DPRK S&T17

Softwar, Cyberwar, Education, Propaganda, S&T
2017
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Softwar, Propaganda, Information Operations (IO)
Panama Papers
ICT, Internet, websites, computerisation
ICT outsourcing/offshoring
Cinema (because of link with computer animation); propaganda
Cyberwar, Cyberespionage, Cyberactivism, cybercrime and hacking
Surveillance, Snowden, NSA
Mobile phones
Education and educational institutions such as Pyongyang University of Science and Technology

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DECEMBER 2017

Crisis Group Welcomes New President & CEO Robert Malley
The International Crisis Group is pleased to announce that Robert Malley will be our organisation’s next President & Chief Executive Officer. Malley, currently Vice President for Policy, will take over from outgoing President & CEO Jean-Marie Guéhenno from 1 January 2018. Malley was formerly Crisis Group’s Middle East and North Africa Program Director and most recently was a Special Assistant to former U.S. President Barack Obama as well as Senior Adviser to the President for the Counter-ISIL Campaign, and White House Coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf region. Previously, he served as President Bill Clinton’s Special Assistant for Israeli-Palestinian Affairs. [NGO] [Softpower] [US dominance] [UNUS]
Congress shouldn’t let this crucial surveillance program lapse
Correction: An earlier version of this editorial incorrectly implied that legislation by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) did not include a warrant exemption for emergency cases. Their bill requires warrants in most cases. This version has been updated. By Editorial Board December 23 at 3:56 PM CONGRESS MANAGED to scrape together the votes to keep the government open over the holidays. But when lawmakers return to Washington in January, they will find a long to-do list: long-term funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which expired after September; protection for the nearly 700,000 young undocumented “dreamers” who otherwise face deportation beginning in March; support for a destabilized Affordable Care Act; and a longer-term government spending bill. What’s more, the clock is ticking down toward the expiration of a crucial national security program that urgently requires congressional reauthorization. The legislation, known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, gives the National Security Agency the authority to eavesdrop on communications of non-Americans located overseas. By necessity, that includes the communications of the people they were speaking with, as well — what’s known as “incidental collection,” and which sometimes includes Americans. Controversially, the FBI can search that incidentally collected information without a warrant in the course of a criminal investigation. [Surveillance] [Governance]
'Egypt's Orascom stops service in N. Korea'
Posted : 2017-12-19 15:32 Updated : 2017-12-19 19:54 By Jun Ji-hye Egyptian telecommunications giant Orascom stopped its service in North Korea early last month and is preparing for a full withdrawal from the country, according to media reports, Tuesday. Local news agency Newsis quoted Japanese intelligence officials and industry sources as saying Orascom has decided to pull its network out of the North completely amid mounting pressure from the United States and the U.N. Security Council (UNSC). The move comes as the international community works to impose harsher sanctions on the regime in Pyongyang in response to its repeated launches of ballistic missiles. In the latest in a series of military provocations, the North fired a Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missile, Nov. 29, claiming it is capable of carrying a larger and more powerful nuclear warhead that can strike anywhere in the U.S. mainland. The media report noted the Egyptian company has yet to officially announce its decision to withdraw from the North, as some procedures need more time to be handled smoothly. In 2008, Orascom, in collaboration with Pyongyang, established Koryolink, the North's only 3G mobile phone network. The number of customers has reportedly reached 3.5 million. The Egyptian company holds a 75 percent stake, while the North has a 25 percent stake. The business deal, authorized by Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris, was part of Cairo's willingness to invest in the reclusive state, highlighting bilateral economic links. The withdrawal is expected to deal a considerable blow to the North, given that Koryolink has been the largest telecommunication operator there. The Egyptian telecom firm had previously indicated its willingness to continue its business in the North within the limits of U.N. sanctions, but is seen as giving up amid international pressure. In September, Sawiris said during his interview with CNBC that his investments in the North were about $250 million, but claimed he stays out of politics there. "I believe I've extended a good service to the innocent people of North Korea who are deprived from seeing their parents who live miles away or can't call their children when they come back from school," he was quoted as saying. "They're allowed to have the simplest services that everybody in the West has. It has nothing to do with politics." [Sanctions] [Orascom] [US dominance]
Net Neutrality Killed as FCC 'Hands Keys to Internet to Handful of Multi-Billion Dollar Corporations'
"The fight to save net neutrality does not end today. This agency does not have, the final word. Thank goodness." by Julia Conley, staff writer FCC commissioners Jessica Rosenworcel and Mignon Clyburn joined protesters outside the panel's headquarters on Thursday before issuing a dissent to Republican chair Ajit Pai's proposal to end net neutrality protections. The repeal was passed with a 3-2 vote. (Photo: Free Press/Flickr/cc)FCC commissioners Jessica Rosenworcel and Mignon Clyburn joined protesters outside the panel's headquarters on Thursday before issuing a dissent to Republican chair Ajit Pai's proposal to end net neutrality protections. The repeal was passed with a 3-2 vote. (Photo: Free Press/Flickr/cc) The nonpartisan First Amendment advocacy group Free Press vowed to take the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to court Thursday after the Republican-controlled panel moved to gut net neutrality protections that prohibit internet service providers (ISPs) from charging for and discriminating against content, in a 3-2 vote along party lines. The FCC just voted to repeal #NetNeutrality but the fight is NOT over. Tell Congress to use a "resolution of disapproval" to overturn the FCC's vote: https://t.co/GU5IfEZOFr — Free Press (@freepress) December 14, 2017 The ACLU released a statement calling the "misguided" decision "a radical departure that risks erosion of the biggest free speech platform the world has ever known." "Today's loss means that telecommunications companies will start intruding more on how people use the internet. Internet service providers will become much more aggressive in their efforts to make money off their role as online gatekeepers," said Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst for the group. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) also denounced the ruling: Once again, the Trump administration has sided with big money and against the interests of the American people. The FCC's vote to end net neutrality is an egregious attack on our democracy. With this decision the internet and its free exchange of information as we have come to know it will cease to exist. The end of net neutrality protections means that the internet will be for sale to the highest bidder, instead of everyone having the same access regardless of whether they are rich or poor, a big corporation or small business, a multimedia conglomerate or a small online publication. At a time when our democratic institutions are already in peril, we must do everything we can to stop this decision from taking effect. [Net neutrality] [Corporate power]
Kim Jong-un controls the weather, North Koreans told
Cleve R Wootson Jr Washington: In rare free moments, when Kim Jong-un isn't calling US President Donald Trump a dotard, launching ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan or engaging in general dictatoring, he apparently goes on leisurely mountain hikes and flexes his never-before-reported superpower: controlling the weather. The case for the North Korean leader's cameo role in a new X-Men movie came during a brisk three-kilometre stroll up snowy Mount Paektu a week or so ago, as reported by the state-controlled Korean Central News Agency. The 2744-metre mountain is normally a wintry mess in December, according to the news agency, but during Kim's visit, it was a "marvellous scene with glee at the reappearance of its great master." When Kim ascended to the top, the mountain showed "fine weather unprecedented". It was obviously an homage to Kim, KCNA reported, the man "who controls the nature". Related Articles [Media] [Mockery] [Cultural miscommunication]
- Kim Jong Un Climbs Mt. Paektu
  Kim Jong Un, chairman of the Workers' Party of Korea, chairman of the State Affairs Commission of the DPRK and supreme commander of the Korean People's Army, climbed Mt Paektu, the sublime mountain of revolution. The ancestral mountain Paektu covered with white snow was displaying marvelous scene with glee at the reappearance of its great master. When Kim Jong Un ascended to the top of it, going through thick snow, it showed fine weather unprecedented in the blizzard of December winter, exposing its majestic figure. As if to give warm welcome to him who brought the "great November event" of the great Korea and show joy at the appearance of the peerlessly illustrious commander who controls the nature, the heart of the ever-changing Lake Chon on the top of Mt Paektu presented charming scenery showing magic peaks and dazzling sunshine on its clear and blue waves. Imposingly standing on Janggun Peak, the respected Supreme Leader gave a familiar look for a while at the dizzy cliffs and the sea of trees, recalling the emotion-charged days when he realized the great historic cause of completing the state nuclear force without yielding even a moment and with the indomitable faith and will of Paektu. He said that he had often climbed Mt Paektu but this is the first time to have in mid-winter such nice weather, rare to be seen even in spring. The weather is so fine that we can see peaks on the shore of Lake Chon more clearly as if they are before our very eyes, he added. [Kim Jong Un] [Paektu]
What to Expect From BBC Panorama and Guardian’s Whitewash of UK Gov’t Funding Terrorists in Syria
December 4, 2017 By Vanessa Beeley 21st Century Wire says… The BBC will be carrying out a controlled journalistic “explosion” on their Panorama programme, airing tonight in the UK. Their report, dramatically titled, “Jihadis You Pay For” is about to expose UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) for the funding of extremist and terrorist groups in Syria via their “Free Syrian Police” project set-up in ‘rebel-held’ areas of Syria since 2014. To referee this virtual clash of the titans, The Guardian has been drafted-in to do the honours. “The report, Jihadis You Pay For, will claim that Foreign Office money paid to the FSP reached people with links to the extremist group al-Nusra Front.” ~ The Guardian Mike Raddie of BSNEWS commented: “Is the Guardian’s Daniel Boffey attempting to whitewash the massive scandals of FCO and BBC funding and working with extremist groups in Syria? Why did he not ask Vanessa Beeley or Robert Stuart to explain how these UK institutions are working alongside al Qaeda/ISIS linked groups inside Syria? Is it any wonder the Guardian has closed reader feedback on the story, less than 8 hours after it was posted? “Comment is Free” so long as you don’t mention unsayable truths such as BBC’s Panorama and Boris Johnson’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office are both working with and financing al Qaeda in direct contravention of UK anti-terror legislation.” Boffey’s response to Raddie’s inquiry: Is it snowing in Moscow yet? — Daniel Boffey (@DanielBoffey) December 3, 2017 In other words, if you don’t adhere the mainstream media’s narrow narrative, then you must be a Russian agent. [Outsourcing] [Syria] [Whiter Helmets] [BBC] [Guardian]
Chomsky and his critics
When the Swedish Academy awarded Bertrand Russell a Nobel Prize, the philosopher was uneasy. I have always supposed, he wrote, that one cannot be respectable without being wicked. He conducted his life out of step with the creed of authority. Twice imprisoned and twice removed from his academic post for his broadsides against war and religion, the aristocratic radical actively courted the displeasure of an elite that made his grandfather prime minister of England. And when, of late, it was disclosed that the CIA had spied on Noam Chomsky, it was not much of a revelation that he too is a prime target for the respectable. An extensive literature has grown up over the years that pegs him as, variously, a Holocaust denier, a neo-Nazi fellow traveller, a Stalin admirer, a Hezbollah adviser, a Saddam Hussein defender, and a Pol Pot sympathiser. These indictments come not just from the remote wilds of the rightwing media. They come from liberal sectors of the press. [Chomsky]
Untouchable - The Uses And Misuses Of ‘Genocide Denial’
Last Updated on 05 December 2017 By Editor Introduction One of the wonders of contemporary propaganda is the extent to which corporate commentators are in denial about their use of the term 'genocide denial'. Clearly, they believe they are using a neutral, objective term to describe indisputable facts of genocidal killing and ugly refusals to recognise those facts. The delusion is quickly exposed when we ask a few simple questions. For example: how often do we see 'mainstream' commentators describing US-UK sanctions on Iraq from 1990-2003 as 'genocidal', as affirmed by senior UN diplomats? How often do journalists describe supporters of the devastating Bush-Blair war on Iraq, the Obama-Cameron war on Libya, or May's war on Yemen as 'genocide deniers'? Can we imagine someone who supported the war on Libya being called an 'Obama apologist'? Like 'terror' and 'terrorism', 'genocide' and 'genocide denial' are simply not terms that are applied to Western actions. [Genocide] [Propaganda]
The Mladic Case: A Stain On Civilization
Christopher Black, international criminal lawyer, examines the legal procedures at the trial of general Mladic, and finds them inadequate. All that is a lie. This is a NATO-style trial. The defiant words of General Mladic to the judges of the NATO controlled ad hoc war crimes tribunal for Yugoslavia rang out loud and clear the day they pretended to convict him. He could have added ‘but history will absolve me” and a lot more but he was thrown out of the room by the chief judge, Orie, in his condescending style, as if he was dealing to a truant schoolboy, instead of a man falsely accused of crimes he did not commit. [Yugoslavia] [UNUS] [Show trial]
CNN in North Korea: Liberal Democracy and Ethno-Nationalism
by Ani Maitra In a Special Report “Secret State: Inside North Korea” that aired on CNN on September 15, 2017, the voiceover of journalist Will Ripley promises U.S.-based viewers “unprecedented access” to a country that has been “hidden from the world until now.” In an attempt to complicate the popular image of North Korea as a secretive and warmongering regime, Ripley seemingly focuses less on the North Korean government and more on the lives and views of ordinary civilians belonging to different demographic groups, such as teenagers at a video game arcade in Pyongyang, a resident in the port city of Wonsan, a farmer in the remote village in the North Hwanghae Province, factory workers singing karaoke in their moment of leisure, and a woman shopping for a smartphone at an upscale departmental store. By the end of his report, Ripley sounds convinced that the citizens of the DPRK are not any different from their American counterparts: “After more than a dozen trips to North Korea, I can’t help but believe that, at heart, we share the same hopes, the same struggles, for food and shelter, for safety, and security, to learn and to live. But I wonder: is it all at risk?” This recognition of an ontological commonality contrasts sharply with the report’s closing images of military parade and bluster. The pugnacious climate created by the North Korean regime’s recent nuclear tests, the report implies through its ominous ending, has suddenly emerged as an unanticipated threat to this commonality discovered by the liberal U.S. journalist. [Media] [CNN] [Liberal] [Academic]
PBS Frontline: “Putin’s Revenge” – unintentionally hilarious
Published on November 30, 2017 PBS’s Frontline series offers what it calls the “inside story of how Vladimir Putin came to see the United States as an enemy — and why he decided to target an American election.” We are publishing it here because it has to be seen to be believed. The sinister music and Burnsian black and white photography, the gravel-voiced narrator, all trying to give gravitas to a script that is so divorced from any kind of maturity, sanity or veridical reality it will make you dizzy. In its quick overview of Putin’s rise to power no mention is made of the collapse of infrastructure, the soaring crime rates and the suffering of working people made destitute by Yeltsin’s “democratisation” of the economy. And no mention is made of how “anti-democratic” Putin reversed this seemingly irreversible decline. No effort is made to define what is meant by “democracy” at all. Nothing that sophisticated is even attempted. Yeltsin, the hood and destroyer, is described as “pro-democracy” because he favoured the US and its economic piracy. Putin is “anti-democratic”, because he didn’t. It’s that unsophisticated. And that absurd. Tune in and see all the usual suspects from John Brennan to Masha Gessen tell unvarnished, awkward and easily disprovable lies with studied earnest. Marvel at the hubris and naivety required to make a two-hour documentary based on a collection of premises that can be disproved with a couple of Googlings. The most remarkable thing about this – and so much recent western propaganda – is how clumsy and foolish it is. This is what passes for high class journalism now in the fluoridated, fantasy-bewildered collective psyche of the Exceptional Nation. Watch it and laugh until you cry. Part two is here. [Russia confrontation] [Putin] [Propaganda]

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NOVEMBER 2017

Did Al Qaeda Dupe Trump on Syrian Attack?
November 9, 2017 Special Report: Buried deep inside a new U.N. report is evidence that could exonerate the Syrian government in the April 4 sarin atrocity and make President Trump look like an Al Qaeda dupe, reports Robert Parry. By Robert Parry A new United Nations-sponsored report on the April 4 sarin incident in an Al Qaeda-controlled town in Syria blames Bashar al-Assad’s government for the atrocity, but the report contains evidence deep inside its “Annex II” that would prove Assad’s innocence. The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Ross fires a tomahawk land attack missile from the Mediterranean Sea at Syria, April 7, 2017. (Navy photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Robert S. Price) If you read that far, you would find that more than 100 victims of sarin exposure were taken to several area hospitals before the alleged Syrian warplane could have struck the town of Khan Sheikhoun. Still, the Joint Investigative Mechanism [JIM], a joint project of the U.N. and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons [OPCW], brushed aside this startling evidence and delivered the Assad guilty verdict that the United States and its allies wanted. The JIM consigned the evidence of a staged atrocity, in which Al Qaeda operatives would have used sarin to kill innocent civilians and pin the blame on Assad, to a spot 14 pages into the report’s Annex II. The sensitivity of this evidence of a staged “attack” is heightened by the fact that President Trump rushed to judgment and ordered a “retaliatory” strike with 59 Tomahawk missiles on a Syrian airbase on the night of April 6-7. That U.S. attack reportedly killed several soldiers at the base and nine civilians, including four children, in nearby neighborhoods. [Khan Sheikhoun] [False flag] [OPCW] [UNUS]
'Inappropriate Behaviour' – Michael Fallon, Yemen, And The ‘Mainstream’ That Is Anything But
19 November 2017 The truth of corporate journalism, and the great irony of its obsession with 'fake news', is that it is itself utterly fake. What could be more obviously fake than the idea that Truth can be sold by billionaire-owned media dependent on billionaire-owned advertisers for maximised profit? The 'mainstream' worldview is anything but – it is extreme, weird, a product of corporate conformity and deference to power. As Norman Mailer observed: 'There is an odour to any Press Headquarters that is unmistakeable... The unavoidable smell of flesh burning quietly and slowly in the service of a machine.' (Mailer, 'The Time Of Our Time', Little Brown, 1998, p.457) A prime example of 'mainstream' extremism is the way the UK's illegal wars destroying whole countries are not an issue for corporate moralists. Physicians for Global Responsibility estimate that 1.3 million people have been killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan alone. And yet it is simply understood that UK wars will not be a theme during general elections (See here and here). By contrast, other kinds of 'inappropriate behaviour' are subject to intense scrutiny. Consider the recent resignation of Defence Secretary Michael Fallon and his replacement by Prime Minister Theresa May's Chief Whip, Gavin Williamson. Fallon resigned after it was revealed that he had 'repeatedly touched the broadcaster Julia Hartley-Brewer's knee at a dinner in 2002'. [Media] [Diversion]
Monbiot, Syria and Universalism
by Philip Roddis George Monbiot I’m worried about George. An admirer of many years standing of his excellent columns charting what John Smith’s even more excellent Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century refers to as “capitalism’s destruction of nature”, I’m dismayed both by his stance on Syria and manner of defending it. His latest Guardian piece, yesterday – A lesson from Syria: it’s crucial not to fuel far-right conspiracy theories – is depressingly typical. The man who writes with such clarity, such evidence based reason, on the ties between environmental recklessness and big money repeatedly shows himself prepared to suspend his critical faculties – while projecting that very sin on his opponents – when it comes to Syria and the Assad ‘regime’. [Syria] {Media]
Russia, U.S. stalemate over Syria chemical weapons inquiry
Michelle Nichols UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Russia said on Monday it was talking to the United States about the U.N. Security Council renewing an international inquiry into chemical weapons attacks in Syria, but Washington countered that Moscow had refused to engage on a U.S.-drafted resolution. FILE PHOTO: A man breathes through an oxygen mask as another one receives treatments, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria April 4, 2017. REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah/ File Photo The mandate for the joint inquiry by the U.N. and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which has found the Syrian government used the banned nerve agent sarin in an April 4 attack, expires on Friday. Russia vetoed an initial U.S. bid to renew the joint investigation on Oct. 24, saying it wanted to wait for the release of the latest investigation’s report two days later. It has since proposed its own rival draft resolution. “We are talking to the U.S., it’s not over yet,” Russian U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told reporters on Monday. [Khan Sheikhoun] [Evidence] [UNUS]
VIDEO: Eva Bartlett Exposes the Lies on Syria
In this episode, James Corbett is joined by Eva Bartlett of InGaza.wordpress.com to discuss her reporting from Syria. They talk about the lies, propaganda and outright fabrications that have attempted to paint the terrorist insurgency as a “civil war” led by “moderate rebels,” including the use of children like Omran Daqneesh and Bana Alabed as unwitting icons for the fake narrative. They also discuss recommended sources for real information about what’s happening in Syria. Sources, links and show-notes can be found here. [Syria] [Propaganda] [EWA]
More Fake News? WMD in Syria Just Like Iraq in 2003?
Contradictions in the UN/OPCW Report on Khan Shaykhun By Rick Sterling Global Research, November 06, 2017 True Publica 5 November 2017 In early 2003 it was claimed that Iraq was a threat to other countries. Despite ten years of crushing economic sanctions plus intrusive inspections, supposedly Iraq had acquired enough “weapons of mass destruction” to threaten the West. It was ridiculous on its face but few people in power said so. Establishment politicians and media across the U.S. promoted the idea. In the Senate, Joe Biden chaired the committee looking into the allegations but excluded knowledgeable critics such as Scott Ritter. This led to the invasion of Iraq. Swedish Doctors for Human Rights say they have found evidence that the chemical attack in Syria was a ‘false flag’ by the White Helmets. Today we have something similarly ridiculous and dangerous. Supposedly the Syrian government decided to use a banned chemical weapon which they gave up in 2013-2014. Despite advancing against the insurgents, the Syrian government supposedly put sarin in a Russian chemical weapon canister and dropped this on the town Khan Shaykhun which has been under the control of Syria’s version of Al Qaeda for years. To top off the stupidity, they left paint markings on the canister which identify it as a chemical weapon. Supposedly the Syrian government did this despite knowing there are many “White Helmet” activists in the town along with with their cameras, videos, computers, internet uplinks and western social media promoters. Supposedly the Syrian government did this despite knowing that neo-conservatives, neo-liberals and zionists are keen to prolong the conflict and drag the US and NATO into it. Supposedly the Syrian government did this despite knowing the one thing that could trigger direct US aggression in the conflict is the use of chemical weapons …. the “red line” laid down by Barack Obama. [Khan Sheikhoun] [False flag] [Evidence]
North Korea - usual suspect in cyberattacks
Reporter's Notebook Posted : 2017-11-03 17:03 Updated : 2017-11-03 19:16 By Choi Ha-young North Korea's cyber warfare capability has become a worldwide concern. The North has been accused of being behind numerous cyberattacks on the websites of government agencies and financial institutions. We tend to regard the North as the prime suspect whenever the systems of banks and public organizations are hacked here. In many cases, however, it is difficult to find evidence supporting the North's direct involvement. It is easy to blame North Korea for untraceable hacking incidents. What is embarrassing is that there has been little improvement in South Korea's cybersecurity technology, and many of its online networks remain vulnerable to attack. During a recent National Assembly audit, lawmakers raised the issue of Pyongyang's cyberattacks on financial institutions and banks here, including the Bank of Korea. [Cyberattack] [Attribution]

