companies that such firms in Panama provide. But the current heavily promoted "leak" of such data to several NATO supporting news organization and a US government financed "Non Government Organization" is just a lame attempt to smear some people the U.S. empire dislikes. It also creates a huge blackmail opportunity by NOT publishing certain data in return for this or that desired favor. [Panama Papers] [IO] [Blackmail]
• ‘Corruption’ as a Propaganda Weapon
  April 4, 2016 Exclusive: Mainstream U.S. journalism and propaganda are getting hard to tell apart, as with the flurry of “corruption” stories aimed at Russia’s Putin and other demonized foreign leaders, writes Robert Parry. By Robert Parry Sadly, some important duties of journalism, such as applying evenhanded standards on human rights abuses and financial corruption, have been so corrupted by the demands of government propaganda – and the careerism of too many writers – that I now become suspicious whenever the mainstream media trumpets some sensational story aimed at some “designated villain.” Far too often, this sort of “journalism” is just a forerunner to the next “regime change” scheme, dirtying up or delegitimizing a foreign leader before the inevitable advent of a “color revolution” organized by “democracy-promoting” NGOs often with money from the U.S. government’s National Endowment for Democracy or some neoliberal financier like George Soros. [Panama Papers] [IO]
• Panama Papers cause Guardian to collapse into self-parody
  by Kit Capture of the Guardian’s totally accidentally misleading headline. You’d be forgiven for thinking, given the above picture, that the Panama Papers had something to do with Vladimir Putin. Maybe he was a kingpin of the whole thing. Maybe he was, at least, among the 12 world leaders implicated in various shady financial practices – along with Petro Poroshenko, the saviour of Ukrainian democracy, and the King of Saudi Arabia (dad of the recent Légion d’Honneur winner). Luke Harding, a bastion of ethical journalism (and not at all a paranoid lunatic), has churned out 2 articles totaling over 5000 words, each using the word “Putin”, almost as often as they use the phrases “allegedly”, “speculation suggests”, “has been described as” and “may have been”. Neither of his articles mentions by name any of the 12 world leaders, past and present, actually identified in the documents, nor do they mention David Cameron’s dad, who is also in there. No, they focus on a cellist friend of Putin’s, talk about his daughter’s marriage, and include an awful lot of diagrams with big arrows that point at pictures of…Vladimir Putin. This is, apparently, all evidence of…something. …I’m not sure what, but it will probably be discussed at length in the “book” Luke Harding is probably planning to publish in a couple of weeks. That’s if the NSA don’t delete it all while he’s typing. The only important, or even true, phrase Harding uses appears at the very top of this article: “ …the president’s name does not appear in any of the records… That’s a minor detail of course, I mean, they have a video: “How to hide $1 billion”. The title screen is, you guessed it, a photo of Putin. Presumably because he is SO GOOD at hiding his billions that, unlike Petro Poroshenko and David Cameron’s dad: “ …the president’s name does not appear in any of the records… So there you go. The Guardian falls into self parody, pasting up a massive picture, a misleading headline and 5000 words (that Harding presumably copied from someone else), at the merest suggestion of a tenuous connection to the Russian president. It’s a bit odd, really. [Panama Papers] [Guardian] [Media] [Russia confrontation]
• Panama Papers: Revealing details live in the gaps between the lines
  by Kit Pictured: NATO Heads of State and their ally, the King of Saudi Arabia Certain species of lizard – when threatened, cornered or in danger of being eaten – have the ability to “drop” their tail. This process, “Autotomy” (from the Greek, auto=self, tome=severing), enables the lizard to flee whilst the predator gets a brief distraction and small meal. The lizard survives. Tails grow back. A simple, efficient survival method. The body ejects a replaceable part in protection of the vital whole. Easily adapted for the “Grand Chess Board”. Pinochet, the Shah of Iran, Saddam Hussein. All have played their part, only to be dropped when it became convenient. Despots and puppets grow back, too. The Panama Papers broke, yesterday. Dozens of MSM outlets joined together in echoing this startling piece of investigative journalism: Rich people avoid paying their taxes. I know, I was shocked too. Most of the BIG HEADLINES and threatening looking diagrams were reserved for Vladimir Putin (The Guardian) and Bashar al-Assad (The Independent), despite the fact that (as we covered last night) neither are named in any of the leaked documents. The names that ARE mentioned? A who’s who of disposable despots, monsters of the week and inconveniently uncooperative politicians…with a few minor British political figures to add some verisimilutude. [Panama Papers] [IO]
• Russian documentary unveils N. Korea's grim reality