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OCTOBER 2017

Russia rejects the false UN-OPCW report on Syrian chemical weapons attack
October 27th, 2017 - Fort Russ News - - Breakingnews.sy - - translated by Samer Hussein - Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Friday that the report of the Joint UN Security Council and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Inquiry Mechanism into the events, relating to the alleged use of sarin gas in the northwestern Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun on April 4th, was flawed as regards its investigative methods and based on false statements coming from the highly questionable sources. Ryabkov's response came after Vasily Nebenzya, Russia's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, yesterday announced that Moscow is proposing a new report by UN experts and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on chemical attacks in Syria. “We have begun to prepare a new document, which has a comprehensive technical character”, said Russian press secretary Fyodor Strzhizovski, adding that it is necessary to conduct such study using experts from different institutions. “It surprises us once again that Western news agencies are shamelessly publish quotations directly from an internal document of the UN Security Council”, he added.[Khan Sheikhoun] [UNUS] [Evidence]
The “European Values” think-tank and their list of “Useful Idiots”
by Kit The idea that the USA might be more dangerous to peace than Iran is just one of the pernicious lies that RT pushes. The historical weight of evidence lending support to this idea is not important. Just when you think that the Russo-phobic hysteria of the Western world couldn’t possibly make itself any more ridiculous…something like this comes along. This is the europeanvalues.net list of “useful idiots”. The list is very long, over 2300 names, because it contains the name of every person to ever appear on either Sputnik or RT. Hosts or guests, hostile or friendly, it doesn’t matter. If you’re on the list, you are a useful idiot. They’ve highlighted some names in yellow, to denote they’re “particularly noteworthy”. Names receiving the yellow highlight – the Russian agent equivalent of twitter’s blue tick – include Harrison Ford, Stephen Fry and Senator John McCain. All noted for their pro-Russian public stance on important political issues. Also on the list are Boris Johnson’s dad, Barack Obama’s wife and John McCain’s daughter. And while all three of them may well be idiots, I’m struggling to see how they’ve ever been useful to anyone. It’s honestly beyond a joke at this point. But let’s take a look behind the scenes anyway. The Think-Tank The not-at-all Orwellian sounding “European Values” think-tank is a Czech based NGO focusing on fighting… …aggressive regimes, radicalisation within the society, the spread of authoritarian tendencies and extremist ideologies including Islamism. Their about page goes into a lot of (vaguely creepy) detail about their logo, in case you were interested, but much less detail about their funding. If you want to know that, you have to read their annual reports. In 2015, for example, you can see that they received funding from disappointingly predictable list of sources. The European Union, the US Embassy, the UK Embassy and (of course) the Open Society Foundation. One day, it would be really nice to read the “Our Funding” section of an NGO’s website, and NOT see George Soros’ name. [Propaganda] [Russia confrontation] [George Soros] [RT]
Twitter bans ads from Russia Today and Sputnik over election interference
Company announced decision following US intelligence community’s conclusion that RT and Sputnik attempted to interfere with the US election Twitter said it uncovered an error in the way it has calculated the size of its user base since 2014. Twitter said it uncovered an error in the way it has calculated the size of its user base since 2014. Photograph: Kacper Pempel/Reuters Dominic Rushe and agencies @dominicru Thursday 26 October 2017 16.12 BST Last modified on Thursday 26 October 2017 17.49 BST Twitter has announced that it will stop taking advertising from all accounts owned by Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik, effective immediately as US lawmakers continue to investigate the impact of foreign-sponsored fake news on the 2016 election. In a blogpost on Thursday the company said it had taken the decision following its own investigations and the US intelligence community’s conclusion that both RT and Sputnik attempted to interfere with the election on behalf of the Russian government. “We did not come to this decision lightly, and are taking this step now as part of our ongoing commitment to help protect the integrity of the user experience on Twitter,” the company said. [Censorship] [Russia confrontation]
Syria regime responsible for gas attack on rebel-held town, UN finds
Bashar al-Assad’s forces were behind sarin attack on Khan Sheikhun that killed more than 87, UN says, as US reaffirms Syria’s president’s rule must end AFP at the United Nations Thursday 26 October 2017 23.08 BST Last modified on Thursday 26 October 2017 23.24 BST Bashar al-Assad’s forces are responsible for a deadly sarin gas attack on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhun that killed scores of people, UN investigators have said, as the United States renewed its warning that the Syrian president has no role in the country’s future. [Khan Sheikhoun] [UNUS]
Bashar al-Assad’s forces responsible for deadly Syria sarin gas attack, UN finds
Syrian children receive treatment following a suspected toxic gas attack in Khan Sheikhun, a rebel-held town in the northwestern Syrian Idlib province, on April 4, 2017 Credit: AFP Agence France-Presse 26 October 2017 • 10:54pm Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces are responsible for a deadly sarin gas attack on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhun that killed scores of people, a UN investigative panel said on Thursday. The joint UN-Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) panel said in a much-awaited report that the "sarin was delivered via an aerial bomb that was dropped by an airplane". The "panel is confident that the Syrian Arab Republic is responsible for the release of sarin at Khan Sheikhun on 4 April 2017," said the confidential report to the UN Security Council obtained by AFP. [Khan Sheikhoun] [UNUS]
Meet the CIA’s Big Brother: The Multibillion Dollar US Spy Agency You’ve Never Heard Of
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s capability is well-equipped to quell the violence of protesters, assist ICE in their deportation corralling, and track all those who belong to minority groups – Muslims, Black Lives Matter... By AnonWatcher - March 30, 2017 If you haven’t heard of the NGA, you can be forgiven. The NGA – the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency employs over 15,000 people in its shadows. The NGA is the cutting-edge spy agency that oversees the surveillance trade. Forget the CIA and NSA. This newish acronymic organization – taking its new existence (started as the National Photographic Interpretation Center in WWII) in 2003 – is massive. Billions are granted for budget and in 2011, its main building measured “four football fields long and covers as much ground as two aircraft carriers,” costing $1.4 billion to complete. [NGA] [Surveillance] [Intelligence]
New livestream available for Pyongyang FM Pangsong (?? FM ??) in Korean and Voice of Korea (VoK) in Russian:
There is a new livestream available for Pyongyang FM Pangsong (?? FM ??) in Korean and Voice of Korea (VoK) in Russian: http://guzei.com/online_radio/listen.php?online_radio_id=17829 The broadcasts in Russian are not according to VoK's shortwave schedule as they are aired at the following hours Moscow Time: 00.30 , 03.30 , 06.30 , 09.30 , 12.30 , 15.30 , 18.30 , 21.30, at all other times Pyongyang FM Pangsong is heard
In North Korea itself there is a state-of-the-art optical fibre cable intranet available which is rapidly expanding. During my last stay in North Korea (May/June 2016) I pointed out that it would be favourable for the North Koreans to have another link to the WorldWideWeb through Russia in order to gain more reliable access to the WWW (hitherto the one and only connection has been the Sinuiju/Dandong link, PR of China). So now it bears fruit! :-) [Internet] [Russia NK]
North Korea's top university to admit more foreign students
Posted : 2017-10-21 12:02 Updated : 2017-10-21 12:02 By Bahk Eun-ji North Korea's most prestigious university, Kim Il Sung University, plans to admit more foreign students by expanding major studies available for them, according to Choson Sinbo, Saturday. The pro-Pyongyang newspaper published in Japan, the university will allow international students to major in various economics and social science studies, including philosophy, law and history, in addition to literature, starting next year. Currently, around 100 students from 33 countries, including China, Russia, Vietnam, France, Mongolia and Britain, are enrolled in the university in Pyongyang. The university opened its door to International students since 1954, but major of their studies are restricted to the Korean language. The Choson Sinbo, a newspaper of Chongryon, a Tokyo-based organization of pro-Pyongyang Korean residents in Japan, noted that foreign students are currently allowed to study the Korean language at Kim Il Sung University for four years, if they pass its entrance exam after completing a one-year preliminary course at Kim Hyong Jik University of Education. "Foreign students who finish the four-year undergraduate studies at Kim Il Sung University can also earn degrees after completing a two-year master's course and a three-year doctor's course. The university also offers a correspondence doctor's course for professors at its foreign partner schools," the newspaper was quoted as saying by Yonhap. International students are now be able to attend classes at Kim Il Sung University's new campus building built on Pyongyang's Ryomyong Street in April this year and the university dedicated a 12-story dormitory for foreign students in the same district in August last year. [Education]
N.Korea Hones Cyberheists into 'Almost Perfect Weapon'
October 17, 2017 09:54 While the world's attention is focused on North Korea's nuclear and missile programs, it has developed its hacking skills into "an almost perfect weapon" and earns as much as US$1 billion a year from cyberheists, The New York Times reported on Sunday. The North has more than 6,000 hackers trained to steal secrets and money from foreign governments and companies, the daily quoted a U.S. intelligence expert as saying. "Cyberheists may bring the North as much as $1 billion a year, or a third of the value of the nation's exports," the paper said. [Cybercrime] [Canard]
As U.S. Confronts Internet’s Disruptions, China Feels Vindicated
By Steven Lee Myers and Sui-Lee Wee Oct. 16, 2017 HULUNBUIR, China — In the United States, some of the world’s most powerful technology companies face rising pressure to do more to fight false information and stop foreign infiltration. China, however, has watchdogs like Zhao Jinxu. From his small town on the windswept grasslands of the Inner Mongolia region of China, Mr. Zhao, 27, scours the internet for calls to violence, fake news and pornography. He is one of a battalion of online “supervisors” whom Weibo, one of China’s biggest social media platforms, announced last month it would hire to help enforce China’s stringent limits on online content. For years, the United States and others saw this sort of heavy-handed censorship as a sign of political vulnerability and a barrier to China’s economic development. But as countries in the West discuss potential internet restrictions and wring their hands over fake news, hacking and foreign meddling, some in China see a powerful affirmation of the country’s vision for the internet. “This kind of thing would not happen here,” Mr. Zhao said of the controversy over Russia’s influence in the American presidential election last year. Besides Communist Party loyalists, few would argue that China’s internet control serves as a model for democratic societies. China squelches online dissent and imprisons many of those who practice it. It blocks foreign news and information, including the website of The New York Times, and promotes homegrown technology companies while banning global services like Facebook and Twitter. Continue reading the main story At the same time, China anticipated many of the questions now flummoxing governments ranging from the United States to Germany to Indonesia. Where the Russians have turned the internet into a political weapon, China has used it as a shield. [Internet] [Censor] [Double standards] [China confronation]
"Russia Interfered!" - By Purchasing Anti-Trump Ads?
After the ludicrous "Russian hacking" claims have died down for lack of evidence, the attention was moved to even more ludicrous claims of "Russian ads influenced the elections". Some readers are upset that continue to debunk the nonsense the media spreads around this. But lies should not stand without response. If only to blame the reporters and media who push this dreck. As evidence is also lacking for any "Russian interference" claims the media outlets have started to push deceiving headlines. These make claims that are not covered at all by the content of the related pieces. The headlines are effective because less than 20% of the viewers ever read beyond them. On the NYT Homepage today we find another one of these: Google Finds Russia Bought Ads to Interfere in Election. [Russia confrontation] [Media] [Heading]
Israel hacked Kaspersky, then tipped the NSA that its tools had been breached
By Ellen Nakashima October 10 at 7:22 PM In 2015, Israeli government hackers saw something suspicious in the computers of a Moscow-based cybersecurity firm: hacking tools that could only have come from the National Security Agency. Israel notified the NSA, where alarmed officials immediately began a hunt for the breach, according to people familiar with the matter, who said an investigation by the agency revealed that the tools were in the possession of the Russian government. Israeli spies had found the hacking material on the network of Kaspersky Lab, the global anti-virus firm under a spotlight in the United States because of suspicions that its products facilitate Russian espionage. [Hacking] Russia confrontation] [Israel]
North Korean hackers stole U.S. and South Korean wartime plans, Seoul lawmaker says
North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Un, inspects artillery launchers in April. (Kcna/Reuters) By Anna Fifield October 10 at 11:32 AM TOKYO — North Korean hackers stole a huge trove of classified U.S. and South Korean military documents last year, including a plan to “decapitate” the leadership in Pyongyang in the event of war, a lawmaker in Seoul said Tuesday. The revelations, if substantiated, come at a time of heightened tensions over North Korea, with President Trump most recently saying that “only one thing will work” when it comes to Pyongyang, hinting at military action. The defense minister in Japan, a close military ally of the United States, said Tuesday that Trump might take such action against North Korea as soon as next month. “I think President Trump will judge in the middle of November how effective pressure and other efforts have been,” Itsunori Onodera told reporters in Tokyo. “If there have been no changes from North Korea, it’s possible that the U.S. will take severe measures.” In Seoul, Rhee Cheol-hee, a lawmaker in the ruling Democratic Party and a member of the parliamentary national defense committee, said that North Korean hackers broke into the Defense Integrated Data Center in September last year to steal secret files, including American and South Korean “operational plans” for wartime action. The data center is the main headquarters of South Korea’s defense network. [Cyber espionage] [Trump] [Military option] [Decapitation]
Noam Chomsky And The BBC: A Brief Comparison
10 October 2017 A recent interview with 88-year-old Noam Chomsky once again demonstrates just how insightful he is in providing rational analysis of Western power and the suffering it generates. By contrast, anyone relying on BBC News receives a power-friendly view of the world, systematically distorted in a way that allows the state and private interests to pursue business as usual. In what follows, we present examples of Chomsky's clarity on several important topics and contrast them with the distortions and silences from BBC News. These examples are not intended to be fully comprehensive, with lots of detailed background. But they are highly illustrative of the propaganda nature of what the BBC broadcasts every day. First, consider North Korea which has carried out missile tests that have 'demonstrated its growing power and expertise, stoking tensions with the US', as the BBC puts it. A helpful graphic shows much of the northern hemisphere within range of these missiles. In particular, the west coast of the United States is portrayed as under real threat from the 'hermit' state's nuclear missiles: a scaremongering scenario that BBC News has promoted in line with the propaganda requirements of the White House, the Pentagon and the arms industry. Video clips on the BBC News website have titles such as 'N Korea announces nuclear test', 'S Korea drill response to N Korea missile', 'We're used to hearing about being bombed' and 'I don't know when I might be killed'. In a forthcoming book of interviews with journalist David Barsamian, 'Global Discontents: Conversations on the Rising Threats to Democracy', Chomsky acknowledges that North Korea has a 'growing arsenal of nuclear weapons and missiles' which does indeed 'pose a threat to the region and, in the longer term, to countries beyond.' But then he provides vital context for this arsenal of weapons: 'its function is to be a deterrent, one that the North Korean regime is unlikely to abandon as long as it remains under threat of destruction.' Yes, threat of destruction; something that is very real in the historical memory of the people: [Chomsky] [BBC] [Threat] [Inversion] [Propaganda]
China’s plan for massive cyber-warrior expansion
Beijing views cybersecurity and national security as equals, and a war between China and the US, if it ever occurs, will witness many cyberspace duels By Zi Yang October 2, 2017 Chinese mastery in cyber-warfare was without a doubt on General Joseph Dunford’s mind when as chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff he named China as the greatest future threat to US security at a congressional hearing last week. Serious cases of hacking in recent years have demonstrated China’s growing cyber-warfare capability. In the past few months, China announced grand plans to expand its dominance massively in the cyber realm. In February 2014, President Xi Jinping took personal control of cyber policies by creating the Central Cyberspace Affairs Leading Group. At a cybersecurity symposium in April 2016, Xi pledged greater state commitment, both financially and policy-wise, to upping China’s cybersecurity capabilities – particularly the identification, recruitment and cultivation of talented individuals. [China confrontation] [Cyberwar] [Cybersecurity]
Russia: Terrorists Used Sarin in Khan Sheikhoun
September 26, 2017 Jim Carey Moscow (GPA) – Russia claims to have evidence that it was terrorists who used sarin gas in the Khan Sheikhoun incident this past April. The Director Russian Foreign Ministry’s Non-Proliferation and Weapons Control Department, Mikhail Ulyanov spoke to reporters at a press conference on Tuesday with new insights into the chemical incident this spring. Counter to the narrative supplied by the UN, Ulyanov claims the Russian government has evidence this event was orchestrated by “rebels” in the Khan Sheikhoun. According to Ulyanov, the Russian government is “keeping a close watch on the situation. There is an enormous amount of evidence implicating the terrorists, who set off a sarin bomb ‘on the ground’ for provocative purposes, knowing the blame would be pinned on Damascus.” This is a suspicion shared by many opponents of the “Syrian opposition,” and for good reason. [Khan Sheikhoun] [OPCW] [False flag]

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SEPTEMBER 2017

Nine charts which tell you all you need to know about North Korea
26 September 2017 As North Korea and the United States continue to trade threats, we have little idea how the war of words is perceived to the people of North Korea because the regime of Kim Jong-un maintains an iron grip over the population, carefully controlling access to the outside world. The country is often depicted as isolated and thoroughly out of step with the 21st century. Statistics are hard to get and often based on estimates, but what can they tell us about life in the North? [Media] [Propaganda] [Spurious statistics]
Bowing Down Before The BBC: Polly Toynbee and The Role Of A Liberal Propagandist
21 September 2017 A standard technique deployed by corporate journalists to fend off challenges from the public is to point to selected examples of 'abuse' and then tar all reasoned criticism with the same mucky brush. Or, if that doesn't work, to sneer at claims of 'conspiracy' or 'plots', thus permitting instant dismissal of the arguments made. Polly Toynbee managed to combine the two techniques in a recent Guardian column. It is a near-masterclass in liberal propaganda. Toynbee began her article by claiming that the BBC, described in hagiographic terms as 'the nation's crucible', is 'often bad at defending itself'. With BBC journalism supposedly 'under ferocious and unjustified attack', in particular from both 'pro- and anti-Brexiteers', she was pleased to hear BBC chairman David Clementi 'standing up for its journalists' in his speech at the Royal Television Society convention in Cambridge last week. [Media] [BBC]
U.S. moves to ban Kaspersky software in federal agencies amid concerns of Russian espionage
By Ellen Nakashima and Jack Gillum September 13 at 4:42 PM The U.S. government on Wednesday moved to ban the use of a Russian brand of security software by federal agencies amid concerns the company has ties to state-sponsored cyberespionage activities. In a binding directive, acting homeland security secretary Elaine Duke ordered that federal civilian agencies identify Kaspersky Lab software on their networks. After 90 days, unless otherwise directed, they must remove the software, on the grounds that the company has connections to the Russian government and its software poses a security risk. The Department of Homeland Security “is concerned about the ties between certain Kaspersky officials and Russian intelligence and other government agencies, and requirements under Russian law that allow Russian intelligence agencies to request or compel assistance from Kaspersky and to intercept communications transiting Russian networks,” the department said in a statement. “The risk that the Russian government, whether acting on its own or in collaboration with Kaspersky, could capitalize on access provided by Kaspersky products to compromise federal information and information systems directly implicates U.S. national security.” [Russia confrontation] [Hysteria] [Cybersecurity]
The Russian Hacking Story Continues to Unravel
September 14, 2017 by Mike Whitney A new report by a retired IT executive at IBM, debunks the claim that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential campaign by hacking Democratic computers and circulating damaging information about Hillary Clinton. The report, which is titled “The Non-Existent Foundation for Russian Hacking Charge“, provides a rigorous examination of the wobbly allegations upon which the hacking theory is based, as well as a point by point rejection of the primary claims which, in the final analysis, fail to pass the smell test. While the report is worth reading in full, our intention is to zero-in on the parts of the text that disprove the claims that Russia meddled in US elections or hacked the servers at the DNC. [Russia confrontation] [US_election16] [Hacking]
- Non-Existent Foundation for Russian Hacking Charge
  Skip Folden, The findings and conclusions of this report are not intended to be pejorative, to malign any party, organization, or individual, particularly, our intelligence agencies, of which I have the highest respect. Herein are simply presentations of discovered facts which challenge the accepted theme of Russia being accused of interfering in the 2016 elections. A significant error has been perpetrated over time based on a flawed foundation of assumptions, which has resulted in excluding other possibilities. Below is a summary of significant problems discovered with both the Dec. 29, 2016 Grizzly Steppe report and the January 06, 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA). Not all cyber intrusion tools, facilities, tactics, techniques, or procedures are exclusive to any one State or non-State player. The lack of exclusivity of the technical parameters and lack of traces simply cannot support a definitive conclusion as to source. Included also are extensive cyber-forensic investigations into the purported July 05, 2016 alleged Russian intrusion of DNC material by a Guccifer 2.0 persona and a material discovery within the alleged intrusion of June 15, 2016. FINDINGS 1) The ICA and GRIZZLY STEPPE Reports lack disclosures and the ICA violated assessment requirements 2) Grizzly Steppe’s Russia Foundation elements, “technical indicators”, e.g., malware programs, IP addresses, and historical targets aren’t unique to Russia and cannot be used to identify Russia or any other source 3) Trace routing of Fancy or Cozy Bear to Russia is non-existent 4) No link has been discovered to relate Wikileaks to Russia 5) Potential conflicts of Interest 6) Three previous Russian accusations strongly refuted 7) Forensic cyber analysis finds July 05 2016 intrusion was local download 8) Forensic cyber analysis finds June 15, 2016 intrusion had Russian fingerprints inserted. 9) Event timing from June 12, 2016 thru June 15, 2016 is highly suspicious 10) Non-State Players of significant means and motive have been ignored [Russia confrontation] [US_Election16] Hacking] [Evidence]
N. Korean hackers set to increase bitcoin attacks to evade sanctions
Posted : 2017-09-13 15:17 Updated : 2017-09-13 17:58 By Chyung Eun-ju North Korean hackers may try to steal bitcoins and other crypto currencies to dodge sanctions, according to a cyber security firm's report cited by Bloomberg on Tuesday (local time). North Korean leader Kim Jong-un appears to be interested in virtual cash because it is secure and secretive. A crypto currency would thus give leeway for the isolated state to move funds where it wants to and change it for various currencies. In retaliation for North Korea's sixth nuclear test early this month, the United Nations Security Council on Monday approved sanctions that could reduce about 30 percent of oil exports to the North, cutting off more than 55 percent of refined petroleum product exports to the state. The sanctions could also cut the country's textile exports by 90 percent. "We definitely see sanctions being a big lever driving this sort of activity," said Luke McNamara, a researcher at FireEye and author of the report. "They (North Korea) probably see it as a very low-cost solution to bring in hard cash." [Sanctions] [Bitcoin] [Hacking] [Canard]
Common Knowledge vs. Reality: The propaganda ghosts of the Cold War
by Denis Churilov Russians are extremely sceptical people. This is partly due to the fact that the modern Russian history has been turbulent, rollercoaster-like, with ideological frameworks changing a few times within a single person’s lifetime. Take the last 40 years, for instance: Soviet propaganda, blatant anti-Soviet propaganda during Perestroika years, (neo-)liberal propaganda, followed by the economic reforms and privatization, which led to a disappointment in capitalism and “free market” by the majority of the population during the 1990s, the attempted “de-Sovietization” information campaign with a second wave of anti-Soviet propaganda during Medvedev years. The list goes on. There is an old joke: Russia, among all countries, has the most unpredictable past. Russian society’s view of its own history is very fluid, with official narratives changing every 4-12 years. The re-evaluation of paradigms happens often, with debates on fundamental historical and political issues being vibrant and mainstream. Most Russian people have learned how to be sceptical and how to not easily trust the official stories. Things are different in the West. Unlike Russia, the Western world has been largely living in the same psycho-historical matrix since the late 1940s. Westerners tend to be more trustful when it comes to the mainstream media and official narratives. The scary thing is that we now have an entire generation of Western intellectuals and politicians who grew up on Cold War propaganda. All the propaganda/psy-ops frameworks that were originally developed by organizations such as the Psychological Strategy Board under Truman and Eisenhower administrations have turned out to be so successful that even the successors of those who designed them started to believe in the propaganda too. The anti-Soviet myths/”memes” contaminated academia decades ago. Many models and research papers have since been based on misconceptions that grew out of the Cold War era anti-Soviet and general anti-Communist propaganda. It all made an impact on the “common knowledge” domain, with many myths seedling roots in the education system, forming people’s values and worldviews. The narrative began to self-replicate. The narrative (which often provides a groundbase for people’s values and, therefore, identity) has become resistant to newly emerging data (the real empirical and archive data that used to be unavailable to Western researchers before the 1990s). Their views on the Soviet/Russian history is only a part of it, evidently. But myths and misconceptions have very little to do with real history. Without understanding the real history, we can’t predict the future. Our ability to make optimal decisions becomes compromised by our inability to model and to prognosticate, simply because we don’t understand the past processes and events correctly. Individuals who live on false memories and delusions, those who have a distorted perception of reality, like people who suffer from various forms of schizophrenia, don’t tend to do well in life (at least, on their own). Same concept applies to society. A society whose collective decision making is compromised by decades of continuous self-replicating propaganda can be dangerous, primarily to itself. As a side note, we live in the age of nuclear weapons. [Propaganda] [Indoctrination]
Facebook’s role in Trump’s win is clear. No matter what Mark Zuckerberg says.
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images) By Margaret Sullivan Media Columnist September 7 at 11:34 AM What a ridiculous notion, Mark Zuckerberg scoffed shortly after the election, that his social-media company — innocent, well-intentioned Facebook — could have helped Donald Trump’s win. “Personally I think the idea that fake news on Facebook .?.?. influenced the election in any way — I think is a pretty crazy idea,” he said. “Voters make decisions based on their lived experience.” In fact, voters make their decisions based on many factors, not just their “lived experience.” Disinformation spread on Facebook clearly was one — a big one. That was obvious in November. It was obvious in April when Facebook, to its credit, announced some moves to combat the spread of lies in the form of news stories. It’s even more obvious now after Wednesday’s news that Facebook sold ads during the campaign to a Russian “troll farm,” targeting American voters with “divisive social and political messages” that fit right in with Donald Trump’s campaign strategy. [Russia confrontation] [Anti-Trump] [Facebook]
The BBC’s Climate Denialism: Coverage Of Hurricane Harvey And The South Asian Floods
Last Updated on 05 September 2017 By Editor In J.G. Ballard's classic novel, The Drowned World, people are struggling for survival on a post-apocalyptic, overheating planet. A 'sudden instability in the Sun' has unleashed increased solar radiation, melting the polar ice caps and causing global temperatures to rise by a few degrees each year. Once-temperate areas, such as Europe and North America, have become flooded tropical lands, 'sweltering under continuous heat waves'. Life has become tolerable only within the former Arctic and Antarctic Circles. The frailty of 'civilisation' and the attempts to cope with psychological changes in the human condition as a result of the catastrophe are laid bare. It is a frightening surreal vision of the human predicament by a master novelist. At one point, one of the characters is asked about his life before the apocalypse. He answers, 'I'm afraid I remember nothing. The immediate past is of no interest to me.' Hurricane Harvey has provided a genuinely terrifying glimpse of a global Ballardian dystopia that may actually be humanity's fate. And yet, even now, corporate media are suppressing the truth. On August 25, the category 4 Hurricane Harvey, with 130 mph winds, made landfall near Corpus Christi on the southern coast of Texas. Harvey's progress then stalled over Houston, the fourth largest city in the United States, dumping enormous 'unprecedented' quantities of water, creating 'a 1-in-1,000-year flood event'. To date, 50 people have been killed, around one million residents have been displaced and 200,000 homes have been damaged in a 'path of destruction' stretching for over 300 miles. [Climate change] [BBC]
The media narrative that really gets under Trump’s skin
By Callum Borchers September 1 at 10:58 AM Play Video 2:23 How John Kelly is trying to bring discipline into the White House In his first month as President Trump’s chief of staff, John F. Kelly has brought discipline to the White House, sometimes to the frustration of Trump. (Video: Bastien Inzaurralde/Photo: Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post) Many things about the media seem to irritate President Trump, but one narrative that really gets under his skin is that someone else controls him. It's a direct shot to the pride of a man who built his political brand on being the one who — “alone” — can fix the nation's problems. If you have noticed the glut of recent reports on White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly's attempt to act as the president's gatekeeper, then you probably were not surprised to read this in The Washington Post on Thursday evening: Trump “has been especially sensitive to the way Kelly's rigid structure is portrayed in the media and strives to disabuse people of the notion that he is being managed.” “Donald Trump resists being handled,” Roger Stone, a former Trump adviser, told The Post's Philip Rucker and Ashley Parker. “Nobody tells him who to see, who to listen to, what to read, what he can say.” In fact, there is substantial evidence that Trump is rather impressionable and can be influenced by what he sees on television or by the last person with whom he speaks about a given issue. But it is clearly important to the president that he be seen as an independent thinker. [Trump] [Media] [Narcissism]
N. Korea threatens to kill S. Korean journalists
Posted : 2017-09-01 16:37 Updated : 2017-09-01 19:13 By Kim Hyo-jin North Korea threatened to execute South Korean journalists and heads of their newspaper companies, Thursday, claiming they insulted the state dignity in their recent review of a book about the isolated country. The North's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) denounced the articles published by the conservative Dong-A Ilbo and Chosun Ilbo newspapers, claiming they falsely described North Korean society as highly capitalist based on the content of the book, "North Korea Confidential: Private Markets, Fashion Trends, Prison Camps, Dissenters and Defectors," whose South Korean title is "Capitalist Republic of Korea," a parody of the country's official name, "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" (DPRK). "The Dong-A Ilbo and Chosun Ilbo committed a hideous crime of seriously insulting the dignity of the DPRK with the use of dishonest contents carried by the propaganda book authored by two British journalists," it said.
The book has been recently published as a Korean edition about two years after the English version of "North Korea Confidential" was published by Seoul-based Reuters correspondent James Pearson and former Economist correspondent Daniel Tudor.

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AUGUST 2017

Official: Syria to Facilitate Chemical Weapons Team Mission
A Syrian official says an international chemical weapons team will visit Damascus in the coming days vowing to facilitate its mission to uncover who used chemical weapons in the country earlier this year. Aug. 12, 2017, Deputy Foreign Minister Faysal Mekdad speaks to the AP at his office in Damascus, Syria, Saturday, Aug. 12, 2017. Mekdad says an international chemical weapons team will visit Damascus in the coming days vowing to facilitate its mission to uncover who used chemical weapons in the country earlier this year. (AP Photo) The Associated Press By ALBERT AJI, Associated Press DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — An international chemical weapons delegation will visit Syria in the coming days and Damascus will facilitate its mission to uncover who used chemical weapons in the country earlier this year, a Syrian official said Saturday. Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad said the delegation of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and U.N. Joint Investigative Mechanism is scheduled to arrive in Syria within 10 days. Mekdad reiterated in an interview with The Associated Press his government's denial of being behind the April 4 attack in the northwestern town of Khan Sheikhoun that killed nearly 100 people. The United States blamed the Syrian military for the attack and launched a punitive strike days later on the Shayrat air base from where it said the attack was launched. "We will offer it all facilitations needed for the investigation and to help it arrive to the place where the alleged chemical attack took place," Mekdad said, adding that a delegation that came to Syria earlier this year did not visit Khan Sheikhoun citing security concerns. He added that the delegation also did not visit the Shayrat air base either. It is not likely that the delegation will be able to visit Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province that has witnessed clashes recently between al-Qaida-linked fighters and rival insurgent groups. "We will ask them to go to Shayrat air base and by that Syria would have given proof that it has no relations to the use of poison gas," Mekdad said in the interview at his office in Damascus [Syria] [OPCW] [Khan Sheikhoun] [Shayrat]
Google Censors Block Access to CounterPunch and Other Progressive Sites
by Eric Sommer Photo by Robert Scoble | CC BY 2.0 The U.S. government, and the information technology companies which collaborate with it, is moving fully into the camp of governments which relentlessly utilize the internet to collect users online data, monitor their activities, and control what they can see and do. First, there was – and is – the NSA, National Security Agency of the U.S., which collects the emails, phone records, social media data, and more from millions of U.S. citizens and the people of the world. Software companies like Google cooperated silently by providing NSA access to its users until Edward Snowden made this odious system public. Now Google, at the behest of its friends in Washington, is actively censoring – essentially blocking access to – any websites which seek to warn American workers of the ongoing effort to further attack their incomes, social services, and life conditions by the U.S. central government, and which seek to warn against the impending warfare between U.S.-led Nato and other forces against countries like Iran, Russia, and China, which have in no way threatened the U.S. state or its people Under its new so-called anti-fake-news program, Google algorithms have in the past few months moved socialist, anti-war, and progressive websites from previously prominent positions in Google searches to positions up to 50 search result pages from the first page, essentially removing them from the search results any searcher will see. Counterpunch, World Socialsit Website, Democracy Now, American Civil liberties Union, Wikileaks are just a few of the websites which have experienced severe reductions in their returns from Google searches. World Socialist Website, to cite just one example, has experienced a 67% drop in its returns from Google since the new policy was announced. [Censor] [Google]
Sky Blocks OffGuardian as a Malware Site
August 4, 2017 Dear OffGuardian readers: A reader in the UK has just advised us that SKY has been blocking the OffGuardian as a malware site, using its Sky Broadband Shield to deny the public access to us. People using Wifi through their Sky package may not find this out and will probably not know how to terminate this intrusion. The Sky number to call to have them remove their shield is 03442414141. As the reader who passed this information to us points out: The assault on truth and sites promoting it has begun and is far reaching and OffGuardian, like WSWS and other left-wing alternate media sites, is obviously being targeted. Hope OffG makes it known as did WSWS.” [Censor]
Archives belie Israel's narrative of Palestinian conflict
Author Daoud Kuttab Posted August 1, 2017 Rona Sela, a curator and lecturer at Tel Aviv University, recounted to It has been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. In the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, an image can also be as dangerous as a cannon. This appears to be the conclusion reached by two women, one Israeli and the other Palestinian, who have dedicated most of their lives to researching images related to the conflict and their use and fate. Early members of the Zionist movement and later Israelis have consistently attempted to control the narrative of the conflict with the Palestinians, including by seizing photographic evidence of Palestine and the Palestinians' history. Al-Monitor how she first became involved with these images 20 years ago. “I was doing research in the mid-1990s,” she began. “My focus was an analysis of Zionist photography in the early stages of the state of Israel. I researched the way institutional Zionist propaganda departments from the 1920s to 1948 used visual images to construct a national identity to build people’s consciousness about national issues. As the Palestinian narrative was, in most cases, missing from the Zionist one, I started searching for Palestinian images.” Early on in her research, Sela found a large group of images by the photographer Khallil Rasas, whose work was not known but had been looted from his studio in Jerusalem. Rasas’ images of Palestinian life during the first half of the 20th century, never made public, often contradicted the official Israeli narrative. Sela published a few texts about Rasas and his work as well as other Palestinian photographers active in Palestine in the 1930s and 1940s. Sela explained, “In the beginning, it was accidental that I came across traces of the looting, but then I started deliberating trying to find more material that was plundered and to understand what the meaning of these images was and how they fit into the larger narrative of the conflict.” Another Sela discovery was a pre-state Zionist project called Village Files, Aerial Photos and Surveys. Sela went public with her research in 2009 and later published it in the Jerusalem Quarterly in 2013. The project involved detailed documentation of pre-1948 Palestinian villages in which the Jewish underground was interested. The Village Files included photographs and surveys of most of the 418 Palestinian villages that have since been demolished or repopulated by Zionists after the Nakba. According to Sela’s published research, many of the images were taken from the air by young Jewish couples often posing as tourists taking romantic flights over the villages. In fact, they were documenting the area and providing the photos to the Jewish underground. The images were to have been kept secret to prevent the possibility of comparisons between before and after photos. Sela believes that the secrecy behind Israeli efforts to hide the images is part of an attempt to protect the monopoly enjoyed by the Israeli narrative. [Propaganda] [Israel] [Palestine] [Zionism]

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JULY 2017

Russia: Don’t blame Syria for chemical attack without visit
By Edith M. Lederer?|?AP July 26 UNITED NATIONS — Russia says the United States and its Western allies rushed to judgment and blamed the Syrian government for using sarin nerve gas in an attack on an opposition-held town in Syria without ever visiting the site and ignoring two witnesses presented by Damascus. It also criticized the report by the fact-finding mission from the chemical weapons watchdog that investigated the incident in Khan Sheikhoun on April 4 which killed more than 90 people, calling it “very biased.” A letter from Russia’s U.N. Mission to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the U.N. Security Council circulated Wednesday contains Russia’s assessment of the status of the investigation into the incident in Idlib province. The attack sparked outrage around the world as photos and video of the aftermath, including quivering children dying on camera, were widely broadcast. The United States blamed the Syrian military for the attack and launched a punitive strike days later on the Shayrat air base where it said the attack was launched. Syrian President Bashar Assad, a Russian ally, has denied using chemical weapons. The Russian assessment says one thing is clear — sarin was used and this was confirmed by analysis of samples from the site received by Syrian authorities. [Khan Sheikhoun] [cbw] [Evidence] [OPCW] [False flag]
Was the “Russian Hack” an Inside Job?
by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity July 25, 2017 MEMORANDUM FOR: The President FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) SUBJECT: Was the “Russian Hack” an Inside Job? Executive Summary Forensic studies of “Russian hacking” into Democratic National Committee computers last year reveal that on July 5, 2017, data was leaked (not hacked) by a person with physical access to DNC computers, and then doctored to incriminate Russia. After examining metadata from the “Guccifer 2.0” July 5, 2016 intrusion into the DNC server, independent cyber investigators have concluded that an insider copied DNC data onto an external storage device, and that “telltale signs” implicating Russia were then inserted. Key among the findings of the independent forensic investigations is the conclusion that the DNC data was copied onto a storage device at a speed that far exceeds an Internet capability for a remote hack. Of equal importance, the forensics show that the copying and doctoring were performed on the East coast of the U.S. Thus far, mainstream media have ignored the findings of these independent studies [see here and here]. [Russia confrontation] [Hacking] [US_election16] [Evidence] [DNC]
In a time of war, investigative reporting in Ukraine is a tough sell
By Cheryl L. Reed July 19, 2017 Dmytro Gnap, an investigative reporter at Hromadske TV, being interviewed by another television station in regards to a story about a wealthy driver who won't be charged for murder after striking and killing a pedestrian in Kyiv. (Photo credit Cheryl L. Reed) [Media] [Softpower] [Ukraine]
UAE orchestrated hacking of Qatari government sites, sparking regional upheaval, according to U.S. intelligence officials
What you need to know about the diplomatic split with Qatar U.S. officials say the United Arab Emirates orchestrated the hacking of Qatari government sites that occurred shortly before the Saudis, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt broke ties with Qatar. (The Washington Post) By Karen DeYoung and Ellen Nakashima July 16 at 6:25 PM The United Arab Emirates orchestrated the hacking of Qatari government news and social media sites in order to post incendiary false quotes attributed to Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad al-Thani, in late May that sparked the ongoing upheaval between Qatar and its neighbors, according to U.S. intelligence officials. Officials became aware last week that newly analyzed information gathered by U.S. intelligence agencies confirmed that on May 23, senior members of the UAE government discussed the plan and its implementation. The officials said it remains unclear whether the UAE carried out the hacks itself or contracted to have them done. The false reports said that the emir, among other things, had called Iran an “Islamic power” and praised Hamas. [Cyberwar] [Gulf politics] [US intelligence] [US Middle East Strategy]
Mass Media Siege: Comparing Coverage Of Mosul and Aleppo
17 July 2017 When Russian and Syrian forces were bombarding 'rebel'-held East Aleppo last year, newspapers and television screens were full of anguished reporting about the plight of civilians killed, injured, trapped, traumatised or desperately fleeing. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Russian leader Vladimir Putin, both Official Enemies, were denounced and demonised, in accordance with the usual propaganda script. One piece in the Evening Standard described Assad as a 'monster' and a Boris Johnson column in the Telegraph referred to both Putin and Assad as 'the Devil'. [Media] [Aleppo] [Mosul]
Aleppo & Mosul: A tale of two liberated cities
Neil Clark The Iraqi city of Mosul. The Syrian city of Aleppo. Both 'liberated' in recent months from radical jihadist terror groups. But while one anti-terrorist operation has been lauded in the West, the other was fiercely denounced. The very different ways in which the respective 'liberations' were portrayed tells us much about the way war propaganda works in the so-called free world. For the last few days we've been fed triumphant reports on western news media about the 'liberation' of Mosul from ISIS. US President Donald Trump issued a White House Statement congratulating the Iraqi authorities in which the words ‘liberation’ or ‘liberated’ appeared three times. Read more Destroyed buildings from clashes are seen during fighting between Iraqi forces and Islamic State militants in the Old City of Mosul, Iraq July 7, 2017 © Ahmed Saad 'Media ban during Mosul campaign helped conceal full extent of destruction' Everyone, it seems, wants to get credit for the successful military operation. The Independent newspaper reported how a Pentagon official said that ISIS had been defeated because of Barack Obama's "training strategies." The liberation of Mosul has been sold to us as a great victory. Which, at face value, it undoubtedly is. Who, after all, would like to see the brutal terrorizing butchers of the Islamic State retain territory? But what’s noticeable is how the cost of ‘liberation’ has been glossed over, even though it has been very high indeed. Airwars researchers, for instance, estimate that between 900 and 1,200 civilians have been killed by US-led coalition and artillery strikes during the eight-month operation, and that "many hundreds of even thousands more may have died in coalition actions." Airwars quotes International Red Cross spokesperson Iolanda Jaquemet, who said of the mass civilian casualties: “They come with shrapnel wounds, bleeding even from their eyes, shot in the head, after being buried under the rubble, traumatized by the air strikes, the artillery, the snipers, the bombs, having lost their whole family – and too often, dying on arrival.” [Media] [Aleppo] [Mosul]
CNN Hires Top al-Qaeda Propagandist for Documentary
by Jay Syrmopoulos, July 12, 2017, Free Thought Project Bilal Abdul Kareem, of On the Ground News, was contracted by CNN to film a documentary called Undercover in Syria. Kareem is a self-proclaimed media activist living in rebel-held Syria and is considered “one of the top English-language propagandists for al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate Jabat al-Nusra,” according to an Alternet expose on Abdul Kareem and his connections to terrorism and CNN. On June 16 Abdul Kareem went public with his intimate connection to CNN, and its documentary “Undercover in Syria”. He relayed his frustration with the network, having essentially whitewashed him out of his credit for a documentary he had a large hand in creating for CNN, which won a prestigious Peabody Award. Abdul Kareem explained how CNN contracted him and his online news outlet, On the Ground News, to film the award-winning documentary. “This was with CNN and their correspondent Clarissa Ward, which I have big-time respect for, big-time respect as a journalist, as a person,” Abdul Kareem said. “This Undercover in Syria, you can Google it — it won the prestigious Peabody Award, and it won the prestigious Overseas Press Club Award, which are basically the highest awards in journalism for international reporting. Now, [CNN] barely mentioned my name! I’m telling you, somehow CNN must have forgotten that I was the one that filmed it, I guess they forgot that.” Contrary to Abdul Kareem’s statement that “CNN must have forgotten,” the reality is likely much closer to the fact that they intentionally minimized the credit Abdul Kareem received, due to his connections to terrorism – thus becoming a mere footnote in the Peabody Awards press release. While the Peabody organization praised CNN host Clarissa Ward for “[going] undercover into northern Syria to document Russian influence on the fighting and to navigate the ongoing devastation,” Abdul Kareem was only given credit in small print, despite him being responsible for filming and providing CNN with the documentary footage of Syria. CNN President Jeff Zucker delivered a keynote address at an April 17 ceremony where the network had won the Overseas Press Club Award for the “Undercover in Syria” documentary. In a press release, the network celebrated the access Ward had been granted to Islamist insurgent-held eastern Aleppo, but failed to credit Abdul Kareem for being the facilitator of these events, or even mention his name. While Abdul Kareem denies involvement with terrorist organizations, the Saudi news outlet Al Arabiya reported on June 7 that Abdul Kareem officially joined Jabat al-Nusra in 2012. Abdul Kareem took to Facebook to dispute the allegation in a video response. “I am not, nor have I ever been, nor do I need to be a part of al-Qaeda. I don’t have any need for that,” he said. [Jihadist] [Syria] [Propaganda] [CNN] [Nusra]
Holding Up A Mirror - An Appeal For Support
12 July 2017 For as long as we can remember, 'pragmatists' have insisted: 'You have to play the media game. You have to work with the corporate press and broadcasters to achieve mass outreach, and hope that you can steer them in a more positive direction.' The idea is that some arguments and policies just go 'too far', guaranteeing 'mainstream' rejection and attack, which results in fewer progressive voices being heard, benefiting precisely no-one. Bottom line: 'You have to play the game.' An alternative approach argues that analysis rooted in compassion that refuses to compromise in exposing the cruelty of state-corporate power can smoke out the corporate media. Alarmed by what they perceive as a class enemy, as a threatening sign that democratic forces might escape the carefully filtered tweedledum-tweedledee choices, elite media will indeed attack. But in the process of attacking, these media are forced to drop the pretence that they are independent and impartial, or even well-intentioned. This is crucial because it is the illusion that 'mainstream' media are basically fair and benevolent that allows them to sell a fake version of democracy as the real thing. Uncompromised analysis does come at a cost, but it holds up a mirror to the corporate media system in a way that erodes its power to deceive. This is a very different game, one that is very much worth the candle. In fact, we believe it has the power to challenge state-corporate power's system of 'managed democracy' favouring elite interests. This is exactly what we have witnessed in the last two years with Jeremy Corbyn's rise to power within the Labour Party. For two years, Corbyn's compassionate, people-centred policies were dismissed as a 'loony left' joke, a relic of the past. Corbyn would never be able to persuade the public, not least because his views would never be given a fair hearing by a press that would subject him to relentless attack. He didn't stand a chance. At time of writing, Corbyn holds an eight-point lead over the Conservatives. 'Mainstream' pundits reckoned without the rise of social media. Simple Advice For A Student Of Broadcast Journalism A week before the election, a student of journalism tweeted a question to the excellent former BBC journalist and interviewer Afshin Rattansi, now host of RT's Going Underground: 'Hey Afshin, love Going Underground on RT, any advice for a broadcast Journalism major? Thanks so much!' Rattansi replied linking to the 1992 documentary, 'Manufacturing Consent – Noam Chomsky and the Media', adding: 'Simple: Just watch ['Manufacturing Consent']... and follow @medialens :)' As the election loomed, we started receiving many supportive messages of this kind. After we mentioned in a tweet that we had now been tilting at 'mainstream' media windmills for 16 years, one corporate journalist wrote to us privately: 'Can't believe its 16 years. Makes me feel very old. Time rushes past etc. But all the more credit to you guys for sticking at it.' Another leading journalist wrote in: 'I really value being kept honest by you guys.' [Media]
OPCW's Sarin Use Probe in Syria Flawed - Russian Foreign Ministry
14:47 13.07.2017(updated 15:02 13.07.2017) Get short URL Topic: Chemical Weapons Incident in Syria’s Idlib Province (168) 0 41721 The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) in Syria's late June investigation into the alleged use of sarin in Khan Sheikhoun was flawed, the Russian Foreign Ministry's nonproliferation department chief told Sputnik, calling on a more serious probe into the April incident. MOSCOW (Sputnik) — On April 4, the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces supported by the United States blamed the Syrian government for an alleged chemical weapon attack in Khan Sheikhoun in Syria's Idlib province. Reacting to the incident, Washington, which had not presented any proof of the chemical weapons use by Damascus, launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles on the Syrian governmental military airfield in Ash Sha'irat on April 6. [Khan Sheikhoun] [OPCW] [UNUS]
Trump suggested a cybersecurity pact with Russia. Lawmakers say they were ‘dumbfounded.’
By Cleve R. Wootson Jr. July 9 at 3:29 PM Play Video 3:09 Deconstructing Trump's latest Twitter statements on Russia President Trump fired off a series of Russia related tweets on Sunday, July 9. Here's what you need to know. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post) On Sunday morning, President Trump spoke of his new alliance with Russian President Vladimir Putin to erect an “impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded.” This, the president tweeted at 7:31 a.m., came after Putin “vehemently denied” interfering with the 2016 U.S. election. The tweet's timing could not have been more perfect — for congressional critics of Trump's new plan. It gave them just enough of a head start to workshop one-liners and practice their comedic timing before the Sunday morning political talk shows. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) quipped on NBC's “Meet the Press” that Trump's plan was “not the dumbest idea I've ever heard, but it's pretty close.” Graham called Trump “literally the only person I know of who doesn't believe Russia attacked our election in 2016" and said he was “dumbfounded.” Graham said Trump is “hurting his presidency by not embracing the fact that Putin is the bad guy.” Play Video 2:19 Does Trump believe Russia meddled in the election? Washington weighs in Washington weighs in on President Trump's visit to theGroup of 20 summit in Hamburg, and whether he believes that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election. (Victoria Walker/The Washington Post) A quick primer: Many, many people and several U.S. government intelligence agencies have accused Putin and Russia of interfering in the 2016 election to help Trump. A special counsel has been appointed to lead the Justice Department's probe into the Trump campaign's possible Russia ties. There's also a criminal probe and congressional fact-finding investigations, all examining Russia. Yet on Sunday, of the 193 countries Trump could have partnered with on cybersecurity, he chose Russia. [Cybersecurity] [Russia confrontation] [Anti-Trump]
Translation in Isolation: The Rare, the Bad, and the Weird
By Martin Weiser | July 06, 2017 In the first and second parts of his series on reading (and interpreting) North Korean media, Martin Weiser took a deep dive down the well of the North Korean digital archive, bringing to our attention a wealth of additions, changes, and omissions that shed light on key aspects of North Korean government policy, and which, at times, inform third-country responses to it. In this, the third part of the series, Weiser returns to the question of translation. By tracing the process by which translations come into being, he highlights the limitations and bottlenecks — some of them serious — that are created by the need to translate into multiple languages on a daily basis with very limited resources and, often, time. While the reader may assume that differences and omissions in official translations are always strategic, they are just as often down to resource and time limitations, and where one North Korean media organization might translate something correctly, elsewhere confusion can be inserted by a slightly unnatural word choice. — Christopher Green, Co-editor [Communications] [Translation]
The Fraud of the White Helmets: Hollywood buys into yet another lie
Philip Giraldi • July 4, 2017 I actually forced myself to watch the documentary The White Helmets, which is available on Netflix. It is 40 minutes long, is of high quality cinematographically speaking, and tells a very convincing tale that was promoted as “the story of real-life heroes and impossible hope.” It is overall a very impressive piece of propaganda, so much so that it has won numerous awards including the Oscar for Best Documentary Short this year and the White Helmets themselves were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. More to the point, however, is the undeniable fact that the documentary has helped shape the public understanding of what is going on in Syria, delivering a Manichean tale that depicts the “rebels” as always good and Bashar al-Assad and his government as un-redeemably evil. It has been reliably reported that celebrities like George Clooney, Justin Timberlake and Hillary Clinton really like the White Helmets documentary and have promoted it with the understanding that it represents the truth about Syria, but it is, of course, not the whole story. The film, which was made by the White Helmets themselves without any external verification of what it depicts, portrays the group as “heroic,” an “impartial, life-saving rescue organization” of first responders. Excluded from the scenes of heroism under fire is the White Helmets’ relationship with the al-Qaeda affiliated group Jabhat al-Nusra and its participation in the torture and execution of “rebel” opponents. Indeed, the White Helmets only operate in rebel held territory, which enables them to shape the narrative both regarding who they are and what is occurring on the ground. Because of increasing awareness of the back story, there is now a growing movement to petition the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to revoke the Oscar based on the complete and deliberate misrepresentation of what the White Helmets are all about. [White Helmets] [Nusra] [Propaganda]
Foisting Blame for Cyber-hacking on Russia
July 2, 2017 Exclusive: Cyber-criminal efforts to hack into U.S. government databases are epidemic, but this ugly reality is now being exploited to foist blame on Russia and fuel the New Cold War hysteria, reports Gareth Porter. By Gareth Porter Recent hearings by the Senate and House Intelligence Committees reflected the rising tide of Russian-election-hacking hysteria and contributed further to it. Both Democrats and Republicans on the two committees appeared to share the alarmist assumptions about Russian hacking, and the officials who testified did nothing to discourage the politicians. On June 21, Samuel Liles, acting director of the Intelligence and Analysis Office’s Cyber Division at the Department of Homeland Security, and Jeanette Manfra, acting deputy under secretary for cyber-security and communications, provided the main story line for the day in testimony before the Senate committee — that efforts to hack into election databases had been found in 21 states. Former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson and FBI counter-intelligence chief Bill Priestap also endorsed the narrative of Russian government responsibility for the intrusions on voter registration databases. But none of those who testified offered any evidence to support this suspicion nor were they pushed to do so. And beneath the seemingly unanimous embrace of that narrative lies a very different story. [Cybercrime] [Hacking] [Russia confrontation] [Attribution]
The Bizarre Case of Bashar
by Uri Avnery June 30, 2017 Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of the legendary Sherlock Holmes, would have titled his story about this incident “The Bizarre Case of Bashar al-Assad”. And bizarre it is.
Political logic did not point that way. Lately, Bashar has been winning. He had no reason at all to do something that would embarrass his allies, especially the Russians. The first question Sherlock Holmes would ask is: What is the motive? Who has something to gain? Bashar had no motive at all. He could only lose by gas-bombing his citizens. Unless, of course, he is crazy. And nothing indicates that he is. On the contrary, he seems to be in full control of his senses. Even more normal than Donald Trump. [Khan Sheikhoun]
Syria says chemical attack probe work of ‘sick mind’
Originally published July 1, 2017 at 9:22 am Updated July 1, 2017 FILE – In this April 4, 2017 file photo, victims of a suspected chemical weapons attack lie on the ground, in Khan Sheikhoun, in the northern province of Idlib, Syria. Syria’s government and its ally Russia accused... (Alaa Alyousef via AP, File) More Share story By SARAH EL DEEB The Associated Press BEIRUT (AP) — Syria’s government accused Saturday the international chemical weapons watchdog of relying on the testimonies of “terrorists” in its probe that concluded sarin gas was used in a deadly attack in Syria two months ago. The Syrian Foreign Ministry in a statement also lashed out at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, saying its investigation has been subjected to political extortion, costing the agency its credibility and impartiality. The ministry called its findings “the creation of a sick mind.” While the OPCW didn’t apportion blame, the U.S., the U.K. and Syrian activists have held the Syrian government responsible for the April 4 on Khan Sheikhoun in the opposition-controlled Idlib province. More than 90 people, including women and children, were killed, sparking outrage around the world as photos and video of the aftermath, which included quivering children dying on camera, were widely broadcast. [Khan Sheikhoun] [OPCW] [UNUS]
Foreign Ministry: OPCW report on Khan Sheikhoun incident has no credibility and cannot be accepted
1 July? 2017 Damascus, SANA – The Foreign and Expatriates Ministry said that the report issued by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) regarding the Khan Sheikhoun incident includes a fabricated narrative with no credibility at all and which cannot be accepted because it is removed from logic, demanding that the OPCW make reports that are fair, credible, and not subject to the pressure exerted by states and sides that seek to block access to the truth. In a statement issued on Saturday, the Ministry said that the Technical Secretariat of the OPCW issued on 29/06/2017 a misleading report featuring the findings of a fact finding committee regarding the Khan Sheikhoun incident, and it seems that the main purpose of forming such committees is to hide facts, and that these committees’ reports are written and prepared in advance by certain circles that are hostile to Syria. [Khan Sheikhoun] [OPCW]
Is Trump Making Up Syria-Sarin Claims?
June 30, 2017 The White House claimed victory after it warned Syria not to mount a chemical weapons attack and nothing happened, but some experts are questioning the quality of these U.S. claims about Syria and sarin, says Dennis J Bernstein. By Dennis J Bernstein This week, the White House issued a warning to Syria that it would pay a “heavy price” if it carried out a chemical weapons attack that was allegedly in the works — and President Trump took credit when no attack occurred. But no evidence was presented to support the White House claims amid growing doubts about Trump’s earlier missile attack on Syria in retaliation for another alleged chemical attack on April 4. The latest doubts about the April 4 incident came from legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh — published in the Sunday edition of Die Welt — who questioned whether the Syrian government carried it out. Hersh earlier had disputed U.S. government claims that the Syrian government was responsible for a sarin attack outside Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013. Another skeptic of these U.S. government accusations is Theodore Postol, [Khan Sheikhoun] [False flag] [Hersh] [Postol]
Diplomats: Watchdog concludes sarin was used in Syria attack
FILE - In this Tuesday, June 27, 2017, file photo, United Nations special envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura is seen on a video screen as he listens to a Security council meeting on Syria at U.N. headquarters. An investigation by the international chemical weapons watchdog has concluded that sarin or a sarin-like substance was used as a chemical weapon in an April 4 attack on a Syrian town that left more than 90 people dead, diplomats said Thursday. (Mary Altaffer, File/Associated Press) By Mike Corder?|?AP June 29 at 5:53 PM THE HAGUE, Netherlands — An investigation by the international chemical weapons watchdog has concluded that sarin or a sarin-like substance was used as a chemical weapon in an April 4 attack on a Syrian town that left more than 90 people dead, diplomats said Thursday. [Khan Sheikhoun] [False flag] [OPCW] [Media]
After Hersh Investigation, Media Connive in Propaganda War on Syria
by Jonathan Cook If you wish to understand the degree to which a supposedly free western media are constructing a world of half-truths and deceptions to manipulate their audiences, keeping us uninformed and pliant, then there could hardly be a better case study than their treatment of Pulitzer prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. [Hersh] [Syria] [cbw] [Media] [Censor]