  Captured scenes from the documentary. / Courtesy of A-List Entertainment By Park Si-soo A Russian documentary that peels off the sugar-coated cover of destitute North Korea will be screened in South Korea despite opposition from Russia and the North. "Under the Sun" will open in domestic theaters on April 27. Vitali Mansky produced the 90-minute film, according to A-List Entertainment, which is handling the documentary's domestic release. Mansky got North Korea's permission to make a documentary about North Korea with the support of the Russian government. Then he was introduced to a girl named Jin-mi, 8, who was supposed to perform at North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's birthday party. Her family looked better off ? she lived in a clean and spacious house in Pyongyang, eating nutritionally balanced food and receiving quality education at a public school. But the director soon realized that her life had been sugar-coated and decided to explore deeper, often secretly. The reality he encountered was shockingly different from that which he observed through the camera. He confirmed that Jin-mi's family had been forced to move to the modernized house before he began to film. One irony he found while filming was that Jin-mi's family had nutritionally perfect meals at home, but he could not find any essential cooking equipment in the kitchen. The Russian also discovered many other contradictions, and realized that North Korean authorities put him in sugar-coated settings to prevent the grim truth about people's lives from being filmed. The director spent a year in Pyongyang making the documentary, according to the distributor. [Propaganda]
• N.Korea Jams GPS Signals
  North Korea on Thursday tried to disrupt South Korean global positioning satellite signals as the leaders of the South, the U.S. and Japan met in Washington to discuss the North's nuclear program. The disruptions could cause mobile communication devices to malfunction and affect airplanes and ships that depend on GPS. The Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning said it issued warnings in Seoul, Incheon, Gyeonggi Province and Gangwon Province as North Korea discharged a large amounts of radio waves to jam GPS signals. Once the jamming waves were detected at around 7:30 p.m., government officials met to assess the impact. The signals were traced to Haeju and Mt. Kumgang in North Korea. "No damage of involving mobile communications and ships has been detected," a ministry official said. "Two airplanes experienced disruptions in signals, but their flight operations were not affected." A government official said the North has been sending test waves since last month. [GPS] [Cyberwar]

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MARCH 2016

• Hackers trace ISIS Twitter accounts back to internet addresses linked to Department of Work and Pensions
  18:39, 14 Dec 2015 By Jasper Hamill Teenage computer experts unveil astonishing web of unpublicised interactions linking extremist social media mouthpieces to the British government Hackers have claimed that a number of Islamic State supporters' social media accounts are being run from internet addresses linked to the Department of Work and Pensions. A group of four young computer experts who call themselves VandaSec have unearthed evidence indicating that at least three ISIS-supporting accounts can be traced back to the DWP. Every computer and mobile phone logs onto the internet using an IP address, which is a type of identification number. Update: British government admits it can't stop ISIS extremists using internet addresses The hacking collective showed Mirror Online details of the IP addresses used by a trio of separate digital jihadis to access Twitter accounts, which have been used to spread extremist propaganda. At first glance, the IP addresses seem to be based in Saudi Arabia, but upon further inspection using specialist tools they appeared to link back to the DWP. [Attribution]
• Taiwan genius helps computer trounce human Go champ
  Publication Date: March 17, 2016 Source: Taiwan Today Taiwan genius helps computer trounce human Go champ Taiwan AI researcher Aja Huang (left) is one of the architects behind Alphago’s landmark trouncing of South Korean champion professional Go player Lee Se-dol March 9-15 in Seoul. (Courtesy of Go Game Guru) A Taiwan artificial intelligence star is shining brighter after his jointly developed computer program achieved a milestone victory over a champion professional Go player from South Korea. Aja Huang, who holds a doctorate in computer science and information engineering from Taipei City-based National Taiwan Normal University, put his education and experience as a top amateur Go player to good use in co-masterminding Alphago’s 4-1 defeat of Lee Se-dol March 9-15 in Seoul. A member of program developer London-headquartered Google DeepMind since 2012, Huang was responsible for key program adjustments during the series of headline-grabbing matches. [Artificial intelligence] [Globalisation]
• N.Korea 'Using Honeytraps to Steal Cyber Secrets'
  North Korea is using honeytraps to steal clandestine information from gullible male South Korean officials on the Internet, the National Intelligence Service said Friday. The NIS told the National Assembly that the North has set up fake Facebook accounts with pictures of pretty women to hook up with scores of former and incumbent South Korean officials and get hold of classified information. The NIS said the North is also spreading false rumors about the South Korean government online. "If a beautiful stranger wants to become your friend on Facebook, you should turn them down," an NIS official warned lawmakers. The NIS said the North Korea succeeded in hacking into the e-mail accounts of 40 South Korean government officials and military officers by sending them e-mails purporting to come from Cheong Wa Dae or other government agencies. Lee Cheol-woo of the ruling Saenuri Party said after the closed-door session that North Korea is conducting cyber terror aimed at jamming GPS navigation systems. "Terror attacks targeting GPS systems are very dangerous since they can cause aircraft to fly in the wrong direction," he added. [Cyberespionage]