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JUNE 2017

Sy Hersh, Exposer of My Lai and Abu Ghraib, Strikes Again, Exposing US Lies About Alleged Assad Sarin ‘Attack’
by Dave Lindorff June 29, 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, the journalist who exposed the My Lai massacre of Vietnamese women, children and old people by US troops, the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal in Iraq, and many other critically important stories, has now obliterated the US government’s (and the US media’s) claim that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s military killed nearly 100 people with a Sarin nerve gas bombing in April, an incident which prompted President Trump to order a Tomahawk cruise missile attack on a Syrian Air Force base. Hersh’s My Lai expose was initially published by the Dispatch News Service, and was eventually run by 33 US newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times (which employed him in its Washington bureau during the Watergate Scandal era, from 1972-75). His later Abu Ghraib expose ran in the New Yorker magazine, as did several other important investigative pieces about the origins of the Iraq war, and about a US covert bombing campaign in Iran. But this latest piece, arguably his potentially most explosive — because it shows a President Trump risking triggering a World War III with Russia based upon his own rash decision, over the objections and to the dismay of his own military and intelligence advisers — couldn’t find a mainstream publisher in the US or the UK. Instead, he had to run it in a German newspaper, Die Welt. [Hersh] [Khan Sheikhoun] [False flag] [Censor]
NYT Finally Retracts Russia-gate Canard
June 29, 2017 Exclusive: A founding Russia-gate myth is that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies agreed that Russia hacked into and distributed Democratic emails, a falsehood that The New York Times has belatedly retracted, reports Robert Parry. By Robert Parry The New York Times has finally admitted that one of the favorite Russia-gate canards – that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies concurred on the assessment of Russian hacking of Democratic emails – is false. New York Times building in New York City. (Photo from Wikipedia) On Thursday, the Times appended a correction to a June 25 article that had repeated the false claim, which has been used by Democrats and the mainstream media for months to brush aside any doubts about the foundation of the Russia-gate scandal and portray President Trump as delusional for doubting what all 17 intelligence agencies supposedly knew to be true. In the Times’ White House Memo of June 25, correspondent Maggie Haberman mocked Trump for “still refus[ing] to acknowledge a basic fact agreed upon by 17 American intelligence agencies that he now oversees: Russia orchestrated the attacks, and did it to help get him elected.” However, on Thursday, the Times – while leaving most of Haberman’s ridicule of Trump in place – noted in a correction that the relevant intelligence “assessment was made by four intelligence agencies — the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency. The assessment was not approved by all 17 organizations in the American intelligence community.” [Russia Confrontation] [Russia-gate] [Anti-Trump] [NYT] [IC]
Lee Camp: How to Write Propaganda for the NY Times – As Demonstrated in an Article About Me
Posted on June 13, 2017 by Yves Smith By Lee Camp, the creator, host, and head writer of the comedy news show “Redacted Tonight with Lee Camp” that airs every Friday on RT America and at YouTube.com/RedactedTonight. He’s a former comedy writer for the Onion and the Huffington Post and has been a touring stand-up comedian for 18 years. This past Thursday the New York Times vomited up a hit piece on little ol’ me – a guy who has been doing stand-up comedy for nearly 20 years and thought maybe that comedy could be used to inform and inspire audiences, rather than just make fun of the differences between men and women. At first when you’re the center of a smear job, you’re annoyed and frustrated. But as I read further through the piece, I realized it was a master class in how to write propaganda for one of the most “respected” news outlets in our country. I’m actually grateful it was written about me because now I can see with my own eyes exactly how the glorious chicanery is done. I count no less than 15 lies, manipulations, and false implications in this short article, a score that even our fearless prevaricator-in-chief Donald Trump would envy. So here now is a “How To” for writing propaganda for the New York Times – using the smear piece against me as an example. [Media]
- An American Comic on a Russian Channel: What He Avoids Speaks Volumes
  By Jason Zinoman June 7, 2017 Photo An image of Julian Assange, left, on “Redacted Tonight,” an RT America program hosted by Lee Camp and sponsored by the Russian government. Last week, Lee Camp, an acerbic left-wing comic, dedicated six minutes of his topical TV show, “Redacted Tonight,” to the discredited conspiracy theory that it wasn’t Russian hackers who leaked emails during the presidential election but Seth Rich, the Democratic National Committee staff member killed in a botched robbery. Mr. Camp’s tepid take — he doesn’t know the truth, but he’s skeptical — was less revealing than his introduction. “Every day I get an email from at least one person or another who says: Why don’t you talk about Seth Rich?” he said, shouting this demand. “And that spirals into: Lee Camp has been told not to talk about Seth Rich. And that will soon become: Lee Camp has accepted $1 million to not talk about Seth Rich. And then a week from now, The Washington Post will run with: Russia infiltrates comedian, forces him not to talk about secret Russian agent Seth Rich. Russia!” If Mr. Camp, who is in his mid-30s, sounds a bit defensive, that may be because it’s a challenging time to be a righteous American host of a political comedy show sponsored by the Russian government. [Russia confrontation] [Media]
Hersh’s New Syria Revelations Buried From View
by Jonathan Cook Veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, the man who exposed the Mai Lai massacre during the Vietnam War and the US military’s abuses of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib in 2004, is probably the most influential journalist of the modern era, with the possible exception of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the pair who exposed Watergate. For decades, Hersh has drawn on his extensive contacts within the US security establishment to bring us the story behind the official story, to disclose facts that have often proved deeply discomfiting to those in power and exploded the self-serving, fairy-tale narratives the public were expected to passively accept as news. His stature among journalists was such that, in a sea of corporate media misinformation, he enjoyed a small island of freedom at the elite, but influential, outlet of the New Yorker. Paradoxically, over the past decade, as social media has created a more democratic platform for information dissemination, the corporate media has grown ever more fearful of a truly independent figure like Hersh. The potential reach of his stories could now be enormously magnified by social media. As a result, he has been increasingly marginalised and his work denigrated. By denying him the credibility of a “respectable” mainstream platform, he can be dismissed for the first time in his career as a crank and charlatan. A purveyor of fake news. Nonetheless, despite struggling to find an outlet for his recent work, he has continued to scrutinise western foreign policy, this time in relation to Syria. The official western narrative has painted a picture of a psychotic Syrian president, Bashar Assad, who is assumed to be so irrational and self-destructive he intermittently uses chemical weapons against his own people. He does so, not only for no obvious purpose but at moments when such attacks are likely to do his regime untold damage. Notably, two sarin gas attacks have supposedly occurred when Assad was making strong diplomatic or military headway, and when the Islamic extremists of Al-Qaeda and ISIS – his chief opponents – were on the back foot and in desperate need of outside intervention. [Hersh] [Media] [False flag] [Censor] [Syria]
Massive cyberattack hits Europe with widespread ransom demands
It is the second massive attack in the past two months to turn powerful U.S. exploits against the IT infrastructure that supports national governments and corporations. The onslaught of ransomware attacks may be the “new normal,” said Mark Graff, the chief executive of Tellagraff, a cybersecurity company. “The emergence of Petya and WannaCry really points out the need for a response plan and a policy on what companies are going to do about ransomware,” he said. WannaCry was the ransomware used in the May attack. “You won’t want to make that decision at a time of panic, in a cloud of emotion.” Play Video 2:24 Decoding Internet Security: Ransomware Here is what you need to know about ransomware: software that locks down your files and demands payment to release them. (Sarah Parnass, Dani Player, Daron Taylor/The Washington Post) The attack mainly targeted Eastern Europe but also hit companies in Spain, Denmark, Norway and Britain. Victims included the British advertising and marketing multinational WPP and a shipping company, APM Terminals, based at the port of Rotterdam. But the damage was worst in Ukraine. Researchers at Kaspersky Lab’s Global Research and Analysis Team, in Russia, estimated that 60 percent of infected computers were in Ukraine and 30 percent in Russia. The hacks targeted government ministries, banks, utilities and other important infrastructure and companies nationwide, demanding ransoms from government employees in the cryptocurrency bitcoin. The hacks’ scale and the use of ransomware recalled the massive cyberattack in May in which hackers possibly linked to North Korea disabled computers in more than 150 nations using a flaw that was once incorporated into the National Security Agency’s surveillance tool kit. Cyber researchers have tied the vulnerability exploited by Petya to the one used by WannaCry — a weakness discovered by the NSA years ago that the agency turned into a hacking tool dubbed EternalBlue. Petya, like WannaCry, is a worm that spreads quickly to vulnerable systems, said Bill Wright, senior policy counsel for Symantec, the world’s largest cybersecurity firm. But that makes it difficult to control — or to aim at anyone in particular, he said. [Hacking] [NSA] [Attribution] [Ransomware]
Three journalists leaving CNN after retracted article
by Brian Stelter @brianstelter June 27, 2017: 6:00 PM ET Three CNN journalists, including the executive editor in charge of a new investigative unit, have resigned after the publication of a Russia-related article that was retracted. Thomas Frank, who wrote the story in question; Eric Lichtblau, an editor in the unit; and Lex Haris, who oversaw the unit, have all left CNN. "In the aftermath of the retraction of a story published on CNN.com, CNN has accepted the resignations of the employees involved in the story's publication," a spokesman said Monday evening. An internal investigation by CNN management found that some standard editorial processes were not followed when the article was published, people briefed on the results of the investigation said. The story, which reported that Congress was investigating a "Russian investment fund with ties to Trump officials," cited a single anonymous source. [Media] [Anti-Trump] [Russia confrontation]
A Cyberattack ‘the World Isn’t Ready For’
By Nicole Perlroth June 22, 2017 Photo Golan Ben-Oni, of the IDT Corporation, which was attacked in April with two cyberweapons stolen from the National Security Agency. Credit Justin T. Gellerson for The New York Times NEWARK — There have been times over the last two months when Golan Ben-Oni has felt like a voice in the wilderness. On April 29, someone hit his employer, IDT Corporation, with two cyberweapons that had been stolen from the National Security Agency. Mr. Ben-Oni, the global chief information officer at IDT, was able to fend them off, but the attack left him distraught. In 22 years of dealing with hackers of every sort, he had never seen anything like it. Who was behind it? How did they evade all of his defenses? How many others had been attacked but did not know it? Since then, Mr. Ben-Oni has been sounding alarm bells, calling anyone who will listen at the White House, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the New Jersey attorney general’s office and the top cybersecurity companies in the country to warn them about an attack that may still be invisibly striking victims undetected around the world. [Hacking] [NSA] [Attribution]
OffG’s PayPal Account has been frozen – please cancel any recurring donations
OffG’s PayPal account has been frozen for what are described as “security” reasons. We have no access to the funds you have donated and – given PayPal’s history with other alternative news sites – it’s possible we may not be able to regain access. Please do NOT make any more donations to this account and cancel any recurring donations you may have set up. If PayPal closes the account, they will retain the funds and WILL NOT return them to the people who donated. So be warned. Many of our followers have suggested we move to a Patreon account, and this might be an opportune moment to do this. We’ll be posting more information about this soon. UPDATE: We have now set up a Patreon account at http://patreon.com/offguardian. [Censorship]
NSA points to North Korea as culprit in “WannaCry” ransomware attack
Posted on : Jun.16,2017 13:53 KST Modified on : Jun.16,2017 13:53 KST A computer hit by a ransomware attack Evidence indicates North Korea’s Reconnaissance General Bureau was behind apparent effort to raise money for the regime The US National Security Agency (NSA) has concluded that North Korea’s Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB) was implicated in the “WannaCry” ransomware attack that took place last month, the US media reported on June 14. Quoting US intelligence officials, the Washington Post reported that this conclusion, “which was issued internally last week and has not been made public, is based on an analysis of tactics, techniques and targets” of the ransomware attack, which “affected more than 300,000 people in some 150 countries last month.” These factors “point with ‘moderate confidence’ to North Korea’s spy agency, the Reconnaissance General Bureau,” the newspaper said. [WannaCry] [Hacking] [Evidence]
Elections officials outgunned in Russia’s cyberwar against America
By Greg Gordon, Ben Wieder and Kevin G. Hall WASHINGTON Local officials consistently play down suspicions about the long lines at polling places on Election Day 2016 that led some discouraged voters in heavily Democratic Durham County, N.C., to leave without casting a ballot. Minor glitches in the way new electronic poll books were put to use had simply gummed things up, according to local elections officials there. Elections Board Chairman William Brian Jr. assured Durham residents that “an extensive investigation” showed there was nothing to worry about with the county’s new registration software. He was wrong. What Brian and other election officials across eight states didn’t know until the leak of a classified intelligence is that Russian operatives hacked into the Florida headquarters of VR Systems, Inc., the vendor that sold them digital products to manage voter registrations. A week before the election, the hackers sent emails using a VR Systems address to 122 state and local election officials across the country, inviting them to open an attachment wired with malicious software that spoofed “legitimate elections-related services,” the report said. The malware was designed to retrieve enough additional information to set the stage for serious mischief, said the National Security Agency report disclosed by the Intercept, an investigative web site. That wasn’t the only type of attack. [Russia confrontation] [US_election16] [Hacking] [Evidence] [Hysteria]
U.S. Announces Global Alert Against N.Korean Hackers
June 15, 2017 12:53 The U.S. government has issued a global alert against a group of North Korean hackers known as "Hidden Cobra," citing major global hacking incidents that have occurred since 2009. The Computer Emergency Readiness Team of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the FBI in a joint statement warned of additional cyberattacks by the group of hackers targeting international media, and the financial, air transport and aerospace industries. [Hacking] [Hysteria]
Unsealed 75 years after the Battle of Midway: New details of an alarming WWII press leak
By Michael E. Ruane June 5 at 8:00 AM Smoke rises from the USS Yorktown after a Japanese bomber hit the aircraft carrier in the Battle of Midway in June 1942. Bursts from Navy antiaircraft fire fill the air. (U.S. Navy via Associated Press) Six months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the June 7, 1942, edition of the Chicago Sunday Tribune trumpeted news of a stunning American victory over a Japanese armada at the Battle of Midway. “Jap Fleet Smashed by U.S.; 2 Carriers Sunk at Midway: 13 to 15 Nippon Ships Hit; Pacific Battle Rages,” the front-page headlines read. And in the center of the page, an intriguing side story: “Navy Had Word of Jap Plan to Strike at Sea.” It was a fascinating, and detailed, description of much of what American intelligence knew beforehand of the enemy’s fleet and plans. Indeed, it was too detailed. The report — 14 paragraphs long — suggested a secret U.S. intelligence coup, and it became one of the biggest and potentially damaging news leaks of World War II. [Pacific War] [Espionage] [Censorship]
The Case For Droning Julian Assange
by Jon Levine | 2:35 pm, June 5th, 2017 After a very long period of mollycoddling, the Trump administration appears to finally be getting tough with Wikileaks. During a press conference in April, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said that he was looking for ways to arrest and prosecute its mercurial leader, Julian Assange. That same month, CIA Director Mike Pompeo denounced the organization as a “hostile intelligence service,” but added that the problem of Wikileaks and Assange offered no “quick fix.” With all due respect to the estimable CIA Director, I would proffer there is a quick fix. We can drone Julian Assange. In a controlled targeted strike, the United States can blow up the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he currently resides, and put an end to Mr. Assange and Wikileaks. [Drone] [WikiLeaks] [Bizarre] [Assassination]
‘The BBC Has Betrayed Its Own Rules Of Impartiality’: Yemen, Saudi Arabia And The General Election
In Alerts 2017 Last Updated on 05 June 2017 By Editor A key function of BBC propaganda is to present the perspective of 'the West' on the wars and conflicts of the world. Thus, in a recent online report, BBC News once again gave prominence to the Pentagon propaganda version of yet more US killings in Yemen. The headline stated: 'US forces kill seven al-Qaeda militants in Yemen, says Pentagon' Seven 'militants' killed is the stark message. A veneer of 'impartiality' is provided by the weasel words, 'says Pentagon'. BBC News then notes blandly, and without quotation marks: 'The primary objective of the operation was to gather intelligence.' Nowhere in the short article was there any attempt to provide an alternative view of who had been killed and why. Were they really all 'militants'? How is a 'militant' distinguished from a 'civilian', or from a soldier defending his country against foreign invaders? There was not even a cautious statement to the effect that the Pentagon's claims could not be verified, as one might expect of responsible journalism. Instead, we have to turn to Reprieve, an international human rights organisation founded in 1999 by the British lawyer Clive Stafford Smith. The group reports that five of the 'militants' were civilians, including a partially blind 70-year-old man who was shot when he tried to greet the US Navy Seals, mistaking them for guests arriving in his village. [BBC] [Propaganda] [Civilians]
Hackers leak emails from UAE ambassador to US
Hacked emails belonging to Yousef al-Otaiba show close coordination with pro-Israel, anti-Iran think tank. The hacked emails show Otaiba, a top UAE diplomat, coordinated with a pro-Israel think tank [File: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP] Hackers have released the first series of leaked emails from the account of UAE's ambassador to the United States Yousef al-Otaiba. The Intercept reported on Saturday that the emails released by a group called "Global Leaks" show the relationship between al-Otaiba and a pro-Israel, neoconservative think tank - the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). The hacked emails, some of which date back to 2014, reveal a high-level of backchannel cooperation between the FDD, which is funded by pro-Israel billionaire Sheldon Anderson, and the UAE. The emails obtained by The Intercept also show FDD and UAE collaboration with journalists who have published articles accusing Qatar and Kuwait of supporting "terrorism". [UAE Israel] [Hacking] [Propaganda] [Gulf politics]
UK's Trident nuclear submarines 'vulnerable to catastrophic hack'
Thinktank sceptical about MoD assurances, saying cyber-attack could lead even to ‘exchange of nuclear warheads’ Trident submarine ‘There are numerous cyber vulnerabilities in the Trident system, from design to decommissioning,’ says one of the report’s authors. Photograph: Andy Buchanan/AFP/Getty Images Ewen MacAskill Thursday 1 June 2017 00.01 BST Last modified on Thursday 1 June 2017 00.08 BST The UK’s Trident submarine fleet is vulnerable to a “catastrophic” cyber-attack that could render Britain’s nuclear weapons useless, according to a report by a London-based thinktank. The 38-page report, Hacking UK Trident: A Growing Threat, warns that a successful cyber-attack could “neutralise operations, lead to loss of life, defeat or perhaps even the catastrophic exchange of nuclear warheads (directly or indirectly)”. The Ministry of Defence has repeatedly said the operating systems of Britain’s nuclear submarines cannot be penetrated while at sea because they are not connected to the internet at that point. But the report’s authors, the British American Security Information Council (Basic), expressed scepticism. “Submarines on patrol are clearly air-gapped, not being connected to the internet or other networks, except when receiving (very simple) data from outside. As a consequence, it has sometimes been claimed by officials that Trident is safe from hacking. But this is patently false and complacent,” they say in the report. Even if it were true that a submarine at sea could not be attacked digitally, the report points out that the vessels are only at sea part of the time and are vulnerable to the introduction of malware at other points, such as during maintenance while docked at the Faslane naval base in Scotland. The report says: “Trident’s sensitive cyber systems are not connected to the internet or any other civilian network. Nevertheless, the vessel, missiles, warheads and all the various support systems rely on networked computers, devices and software, and each of these have to be designed and programmed. All of them incorporate unique data and must be regularly upgraded, reconfigured and patched.” [Trident] [Vulnerability] [Ambiguity] [Hacking] [Air-gap] [Cyberwar]
MSM trying damage control as May is mocked all over social media
by Catte Last night’s televised “Battle for No. 10” proved a cataclysmic disaster for the Tories. Before the debate even ended #TheresaMayGIFS was a trending hashtag on Twitter, representing her perceived failure in animated form. But this hasn’t stopped the establishment trying to rewrite history to turn defeat into victory In last night’s TV “battle” aired on Sky News and Channel 4 (it wasn’t a debate since there was no direct interaction between the two party leaders), Corbyn was competent. Not brilliant, but competent, but he effortlessly outshone May, because apparently bare competence is a thing she can only dream of. Even after the Tories sent pre-scripted talking points to all their members with instructions to Tweet them during the debate, and even after the famous Tory Jeremy Paxman made an exhibition of his bias by hectoring and screaming at Corbyn while allowing May to ramble and stumble uninterrupted for as long as she chose, the end result was a car crash, and #TheresaMayGIFS is currently a trending Twitter hashtag celebrating her grandiose and absolute fail [UK_election17] [Media]

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MAY 2017

US Journalism’s New ‘Golden Age’?
By Robert Parry Consortiumnews 22 May 2017 The mainstream U.S. media is congratulating itself on its courageous defiance of President Trump and its hard-hitting condemnations of Russia, but the press seems to have forgotten that its proper role within the U.S. democratic structure is not to slant stories one way or another but to provide objective information for the American people. By that standard – of respecting that the people are the nation’s true sovereigns – the mainstream media is failing again. Indeed, the chasm between what America’s elites are thinking these days and what many working-class Americans are feeling is underscored by the high-fiving that’s going on inside the elite mainstream news media, which is celebrating its Trump- and Russia-bashing as the “new golden age of American journalism.” The New York Times and The Washington Post, in particular, view themselves as embattled victims of a tyrannical abuser. The Times presents itself as the brave guardian of “truth” and the Post added a new slogan: “Democracy dies in darkness.” In doing so, they have moved beyond the normal constraints of professional, objective journalism into political advocacy – and they are deeply proud of themselves. The Washington Post building in downtown Washington, D.C. (Photo credit: Washington Post) In a Sunday column entitled “How Trump inspired a golden age,” Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank wrote that Trump “took on the institution of a free press – and it fought back. Trump came to office after intimidating publishers, barring journalists from covering him and threatening to rewrite press laws, and he has sought to discredit the ‘fake news’ media at every chance. Instead, he wound up inspiring a new golden age in American journalism. “Trump provoked the extraordinary work of reporters on the intelligence, justice and national security beats, who blew wide open the Russia election scandal, the contacts between Russia and top Trump officials, and interference by Trump in the FBI investigation. Last week’s appointment of a special prosecutor – a crucial check on a president who lacks self-restraint – is a direct result of their work.” Journalism or Hatchet Job? But has this journalism been professional or has it been a hatchet job? Are we seeing a new “golden age” of journalism or a McCarthyistic lynch mob operating on behalf of elites who disdain the U.S. constitutional process for electing American presidents? For one thing, you might have thought that professional journalists would have demanded proof about the predicate for this burgeoning “scandal” – whether the Russians really did “hack” into emails of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and then slip the information to WikiLeaks to influence the outcome of the 2016 election. You have surely heard and read endlessly that this conclusion about Russia’s skulduggery was the “consensus view of the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies” and thus only some crazy conspiracy theorist would doubt its accuracy even if no specific evidence was evinced to support the accusation. But that repeated assertion is not true. There was no National Intelligence Estimate (or NIE) that would compile the views of the 17 intelligence agencies. Instead, as President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on May 8, the Russia-hacking claim came from a “special intelligence community assessment” (or ICA) produced by selected analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation, or as Clapper put it, “a coordinated product from three agencies – CIA, NSA, and the FBI – not all 17 components of the intelligence community.” Further, as Clapper explained, the “ICA” was something of a rush job beginning on President Obama’s instructions “in early December” and completed by Jan. 6, in other words, a month or less. Clapper continued: “The two dozen or so analysts for this task were hand-picked, seasoned experts from each of the contributing agencies.” However, as any intelligence expert will tell you, if you “hand-pick” the analysts, you are really hand-picking the conclusion. [Anti-Trump] [Russia confrontation] [Media]
There’s Proof That North Korea Launched the WannaCry Attack? Not So Fast! – A Warning Against Premature, Inconclusive, and Distracting Attribution
By James Scott, Sr. Fellow, ICIT Last week, ICIT urged responsible news outlets to focus on meaningful aspects of the May 12, 2017 WannaCry attack on over 230,000 systems in over 150 countries, such as the desperate need for security-by-design in software and technology, the perpetual failure of organizations across the globe to secure their systems against publically disclosed vulnerabilities and threats, and the hazards of the collection and concealment of exploitable vulnerabilities by governments, agencies, and private organizations. Nevertheless, firms motivated by private agendas are dangerously attempting to shift public dialogue back to speculation of attribution despite a clear and present necessity for pervasive, transparent, and inclusive dialogue addressing the underlying weaknesses in cybersecurity culture and critical infrastructure systems that enabled the May 12, 2017 WannaCry attack to succeed in the first place. To be abundantly clear, the recent speculation concerning WannaCry attributes the malware to the Lazarus Group, not to North Korea, and even those connections are premature and not wholly convincing. Lazarus itself has never been definitively proven to be a North Korean state-sponsored advanced persistent threat (APT); in fact, an abundance of evidence suggests that the Lazarus Group may be a sophisticated, well-resourced, and expansive cyber-criminal and occasional cyber-mercenary collective. Circumstantial similarities between malware variants and C2 infrastructure led to the recent attribution of WannaCry to Lazarus despite a sharp difference in the level of sophistication of the malware and threat actors, glaring differences in the target demographics, and severe variations in the operational procedures of the actors. At best, WannaCry either borrowed heavily from outdated Lazarus code and failed to change elements, such as calls to C2 servers, or WannaCry was a side campaign of a minuscule subcontractor or group within the massive cybercriminal Lazarus APT. [WannaCry] [Attribution]
Here’s one tally of the losses from WannaCry ransomware global attack
By Tim Johnson WASHINGTON A digital worm powered by stolen National Security Agency software caused $1 billion in damages when it infected hundreds of thousands of computers in less than a week, a Florida digital security company says. And new attacks may be in the offing. Hackers unleashed the worm, dubbed WannaCry, on May 12. Some 200,000 to 300,000 computers were affected in at least 150 countries. “The estimated damage caused by WannaCry in just the initial four days would exceed $1 billion, looking at the massive downtime caused for large organizations worldwide,” Stu Sjouwerman, chief executive at KnowBe4, a Clearwater, Florida, firm that helps firms avoid phishing efforts, wrote in a statement. The damage estimates include loss of data, lost productivity, disruptions to business, forensic investigation, reputational harm and other factors, the company said. The digital contagion encrypted the hard drives of computers. Hackers then demanded payment in the digital currency bitcoin to unfreeze the hard drives. The hackers provided three bitcoin wallets, or repositories, for payment of a minimum of $300. [WannaCry] [Evidence] [Attribution]
The life and death of the Seth Rich conspiracy theory
Seth Rich was shot and killed July 10, 2016, near his home in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington. (Democratic National Committee/Democratic National Committee) By David Weigel May 24 at 6:00 AM When Seth Rich’s Gmail account received an alert this week from Mega.com, attempting to start a new account on a website created by the New Zealand-based Internet businessman and convicted hacker Kim Dotcom, his family knew that something was off. Over seven frenzied days, Dotcom had become a leading purveyor of the theory that Rich, a staffer at the Democratic National Committee who was shot dead near his home in Northeast Washington last summer, had supplied DNC documents to WikiLeaks and was killed as a result. Multiple security analysts and an FBI investigation have tied the release to hackers with ties to Russia. D.C. police have said repeatedly that they think Rich was slain in a random robbery attempt. According to experts and Rich’s family, the emailed invitation from welcome@mega.nz appeared to be an attempt to gain access to Rich’s email. Joel Rich, who monitors his late son’s Gmail account when new emails come in, did not click the link. Dotcom had not worked at Mega itself for years, but he was promising on Twitter to prove that the younger Rich had been in contact with WikiLeaks — and Fox News host Sean Hannity was telling his 2.37 million Twitter followers to be ready for a revelation. Hannity had invited Dotcom to appear on his show for what he said on Twitter would be a “#GameChanger” interview. The implication: that Dotcom would finally offer evidence of his claim that Rich had sent internal DNC documents to WikiLeaks before his death. [Seth Rich] [DNC]
Fox News retracts controversial story on Seth Rich’s death and alleged WikiLeaks contact
By Kristine Phillips and Peter Holley May 23 at 7:02 PM Seth Rich was shot and killed July 10 in Washington. (Democratic National Committee) A week after publishing a problematic account about the death of former Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich — an article that said Rich made contact with WikiLeaks before he was shot and killed in Washington — Fox News retracted the story, saying it did not meet the organization’s editorial standards. “The article was not initially subjected to the high degree of editorial scrutiny we require for all our reporting,” Fox said in a brief statement posted on its website Tuesday. “Upon appropriate review, the article was found not to meet those standards and has since been removed.” [Seth Rich] [DNC] [Whistleblower] [Deep state]
The absurd conspiracy theory around Seth Rich’s death causes real harm
By Editorial Board May 22 at 7:30 PM LET’S DISPENSE with calling the frenzy of reports about Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich’s death last summer fake news. So overused and misused is the phrase — by those seeking to disparage things they simply dislike or disagree with — that it risks losing real meaning. And there must be no ambiguity or confusion about the recent reports about Mr. Rich. They are lies. They do great harm. And those peddling them, including most recently former House speaker Newt Gingrich, are either ignorant of the facts or without scruple. [Seth Rich] [DNC] [Whistleblower]
BBC goes full Big Brother in recent announcement
Brought to our attention by Mark Doran, a new BBC document dated May 2017 contains this bizarre threat to its licence-payers: 9. Offensive or inappropriate content on BBC websites If you post or send offensive, inappropriate or objectionable content anywhere on or to BBC websites or otherwise engage in any disruptive behaviour on any BBC service, the BBC may use your personal information to stop such behaviour. ? Where the BBC reasonably believes that you are or may be in breach of any applicable laws (e.g. because content you have posted may be defamatory), the BBC may use your personal information to inform relevant third parties such as your employer, school email/internet provider or law enforcement agencies about the content and your behaviour. Here’s Mark’s screen cap of the doc: Not only is this freakishly (yes, there’s no other word) Orwellian, it’s completely vague. Are the words “objectionable” and “disruptive” going to be employed like the words “hate” (currently being used to shut down discourse on social media), and “fascist” (currently being used by (often fascist) neoliberals to brand any serious criticism of globalism and the corporatocracy), to outlaw and/or punish dissident views? And what about “defamatory”? Is anyone calling Theresa May a malfunctioning Thatcher-bot going to be shopped out to her lawyers by the Beeb? Clarification, at the very least, is urgently needed. Better still, the BBC should backtrack and guarantee it will remain a broadcast corporation and NOT presume to act as an arm of the state security system. If you’re a concerned UK citizen, don’t hesitate to contact the BBC to express your views – though be prepared for a follow-up visit from the cops. [Repression] [BBC]
Seth Rich, Craig Murray and the Sinister Stewards of the National Security State
Mike Whitney • May 19, 2017 Why is it a “conspiracy theory” to think that a disgruntled Democratic National Committee staffer gave WikiLeaks the DNC emails, but not a conspiracy theory to think the emails were provided by Russia? Why? Which is the more likely scenario: That a frustrated employee leaked damaging emails to embarrass his bosses or a that foreign government hacked DNC computers for some still-unknown reason? That’s a no-brainer, isn’t it? Former-DNC employee, Seth Rich, not only had access to the emails, but also a motive. He was pissed about the way the Clinton crowd was “sandbagging” Bernie Sanders. In contrast, there’s neither evidence nor motive connecting Russia to the emails. On top of that, WikiLeaks founder, Julien Assange (a man of impeccable integrity) has repeatedly denied that Russia gave him the emails which suggests the government investigation is completely misdirected. The logical course of action, would be to pursue the leads that are most likely to bear fruit, not those that originate from one’s own political bias. But, of course, logic has nothing to do with the current investigation, it’s all about politics and geopolitics. We don’t know who killed Seth Rich and we’re not going to speculate on the matter here. But we find it very strange that neither the media nor the FBI have pursued leads in the case that challenge the prevailing narrative on the Russia hacking issue. Why is that? Why is the media so eager to blame Russia when Rich looks like the much more probable suspect? [DNC] [Hacking] [Seth Rich] [Whistleblower]
Gingrich spreads conspiracy theory about slain DNC staffer
By David Weigel May 21 at 11:13 AM Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, a stalwart supporter of President Trump, used a Sunday-morning appearance on “Fox and Friends” to spread the conspiracy theory that former Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich was killed last year to cover up the true story of how WikiLeaks obtained tens of thousands of hacked Democratic Party emails. “We have this very strange story now of this young man who worked for the Democratic National Committee, who apparently was assassinated at 4 in the morning, having given WikiLeaks something like 53,000 emails and 17,000 attachments,” Gingrich said. “Nobody’s investigating that, and what does that tell you about what’s going on? Because it turns out, it wasn’t the Russians. It was this young guy who, I suspect, was disgusted by the corruption of the Democratic National Committee. He’s been killed, and apparently nothing serious has been done to investigative his murder. So I’d like to see how [Robert S.] Mueller [III] is going to define what his assignment is.” [Seth Rich] [DNC] [Hacking] [Whistleblower]
Murdered DNC Staffer Seth Rich Shared 44,053 Democrat Emails with WikiLeaks: Report
Tyler Durden • ZeroHedge • May 16, 2017 For the past several months, Democrats have based their “Resist 45? movement on unsubstantiated assertions that the Trump campaign coordinated with Russian intelligence officials to undermine the 2016 Presidential Election thereby ‘stealing’ the White House from Hillary Clinton. Day after day we’ve all suffered through one anonymously sourced, “shock” story after another from the New York Times and/or The Washington Post with new allegations of the ‘wrongdoing’. But, new evidence surfacing in the Seth Rich murder investigation may just quash the “Russian hacking” conspiracy theory. According to a new report from Fox News, it was former DNC staffer Seth Rich who supplied 44,000 DNC emails to WikiLeaks and not some random Russian cyber terrorist, as we’ve all been led to believe. According to Fox News, though admittedly via yet another anonymous FBI source, Rich made contact with WikiLeaks through Gavin MacFadyen, an American investigative reporter and director of WikiLeaks who was living in London at the time. According to Fox News sources, federal law enforcement investigators found 44,053 emails and 17,761 attachments sent between DNC leaders from January 2015 to May 2016 that Rich shared with WikiLeaks before he was gunned down on July 10, 2016. [WikiLeaks] [DNC] [Assassination] [Whistleblower]
Sweden drops Assange rape allegation, but Britain says WikiLeaks founder still faces arrest
Play Video 1:09 Swedish prosecutor drops Assange rape investigation The investigation into rape allegations against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been dropped. Swedish prosecutors saying there are no further avenues to pursue. (Reuters) By Karla Adam May 19 at 12:50 PM LONDON — Swedish prosecutors on Friday dropped their investigation into a rape allegation against Julian Assange, closing a nearly seven-year legal saga that led the WikiLeaks founder to seek sanctuary at the Ecuadoran Embassy in London. But British police said that Assange still faces arrest for jumping bail if he walks out of diplomatic protection, which he claims is needed to keep him from being extradited to the United States to face charges of disclosing confidential military and diplomatic documents. The Swedish Prosecution Authority said in a statement that Sweden’s director of public prosecution, Marianne Ny, “today decided to discontinue the investigation” into a rape claim against Assange. [Assange] [Whistleblower] [Witch-hunt]
'Shadow Brokers' to release N. Korean missile, nuclear network data
Posted : 2017-05-18 15:13 Updated : 2017-05-18 15:13 By Lee Han-soo Shadow Brokers, a hacking group that has taken credit for the "WannaCry" ransomware attack, says it will unleash network data relating to the North Korean nuclear and missile programs in June. The group, which became infamous after publishing leaks of hacking tools from the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), posted Tuesday that there are more to come. The group said it will sell the data through "TheShadowBrokers Data Dump of the Month," a subscription service it said it will launch in June. The information the group claims it will release includes hacking tools targeting mobile devices or Windows 10, and data from the worldwide SWIFT banking system code or nuclear and missile programs in Russia, Iran, China or North Korea. The group said it will release the tools to subscribers monthly or go "dark" permanently if the "responsible party" buys the tools for an appropriate price, referring to the NSA. The WannaCry ransomware attack on May 12 crippled tens of thousands of computer systems in nearly 150 countries, including South Korea. As of Wednesday, 14 Korean companies, including movie theater chain CGV and a bus schedule system in Asan, South Chungcheong Province, have reported attacks. The Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA) urged users to continue updating Windows to prevent possible attacks. [Hacking] [Shadow Brokers]
Cyberattack: N. Korea's new cash source?
Posted : 2017-05-17 17:26 Updated : 2017-05-17 19:14 By Kim Hyo-jin Speculation is rising that North Korea is using cyberattacks to earn cash amid tightened international sanctions against the isolated country. U.S. Homeland Security Advisor Tom Bossert said Monday that less than $70,000 has been paid to hackers in the form of bitcoins in connection with an ongoing ransomware attack. The ransomware, dubbed WannaCry, had infected more than 300,000 computers in about 150 countries, Bossert said. It can encrypt all files on a Windows PC and submit a demand for $300 worth of bitcoins, an untraceable digital currency widely used online, to unlock the user's data. North Korea has been suspected of being behind the cyberattacks as security experts suggested a link between the WannaCry ransomware and a North Korean-run hacking operation. Google researcher Neel Mehta and the Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab earlier claimed the code used in the ransomware shares many similarities to code used by the Lazarus hacking group, believed to be connected to Pyongyang. The Lazarus group has reportedly been engaged in past cyberattacks including the targeting of Sony Pictures in 2014 and the central bank of Bangladesh in 2016. Analysts say signs of North Korea engaging in ransomware attacks have been detected in recent years, raising the possibility they may be a means to earn foreign currency. [Cyberwar] [Hacking] [Ransomware] [WannaCry] [Canard] [NK bashing]
Imaginary interior of Saydnaya now has imaginary crematorium – State Dept.
by Catte Remember “Saydnaya Military Prison”? It was the subject of enormous media attention a while back on the basis of a “report” from Amnesty International that turned out to have been fabricated in the UK by a virtual reality company “using 3D models, animations, and audio software, based on the admittedly baseless accounts of alleged witnesses who claim to have been in or otherwise associated with the prison.” Well, the totally imaginary interior of Saydnaya now – according to US State Dept – has a totally imaginary “crematorium” added to it in which to dispose of all the totally theoretical corpses being generated by the completely unsubstantiated mass-murders. Here is the impressive and plausible Stuart Jones telling us all about it. [Syria] [Propaganda] [Allegation]
The ARF moves forward on cybersecurity
by Brad Glosserman Brad Glosserman (brad@pacforum.org) is the executive director of Pacific Forum CSIS. This analysis draws on the CSCAP Cybersecurity Workshop that he co-chaired in Indonesia on April 5; the report from that meeting, along with key findings, agenda, and participant list, is available here. The Wannacry virus that attacked computers around the world last week is one more reminder of the growing threat posed by vulnerabilities in cyberspace. Over 100,000 networks in over 150 countries were infected by the malware; the actual ransoms paid appear to have been limited, but the total cost of the attack – including, for example, the work hours lost – is not yet known. Experts believe that this is only the most recent in what will be a cascading series of attacks as information technologies burrow deeper into the fabric of daily life; security specialists already warn that the next malware attack is already insinuated into networks and is awaiting the signal to begin. [WannaCry] [Cybersecurity]
What you need to know about the WannaCry Ransomware
Symantec Official Blog The WannaCry ransomware struck across the globe in May 2017. Learn how this ransomware attack spread and how to protect your network from similar attacks. By: Symantec Security Response Symantec Employee Created 15 May 2017 UPDATE: May 15, 2017 23:24:21 GMT: The WannaCry ransomware struck across the globe in May 2017. Learn how this ransomware attack spread and how to protect your network from similar attacks. By: Symantec Security Response Symantec Employee Created 15 May 2017 0 Comments : ????, ????, ??? 30 2226 UPDATE: May 15, 2017 23:24:21 GMT: [WannaCry] [Hacking]
Terrorist confesses to working with “White Helmets” in Aleppo to fabricate chemical attack and blame Syrian Army
13 May 2017 Aleppo, SANA – Terrorist Walid Hendi confessed to taking part in fabricating videos and photos for a Turkish TV channel while working with the so-called “White Helmets” that depict neighborhoods and areas in Aleppo being attacked with chemical weapons in order to blame the Syrian Arab Army. In confessions broadcast by the Syrian TV on Saturday evening, al-Hendi said that he joined the “white Helmets” three years ago in return for receiving funds from the so-called “local council” and financers from Arab Gulf countries. Hendi said that they were told that there will be chemical attacks, and they were given protective clothing and they staged a fake chemical attack that was filmed by a Turkish channel, adding that they were filmed by two people called Ibrhaim al-Haj and Mohammad al-Sayyed as they sounded sirens and brought stretchers to transport supposed injured people, with the intent of posting these videos online and accuse the Syrian Arab Army of carrying out a chemical attack. [White helmets] [False flag] [cbw]
N. Korea behind globe-spanning 'Wannacry' cyberattack?
Posted : 2017-05-16 13:44 Updated : 2017-05-16 13:47 By Lee Han-soo Is North Korea behind the devastating globe-spanning cyberattack that has crippled countless of computer systems in recent days? Two major software security firms, Kaspersky and Symantec, claim they have evidence linking the Wannacry ransomware attack to North Korea's notorious Lazarus Group. The worldwide cyber ransomware extortion attack, which started on May 12, has crippled tens of thousands of computer systems in nearly 100 countries, including South Korea. Both security firms claim the technical details within an early version of the ransomware are similar to those used by the North Korean hacking organization, suspected of being behind the 2015 attack on Sony Pictures and the $81 million heist from a Bangladeshi bank in 2016. Experts at Kaspersky said there was a high probability that the North Korean group was behind the latest attack. "We believe it's important that other researchers around the world investigate these similarities and attempt to discover more about the origin of WannaCry," said Kaspersky in a blog post. Kaspersky argued that code similarities within the malicious software had been erased in later versions and that the presence of a kill switch supported claims that a state was behind the attacks. However, both security companies fell short of confirming North Korea as the culprit behind Wannacry, saying there was no solid evidence of this, and that it was possible someone had merely borrowed the code. Meanwhile, 10 Korean companies have so far been struck by WannaCry. Damaged enterprises include CGV and a bus schedule system in Asan. However, experts say most local companies and institutions seem to be intact. [WannaCry] [Canard] [Attribution]
White Helmets Video: Swedish Doctors for Human Rights Denounce Medical Malpractice and ‘Misuse’ of Children for Propaganda Aims
by The Indicter | posted in: March 2017 issue | 0 By Prof Marcello Ferrada de Noli, chairman, Swedish Doctors for Human Rights – SWEDHR. An examination of a White Helmets video, conducted by Swedish medical doctors, specialists in various fields, including paediatrics, have revealed that the life-saving procedures seen in the film are incorrect – in fact life-threatening – or simply fake, including simulated emergency resuscitation techniques being used on already lifeless children. New findings published March 17, 2017: White Helmets Movies: Updated Evidence From Swedish Doctors Confirm Fake ‘Lifesaving’ and Malpractices on Children I The Alleged Sarmin Attack There has been a recent, intense, publicity campaign that has capitalised on the Oscar for best documentary being awarded to the NATO and Gulf state funded organization, the White Helmets and their Netflix documentary producers. [1] The White Helmets had previously been winners of the “Alternative Nobel Prize”, given to them in Sweden in 2016. [2] These various awards have ensured that the White Helmet fictitious “saving-children-lives” videos have been re-circulating across corporate and social media, a major PR coup for the sponsors of this questionable organization. Central to this PR campaign and just prior to the Oscar award ceremony, Human Rights Watch published a “retrospective” report on February 13th 2017, focusing on spurious accounts of chemical attacks on the recently liberated city of Aleppo. This familiar HRW propaganda piece recycled a previous report from April 2015 detailing an alleged chlorine gas attack in Sarmin, Idlib [4]. Footage of the aftermath of this attack was provided, at the time, by none other than the White Helmets, which brings us to the macabre video, uploaded by this alleged first responder NGO to YouTube on March 15th 2015. [5] [White Helmets] [HRW] [Propaganda]
Hackers exploit stolen U.S. spy agency tool to launch global cyberattack
Researchers with security software maker Avast said they had observed 57,000 infections in 99 countries with Russia, Ukraine and Taiwan the top targets. By Costas Pitas and Carlos Ruano | LONDON/MADRID A global cyberattack leveraging hacking tools widely believed by researchers to have been developed by the U.S. National Security Agency hit international shipper FedEx, disrupted Britain's health system and infected computers in nearly 100 countries on Friday. Cyber extortionists tricked victims into opening malicious malware attachments to spam emails that appeared to contain invoices, job offers, security warnings and other legitimate files. [Hacking] [Malware] [NSA]
Al-Qaeda Leader Praises Syria White Helmets as “Hidden Soldiers of the Revolution”
By Brandon Turbeville Global Research, May 10, 2017 Activist Post 9 May 2017 As hard as the Western corporate media works to employ propaganda techniques and tragic narratives with which to convince their respective populations that the terrorists funded by Western governments fight against the Syrian government are actually democracy-loving freedom fighters and selfless activists, more and more revelations come to light showing the true nature of heavily hyped groups like the White Helmets. Indeed, it seems that, every week, another piece of evidence emerges revealing the White Helmets to be nothing more than a wing of al-Qaeda/al-Nusra designed to produce clever propaganda videos to tear at the usually hardened heartstrings of unsuspecting Americans. After having been exposed for housing themselves in the same building as Nusra/Qaeda, carrying weapons (also see Vanessa Beeley’s article here), using dangerous and erratic rescue and emergency techniques, proudly proclaiming support for terrorists and the desire to see Syrian military personnel killed, the White Helmets went on to sign documents and proclamations in support of Nusra in its effort to prevent civilians from access to drinking water. Now, a little-known video made by the leader of Tahrir al-Sham (al-Qaeda in Syria), Abu Jaber, on March 16, 2017, is making the rounds of social media, showing Jaber praising the White Helmets as the “hidden soldiers of the revolution” and thanking them for what they do. “Second, a message of thanks and gratitude to the hidden soldiers of our revolution,” Jaber said. “On top of the list are the parents of the martyrs and the men of the White Helmets.” [Nusra] [White Helmets] [Propaganda]
‘Meltdown’: The Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland Writes Jeremy Corbyn’s Obituary
Print Email In Alerts 2017 Post 10 May 2017 Last Updated on 10 May 2017 By Editor In bygone years, defenders of the Guardian's supposed 'progressive' credentials would typically cite the presence of Seumas Milne, Owen Jones and George Monbiot. The newspaper's cupboard is looking decidedly threadbare now. After a year's leave of absence, Milne left the paper permanently in January to continue leading Jeremy Corbyn's media team. Jones has been notable for his, at best, conflicted support of Corbyn having, for two years, turned a blind eye to his paper's relentless opposition to Corbyn's leadership. Jones has also allowed himself to be used by the Israel lobby. Meanwhile Monbiot, notwithstanding years of valuable environmental journalism, has shown consistently poor judgement when writing about foreign policy. There are now no plausible fig leaves to hide the Guardian's liberal gatekeeper role in suppressing, marginalising and smearing the required radical challenges to established power. This insidious role was highlighted once again in a woeful piece by Jonathan Freedland in the wake of last week's council elections. Titled, 'No more excuses: Jeremy Corbyn is to blame for this meltdown', the Guardian sage and BBC contributor pointed to a projected national figure of 27% support for Labour, 'the worst recorded by an opposition since the BBC started making such calculations in 1981.' This time it was not 'a judgment delivered by the hated mainstream media': the pejorative phrase suggesting that the 'hate' is unjustified or overwrought. 'The verdict of the electorate', the former Guardian opinion editor intoned, 'was damning'. [Media] [Corbyn] [Guardian]
Why your next Echo command should be: ‘Disconnect me from the internet’
By Tim Johnson WASHINGTON Dr. Herbert Lin, one of the nation’s pre-eminent thinkers on cybersecurity policy, shuns the internet-connected devices that fill some American homes. He’ll have nothing to do with “smart” refrigerators, hands-free home speakers he can call by name, intelligent thermostats and the like. “People say to me, ‘How can you have a doctorate in physics from MIT and not trust in technology?’ And I look at them and say, ‘How can I have a doctorate in physics from MIT and trust technology?’ ” Lin said. Part of what he distrusts is the “internet of things,” and the ease with which hackers can penetrate “smart” devices with digital worms and shanghai them into massive robotic networks to launch crippling digital attacks or generate ever greater quantities of spam. It is a mistrust based on mathematics. Internet-enabled devices are exploding in number. Gartner, a research giant in technology, says the devices will climb from 6.4 billion at the end of last year to 25 billion by 2020. Such growth sharply augments the power of hidden robotic networks, or botnets. Now, an unseen battle unfolds. Weaponized digital worms are entering the scene and infecting masses of devices that obediently await instructions from a remote master to spring to action, possibly a new botnet attack. The threat from botnets is so serious that FBI Director James Comey brought them up at a Senate hearing last week, saying the “zombie armies” created from internet devices can do tremendous harm. UNC prof, what else it is finding out?) “Last month, the FBI – working with our partners, with the Spanish national police – took down a botnet called the Kelihos botnet and locked up the Russian hacker behind that botnet,” Comey said. “He’s now in jail in Spain, and the good people’s computers who had been lashed to that zombie army have now been freed from it.” [Cybersecurity] [Russia confrontation] [Extraterritoriality]
French Election Hack: What do we know so far…
More elections. More hacking. The same headlines with slightly different words. This time it’s in France. This time the “victim” is Emmanuel Macron. The “outsider”, “independent” candidate, a man who completely unexpectedly rose to political prominence on the back of nothing more than a career in high-finance and a platform of telling rich people exactly what they wanted to hear. So what questions does this new hack raise? Firstly, what do we know? So far, not much. The information itself may well be meaningless. Like so many leaks, dumps and hacks there is a glut of data…plus it is all in French, so most UK/US based alternate media will have to be patient with translations. Scanning through it is like panning for gold. It will take dedicated internet users months to sift it all…and in the end there may be no nuggets at all, just a bunch of mud. [French election] [Hacking] [Censorship] [Attribution]
A Response To George Monbiot's 'Disavowal'
06 May 2017 Guardian columnist George Monbiot has responded to our recent media alert on the alleged gas attack in Khan Sheikhoun, Idlib, Syria, on April 4: 'Here's a response to the latest attempt by @medialens to dismiss the mounting evidence on the authorship of the #KhanSheikhoun attack' This is a very serious misrepresentation of what we have argued in two media alerts. We made our position crystal-clear in the latest alert: 'We have no idea who was responsible for the mass killings in Idlib on April 4; we are not weapons experts. But it seems obvious to us that arguments and evidence offered by credible sources like Postol should at least be aired by the mass media.' To interpret this as an attempt to 'dismiss the mounting evidence on the authorship of the #KhanSheikhoun attack' is to exactly reverse the truth, which is frankly outrageous from a high-profile Guardian journalist. We are precisely calling for journalists to not dismiss evidence on the authorship of the alleged attack. This is why we quoted investigative reporter Robert Parry: [Khan Sheikhoun] [Evidence] [Guardian] [Liberal]
Syria: Where the Rubber Meets the Road
by Mike Whitney April 12, 2017 “Our U.S. Army contacts in the area have told us this is not what happened. There was no Syrian ‘chemical weapons attack.’ Instead, a Syrian aircraft bombed an al-Qaeda-in-Syria ammunition depot that turned out to be full of noxious chemicals and a strong wind blew the chemical-laden cloud over a nearby village where many consequently died…..This is what the Russians and Syrians have been saying and – more important –what they appear to believe happened.” — Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, 20 former members of the US Intelligence Community You don’t have to be a genius to figure out that the case against Syrian President Bashar al Assad is extremely weak. The chemical weapons attack in Khan Shaykhun, has produced no smoking gun, no damning evidence, in fact, no evidence at all. Similar to the Russia hacking fiasco, (not a shred of evidence so far) the western media and the entire political class has made the case for attacking a sovereign country on the thin gruel of a few videos of an incident that took place in a location that is currently under the control of militant groups connected to al Qaida. That’s pretty shaky grounds for a conviction, don’t you think? And it’s not up to Assad to prove his innocence either. That’s baloney. The burden of proof rests with the prosecution. If Trump and his lieutenants have evidence that the Syrian President used chemical weapons, then– by all means– let’s see it and be done with it. If not, we have to assume that Assad is innocent, not because we like Assad, but because these are the legal precedents that one follows to establish the truth. And that’s what we want, we want to know what really happened. [Khan Sheikhoun] [Evidence]
Wilkerson: Trump Attack on Syria Driven by Domestic Politics
TheRealNews Published on Apr 7, 2017 Former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, tells Paul Jay that the Syrian Government may not be responsible for the chemical attack and that Trump's response was a violation of international law [Paul Jay interviews Lawrence Wilkerson] [Khan Sheikhoun] [Intelligence] [False flag] [US Syria policy] [Neocon] [Domestic]
The Haircut
Brilliant Australia satire on the media portrayal of North Korea, of Kim Jong Un, and Kim's haircut [Media] [Propaganda] [Personalisation]
The silence of the pseudo-left on the danger of war
by Eric London at Defend Democracy Press war is cool for the new Left A wide range of nominally left-wing political groups and publications have acquiesced to a series of dangerous military actions by the Trump administration that have brought the world to the brink of war. On April 13, the US dropped the largest nonnuclear bomb ever deployed in history in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan. The Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) bomb weighs over 10 tons and is so destructive it reportedly obliterated the homes of peasants living several miles from the drop zone. Four days later, Vice President Michael Pence traveled to the demilitarized zone on the Korean peninsula, where the US has threatened to use preemptive military force against the nuclear-armed North. Pence acknowledged that the MOAB bombing was aimed at proving that the US was prepared to go to war. “Just in the past two weeks,” he declared, “the world witnessed the strength of our new president in actions taken in Syria and Afghanistan. North Korea would do well not to test his resolve or the strength of the armed forces of the United States in this region.” The growing danger of a nuclear conflagration is widely felt. A Marist poll published this month shows that 72 percent of Americans are concerned about growing international tensions. Leading figures in Russia, China, North Korea and the United States have warned of the real possibility of war. “Nuclear war has become thinkable again,” reads a headline in Monday’s Guardian. The New York Times’ April 17 editorial warns of “President Trump’s Loose Talk on North Korea,” while the Times news section compares tensions in East Asia to the Cuban missile crisis. Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman wrote an article titled, “Donald Trump, Kim Jong Un and the risk of nuclear miscalculation.” It is the most basic obligation of socialists to condemn and oppose US war threats and warn the working class of the dangers and root causes of imperialist war.1 All the more remarkable is the role played by various political groups that identify themselves as left-wing but have maintained an intentional silence with regard to the dropping of the MOAB and the threat of war in Korea. These groups hide the threat of war from their readers and provide political cover for US imperialism. [New Left] [Imperialism]
How to Hack and Not Hack a Missile
By John Schilling 21 April 2017 With a shortage of good options on the table for dealing with North Korea’s strategic weapons, there is an understandable temptation to look for unconventional alternatives. So-called “cyberwarfare” is definitely unconventional and the appeal is obvious. Whether one wants to meddle in an election, stop an offensive movie release or derail a weapons program, cyberattacks involve no politically embarrassing dead bodies on either side, carry little risk and are eminently deniable. But cyberwarfare is a long game, and a secret one. Victories will not take the form of spectacular explosions on the launch pad, and we will need to look for more subtle indications of success. [Cyberwar] [Missile test] [Hacking] [Perception]