• N.Korea 'Hacked Senior S.Korean Officials' Smartphones'
  North Korea has hacked the smartphones of senior government and other officials in South Korea, the National Intelligence Service here said on Monday. The North also attempted cyber attacks on South Korean railways and other infrastructure. The NIS made the announcement in a press release. The government is on alert for further cyber attacks, which in the past have tended to follow nuclear and rocket tests. As part of these efforts, all the subway lines in Seoul have beefed up their network security. The NIS warned that North Korea is likelier than ever to carry out further hacking attacks after the international community tightened sanctions last week. Meanwhile, the NIS reported to the National Assembly's Intelligence Committee in August of last year that North Korean operatives attempted to hack the smartphones of some 1,000 "important figures," according to a committee member. [Cyberwar]
• Spies Sans Frontières?
  How CIA-linked Palantir is gaining ground in the aid industry (and why some humanitarians are worried) By Obi Anyadike Editor-at-Large NAIROBI, 7 March 2016 A months-long investigation by IRIN into the secretive intelligence-linked firm Palantir, reveals a cosying up to aid organisations large and small, including a bargain-basement contract with a sensitive UN agency, and a flirtation with the international response to the Ebola outbreak. But how close is too close? •UN nuclear watchdog IAEA, dealing with Iran and North Korea, has contracted Palantir at rock-bottom rates •Palantir was close to a role in the UN's Ebola response, but walked away •The UN's humanitarian arm engaged Palantir on a proof-of-concept analysis in the Philippines •The Silicon Valley "unicorn" explored the non-profit sector as hedge against a decline in counter-terrorism opportunities •Political and confidentiality concerns limit its success, as well as a clash of organisational cultures The software is amazing. It’s an all-powerful data integrator: combing through data from documents, websites, social media and databases, turning that information into people, places, events, things, displaying those connections on your computer screen, and allowing you to probe and analyse the links between them. The tool, developed by secretive Silicon Valley firm Palantir, can be enlisted to tackle a range of humanitarian problems: from people trafficking and gun-running to stemming floods. It could revolutionise disaster coordination, management and response. But the global aid community is wary. Palantir retains extremely close links to the US security establishment, and the line between politics and humanitarian work is under constant attack and incrementally being pushed back. [NGO] [Intelligence][CIA]
• South Korea and the Art of Collaboration
  by Andre Vltchek If raw, naked propaganda makes you sick, stay away from South Korea (ROK)! While the Western brain-conditioning machine wants you to believe that it is actually the North that is successfully indoctrinating its citizens, those of us who have worked on both sides of the border (or on both sides of the “DMZ”) know much better. And if they don’t tell, they lie! From the “art work” on both sides of the barbed wire fences, to the institutions designated to brainwash millions of common people, South Korea is leading; its regime’s propaganda (and the propaganda of its Western handlers) is much more experienced, determined, aggressive and therefore, effective. [Propaganda]
• The Caesar Photo Fraud that Undermined Syrian Negotiations
  by Rick Sterling A 30 page investigative report on the “Caesar Torture Photos” has been released and is available online here. The following is a condensed version of the report. Readers who are especially interested are advised to get the full report which includes additional details, photographs, sources and recommendations. Introduction There is a pattern of sensational but untrue reports that lead to public acceptance of US and Western military intervention in countries around the world: * In Gulf War 1, there were reports of Iraqi troops stealing incubators from Kuwait, leaving babies to die on the cold floor. Relying on the testimony of a Red Crescent doctor, Amnesty Interenational ‘verified’ the false claims. * Ten years later, there were reports of yellow cake uranium going to Iraq for development of weapons of mass destruction. * One decade later, there were reports of Libyan soldiers drugged on viagra and raping women as they advanced. * In 2012, NBC broadcaster Richard Engel was supposedly kidnapped by pro-Assad Syrian militia but luckily freed by Syrian opposition fighters, the “Free Syrian Army”. All these reports were later confirmed to be fabrications and lies. They all had the goal of manipulating public opinion and they all succeeded in one way or another. Despite the consequences, which were often disastrous, none of the perpetrators were punished or paid any price. It has been famously said “Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.” This report is a critical review of the “Caesar Torture Photos” story. As will be shown, there is strong evidence the accusations are entirely or substantially false. [Syria] [Propaganda]
• The new mind control
  The internet has spawned subtle forms of influence that can flip elections and manipulate everything we say, think and do
  by Robert Epstein Are search engines and social media sites manipulating the important decisions we make every day? Over the past century, more than a few great writers have expressed concern about humanity’s future. In The Iron Heel (1908), the American writer Jack London pictured a world in which a handful of wealthy corporate titans – the ‘oligarchs’ – kept the masses at bay with a brutal combination of rewards and punishments. Much of humanity lived in virtual slavery, while the fortunate ones were bought off with decent wages that allowed them to live comfortably – but without any real control over their lives. In We (1924), the brilliant Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin, anticipating the excesses of the emerging Soviet Union, envisioned a world in which people were kept in check through pervasive monitoring. The walls of their homes were made of clear glass, so everything they did could be observed. They were allowed to lower their shades an hour a day to have sex, but both the rendezvous time and the lover had to be registered first with the state. [Indoctrination] [Google]
• The black art of news management
  John Pilger
  3 June 2010 In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes the "master illusions" which have formed the basis of black propaganda and provided "false flags" for political chicanery and for wars and atrocities, such as Iraq and the Israeli assault on the Gaza peace flotilla. How do wars begin? With a “master illusion”, according to Ralph McGehee, one of the CIA’s pioneers in “black propaganda”, known today as “news management”. In 1983, he described to me how the CIA had faked an “incident” that became the “conclusive proof of North Vietnam’s aggression”. This followed a claim, also fake, that North Vietnamese torpedo boats had attacked an American warship in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964. “The CIA,” he said, “loaded up a junk, a North Vietnamese junk, with communist weapons - the Agency maintains communist arsenals in the United States and around the world. They floated this junk off the coast of central Vietnam. Then they shot it up and made it look like a fire fight had taken place, and they brought in the American press. Based on this evidence, two Marine landing teams went into Danang and a week after that the American air force began regular bombing of North Vietnam.” An invasion that took three million lives was under way. [Black flag] [Disinformation] [Cheonan]

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FEBRUARY 2016

• Keeping the Panda at Arm’s Length: The China Factor in the Apple/FBI Battle
  Monday, February 22, 2016 I take perverse pleasure (note to self: discuss with analyst!) in parting company with my libertarian/lefty buddies on the issue of the FBI’s demand that Apple assist in accessing an iPhone phone of the San Bernardino shooter. The shadow of the People’s Republic of China—and the demands it plans to impose on US vendors of telecom/IT equipment in China once the Obama administration has established the benchmark for law enforcement intrusion—hangs over the whole debate. And I believe the Obama administration has done a pretty canny job of getting law enforcement’s foot in the door while not letting the CCP panda completely in the tent. First off, some techy details, as I understand them. (If I misunderstand them, and somebody points them out, I will happily and humbly correct.) [Encryption] [Surveillance] [China confrontation]
• BBC to Start N.Korea Radio Service
  The BBC plans to launch a North Korean radio service this autumn. The move is part of the broadcaster's initiative to expand its World Service, announced in September last year. The daily broadcasts will last 30 minutes each and will contain information about Northeast Asian politics and foreign news coverage of North Korea. The BBC is expected to recruit Korean-speaking anchors and reporters soon. Production is overseen by BBC headquarters in London, with the programs transmitted from Singapore. The service will be available on the Internet as well. The U.K. parliament has been urging the BBC since 2008 to provide accurate information to North Koreans and help lead changes in the isolated state. Most North Korean households have radios and will probably be able to tune in. [Propaganda] [Softwar] [UK]
• Trumbo: Hollywood’s Anti-Communist Tribute to Itself
  by Eric Mann Trumbo, produced and written by John McNamara and Bruce Cook and starring Bryan Cranston, is billed as a courageous defense of Dalton Trumbo, a well-meaning communist writer. According to the film, Trumbo was little more than a courageous democrat who was Black-listed by Hollywood, went to prison, spent a decade in screenplay exile, and triumphantly returned through his own true grit and talent—as the good guys in Hollywood, Kirk Douglas and Otto Preminger, finally got him re-instated. His life is portrayed as a story of how truth, justice, and the American way win out over narrow mindedness and knee jerk anti-communism. It vilifies and caricatures those like Senator Joseph McCarthy, gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, actor John Wayne, and the heads of the Hollywood studios as those who sullied our wonderful first amendment. It’s enough to make you sing America the Beautiful and sign up for