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APRIL 2017

Nuking The West Coast: BBC News Massively Hypes North Korean ‘Threat’ To The United States
By Editor One of the longstanding functions of the 'mainstream' media is to channel government ideology about who are 'the Good Guys' - that's 'us' and our allies - and who are the 'Bad Guys' – 'Putin's Russia', 'Saddam's Iraq', 'Chavez's Venezuela', 'Gaddafi's Libya' (until rehabilitated for a while by Blair) and North Korea. Of course, 'we' often help 'Bad Guys' into power, even give them poison gas, sell them arms, and support them through thick and thin. But let's put all that to one side. Consider a recent BBC News at Ten segment on the US, China and North Korea that began with presenter Huw Edwards saying: 'President Trump has said the United States will "solve" the threat posed by North Korea's nuclear programme. In an interview with the Financial Times, the president said the US would act alone if China would not intervene. He made his comments ahead of a visit to the US by the Chinese president later this week. Our North America editor, Jon Sopel, is at the White House. 'And, Jon, what does this tell us then about President Trump's approach to this upcoming visit?' Jon Sopel: 'Well, Huw, for all the talk of surveillance and phone tapping and wire taps and Russia, this is the major strategic national security issue, at least as far as this White House is concerned. What to do about North Korea and their growing ability, it seems, to launch a nuclear missile that could hit the west coast of America.' (April 3, 2017; kindly captured and uploaded to YouTube for us by Steve Ennever) As we will see, far from being responsible, 'impartial' journalism, this was blatant propaganda, depicting North Korea as a serious threat to the United States, capable of hitting California with a nuclear missile. Consider, by contrast, a careful analysis by the US writer Adam Johnson in a piece for Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting last month. [Propaganda] [Hype] [Hysteria] {BBC] [Hype]
Debunking Trump’s Casus Belli in Syria
by Philip Giraldi c Wars and rumors of wars have been dominating news cycles of late. No one should be surprised that there is a “former intelligence officer” subculture that is particularly noticeable in the Washington, DC, area. We stay in touch, communicate regularly, have lunches to discuss the “old days,” and sometimes organize to raise objections to some of the foreign follies pursued by the U.S. government. Though we often try to stay under the radar, making personal but discreet contact with sympathetic congressmen and journalists, we sometimes work together to get letters to the editor or articles placed in national publications. More rarely we appear on television or radio to discuss our own perspectives on current events. There is an additional element that helps shape our perceptions—namely, that many of us are in contact with friends who are still in harness with the Intelligence Community or who are working as post-retirement contractors. Though current employees generally are highly cautious about what they are doing, and we are acutely aware that it is not a good idea to ask anything specific, frustration over specific governmental policies and actions is occasionally vented. Recently, with the cruise missile attacks on a Syrian airfield, there has been a considerable loosening of the normal restraints that employees exercise regarding their duties. Even more than the invasion of Iraq, which was viewed skeptically by many in the community, the decision by President Trump to retaliate with force against Damascus has been met with dismay among many of those closest to the action in the Middle East.
The insiders note that no evidence has been produced to demonstrate convincingly that Syrian forces dropped a chemical bomb on a civilian area. U.S. monitors, who had been warned by the Russians that an attack was coming, believe they saw from satellite images something close to the Russian account of events, with a bomb hitting the targeted warehouse, which then produced a cloud of gas. They also note that Syria had absolutely no motive for staging a chemical attack. In fact, it was quite the contrary, as Washington had earlier that week backed off from the U.S. position that President Bashar al-Assad should be removed from office. The so-called rebels, however, had plenty of motive. Many intelligence officials have concluded that the White House is lying and concealing what it knows. [US Syria policy] [False flag] [Intelligence]
N.Korean Hackers Stole Over W90 Million from Banks
April 27, 2017 13:21 North Korean hackers are believed to have stolen more than US$90 million from banks overseas last year, computer security firm Symantec said Wednesday. Symantec analyzed cyber crimes around the world last year and fingered North Korean hackers in attacks on 104 banks in 30 countries, including a heist on the central bank of Bangladesh that netted $81 million. Symantec analyzed the malicious code used in the Bangladesh heist and concluded that it was the same as the one used by a group called Lazarus, which is thought to be linked with the North Korean regime. The group was behind the 2014 attack on Sony Pictures' Hollywood studio, and the FBI blamed it on North Korea as it occurred before the release of the caper "The Interview," about the attempted assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The hackers obtained a security code for the central bank of Bangladesh and stole the money by asking the New York Federal Reserve Bank to transfer funds in the central bank's account to the Philippines and Sri Lanka. Some of the money was recovered when authorities became suspicious, but most of it was lost. Yoon Kwang-taek at Symantec Korea said, "Lazarus was discovered to have been behind cyber attacks targeting banks in Vietnam, Ecuador, the Philippines and Poland since 2015," stealing altogether $94 million. [Attribution] [Evidence] [Diversion] [Cybercrime]
The Dilemma for Intelligence Agencies
by Lawrence Davidson Government intelligence agencies, particularly those in the United States, have a problem. Its nature was spelled out by the retired British diplomat Alastair Crooke in an article entitled “Trump’s 59-Tomahawk Tweet,” appearing 8 April 2017. As the title suggests, Crooke was reacting to President Trump’s precipitous attack on a Syrian government airbase, following the chemical weapons episode of 4 April 2017 at the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun. Crooke notes that U.S. intelligence had raised doubts as to the Syrian government’s responsibility for the release of poison gas. It seems likely that the Russians had alerted U.S. forces that the Syrian air force was going to attack a rebel warehouse in Khan Sheikhoun that was allegedly full of explosives and weapons. Unbeknownst to the Russians, the Syrians, and the Americans, the warehouse also held a poisonous mix of organic phosphates and chlorine. There is also evidence suggesting that whatever released the poison gas came from an explosive device placed on the ground. Wherever the resulting gas cloud came from, and a Syrian government bomb is certainly not the only possibility, It spread over a local neighborhood and killed a number of exposed residents. [Intelligence] [Foreign policy] [Domestic]
Evidence Consistent with the Possibility of a Poison Gas Release from an Attack on an Ammunition Depot in Khan Sheikhoun On April 4, 2017
By Dr. Theodore Postol
Washington's Blog 25 April 2017 I have been examining the possibility that the attack on April 4, 2017 hit an ammunition dump as claimed by the Russians. Videos taken on the morning of the attack of the explosive debris clouds from four targets that were hit provide strong circumstantial evidence that this Russian explanation could be true. One of the clouds is quite distinctly different from all the others – with a base-area of the debris cloud stem that covers an area five or more times larger than the cloud-stem bases of the other bomb debris clouds. This is consistent with the possibility that this debris cloud was created by an initial explosion followed by a series of secondary explosions – a situation that would be expected if the site was in fact an ammunition dump. I have also looked up data on poisonous gases that could be generated by the combustion of plastics and photographs of the dead and dying from the Bhopal, India chemical accident of December 2/3, 1984. Many of the apparent symptoms of the victims from the Bhopal catastrophe are similar in appearance to those observed in victims of the Khan Sheikhoun attack.
This is not proof that the Russian explanation for a mass poisoning is correct, but given that there is no evidence to support the American alternative explanation of a sarin release from an airdropped munition at a site identified by the White House Intelligence Report, this additional data does provide some information that is relevant to the ongoing discussions on this matter. [Khan Sheikhoun] [Evidence]
The Chemical-Weapons Attack In Syria: Is There a Place for Skepticism?
The American media has excluded dissenting expert opinions in its rush to embrace Trump’s war on Syria. By James Carden April 19, 2017 In addition to highlighting the embarrassing degree to which the American media is seduced by displays of American military might, its rush to embrace President Trump’s decision to launch a military attack against Syria on April 6 has also crowded out dissenting voices from the administration’s claim that it was the government of Bashar al-Assad that was responsible for the chemical-weapons attack in Khan Sheikhun, which killed over 80 people and injured hundreds. By firing 59 Tomahawk missiles at the Shayrat air base in Syria, and killing five Syrian soldiers and nine civilians in the process, President Trump was able to transform himself in the eyes of the media from an object of derision into, in the words of erstwhile Trump critic Elliot Abrams, “Leader of the Free World.” Dissent from what amounts to a new party line has been noticeably absent. [Syria_airstrike170406] [Khan Sheikhoun] [Evidence] [Postol]
Graun celebrates Macron’s avowal to despoil working people, wreck infrastructure & enrich banking class
by Catte One of the numerous nicely airbrushed promo pics the “liberal” Guardian s running of its new hero Macron is more Obama than Obama. More Blair than Blair. A creation, groomed and glossed for this “spontaneous” bid for power by the banking class he unashamedly represents. The Guardian unsurprisingly has numerous pieces (comments-disallowed) pushing this glibly smiling drone as the Saviour of France. Here’s an example to give you a flavour. All predictable and barely worth discussion. But one of the pieces has a little blue sidebar summarising their darling’s policies and position, which so completely encapsulates the destruction of meaning in political language we are currently witnessing that it should be noted. Here is a screen cap: You see, the Guardian defines itself as a “centrist/liberal Left” outlet, so, of course it supports “liberal Left” polices. How does it do this and still be the paper of record for Wall Street and the neocons? Easy. It just plays Humpty Dumpty and redefines what words actually mean. Here is what “centrist/liberal Left”, as encapsulated by Macron’s policies, now means for the Graun and the class it represents: [Macron] [Guardian]
Young men in devastated countries used to dream of America. Not anymore.
By Richard Cohen Opinion writer April 24 at 7:47 PM My friend, publicity-shy but otherwise admirable, has an odd way of spending his free time. He flies to some of the world’s most Godforsaken places and tries to help some of the world’s most Godforsaken people. This is how he got to the Dadaab refugee camp on the Somalia-Kenya border, a moonscape of sun-blanched trees adorned with errant plastic bags, where young men, such as the ones my friend encountered, until recently dreamed of America. No longer, though. “We are not wanted anymore,” one of the refugees said. “America is not a friendly place.” They said they’d prefer to go back to war-torn Somalia. My friend was disbelieving. “You’d rather go back to a war zone than go to America?” he asked. “Yes,” the young man said. Yes, his friends nodded in agreement. Their reason: President Trump. [Decline] [Softpower] [Trump] [Blame] [Islamophobia]
BBC R4’s “nostalgia-driven, rose-tinted hypnosis” hides most blatant propaganda on airwaves
by Tangible Truth Recently, while having an animated discussion with my housemate about the properties of tomatoes, I had reason to refer to a program I’d listened to on BBC Radio 4 some years ago, about cold-stored fruit. I recalled a snippet of information about certain compounds in the tomato fruit which, damaged by low temperatures, severely affect a tomato’s flavour. It was probably on Gardener’s Question Time or the like. To which my housemate replied “Well, you can usually trust Radio 4”. And then it occurred to me, this pretty much sums up what millions of people think about BBC Radio 4 across the British Isles and globally. Radio 4 is the only aspirational talk-radio station on British airwaves and the second most popular radio station in the UK. Many who disavow and distrust the BBC TV news are inclined to view R4 in a more forgiving light, as essentially benign. In fact, as an ever-increasing number of people switch off BBC News programs, Radio 4 audience size is actually increasing. Its millions of listeners are invited to tune-in and zone out to the reassuring sounds of a BBC of yesteryear. Harking back to that mythical Golden Age of British values, its self-styled image as a smart, erudite, discerning, well-informed network caters to its listeners’ vanity. With a troop of well-spoken, well-educated, knowledgable-sounding presenters, it is an ideal breeding ground for complacency. Well-spoken, plummy voices through sonorous ribbon microphones, Nicholas Parsons, the Archers’ theme – ready and waiting to trigger the dotage of our critical mind. With its famous output of light entertainment, quizzes and magazine shows, it’s easy to forget Radio 4 is very much a “news” channel – with hourly bulletins and extensive current events programming. And whatever its facade of fusty comfort might be, it has a very definite agenda. As Bob Shennan, Director of BBC Radio and Music, says about R4’s Today program: In an era of fake news, echo chambers and significant shifts in global politics, the role of Radio 4’s Today as the trusted guide to the world around us is more important than ever. How reassuring. But before we settle back into cosy slumber, secure in the knowledge Radio 4 is keeping us safe, let’s examine just one small example of our trusted guide’s prodigious output. [BBC] [Propaganda]
How the US media reacted to Trump's Syria attack
- The Listening Post (Lead) Published on Apr 15, 2017 The Listening Post begins with those disturbing images from Syria, the aftermath of that chemical weapons attack, that led to the US missile strike. The video went to air, showing the dead or dying victims, many of them children - and 50 hours later American missiles were hitting their targets. The US strike came 77 days into Donald Trump's presidency, two and a half months marked by unprecedented hostility between the US media and a new administration. But nothing changes the narrative quite like pictures of a few Tomahawk missiles being launched into the night sky. And the tone shifted. Journalists praised Trump's decisiveness, his morality, and the might of the US military. He was described as something he'd seldom been accused of - being 'presidential.' There are plenty of media angles in this story: from the haunting images of victims of chemical weapons, the impact the pictures are said to have had on Trump, to the video supplied by the Pentagon from those warships that is now driving the story. [Syria_Airstrike170406] [Media] [Video]
Google now threatening Alt-News web-sites
Eric Zuesse I just happened to notice at one of my publishers, RINF, “Google’s Censorship Of Independent News – Rinf Becomes Latest Victim”, and the owner, Mick Meaney, described Google’s threat to him if he didn’t remove a news-article that was critical of the Israeli government. He promptly removed it. He continued: Then the next day, as I expected, I received another email telling me to delete a second article. This time it was an article about Donald Trump, written by Eric Zuesse.” He’s in a predicament: My choice is now; let Google dictate what information is acceptable, or significantly reduce the amount of time I spend devoted to RINF.” I used to be published at places such as Huffington Post, Salon, and Common Dreams, but the number of sites that are willing to publish me has gradually reduced as more and more of my articles came to expose the operations that control the U.S. federal government. None of those publishers explained to me why they were dropping me. But now I understand. And Google isn’t alone in this; they’re part of the same operation that has taken over the U.S. and many foreign ‘news’ operations and thus now controls what the publics believe, in many countries. I knew that this would happen. But, unlike some other courageous journalists, I’m still alive and able to continue doing the best job I can, for the public, and without charging anyone for access to it. [Censorship] [Google]
Why Vault 7 Tools Used by Private Contractors Shows US Intel Needs a Ground-Up Rebuild Part 2
by GH Eliason So, let’s begin at the end. The fastest way to get things done on a geopolitical level has become hiring the private Intel and policy making professionals and letting them loose as experts to the mainstream media. Who is using chemical weapons on the Syrians? Who was involved in the Russian election interference and fake news during the 2016 elections? Who shot down MH-17 in 2014? Someone, somewhere had to be doing something, right? In part 1 of this article, I detailed the rise of privatized Intel. Their history clearly shows that it wouldn’t have been possible without a helping hand from Congressional members that found out they could get their hands on top secret Intel if, and only if, they got it before it was labeled classified. Although impact on policy is the subject of another article, both lobbyists and Congress found they could build or destroy any administration’s foreign policy by hiring the right Intel providers from the private sector Intel community. [Intelligence] [Privatisation]
How the U.S. Government Spins the Story: Did Syria actually use chemical weapons?
Philip Giraldi • April 18, 2017 Sounds like we’ve heard it all before, because we have, back in August 2013, and that turned out to be less than convincing. Skepticism is likewise mounting over current White House claims that Damascus used a chemical weapon against civilians in the village of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province on April 4th. Shortly after the more recent incident, President Donald Trump, possibly deriving his information from television news reports, abruptly stated that the government of President Bashar al-Assad had ordered the attack. He also noted that the use of chemicals had “crossed many red lines” and hinted that Damascus would be held accountable. Twenty-four hours later retribution came in the form of the launch of 59 cruise missiles directed against the Syrian airbase at Sharyat. The number of casualties, if any, remains unclear and the base itself sustained only minor damage amidst allegations that many of the missiles had missed their target. The physical assault was followed by a verbal onslaught, with the Trump Administration blaming Russia for shielding al-Assad and demanding that Moscow end its alliance with Damascus if it wishes to reestablish good relations with Washington. [Syria] [cbw] [Khan Sheikhoun] [Evidence] [Gabbard] [Syria_airstrike170406]
History of Iran Covert Action Deferred Indefinitely
Posted on Apr.18, 2017 in Declassification, History, Iran by Steven Aftergood A declassified U.S. Government documentary history of the momentous 1953 coup in Iran, in which Central Intelligence Agency personnel participated, had been the object of widespread demand from historians and others for decades. In recent years, it finally seemed to be on the verge of publication. But now its release has been postponed indefinitely. Last year, “the Department of State did not permit publication of the long-delayed Iran Retrospective volume because it judged the political environment too sensitive,” according to a new annual report from the State Department Historical Advisory Committee (HAC). “The HAC was severely disappointed.” “The HAC was unsuccessful in its efforts to meet with [then-]Secretary Kerry to discuss the volume, and now there is no timetable for its release,” the new report stated. The controversy originally arose in 1989 when the State Department published its official history of US foreign relations with Iran that somehow made no mention of the 1953 CIA covert action against the Mossadeq government, triggering protests and ridicule. That lapse led to enactment of a 1992 statute requiring the Foreign Relations of the United States series to present a “thorough, accurate, and reliable” documentary history of US foreign policy. The State Department also agreed to prepare a supplemental retrospective volume on Iran to correct the record. The retrospective volume is what now appears to be out of reach. In truth, a fair amount of documentation related to the events of 1953 in Iran has been declassified and released. It is unclear how much more of significance remains to be disclosed. (Those who have read the missing volume say there is at least some new substance to it.) But the position taken by the Obama State Department that 60 year old policy documents are too politically sensitive to be released is disheartening in any case. [Iran] [Coup] [FOI] [Censorship]
Hackers have just dumped a treasure trove of NSA data. Here’s what it means.
By Henry Farrell April 15 at 8:00 AM Department of Justice staffers install posters of a suspected Russian hacker. (Yuri Gripas/Reuters) A group of hackers called the Shadow Brokers has just released a new dump of data from the National Security Agency. This is plausibly the most extensive and important release of NSA hacking tools to date. It’s likely to prove awkward for the U.S. government, not only revealing top-secret information but also damaging the government’s relationships with U.S. allies and with big information technology firms. That is probably the motivation behind the leak: The Shadow Brokers are widely assumed to be connected with the Russian government. Here’s what the dump means. [NSA] [Hacking] [Whistleblower]
Wag The Dog — How Al Qaeda Played Donald Trump And The American Media
Responsibility for the chemical event in Khan Sheikhoun is still very much in question.
Scott Ritter
04/09/2017 08:57 am ET | Updated 5 days ago Once upon a time, Donald J. Trump, the New York City businessman-turned-president, berated then-President Barack Obama back in September 2013 about the fallacy of an American military strike against Syria. At that time, the United States was considering the use of force against Syria in response to allegations (since largely disproven) that the regime of President Bashar al-Assad had used chemical weapons against civilians in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta. Trump, via tweet, declared “to our very foolish leader, do not attack Syria – if you do many very bad things will happen & from that fight the U.S. gets nothing!” [Syria] [cbw] [Khan Sheikhoun] [Nusra] [Al Qaeda]
Syria: Cui Bono?
by Uri Avnery Cui bono – “who benefits” – is the first question an experienced detective asks when investigating a crime. Since I was a detective myself for a short time in my youth, I know the meaning. Often, the first and obvious suspicion is false. You ask yourself “cui bono”, and another suspect, who you did not think about, appears. [Syria][cbw] [Evidence] [Khan Sheikhoun] [Cui bono]
Why would Assad use sarin in a war he’s winning? To terrify Syrians.
There's a long history of brutal attacks with no military purpose. By Annia Ciezadlo April 11 Follow annia Annia Ciezadlo is a Beirut-based journalist and the author of "Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War." BEIRUT — In the summer of 1925, rebels from the Syrian countryside mounted a guerrilla uprising against French colonial rule. The French retaliated by looting, burning and carrying out massacres in villages they suspected of supporting the rebels. That October, French authorities executed about 100 villagers outside Damascus. They displayed 16 of the mutilated corpses in the capital’s main public square; La Syrie, the government newspaper, called the row of bodies “a splendid hunting score.” The French had no military reason to do this. Although they had underestimated the rebels at first, they were sure to defeat the vastly outgunned Syrian peasants in the end. The line of butchered bodies was there to send a message: This is the fate of rebels and those who support them. This month, warplanes dropped a chemical agent — most likely sarin , according to doctors who treated the victims — on a town in the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib called Khan Sheikhoun. As gruesome pictures emerged of men, women and children convulsing and foaming at the mouth before dying, a simple question came to dominate the discussion online. From the far right of Mike Cernovich and Ron Paul to the anti-imperialist left, the question was: Why would Assad attack his own people when he was already winning the war? The Syrian regime had regained control of rebel-held east Aleppo and was in the midst of evacuating people from the country’s few remaining rebel enclaves. So why would Assad provoke international outrage with needless carnage, when he had much to lose and saw little concrete military gain? [Syria] [cbw] [Khan Sheikhoun] [cui bono]
N. Korea's top university offers summer program for international students
Posted : 2017-04-13 15:24 Updated : 2017-04-13 19:51 By Lee Han-soo North Korea's top university, Kim Il-sung University, will launch a three-week summer program for international students on July 2. Applications are under way, seemingly under the supervision of Juche Travel Services, a British tour agency specializing in the isolated country. Maximum accommodation has been set at 30. [Education]
CIA chief targets WikiLeaks and Julian Assange as ‘hostile,’ vows to take action
By Tim Johnson tjohnson@mcclatchydc.com WASHINGTON CIA Director Mike Pompeo on Thursday called the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks a hostile intelligence service and said the group would soon face decisive U.S. action to stifle its disclosures of leaked material. “It ends now,” Pompeo said in his first public remarks after 10 weeks on the job, indicating that President Donald Trump will take undefined but forceful action. Pompeo lashed out aggressively against Julian Assange, the Australian founder of WikiLeaks – who has been holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London for nearly five years – calling him a narcissist and “a fraud, a coward hiding behind a screen.” The broadside against Assange and WikiLeaks marked a sharp about-face toward Assange, whom Trump once applauded for publishing emails stolen from 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The CIA, hurt by a recent WikiLeaks disclosure of purported stolen spying tools, is elevating WikiLeaks into a high-profile target. “WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service. It has encouraged its followers to find jobs at CIA in order to obtain intelligence,” Pompeo said. [CIA] [Pompeo] [WikiLeaks] [Whistleblower] [Chutzpah]
N.Korea Extorts Bitcoins as Flow of Hard Currency Dries up
By Kim Jin-myung April 14, 2017 10:59 North Korea has been acquiring some US$87,400 worth of bitcoins a month in recent years, Radio Free Asia reported Thursday. The virtual currency guarantees users' anonymity and is extremely difficult to track, raising concerns that it can be used to buy all manner of dangerous contraband on the Dark Web. Internet security company Hauri tracked North Korean activities from April 2013, when the inter-Korean Kaesong Industrial Complex was suspended, until 2015. The industrial park was a major source of hard currency for the North until it was finally shut down completely in 2016. Choi Sang-myoung at Hauri told RFA that in 2013 "North Korea stole $35,000 worth of bitcoins from South Korea in just two weeks and hundreds of millions of won a month later." He added it was probably doing the same thing in other countries. One individual who hacked into online shopping mall Interpark last May demanded W3 billion worth of bitcoins to stop him exposing the personal details of more than 10 million customers, and South Korean cyber police concluded the perpetrator worked for North Korea's intelligence agency (US$1=W1,131). FRA also quoted James Lewis of the U.S. Center for Strategic and International Studies as saying that the North's primary interest in cyber attacks is to acquire foreign currency, targeting especially banks in small countries. [bitcoin] [Hype] [Cybercrime]
Trump’s Tomahawks – The Instant Certainty Of The ‘Mainstream’ Press
Post 12 April 2017 Last Updated on 12 April 2017 By Editor As ever, it didn't take long for them to make up their minds. Roy Greenslade reports in the Guardian on the media reaction to Donald Trump's bombardment of Syria in 'retaliation' (USA Today) for the alleged chemical weapons attacks on Khan Sheikhoun, Idlib, Syria: 'There was an identifiable theme in almost every leading article and commentary: "Well done Donald, but ... " The "buts" amounted to eloquent judgments on the president's character, conveying explicit messages of disquiet and distrust.' In other words, almost every leading article and commentary in every UK newspaper supported Trump's blitz. Much the same was true in the United States where Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) found that of 46 major editorials, only one, in the Houston Chronicle, opposed the attack. FAIR's Adam Johnson reported: '83% of major editorial boards supported Trump's Syria strikes, 15% were ambiguous and 2% - or one publication - opposed.' FAIR found similar bias in media coverage of the 2003 Iraq war and the 2011 Libya war. [Syria_airstrike_170406] [Media] [cbw] [False flag]
NYT Retreats on 2013 Syria-Sarin Claims
April 6, 2017 Exclusive: Even as The New York Times leads the charge against the Syrian government for this week’s alleged chemical attack, it is quietly retreating on its earlier certainty about the 2013 Syria-sarin case, reports Robert Parry. By Robert Parry The New York Times, which has never heard an allegation against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that it hasn’t immediately believed, has compiled a list of his alleged atrocities with a surprising omission: the Aug. 21, 2013 sarin gas attack outside Damascus. A heart-rending propaganda image designed to justify a major U.S. military operation inside Syria against the Syrian military. Why this omission is so surprising is that the sarin incident was the moment when the Western media and the Washington establishment piled on President Barack Obama for not enforcing his “red line” by launching military strikes against the Syrian government to retaliate for Assad “gassing his own people.” The retaliation, which would have pummeled the Syrian military, was hotly desired by neoconservatives and liberal interventionists who were obsessed with achieving another Mideast “regime change” even if that risked turning Syria over to Al Qaeda and/or the Islamic State. The story of Obama’s supposed “red line” retreat has become a treasured groupthink of all the “important people” in D.C. So, for the Times to compile a summary of alleged Assad atrocities, which included a separate section on “chemical attacks,” and to leave out the August 2013 case suggests that even The New York Times cannot sustain one of the most beloved myths of the Syrian war, that Assad was at fault for the sarin attack. [cbw] [Syria] [False flag] [Media] [NYT]
Congressman: 'I don't think' Assad is behind Syria attack
By Eleanor Mueller, CNN Updated 1938 GMT (0338 HKT) April 5, 2017 GOP rep. stuns anchor Source: CNN GOP rep. stuns anchor 01:14 Story highlights Republican congressman said the attack "does not serve (Assad's) interests" Activists groups, US officials and lawmakers have placed blame on the Assad regime Washington (CNN)Republican Rep. Thomas Massie expressed doubt Wednesday that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is responsible for Tuesday's chemical attack, and reinforced his stance that US intervention could "end up making the situation worse." Speaking on CNN's "At This Hour" with Kate Bolduan, the Kentucky lawmaker told the host that he didn't think the Syrian leader launched the attack, and that further intervention by the US government may aggravate the situation. "Frankly, I don't think Assad would have done that," Massie said. "It does not serve his interests." Dozens of people -- including at least 10 children -- died, and more than 200 people were injured in a suspected chemical weapons attack in northern Syria Tuesday. Activist groups and some US officials have attributed the tragedy to Assad and his regime, including President Donald Trump who cited Assad's administration Wednesday. When a visibly stunned Bolduan pressed Massie on who -- if not Assad -- may be responsible for the attack, Massie seemed to suggest that the incident could have been unintentional. "You've got a war going on over there," Massie said. "Supposedly that airstrike was on an ammo dump, and so I don't know if it was released because there was gas stored in the ammo dump or not -- that's plausible." [cbw] [Syria] [False flag] [Cui bono]
If Assad has been hiding chemical weapons, we need to know
Jerry Smith
Before the dust settles on the latest atrocity in Syria, UN weapons inspectors must be allowed in to survey the damage – and tell us who was responsible A UN weapons inspector ‘Allowing investigators free access is the best way to ensure that scientific precision, investigative rigour and international transparency trump political machinations.’ Photograph: Local Committee of Arbeen/EPA Thursday 6 April 2017 08.00 BST Last modified on Friday 7 April 2017 03.24 BST The images from the apparent chemical weapons attack in Khan Sheikhun, in the Idlib province of Syria, are horrific. In the absence of confirmed scientific analysis, the signs of uncontrolled twitching, laboured breathing, excessive salivation and pinpointed pupils do suggest an organophosphate poisoning. Within that group of chemicals are the infamous nerve agents; so-called because of their mechanism of disrupting the nerve pathways. Chances of survival are dependent on many factors including the dose received, the speed of decontamination and the use of specialist injectable antidotes. [cbw] [Syria] [Evidence]
BBC redacts article on Idlib to hide unwelcome facts
The push for “action” following the alleged chemical attack in Idlib, Syria is reaching fever pitch. Indeed, it may already have had disastrous consequences. The spokespeople for power that are the Western press consider the case against the Assad regime air-tight. Absent any forensic, or even circumstantial, evidence the mainstream media have resorted to simple arguments from authority looks of bewilderment. The trouble is “authority” doesn’t seem have any cohesion in this matter – so the press have carefully chosen who they will listen to…and who they will remove from their websites. Col. Hamish de Bretton-Gordon is the favored voice of “reason” on these matters, he has dismissed any idea other than a deliberate attack by the Syrian government as “fanciful”. And has been cited everywhere from Channel 4, to the Daily Mail to the Guardian, to the BBC. He is universally credited as a “chemical weapons expert” who works as the director of “Medics Under Fire”….but that’s not his only job, just his most recent. He was originally in the British army, filling an important role at NATO: Previously Commanding Officer of the UK CBRN Regiment and NATO’s Rapid Reaction CBRN Battalion, Hamish is one of the most operationally experienced CBRN practitioners in the World and is regarded as one of the leading experts in Chemical and Biological Counter Terrorism and warfare. With other hints from his biography suggesting some work in espionage or military intelligence: He has also worked with US networks and British newspapers to smuggle chemical samples out of Syria for verification in UK and France. …so he’s hardly an objective source. [cbw] [Syria] [Pundits]
Trump condemns Syria chemical attack and suggests he will act
Trump: 'My attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much' Play Video3:36 President Trump discussed Syria and the Islamic State during a joint news conference with King Abdullah II of Jordan at the White House on April 5. Here are key moments from that event. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post) By Anne Gearan April 5 at 7:26 PM President Trump confronted the enormity of the six-year-old Syrian conflict on Wednesday, acknowledging that he now bears responsibility for a war his predecessor could not end, but offering no specifics on what he could do differently. Clearly emotional, Trump said a chemical attack in Syria that killed scores of civilians, including children, “crossed a lot of lines for me.” “When you kill innocent children, innocent babies — babies! — little babies,” Trump said, “that crosses many, many lines. Beyond a red line, many, many lines.” Trump said the multifaceted conflict “is now my responsibility,” and he appeared to reckon with the same lack of good options in Syria that repeatedly confounded President Barack Obama. Like Obama, Trump faces a Syrian strongman willing to commit atrocities and whose military and diplomatic backing from Russia has prolonged a civil war with numerous belligerents, separate from the campaign to defeat the Islamic State. [Trump] [cbw] [False flag] US Syria policy]
Putin rebukes Netanyahu over ‘groundless’ accusations on suspected chemical incident in Syria
Published time: 6 Apr, 2017 14:20 Edited time: 6 Apr, 2017 19:48 Russian President Vladimir Putin told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a telephone conversation that it was unacceptable to make “groundless” accusations concerning the alleged chemical weapons incident that took place in Syria earlier this week. During the phone call initiated by the Israeli side on Thursday, Putin and Netanyahu stressed the importance of boosting international efforts to tackle terrorism, the Kremlin said in a statement. Read more Idlib, Syria April 4, 2017 © Ammar Abdullah Rebels ‘only people who benefited’ from Idlib chemical weapons attack – analyst Both sides “expressed readiness to expand [cooperation] in the interest of assuring stability and security in the Middle East and, first of all, in Syria,” it said. In particular, Putin “pointed out that it was unacceptable to make groundless accusations against anyone without conducting a detailed and unbiased investigation.” [Russia Israel] [Syria] [cbw] [Chutzpah]
Trump and his ‘America First’ philosophy face first moral quandary in Syria
President Trump, whose “America First” foreign policy is facing its first major test with crises in Syria and North Korea, speaks at a news conference on Wednesday in the White House Rose Garden. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg News) By Greg Jaffe April 5 at 8:15 PM President Trump has vowed to follow a radically new approach to foreign policy that jettisons the costly mantle of moral leadership in favor of America’s most immediate economic and security interests. This week, crises in Syria and North Korea have put Trump’s “America First” foreign policy to perhaps its biggest test. On Wednesday, the president stood next to Jordan’s King Abdullah II in the Rose Garden and delivered a statement on the brutal chemical weapons attack in Syria that sounded as though it could have been given by any one of his recent predecessors in office. [Trump] [Syria] [cbw] [Hypocrisy]
'Chemical attack' in Syria draws international outrage
UN to investigate potential war crimes after dozens were killed in Idlib attack US says 'cannot be ignored' A suspected chemical attack in Syria has drawn international condemnation, with the United States, France and Britain all pointing the finger at President Bashar al-Assad's forces. At least 58 people, including 11 children, were killed in the rebel-held Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province on Tuesday, doctors and a monitor said. The United Nations said it would investigate the bombing raid as a possible war crime, and an emergency Security Council meeting was scheduled for Wednesday . [Syria] [cbw] [false flag] [IO]
UN deeply disturbed by chemical attack in Syria
Xinhua, April 5, 2017 UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday said he is deeply disturbed by reports of alleged use of chemical weapons in an airstrike in Syria's northwestern province of Idlib. Media reports said about 70 people were killed, 200 others were wounded Tuesday in a gas attack in a rebel-held area in southern Idlib. "The United Nations is not currently in a position to independently verify these reports," said a statement released by Guterres' spokesperson. According to the statement, the Fact Finding Mission of Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has announced that it has begun gathering information to confirm the use of chemical weapons. [Syria] [cbw] [UNUS]
Syria chemical 'attack': Russia blames rebel weapons
Russia says that a chemical attack that killed and injured dozens of civilians in a rebel-held town in northern Syria came from rebel weapons on the ground. Its defence ministry acknowledged that Syrian planes had attacked the town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province. But it said the aircraft had struck a depot producing mines filled with a poisonous substance, for use in Iraq. The US and others said Syrian planes dropped chemical weapons, which Damascus denied. UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson responded to the Russian statement by saying: "All the evidence I have seen suggests this was the [Syrian President Bashar] Assad regime... using illegal weapons on their own people." What happened? UK-based monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the death toll in Khan Sheikhoun at 72, including 20 children. Footage from the scene showed civilians, many of them children, choking and foaming at the mouth. Witnesses said clinics treating the injured were then targeted by air strikes. Some of the victims were treated across the border in Turkey. One woman in hospital said: "We were affected by the gas. We couldn't stand up. I felt dizzy and sick. I suffer from shortness of breath. I couldn't breathe." The Observatory cites reports from the area saying it was subjected to a further wave of air strikes on Wednesday. Media captionVictims were treated for injuries, including asphyxiation The issue will overshadow a conference under way in Brussels, at which 70 donor nations will discuss aid efforts in Syria. Delegates want to step up humanitarian access for thousands of civilians trapped by fighting. The UN Security Council is also due to hold emergency talks later following the incident. What do the Russians say? Russia, which backs Bashar Assad's government, released a statement on YouTube. "Yesterday [Tuesday], from 11:30am to 12:30pm local time, Syrian aviation made a strike on a large terrorist ammunition depot and a concentration of military hardware in the eastern outskirts of Khan Sheikhoun town," Russian defence ministry spokesman Igor Konoshenkov said. "On the territory of the depot there were workshops which produced chemical warfare munitions." He said the chemical munitions had been used by rebels in the city of Aleppo last year. "The poisoning symptoms of the victims in Khan Sheikhoun shown on videos in social networks are the same as they were in autumn of the previous year in Aleppo," he added. [Syria] [cbw]
N.Korea Hacks into Secret War Plans
By Lee Yong-soo April 04, 2017 11:17 North Korean hackers seem to have managed to access a secret war masterplan by South Korea and the U.S. in a cyberattack last September, sources here said Monday. One government source said Defense Ministry investigators questioned around 40 people over the hacking attack and it appears that part of the masterplan, dubbed OPLAN 5027, "leaked." A Defense Ministry source said the hackers accessed reports containing portions of the plan, not the entire document. Defense Minister Han Min-koo and other military officials last year downplayed the seriousness of the hacking attack, saying that only a small number of sensitive military secrets leaked out. OPLAN 5027 was first drawn up in 1978, when the South Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command was established, and updated every two years since 1994. It includes troop deployment plans, key North Korean targets, strategies and military control of facilities in the North. A military official said "discussions are still taking place" whether the plan has to be overhauled now the North has seen chunks of it. The ministry found out about the leak while investigating a new computer virus in September that attacked the vaccine server at the military cyber command. Investigators discovered that the Defense Ministry's Internet and Intranet servers were infected with the same malware, affecting the minister's own computer and around 2,500 computers with Internet access and 700 connected to the Intranet. At the time, the ministry said only that hackers accessed "some military information, including sensitive information" and that North Korea appears to be responsible. The hackers tried to attack the main server of the Defense Integrated Data Center, which serves as the cyber nerve center of South Korea's defense system. [OPLAN 5027] [Cyberespionage]
The establishment needs to make up its mind: do “false flags” happen, or not?
Just hours after the alleged terrorist attack on a St Petersburg metro station, a BBC news reporter stated (see the video above): Well, there have been demonstrations – political demonstrations – against corruption, and against President Putin and his system…perhaps this is some kind of attempt to distract from the calls for a corruption investigation, and the calls for President Putin himself to step down.” The BBC never uttered a single word about the possible political motives behind any other terrorist attack. Not for decades. Lockerbie, Nice, 7/7, Berlin, the Bataclan, Orlando, 9/11, JFK and the 2001 Anthrax Attacks. Every single attack or assassination has a “possible false flag” theory behind it. Some are extremely likely, others less so. The BBC has given the same exact level of coverage to all of them: zero. There are even proven cases of Governments planning and/or conducting such attacks: Operation Northwoods, The Gulf of Tonkin Incident, the USS Liberty and Operation Gladio. These are all uncontested historical facts. The BBC has given the same exact level of coverage to all of them: zero. [Terrorism] [BBC] [False flag] [Propaganda]
Suspected gas attack kills 58 in Syria as victims foam at the mouth, activists say
A man carries the body of a dead child after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria. (Ammar Abdullah/Reuters) By Louisa Loveluck April 4 at 3:16 PM BEIRUT — Scores of Syrians, many of them women and young children, were killed Tuesday in one of the deadliest chemical attacks of the country’s six-year war, according to doctors, rescue workers and eyewitnesses. Airstrikes on the northwestern town of Khan Sheikhoun began just after daybreak, delivering an unidentified chemical agent that killed at least 58 people and filled clinics across the area with patients foaming at the mouth or struggling to breathe. In a White House statement, President Trump said the attack was “reprehensible and cannot be ignored by the civilized world.” But he blamed the Syrian regime’s “heinous actions” on the Obama administration’s “weakness and irresolution,” a reference to President Barack Obama’s failure to back an earlier ultimatum over chemical weapons in Syria with military action. [Syria] [cbw] [False flag] [Propaganda]
Why Vault 7 Tools Used by Private Contractors Shows US Intel Needs a Ground-Up Rebuild Part 1
by GH Elisaon The Vault 7 exposé by WikiLeaks neglected to mention the most important part of the disclosure. Sure, the CIA has all these tools available. Yes, they are used on the public. The important part is; it’s not the CIA that’s using them. That’s the part that needs to frighten you. The CIA, by the definition of its mission, cannot use the tools in Vault 7, and definitely not on Americans. All the tools are unclassified, open-source, and can be used by anyone. It makes them not exactly usable for secret agent work. That’s what makes it impossible for them to use Vault 7 tools directly. Because of the possible exposure for the agency, use of the tools was farmed out. Instead, they are there for subcontractors to use. Are you worried about your TV watching you? Has your car developed the habit of starting itself in the morning? [CIA] [Intelligence] [Privatisation]
On Propaganda and Bias: An open-letter to the Royal Academy
Mr Christopher LeBrun, President Mr Charles Saumarez Smith, Secretary and Chief Executive Mr Tim Marlow, Director of Artistic Programmes Royal Academy of Arts, London 28 March 2017 Dear Sirs, I am writing to you to express my disappointment at the curatorial handling of the exhibition Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932 currently on display at the RA. Whilst I am not an art historian or an expert in Russian art of the period, it is well known (and apparent just looking at the pieces on display at the RA) that the years covered by the exhibition represent a decisive and hugely fruitful moment in the development of Russian and European Modernism in which artists who came from a figurative tradition coexisted with avant-garde currents like the Russian Futurists or, later, the Constructivists, along with visionary figures like Kasimir Malevich, Wassily Kandinsky, El Lissitzky and others (whom you reference in the exhibition), besides, of course, developments in photography, theatre, dance, music and cinema. For this reason, I was incredibly excited to visit the RA exhibition, anticipating a serious, insightful and engaging discussion on these artists and artistic currents, their antecedents, influences, formative years and evolution, their ideas on art and the goals of their practice, how they communicated with and influenced each other, their legacy, and, of course, the influence the October Revolution and the onset of the Soviet period had on the Russian artistic landscape. This is, I believe, in line with the sort of analysis visitors to a major art show naturally expect to find. I was extremely disappointed to see that the RA exhibition contains very little substantial information about these artist and groups, other than the sketchiest biographical details. Instead, the curatorial commentary consists of a relentless, fiercely partisan, anti-communist and anti-Soviet tirade of an overtly political nature which continues room after room and caption after caption, leaving space for little else. Whilst this sort of narrative angle and choice of language may be OK for an opinion column in the Daily Mail I believe it is completely out of place in a major art exhibition, which should be, first and foremost, about the art. [Art] [Propaganda] [Russia confrontation] [Anti-Communism]
WikiLeaks’ latest release of CIA cyber-tools could blow the cover on agency hacking operations
The seal of the Central Intelligence Agency at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. (Carolyn Kaster/AP) By Ellen Nakashima March 31 at 8:06 PM WikiLeaks’ latest disclosure of CIA cyber-tools reveals a technique used by the agency to hide its digital tracks, potentially blowing the cover on current and past hacking operations aimed at gathering intelligence on terrorists and other foreign targets. The release Friday of the CIA’s “Marble Framework” comes less than a month after the WikiLeaks dumped onto the Internet a trove of files — dubbed “Vault 7” — that described the type of malware and methods the CIA uses to gain access to targets’ phones, computers and other electronic devices. [WikiLeaks says it has obtained trove of CIA hacking tools] “This appears to be one of the most technically damaging leaks ever done by WikiLeaks, as it seems designed to directly disrupt ongoing CIA operations and attribute previous operations,” said Nicholas Weaver, a computer security researcher at the University of California at Berkeley. [WikiLeaks] [CIA] [Hacking]