the U.S. army on the way out of the theater. Not surprisingly, we can’t expect Hollywood to tell the true story of Dalton Trumbo the radical communist or to expose capitalism or itself. It does not have the courage to present U.S. communists in any of their toughminded, courageous splendor—as the leaders of the fight against fascism, “the Party of the Negro,” the driving force for trade unionism, the defenders of the foreign born, the party that challenged the Democrats, the passionate friends and defenders of the Soviet Union, the true victors of World War II, and the best and the brightest of their generation. There is a pathetic scene in which Trumbo’s daughter asks him, “Dad are you a communist?” He answers, “Would you share your sandwich with someone who did not have one?” to which she dutifully replies, “Of course” and he answers, “So that makes you a communist too.” If only communists were people who just wanted to share their sandwiches the entire witch hunt against them would truly be bizarre and unjust. But what if he said, “Honey, if you want to share your sandwich, seize the means of production, and smash the capitalist state yes, that would make you a communist.” After all, do we really expect Hollywood to urge people to become communists or to challenge the Democratic Party and capitalism itself? Hell no, they want to re-package the fight against the Hollywood Blacklist as a feel-good story that would be better run on the Hallmark Channel. A film the presents the real Dalton Trumbo and other hard-assed communist writers like Richard Wright, Howard Fast, Langston Hughes as socialist revolutionaries who had great influence on their fellow travelers, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, John Steinbeck, and many others is crying out to be made. Let’s look at how Hollywood and capitalism use a film about communism to foster anti-communism at a time when people are once again seeing through and challenging the system itself. Dalton Trumbo was a fine writer and screenwriter. In 1938, he wrote a great anti-war novel, Johnny Got His Gun that challenged all forms of capitalist wars. During World War II he faced his own dilemma when his own true anti-war sentiments came in conflict with his support for the great anti-fascist war and yes, a war to defend the Soviet Union. That would have been worth exploring but of course it would require some explanation of the great attraction of Trumbo to the Soviet Union. [Cinema] [Communism]
• Is the US a threat to Israel?
  The Intercept published Jan. 29 information about Operation Anarchist, an extensive spying initiative of the United States and the United Kingdom against Israel’s covert aerial activities. The article generated an enormous storm in Israel’s security circles and also in its highest political echelons. According to the report that was drawn from Edward Snowden’s documents, the national wiretapping services of both the United States and the United Kingdom — the National Security Agency and Government Communications Headquarters, respectively — set up secret spying facilities atop Cyprus’ Troodos Mountains. For 18 years, they have been tracking Israeli activities of fighter jets, unmanned aerial vehicles (UCAVs or combat drones) and Israel’s entire aerial deployment. According to the documents, the Americans succeeded in breaking the code encryption of Israel’s drone alignment including the Israeli Heron. The leaked documents claim that this is an unmanned aircraft capable of attacking deep in enemy territory. According to the published information, even the operating code of the Arrow project's Black Sparrow target missile was breached by the superpowers. The Black Sparrow is a missile launched by Israeli fighter planes from a very high altitude; it resembles the Iranian Shahab missile that the Arrow is supposed to intercept and damage at high altitude. [Cyberespionage] [Israel] [Client] [Friction]

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JANUARY 2016

• S. Korea raises cyber alert level amid signs of N. Korean hack attacks
  January 25, 2016 By Kang Yoon-seung SEOUL (Yonhap) — South Korea raised its cyber alert level following the influx of malicious e-mails presumed to have originated from North Korea amid a spike in cross-border tensions after Pyongyang tested a fourth nuclear device early this month, the government said Monday. The country’s cyber alert was marked up one notch to “yellow” from the normal “blue,” the Ministry of Science, ICT, and Future Planning said. It said authorities detected an increase in e-mails that impersonate government organizations, including the presidential office and the foreign ministry, as well as Internet portal managers. “North Korea has attempted cyber attacks previously to spark public anxiety and hostility against the government,” the ICT ministry said, adding that the latest series of e-mails could be part of North Korea’s broader provocations following what it claimed was a hydrogen bomb test on Jan. 6. [Hacking] [Canard]
• Latest Cyber Attack Traced to N.Korea
  A recent cyber attack on South Korean government agencies has been traced to North Korea as expected. Police said the IP addresses of the senders of spam e-mails on Jan. 13-14, right after the North's latest nuclear test, were the same as those used in a cyber attack against Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power in 2014. The e-mails containing malicious code purported to come from Cheong Wa Dae and targeted thousands of government employees here.
  Police said the IP addresses have been traced to the northeastern Chinese province of Liaoning that borders North Korea and match those used in the cyber attack against the nuclear agency in 2014. In 2014, the hackers threatened to paralyze nuclear power plants and leaked some reactor blueprints to the public. Police said the latest attack was something known as "two-track phishing e-mails" where hackers hide malware in second e-mails that are sent after recipients respond to the uncompromised first e-mails. [Hacking] [Attribution]
• [Photo] Young Kim Jong-un’s playtime
  Posted on : Jan.10,2016 11:10 KST Modified on : Jan.10,2016 11:10 KST Following the recent nuclear test, North Korean Leader, Kim Jong-un, appears on the cover of the Jan. 18 issue of US newsmagazine The New Yorker. The magazine publicized the illustration, titled “New Toys,” through its Twitter feed on Jan. 8 (Korean time). [H-bomb] [Test] [Racism]
• Obama administration plans shake-up in propaganda war against the Islamic State
  This image was taken from video posted by the Islamic State and circulated online Jan. 3, purporting to show members of the Islamic State shooting five men accused of spying for Britain in Syria. (AP) By Greg Miller and Karen DeYoung January 8 at 4:00 PM ? The Obama administration is overhauling its faltering efforts to combat the online propaganda of the Islamic State and other terrorist groups, U.S. officials said, reflecting rising White House frustration with largely ineffective efforts so far to cut into ISIS’s use of social media to draw recruits and incite attacks. Officials will create a new counter-terrorism task force, which will be based at the Department of Homeland Security but aims to enlist dozens of federal and local agencies. Other moves include revamping a State Department program that was created to serve as an information war room to challenge the Islamic State online and erode its appeal. U.S. officials said the unit at the State Department will turn its focus toward helping allies craft more localized anti-terror messages, and will stop producing any videos or other material in English — ending a campaign that had been derided by critics. [ISIS] [Propaganda]
• US signals intelligence (SIGINT) activities in Japan 1945 – 2015: A Visual Guide
  You are here: Home » NAPSNet » Special Reports » US signals intelligence (SIGINT) activities in Japan 1945 – 2015: A Visual Guide Desmond Ball and Richard Tanter 23 December 2015 I. Introduction The US maintained signals intelligence (SIGINT) activities at about 100 sites in Japan during the Cold War, probably than in any other country. In Japan today, about 1,000 US personnel are engaged in SIGINT, Information Operations, Internet surveillance and Network Warfare activities, mainly at Yokusuka, Misawa, Yokota Air Base in Tokyo, Camp Hansen and Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, and the US Embassy in Tokyo. The US SIGINT activities in Japan have directly supported US nuclear war planning, Korean War and Vietnam operations, and since September 2011, the ‘Global War on Terror’. The technological developments over these seven decades have been stupendous. The end of the Cold War coincided with the beginning of the World Wide Web and the Internet age. Surveillance of the Internet and computer network systems became the highest priority. Intelligence became conflated with operations, with a proliferation of Information Operations (IO) and Cyber-warfare units. There has been no Japanese involvement in the US SIGINT activities, and no direct cooperation between US and Japanese SIGINT stations, apart from limited cooperation with respect to particular crises, and with the partial exception of Camelus at Camp Hansen since 2007. Japan is a Third Party to the UKUSA Agreements under which the US and Japan exchange certain designated intercept materials, including HF/VHF DF bearings, but excluding higher level cryptologic material. [SIGINT] [China confrontation] [US Japan alliance]

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