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MARCH 2017

A Eulogy to Women in Business Training
By Andray Abrahamian 29 March 2017 “I want to go into business,” she said, “to show that women can be good business leaders too.” When Geoffrey K. See, Choson Exchange’s founder, first heard a female North Korean university student say this in 2007, two thoughts came to mind. First, there is so much we do not know or understand about North Korea. Second, there must be a way to help people like her—young and highly motivated entrepreneurs with aspirations to create new business opportunities. [Training]
Bana of Aleppo: the Story So Far
by Barbara McKenzie Back in 2011 there was the Gay Girl of Damascus, supposedly a young lesbian blogging from the Syrian capital in support of the Arab Spring, but who turned out to be a 40 year old man from Georgia, USA, living in Scotland. Now, five years on, we have @AlabedBana tweeting from Aleppo. The Bana story all began in September of 2016 when 7 year old Bana began to tweet from eastern Aleppo to share with the world her anxiety about living in a war-torn city. It is perhaps a sad reflection of the world we live in that her arrival on the social media scene provoked a certain amount of scepticism, hilarity even. It seems only fair to endeavour to consider the Bana case objectively. Bana, as we are told, lives with her parents and two brothers in Aleppo. Her mother Fatemah is a teacher who ‘manages Bana’s Twitter account’ and occasionally tweets herself, and her father Ghassan works in the ‘legal department of the local council’, whatever that means – the area is totally controlled by al Nusra who have set up their own council: [Aleppo] [Propaganda]
CrowdStrike: How the Guardian Delivers its Fake News
Tutisicecream The emerging CrowdStrike “Russian Hack Attack” revelations show the most recent example of the Guardian along with the rest of the WMSM parroting the same fake news story As the Guardian bemoans that the post truth era is upon us, we find another example of the fake news they faithfully report to their readers in the emerging revelations of CrowdStrike. First revealed by Michael Sainato this week in Counterpunch Thursday 23 March 2017 growing interest is developing in this story, but don’t expect too much reporting in the Guardian or other MSM outlets. Why? Well put simply as the Guardian froths over the Putin Paradox, the Guardian’s very real Propaganda Paradox is proving a more salient line of questioning among independent minded observers. [Russia confrontation] [Hacking] [US_election16]
How British Trainers Quietly Help Shape North Korean Education
The British Council has run a teacher training program in North Korea for 17 years. By Charlotte Fitzek March 30, 2017 Teaching the United Nations Charter, including its chapter on human rights, to a group of 20-something-year-old North Korean students was not something the British Council trainer had expected when moving to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). And yet, he found himself not only developing a lesson plan on the Charter, but being requested to teach the material so the North Koreans might have the opportunity to observe how the class might best be conducted. Ordinarily, discussing UN human rights values would be a non-starter in a North Korean classroom. “As in most things,” the teacher avoided opinion and “would just allow the text to do the teaching.” Years of building rapport led to this moment. [Training] [Condescension] [cant]
Scientists outwit predatory publishers by tricking them into appointing a fake editor
Kate Aubusson March 23 2017 - 11:36AM Has there ever been a more impressive academic than Dr Anna O. Szust? The prolific polymath has been appointed editor at almost 50 academic journals covering a mind-boggling array of scientific fields. The problem is, Dr Szust does not exist. She is the honey pot in an ingenious sting devised to swindle the swindlers of the academic world: predatory journals. These dodgy outfits – whose scientific rigour is more akin to magic eight ball than legitimate academic publications – prey on researchers desperate for kudos in an environment where they must publish or perish. Related Content Using their limited wiles (vague flattery, phishing tools, spam software and terrible grammar) predatory publishers court academics with polite invitations to join advisory boards, editorial teams, conference line-ups. They appear to aggressively and indiscriminately recruit academics to their editorial boards to give the boards an air of legitimacy, often sending offers to researchers working in fields with no link to the journal's purported subject matter. A public health researcher may be invited to join the board of journals covering neuroscience, metallurgy, or civil engineering. A group of researchers, so fed up with the daily bombardment of emails from "parasitic publishers", created a fake scientist, Anna O. Szust, (oszust translates to "a fraud" in Polish). [Academia}
Global Laundromat update: “Bank did bank things with famous person”
Perhaps this is the beginning of a new series for the Guardian? Maybe in the future we can expect stories entitled “Man who voted Brexit regularly beats wife” and “Angela Merkel lives in the same city Adolf Hitler called home”. Has the Guardian hit a new low in shameless, dishonest, click-bait headlines? You be the judge. I think the “Global Laundromat” scandal might not be having the massive impact that The Guardian expected it to (personally, I blame the rather silly name). When it was launched yesterday it was meant to be a splash, but it has landed more like a ripple, so far failing to even repeat the short-lived intensity of the Panama Papers. Todays article is simply a readjustment of all same talking points mentioned several times each yesterday, only chopped up into a different order. Like that episode of the Simpsons where Marge keeps chopping up one Chanel suit into a variety of different outfits. You can tell they are desperate to get people clicking, because they’ve tried to tie it into an actual talking point: Donald Trump’s “Russia connections”. The entirety of this “new information” is contained within the headline: Bank that lent $300m to Trump linked to Russian money laundering scam That’s it. That’s not a teaser for more information. That’s not a summary of a complex plot. That is literally all the information. To quote the article directly: The German bank that loaned $300m (Ł260m) to Donald Trump played a prominent role in a money laundering scandal run by Russian criminals That’s right: Deutsche Bank, one of the largest and most important banks in the world, handling literally billions of dollars worth of business, received exchanges from Latvian banks implicated in money laundering AND lent money to Donald Trump. This is a wonderful new method of reporting, simply stating two completely unrelated incidents and hoping people make the connection themselves. [Guardian] [Russia confrontation]
House Intelligence chair says ‘it’s possible’ Trump’s communications were intercepted during transition
Nunes: Intelligence agencies ‘incidentally collected information’ on Trump associates Play Video0:44 Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said on March 22 that intelligence agencies “incidentally collected information” on President Trump’s transition team officials before Trump took office. (Reuters) By Karoun Demirjian March 22 at 4:04 PM House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes went to the White House on Wednesday afternoon to personally brief President Trump about intelligence he says he has seen regarding surveillance of foreign nationals during the presidential transition. The surveillance could have inadvertently picked up the president or members of his transition team, the chairman said. “What I’ve read seems to me to be some level of surveillance activity, perhaps legal. I don’t know that it’s right,” Nunes said to reporters outside the White House. “I don’t know that the American people would be comfortable with what I’ve read.” “The president needs to know these intelligence reports are out there,” Nunes added. “I think the president is concerned, and he should be.” President Trump was asked if he felt vindicated after Nunes’s visit in his claims that he was wiretapped during the campaign at his Trump Tower headquarters by President Obama’s administration. That claim has been roundly rejected by members of the intelligence community, including FBI Director James B. Comey and even Nunes himself, who again rejected the wiretapping allegation on Wednesday outside of the White House. “I somewhat do. I must tell you I somewhat do,” Trump said following Nunes’s visit. “I very much appreciated the fact that they found what they found. I somewhat do.” [Trump] [Surveillance] [Deep state] [Wiretapping]
“Global Laundromat” has the Guardian in a Spin
by Kit
The latest “breaking” story from the Guardian and Luke Harding is hitting the headlines. Almost exactly 1 year after the explosive anti-climax that was “The Panama Papers”, Harding and the coterie of NGOs for which he acts as de-facto spokesperson have a big announcement to make: Banks launder money, and some of it is Russian. I don’t know why they use American money with a Russian flag superimposed. They were probably afraid nobody would recognise roubles. We are nearing the anniversary of the release of the Panama Papers, a “big story” involving years of work, hundreds of leaked documents, a team of exceptional journalists (and Luke Harding) and a dramatic reveal: “Sometimes, very rich people use legal loopholes to avoid paying their taxes.” The list of implicated parties included heads of state, celebrities, athletes, David Cameron’s dad and a cellist that knows Vladimir Putin. We all remember who the Guardian decided to focus on, and we all know why. Today the same crack-team (and Luke Harding) are releasing the long-awaited sequel to their original hit. “The global Laundromat”, it’s called. It’s a product of a years-long investigation into money laundering in ex-Soviet states, using British shell companies. I can’t comment on the truth of these allegations, because we don’t get to see the evidence, we are simply tell us it’s true “according to letters The Guardian has seen”, and “reports shown to the Guardian”…and other variations on that theme. [Russia confrontation] [Guardian] [Media] [Luke Harding] [Evidence] [Money laundering] [Banking]
“Fake Scholarship” and the Future of America’s University
By Prof Michel Chossudovsky Global Research, March 21, 2017 Harvard University has established a modern version of the Catholic Church’s Index Librorum Prohibitorum, a list of prohibited online publications which are tagged as “fake” and “false”, broadly following the politically tainted “List” of censored independent and alternative media. As we recall the Catholic Church’s Index was a list of books “deemed heretical, anti-clerical or lascivious”.1 Ex Cathedra, Harvard has decided in one fell swoop that virtually the entire US based “Alternative Media” pertaining to tens of thousands of authors would be categorized not only as fake news, but fake science, knowledge and analysis. The Harvard Index however goes far beyond the Catholic Church’s Index which selectively banned books after careful reading, review and evaluation within the Church’s hierarchy. This frivolous decision by Harvard constitutes a violation of the most fundamental principles of university education which are debate, discussion, critique and analysis. The Harvard Index acts as a Lynchpin. It establishes a “new normal”, a guideline to colleges and universities across the land, regarding what we can or cannot read, what we can or cannot write. Needless to say, Harvard’s Index broadly undermines the foundation of University education. It instates academic mediocrity. In turn, the targeted websites– including Global Research- are the object of a “wiki-smear” campaign, which has become embedded in online search engines. The latter tend to be increasingly skewed against alternative media content. [Censorship] [Fake News] [Harvard]
Why does WikiLeaks keep publishing U.S. state secrets? Private contractors.
By outsourcing key intelligence work, the government has made classified material more vulnerable. By Tim Shorrock March 16 Follow @TimothyS Tim Shorrock is the author of "Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing." When WikiLeaks released more than 8,000 files about the CIA’s global hacking programs this month, it dropped a tantalizing clue: The leak came from private contractors. Federal investigators quickly confirmed this, calling contractors the likeliest sources. As a result of the breach, WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange said, the CIA had “lost control of its entire cyberweapons arsenal.” Intelligence insiders were dismayed. Agencies “take a chance with contractors” because “they may not have the same loyalty” as officers employed by the government, former CIA director Leon Panetta lamented to NBC. But this is a liability built into our system that intelligence officials have long known about and done nothing to correct. As I first reported in 2007, some 70 cents of every intelligence dollar is allocated to the private sector. And the relentless pace of mergers and acquisitions in the spies-for-hire business has left five corporations in control of about 80 percent of the 45,000 contractors employed in U.S. intelligence. The threat from unreliable employees in this multibillion-dollar industry is only getting worse. [WikiLeaks] [Privatisation] [Whistleblower]
Trump stands by wiretapping allegations, tells German leader they have ‘something in common perhaps’
By John Wagner March 17 at 3:56 PM At a joint news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, March 17, President Trump seemed to suggest he stands by his claim that the Obama administration conducted surveillance on his 2016 presidential campaign. He also said he "seldom" regrets any of his tweets. (Reuters) President Trump refused to back off his unfounded allegations that former president Barack Obama last year wiretapped his phones in Trump Tower when asked about the subject during a joint news conference Friday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. After a German reporter asked Trump about the allegations, the president turned to Merkel and said “as far as the wiretapping … by this past administration, at least we have something in common perhaps.” [Trump] [Surveillance
Britain: White House says it won’t repeat claims that a British agency wiretapped Trump
By Karla Adam March 17 at 2:55 PM Spicer repeats claim Obama used British intelligence to spy on Trump Play Video0:35 At the White House briefing, March 16, press secretary Sean Spicer quoted from a Fox News report alleging former president Barack Obama had access to intelligence on President Trump through the GCHQ. In response, the British intelligence agency denied this. (Reuters) LONDON — The British government said Friday that the White House has promised not to repeat claims that Britain’s main surveillance agency spied on Donald Trump, in what appears to be an attempt to smooth ruffled feathers on this side of the Atlantic. The intervention followed an extraordinary statement by the Government Communications Headquarters, the British eavesdropping agency known as GCHQ, which slapped down allegations that the Obama administration used it to spy on Trump. At a news briefing Friday, a spokesman for British Prime Minister Theresa May said: “We have received assurances from the White House that these allegations would not be repeated.” The spokesman would not confirm reports in the British media that the White House had apologized to Britain. [Trump] [Surveillance] [GCHQ]
Is the Vault 7 Source a Whistleblower?
by Jesselyn Radack It is the leakiest of times in the Executive Branch. Last week, Wikileaks published a massive and, by all accounts genuine, trove of documents revealing that the CIA has been stockpiling, and lost control of, hacking tools it uses against targets. Particularly noteworthy were the revelations that the CIA developed a tool to hack Samsung TVs and turn them into recording devices and that the CIA worked to infiltrate both Apple and Google smart phone operating systems since it could not break encryption. No one in government has challenged the authenticity of the documents disclosed. We do not know the identity of the source or sources, nor can we be [CIA] [WikiLeaks] [Whistleblower]
North Korea: The Cyberwar of All against All
They hack us. We hack them. It's a recipe for catastrophe. By John Feffer, March 14, 2017. Originally published in Hankyoreh. The political theorist Thomas Hobbes warned in the 17th century that without the modern state and its sovereign control of territory, humanity would slip back into a state of nature in which violence was uncontrolled and ever-present. “A war of all against all” would break out, he wrote, in which neighbor would turn against neighbor. States would continue to fight one another, but a measure of stability would reign at the level of society. Today, without any international authority to regulate cyberspace, a war of all against all has indeed broken out. Each day there are new headlines about a hacking scandal, a cyberattack against a bank or government institution, or even more serious offensive actions. The United States pioneered this kind of warfare when, during the administration of George W. Bush, it inserted malware into the Iranian nuclear complex that destroyed centrifuges and set back the program. More recently, the United States was on the receiving end of cyberwarfare when hackers, probably at the behest of the Russian government, stole material from the Democratic Party, arranged for its release prior to the 2016 presidential elections, and influenced the outcome in favor of Donald Trump. The latest revelations of cyberware, however, involve North Korea. The New York Times published an article on March 4 claiming that at least some of the many mishaps and failures associated with North Korea’s missile program were the result of a secret U.S. program to thwart launches through electronic means. [Cyberwar]
Guardian promoting GCHQ demand for more internet censorship
In the past year the Guardian has been overtly promoting internet censorship. A while back they uncritically coordinated with Yvette Cooper’s insinuating “take back the internet” programme to make sure we all get “the web we they want”. Last week they uncritically published an opinion piece from Tim Berners-Lee, where he claims we should: …push back against misinformation by encouraging gatekeepers such as Google and Facebook to continue their efforts to combat the problem… While, of course…. …avoiding the creation of any central bodies to decide what is “true” or not. Hmmm…tough thing to achieve you may think. Which is possibly why Tim doesn’t bother to tell us how he thinks it should be done. In fact we can be pretty sure, being a bit of a genius allegedly, Tim knows pretty well that Governments and corporations are so irreversibly intertwined, their policies and goals so similar, that by instructing Facebook to “take measures” you are, in effect, privatising Orwell’s Minitrue, and creating precisely the “central bod[y] to decide what is true or not” that he affects to fear. We cn also be pretty sure that if/when Facebook/Twitter and the rest announce the creation of some new “special department” for further “fact-checking”, people at the Guardian will write editorials congratulating them on saving the internet. That brings us to today. Today the Guardian are – again uncritically – reprinting censorship advocacy, this time by their very close associates GCHQ [Censorship]
- Facebook and Twitter should do more to combat fake news, says GCHQ
  Josh Halliday North of England correspondent Tuesday 14 March 2017 15.27 GMT Last modified on Tuesday 14 March 2017 15.45 GMT Social networks such as Twitter and Facebook should be doing more to combat the emerging threat of fake news, a director of the government’s new National Cyber Security Centre has said. Paul Chichester, the director for operations at the GCHQ-controlled body, said the companies must recognise their “social responsibility” and help tackle misinformation spread by state-backed groups. He said: “We don’t own those platforms, we don’t run them, the industry does. It’s really important that they do recognise they carry some social responsibility. “Technology companies, they’re huge global companies with responsibilities of nation states sometimes to tackle some of these problems.”
Crumbling Monolith Resents an Angry Public
by Kit From the same man who brought us “obviously we’re not propaganda, because sometimes people don’t believe us!” Nick Cohen’s latest column is headlined: Farage meets Assange in a shameless illiberal alliance, but might more properly be entitled “Why I drink more than I used to, and how it’s all your fault.” In it he seeks to conflate everyone he doesn’t understand, everyone he doesn’t like, anyone who disagrees with him and all the idiotic proles who make the wrong decisions, into one vast group of “other”. A mauling, rucking mass of herd like humanity who just aren’t smart enough, or cynical enough, to get on his level and see the way the world works. Bitterness weighs heavy between each word. There are almost audible sighs in the paragraph breaks. He’s a man besieged on all sides by fools, armed with only the double-sided smugness afforded to those who never veer one degree from the middle of the road. About one thing, however, we do (sort of) agree: Nigel Farage’s social call on Julian Assange’s hideaway in the Ecuadorian embassy was a clarifying moment that ought to have flooded light on a dark world. To those who are willing to see, it revealed that far left and far right are now one movement.“ I would almost-semi-begin to agree with the bolded line, with a very important qualification. Namely, I would disregard entirely his use of the word “far”. For one thing, Assange has never displayed any real political loyalty, let alone to the far left, and however conservative and unpleasant Farage maybe…he’s hardly a Nazi. But that’s beside the point – Many people in the alt-news, and some battle-weary mainstreamers like John Pilger, have long said that the left-right paradigm of Western politics is dead. There is no left/right anymore, not in the mainstream. Red and blue don’t apply any longer, they met in the middle and ran together. The slow, deliberate re-medievalisation of society has split us, not into leftists and rightists, but into those inside the castle looking out, and those outside looking in. Communists and fascists and everyone in between united shovelling shit, and angrily braying for change. I’m sure, from Nick Cohen’s seat in the tower, all the peasants look the same. If only they’d understand that this is just the best way of doing things. It’s very telling of the current climate that Farage visiting Assange following the “Vault 7” dump has received more condemnation in the Guardian than any of the content of said leaks, in his column Cohen doesn’t mention them once. Marina Hyde’s toxic little contribution saw fit to be flippant about them (it’s a dreadful article, one that deserves its own reply. Watch this space.). That a prominent political figure should visit a world-famous political activist days AFTER a big leak of incredibly damning CIA files is hardly noteworthy, let alone a sign of conspiracy. It’s possible Farage just popped in to tell Assange his brand of TV, and ask if it’s still safe to drive his BMW. [Media] [Guardian] [Nick Cohen]
In a society of “believers” & “deniers” we all become Inquisitors
by Catte the two minute hate redefined for the Facebook age Light often arises from a collision of opinions, as fire from flint & steel” Benjamin Franklin, 1760 “The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.” John Stuart Mill The “collision of opinion” so endorsed by enlightenment thinkers, is not currently encouraged. If someone says something stupid or blatantly false our first response is no longer to try to prove them wrong – it’s to silence them. To quote Jonathan Pie we focus on “stopping debates instead of winning them.” A good recent example of that is the bizarre trial-by-media of Polish right-wing MEP Janusz Korwin-Mikke. Let’s be clear. JKM seems to hold a pretty reactionary and unpleasant set of views, about women and much else. Speaking as a woman, I’m not a fan of that. Here is the gentleman, talking about the gender pay gap, in the discourse that ignited the current eruption of outrage: His English is broken, his reasoning shaky and his conclusions pretty flawed. He’s a self-created straw man, waiting to be knocked over by any reasonably intelligent or astute opponent. But what has the response in the media been? Yes, that’s right, not a series of rational refutations, but a chorus of offended people hurling abuse and demanding the clown be censored. Piers Morgan, who invited Korwin-Mikke on to Good Morning Britain did little more than exchange playground insults with the man. Korwin-Mikke says his opinions are based on “scientific studies”. Did Morgan bother to ask what these “studies” might be? Did he offer counter-evidence that proves the nonsense Korwin-Mikke is talking? No. He just called him “stupid” and a “sexist pig”. Ok, maybe JKM is both those things, but that’s not the point. If he’s wrong he should be shown to be wrong, with rebuttal, not ad hominem. What Morgan did, and was lauded for, isn’t debate, it’s an ignorant brawl, or the two-minutes hate. The fact the hate-figure on this occasion is some man with unpleasant ideologies and dodgy data does not make it a great day for democracy.[Free speech]
Wikileaks Reveals: CIA’s UMBRAGE Allows Agency to Carry out ‘False Flag’ Cyber Attacks
By Whitney Webb Global Research, March 10, 2017 Mint Press News 7 March 2017 A new release of CIA documents by Wikileaks indicates that the intelligence agency has the means and the intent to mask the cyber-attacks it commits by making them seem as if they originated from a foreign power. Earlier today, Wikileaks once again made headlines following its release of the “largest ever publication of U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) documents.” The massive release – just the first batch in a trove of documents code-named “Vault 7” by Wikileaks – details the CIA’s global covert hacking program and its arsenal of weaponized exploits. While most coverage thus far has focused on the CIA’s ability to infiltrate and hack smartphones, smart TVs and several encrypted messaging applications, another crucial aspect of this latest leak has been skimmed over – one with potentially far-reaching geopolitical implications. According to a Wikileaks press release, the 8,761 newly published files came from the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence (CCI) in Langley, Virginia. The release says that the UMBRAGE group, a subdivision of the center’s Remote Development Branch (RDB), has been collecting and maintaining a “substantial library of attack techniques ‘stolen’ from malware produced in other states, including the Russian Federation.” As Wikileaks notes, the UMBRAGE group and its related projects allow the CIA to misdirect the attribution of cyber attacks by “leaving behind the ‘fingerprints’ of the very groups that the attack techniques were stolen from.” [CIA] [Hacking] [Attribution] [False flag] [Umbrage]
WikiLeaks’ Latest CIA Data Dump Undermines Case Against Russia Election Hack
by Dave Lindorff The so-called Deep State and Democratic Party campaign to demonize Russia for allegedly “hacking the US election,” and delivering the country into the hands of Donald Trump suffered a huge and probably mortal blow this week with the release by WikiLeaks of over 7000 secret CIA documents disclosing secret CIA hacking technologies. The case being made against Russia as being the source of leaked emails of the Democratic National Committee and of Clinton Campaign Chair John Podesta — documents that proved that the DNC had been corrupting the primary process in favor of corporatist candidate Hillary Clinton and undermining the campaign of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, and that also revealed the embarrassing contents of Clinton’s highly paid secret speeches to a number of giant Wall Street banks — had always been tenuous, with no hard evidence ever presented. All the intelligence agencies would say was that they had a “high degree of certainty,” or “strong reason to believe” that the Russians were the source of the deeply damaging documents late in the campaign season. Adding to doubts that Russia had actually hacked the DNC was WikiLeaks itself, which insisted that it had obtained the DNC and Podesta emails not from a hack of computers, but from an internal DNC staffer who actually pulled them off computers with a thumb drive and provided them to the organization — a person later identified as Seth Rich, who was mysteriously murdered on his way home from DNC headquarters in Washington, shot in the back at night in an unsolved case that the local police quickly labeled a “botched burglary,” although nothing was taken from his body by his assailant — not his wallet or watch even. (Wikileaks has offered a $20,000 reward for information that helps solve that uninvestigated case.) But one thing the blame-Russia conspiracy theorists did have going for them was their assertion that the leaked DNC documents contained routing information and ISPs that pointed to Russia as the source of the hacks. [CIA] [Hacking] [Attribution] [DNC]
A Flawed UN Investigation on Syria
March 11, 2017 Exclusive: U.N. investigators increasingly make their conclusions fall in line with Western propaganda, especially on the war in Syria, as occurred in a distorted report about last year’s attack on an aid convoy, explains Gareth Porter. By Gareth Porter The March 1 report by the United Nations’ “Independent International Commission of Inquiry“ asserted that the bloody attack on a humanitarian aid convoy west of Aleppo City on Sept. 19, 2016, was an airstrike by Syrian government planes. But an analysis of the U.N. panel’s report shows that it was based on an account of the attack from the pro-rebel Syrian “White Helmets” civil defense organization that was full of internal contradictions. [Syria] [Propaganda] [UNUS] [White Helmets]
What’s a legitimate news outlet? A new face in the White House press pool raises questions.
By Paul Farhi March 10 at 4:33 PM In an age of partisan media, the lines between “partisan” and “media” can sometimes blur. Case in point: The pool reporter covering Vice President Pence on Thursday — that is, the reporter who supplied details about Pence’s daily activities as proxy for the rest of the press corps — was an employee of the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank. In other words, the news that reporters received about the vice president came from a journalist employed by an organization with a vested interest in the direction of White House and federal policy. The development is unusual; the reporter, Fred Lucas, is the first member of his organization to take on pool reporting duties, which are typically handled on a rotating basis by mainstream news organizations. Lucas also covered Pence as the pooler two weeks ago. [Media] [Hypocrisy]
WikiLeaks pledges to release software code of CIA hacking tools to tech firms
By Ellen Nakashima, Elizabeth Dwoskin and Devlin Barrett March 9 at 3:53 PM WikiLeaks will release to tech firms the software code of CIA hacking tools that were designed to compromise smartphones and other products, the group’s founder said Thursday, attempting to position himself as a defender of cybersecurity and probably further antagonizing the intelligence community. “We have decided to work with” the firms, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said at a news conference, “to give them some exclusive access to the additional technical details we have so that fixes can be developed and pushed out, so that people can be secured.” Once the patches are sent out — or, as Assange put it, “once this material is effectively disarmed by us” — WikiLeaks will release more details publicly, he said. Assange’s remarks come two days after the radical transparency site put up a cache of files describing secret CIA hacking techniques and tools aimed at, for instance, seizing control of iPhones and Google’s Android phones, turning some Samsung television sets into bugging devices and getting data from devices not connected to the Internet. The release stopped short of releasing the code itself. [WikiLeaks] CIA] [Hacking]
US Intelligence Officials: Latest WikiLeaks Drop “Worse Than Snowden” Docs
The documents published by WikiLeaks don’t just endanger current US cyber operations — they provide a blueprint for anyone wanting to exploit the CIA’s cyber capabilities for their own purposes. posted on Mar. 8, 2017, at 2:50 p.m. Sheera Frenkel BuzzFeed News Reporter SAN FRANCISCO — US intelligence officials were panicked that WikiLeaks released a trove of thousands of documents on Tuesday, which claim to expose the tools the CIA uses to hack phones, computers, and other devices. Intelligence officials confirmed to BuzzFeed News that the documents they reviewed appear legitimate, and that they not only put current US cyber operations in danger, but provide a road map for adversaries around the world who want to study US methods and, one day, deploy those methods themselves. [WikiLeaks] [Surveillance]
WikiLeaks says it has obtained trove of CIA hacking tools
WikiLeaks says it has a trove on the CIA’s hacking secrets. Washington Post national security reporter Greg Miller explains what these documents reveal. (Dalton Bennett, Greg Miller/The Washington Post) By Greg Miller and Ellen Nakashima March 7 at 7:01 PM A vast portion of the CIA’s computer hacking arsenal appeared to have been exposed Tuesday by the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks, which posted thousands of files revealing secret cyber-tools used by the agency to convert cellphones, televisions and other ordinary devices into implements of espionage. The trove appeared to lay bare the design and capabilities of some of the U.S. intelligence community’s most closely guarded cyberweapons, a breach that is likely to cause immediate damage to the CIA’s efforts to gather intelligence overseas and place new strain on the U.S. government’s relationship with Silicon Valley giants including Apple and Google. WikiLeaks, which claimed to have gotten the files from a current or former CIA contractor, touted the trove as comparable in scale and significance to the collection of National Security Agency documents exposed by former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden. [CIA] [WikiLeaks] [Whistleblower] [Surveillance] [Espionage]
Let’s Give the CIA the Credit It Deserves. “America’s Fantastic Hacking Achievements”
By Norman Solomon Global Research, March 08, 2017 For months now, our country has endured the tacit denigration of American ingenuity. Countless statements — from elected officials, activist groups, journalists and many others — have ignored our nation’s superb blend of dazzling high-tech capacities and statecraft mendacities. Fortunately, this week the news about release of illuminating CIA documents by WikiLeaks has begun to give adequate credit where due. And not a moment too soon. For way too long, Russia has been credited with prodigious hacking and undermining of democracy in the United States. Many Americans have overlooked the U.S. government’s fantastic hacking achievements. This is most unfair and disrespectful to the dedicated men and women of intelligence services like the CIA and NSA. Far from the limelight, they’ve been working diligently to undermine democracy not just overseas but also here at home. Today, the massive new trove of CIA documents can help to put things in perspective. Maybe now people will grasp that our nation’s undermining of democracy is home-grown and self-actualized. It’s an insult to the ingenious capacities of the United States of America to think that we can’t do it ourselves. [CIA] [Hacking] [WikiLeaks] [Humour]
CIA Leak: “Russian Election Hackers” May Work at Langley (i.e. CIA Headquarters)
By Moon of Alabama Global Research, March 08, 2017 Moon of Alabama Attribution of cyber-intrusions and attacks is nearly impossible. A well executed attack can not be traced back to its culprit. If there are some trails that seem attributable one should be very cautions following them. They are likely faked. Hundreds if not thousands of reports show that this lesson has not been learned. Any attack is attributed to one of a handful of declared “enemies” without any evidence that would prove their actual involvement. Examples: Russian Hackers Blackmail US Liberal Groups After Stealing Emails And Documents, Report Says US officially accuses Russia of hacking DNC and interfering with election Iran hacked an American casino, U.S. says Iran suspected for the attack on the Saudi Aramco North Korea ‘hacks South’s military cyber command’ Official: North Korea behind Sony hack In June 2016 we warned The Next “Russian Government Cyber Attack” May Be A Gulf of Tonkin Fake: All one might see in a [cyber-]breach, if anything, is some pattern of action that may seem typical for one adversary. But anyone else can imitate such a pattern as soon as it is known. That is why there is NEVER a clear attribution in such cases. Anyone claiming otherwise is lying or has no idea what s/he is speaking of. There is now public proof that this lecture in basic IT forensic is correct. [CIA] [Hacking] [Attribution] [False flag]
Vault 7: CIA Hacking Tools Revealed
Press Release Today, Tuesday 7 March 2017, WikiLeaks begins its new series of leaks on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Code-named "Vault 7" by WikiLeaks, it is the largest ever publication of confidential documents on the agency. The first full part of the series, "Year Zero", comprises 8,761 documents and files from an isolated, high-security network situated inside the CIA's Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley, Virgina. It follows an introductory disclosure last month of CIA targeting French political parties and candidates in the lead up to the 2012 presidential election. Recently, the CIA lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal including malware, viruses, trojans, weaponized "zero day" exploits, malware remote control systems and associated documentation. This extraordinary collection, which amounts to more than several hundred million lines of code, gives its possessor the entire hacking capacity of the CIA. The archive appears to have been circulated among former U.S. government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner, one of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive. "Year Zero" introduces the scope and direction of the CIA's global covert hacking program, its malware arsenal and dozens of "zero day" weaponized exploits against a wide range of U.S. and European company products, include Apple's iPhone, Google's Android and Microsoft's Windows and even Samsung TVs, which are turned into covert microphones. Since 2001 the CIA has gained political and budgetary preeminence over the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). The CIA found itself building not just its now infamous drone fleet, but a very different type of covert, globe-spanning force — its own substantial fleet of hackers. The agency's hacking division freed it from having to disclose its often controversial operations to the NSA (its primary bureaucratic rival) in order to draw on the NSA's hacking capacities. [CIA] [Hacking] [Attribution] [WikiLeaks]
COULD CYBER ATTACKS DEFEAT NORTH KOREAN MISSILE TESTS?
Markus Schiller and Peter Hayes March 6, 2017 I. INTRODUCTION This essay by Markus Schiller and Peter Hayes suggests that it is improbable that US cyber attacks were the cause of DPRK intermediate range missile failures as was suggested in a March 6, 2017 New York Times story. Markus Schiller is an aerospace engineer, with rocket analysis experience gained at Schmucker Technologie and RAND. In 2015, he started the rocket and space consulting company ST Analytics in Munich. Peter Hayes is Executive Director of Nautilus Institute and Honorary Professor at the Center for International Security Studies, University of Sydney. [Missiles] [US NK policy] [Cyberwar]
Putin destroyed Russia’s independent press. Trump seems to want the same.
President Donald Trump lashes out at the media during this Feb. 16, 2017, news conference in the East Room of the White House. (Evan Vucci/AP) By Margaret Sullivan Media Columnist March 5 at 3:00 PM Many Americans were appalled when President Trump called the news media “the enemy of the American People.” And rightly so: It’s a phrase out of the autocrats’ handbook. What got less attention was Trump’s answer to Bill O’Reilly of Fox News, who challenged the president about his admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin — given how it’s widely acknowledged that the Russian president has caused the deaths of dissidents and journalists. “He’s a killer,” O’Reilly said. Trump shrugged it off. “There are a lot of killers. We have a lot of killers,” he said. “Well, you think our country is so innocent?” Joel Simon, author and executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, called it “the most chilling statement Trump has made about the media.” [Russia confrontation] [Media] [Trump]
Leaks and unnamed sources fuel media’s plan to destroy Trump
By Michael Goodwin March 5, 2017 | 6:20am Here a Russian story, there a Russian story, everywhere a Russian story — all based on leaks from anonymous sources. You don’t have to be a spook to spot the plan: Destroy Donald Trump by putting him in a bear hug. To judge by their scattershot approach, the conspirators are fishing for a bombshell. The fallback goal is to inflict death by a thousand cuts. Already they’ve gotten one scalp and part of another. Gen. Mike Flynn is gone, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions is wounded. Each made a mistake that obscured a larger truth: Somebody in the government has been spying on Trump’s team and giving top secret information to anti-Trump media outlets. Our president is many things, but dumb he’s not. He recognized the stakes, so yesterday he struck back in a way that dramatically upped the ante in the war over his presidency. Trump’s early-morning tweets accusing President Barack Obama of having wiretapped him at Trump Tower startled the world. It is a sensational claim, but in light of the tsunami of leaks from intelligence agencies, the president is right to suspect that he’s the target of a dirty game. [Trump] [Anti-Trump] [Russia confrontation] [Media]
What’s wrong with ‘alternative facts’?
by Kip Hansen at Climate Etc. the original Wkipedia definition of the phrase “alternative facts”. If you Google the phrase now you will of course find this has been swamped by hits for the alleged gaff made by Trump counsellor KellyAnne Conway. the original Wkipedia definition of the phrase “alternative facts”. If you Google the phrase now you will of course find this has been swamped by hits for the alleged gaff made by Trump counsellor KellyAnne Conway. ‘Alternative facts’ is a term in law to describe inconsistent sets of facts put forth in a court given that there is plausible evidence to support both alternatives. The term is also used to describe competing facts for the two sides of the case. – Wikipedia So . . . what exactly is a ‘fact’? From the Wikipedia: “…A fact is something that has occurred or is correct. Facts may be checked by reason, experiment, personal experience, or may be argued from authority. In the most basic sense, a scientific fact is an objective and verifiable observation, in contrast with a hypothesis or theory, which is intended to explain or interpret facts. With this context, it is not surprising that there are competing ‘facts’ of which their proponents are equally certain. ‘Facts’ are being confused with hypotheses and theories, and too many ‘facts’ are being asserted by authority. So . . . what’s wrong with ‘alternative facts?’ Nothing — absolutely nothing. Quite the opposite, really. Alternative facts are what we use to learn new things about the world around us. Science is the subject of using alternative facts to come to a better understanding. Discovering that there are alternative facts about something – even better, seemingly contradictory facts – is what points us to an area of study that promises the reward of new insights into the natural world.
Human Rights Watch accuses Duterte of instigating killing in 'cold blood'
The watchdog group said the Philippine president's public exhortations to kill drug suspects could make him liable for extrajudicial killings by police March 2, 2017 —A new report by Human Rights Watch accuses the Philippine National Police of falsifying evidence to justify unlawful killings of suspected drug dealers and users as part of president Rodrigo Duterte’s signature war on drugs. The president and other senior officials have “instigated and incited” extrajudicial killings in a campaign that could amount to crimes against humanity, said the watchdog group, which called on the United Nations to launch an investigation into the deaths of more than 7,000 people. The report is among the sharpest international condemnations of Mr. Duterte’s war on drugs to emerge thus far, detailing a wide range of alleged National Police abuses and placing the blame ultimately at the feet of Duterte. [Duterte] [HRW] [China confrontation]
And the Oscar for Best Documentary Short goes to…”ISIS – Al Qaeda”
By Alex Christoforou, Vanessa Beeley, Eva Bartlett, and Patrick Henningsen Global Research, February 27, 2017 The Duran, RT News 27 February 2017 If there were any doubts that the Oscars were merely a political tool wielded by the globalist elite, doubt no more. It should come as no surprise that a film celebrating the White Helmets scooped up an Oscar for best short documentary. Might as well hand the Oscar to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Far from a humanitarian organisation, the White Helmets are an Al Qaeda staffed propaganda group that is embedded with brutal jihadists looking to overthrow the sovereign government of Syria. [White Helmets] [IO] [Propaganda]
Published on February 28, 2017 Guardian now fan-worshipping Bush Jr? Oh, the humanity
We have a theory there is a mole somewhere in the Scott Trust (Ltd). A deep infiltration agent from the Old Left, who remembers the days when the Graun at least pretended to have a moral compass, and who is exacting a terrible revenge for the paper’s slide into neoliberalism by forcing it to become its own parody account. How else, really, to explain much of its recent output, culminating in this editorial from today? Yes, it’s real. The Guardian is – really – going out there on that limb, suggesting Dubya is now pretty fine, just because he isn’t Trump: “ His defence today of a free press (“indispensable”), his call for a “lawful, welcoming” immigration policy and his preference for “answers” in the scandal engulfing Donald Trump’s team over Moscow’s meddling in the presidential election may mark a turning point for Republicans We have to wonder, who else is going to get rehabilitated now on the basis of not being Trump? Maybe this will be next week’s “Guardian View”? [Guardian] [George W Bush] [Trump] [Goebbels]

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FEBRUARY 2017

Human Rights Watch Cites Al Qaeda and Collaborators in Latest Syria Report
On the heels of Amnesty International’s admittedly and entirely fabricated report regarding Syria’s Saydnaya prison, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has published its own baseless report on Syria – this one regarding alleged chlorine bomb attacks in Aleppo during the city’s liberation late last year. In a post on HRW’s website titled, “Syria: Coordinated Chemical Attacks on Aleppo,” it claims: Syrian government forces conducted coordinated chemical attacks in opposition-controlled parts of Aleppo during the final month of the battle for the city, Human Rights Watch said today. However, when qualifying HRW’s accusations, it admits: Through phone and in-person interviews with witnesses and analysis of video footage, photographs, and posts on social media, Human Rights Watch documented government helicopters dropping chlorine in residential areas on at least eight occasions between November 17 and December 13, 2016. The attacks, some of which included multiple munitions, killed at least nine civilians, including four children, and injured around 200. Watching the videos and viewing the photographs reveals that none of them actually link any of the alleged “chlorine attacks” to Syrian forces, or even to chlorine itself. The body of evidence presented by HRW also reveals that the interviews they conducted with alleged “witnesses” included almost exclusively opposition forces. Among them were the US-UK funded White Helmets – referred to disingenuously as “Syria Civil Defense” in HRW’s report – who served as designated terrorist organization Jabhat Al Nusra auxiliaries, often found on the battlefield shoulder-to-shoulder with armed militants. http://journal-neo.org/2017/02/26/human-rights-watch-cites-al-qaeda-and-collaborators-in-latest-syria-report/ [Syria] [cbw] [HRW]
How the everyday use of militaristic jargon makes us more combative
Nan Levinson 24 February 2017 The language of violence pervades our discourse, even when we’re not talking about war. This article was first published on Waging Nonviolence. “War is merely the continuation of politics by other means,” wrote the Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz. Lately, it’s been sounding like the other way around. That’s not likely to change soon, since the language of warfare and violence pervades Americans’ discourse, even when we’re not talking about war. But as we struggle to come to terms with what wasn’t heard during the campaign, we need also to reckon with what was. “The country has descended into full partisan battle mode,” proclaimed the Washington Post in typical campaign coverage, while journalism sites warned against relying on such warlike clichés. Warn away; they were everywhere. [Militarisation]
The Mexican Origins of North Korea’s Latest YouTube Channel
By Martyn Williams 22 February 2017 A YouTube account that began livestreaming North Korean television last week is part of network of social media sites that have amassed millions of views for North Korean propaganda and appear to be based in Mexico. The new YouTube channel, called “KCTV – Choson TV,” was created on February 6, 2017, and has already livestreamed several hours of Korean Central Television. Each broadcast is labeled as a “test,” and it’s unknown if the livestream will become a regular service, but one thing is for sure: it’s not coming from Pyongyang. At the top of the page, it carries the “Korean Central Television” name and several photos from behind the scenes at the TV propaganda outlet. No doubt, they are meant to infer it’s an official YouTube outlet. The YouTube page is linked to a Facebook page called “Choson TV – Korean Central Television«????????».” The same Facebook page used to promote a different YouTube channel called “KoreanCentralTV1,” but that was deleted by YouTube on November 21, 2016. [Propaganda] [Censorship] [Double standards]
Information Penetration and Government Control in North Korea
The US-Korea Institute at SAIS and Intermedia present Date and Time March 1, 2017 10:00 am - 11:30 am Reservations Reservations are required; fill out form below. Information Penetration and Government Control in North Korea Wednesday, March 1, 2017 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM SAIS Kenney Auditorium 1740 Massachusetts Ave. NW Washington, DC 20036 The US-Korea Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and InterMedia invite you to attend a discussion on the state of North Korean information and media environment, as well as new efforts by the government to control what information citizens can access in North Korea. The discussion will be based on the InterMedia’s newest report, Compromising Connectivity: Information Dynamics Between the State and Society in a Digitizing North Korea, which is a follow-up to an earlier report, A Quiet Opening. Presentation of Findings ?Nat Kretchun, Author of Compromising Connectivity; Deputy Director at Open Technology Fund Discussion on Information Dynamics in North Korea ?Seamus Tuohy, Co-author of Compromising Connectivity; Principle Consultant at Prudent Innovation ?Markus Garlauskas, Senior National Intelligence Officer on the National Intelligence Council (Invited) Moderator: Jenny Town, Assistant Director of the US-Korea Institute, Johns Hopkins SAIS [Subversion]
North Korean university recruits English teachers
Posted : 2017-02-20 15:03Updated : 2017-02-20 15:03 By Lee Han-soo Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), North Korea's first privately funded university, is recruiting English teachers. The school is receiving applications from candidates in dozens of countries, many of which are ironically non-English speaking countries such as South Korea, China and Japan.
CNN using intentionally misleading headlines (again)
This is CNN’s latest article on the all ways Trump is allegedly linked to Russia, Russian spies and Vladimir Putin. Above, a screen-grab of their headline. It seems intercepted communications show that members of Trump’s campaign were “in contact” with Russian officials. This is shocking and treason and stuff, so the CNN brought in “intelligence experts” to analyse what all this could mean. It’s all very serious. Buried half-way through the story is this: “ Officials emphasized that communications between campaign staff and representatives of foreign governments are not unusual. “Not unusual”. So what it could mean…is nothing. So that’s that then. [Russia confrontation] [Media]
- Trump aides were in constant touch with senior Russian officials during campaign
  By Pamela Brown, Jim Sciutto and Evan Perez, CNN Updated 0337 GMT (1137 HKT) February 16, 2017 Story highlights The communications stood out to investigators due to the frequency and the level of the Trump advisers involved Investigators have not reached a judgment on the intent of those conversations (CNN) — High-level advisers close to then-presidential nominee Donald Trump were in constant communication during the campaign with Russians known to US intelligence, multiple current and former intelligence, law enforcement and administration officials tell CNN. President-elect Trump and then-President Barack Obama were both briefed on details of the extensive communications between suspected Russian operatives and people associated with the Trump campaign and the Trump business, according to US officials familiar with the matter. Both the frequency of the communications during early summer and the proximity to Trump of those involved "raised a red flag" with US intelligence and law enforcement, according to these officials. The communications were intercepted during routine intelligence collection targeting Russian officials and other Russian nationals known to US intelligence. Among several senior Trump advisers regularly communicating with Russian nationals were then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort and then-adviser Michael Flynn. Officials emphasized that communications between campaign staff and representatives of foreign governments are not unusual. However, these communications stood out to investigators due to the frequency and the level of the Trump advisers involved. Investigators have not reached a judgment on the intent of those conversations. [Russia confrontation] [Media] [Anti-Trump]
Charlie Chan and the Orientalist Exception
Haiyan Lee February 15, 2017 Of the dozens of Charlie Chan films made in the U.S., only one is set in the fictional detective’s putative homeland. Released in 1935, Charlie Chan in Shanghai makes much of the “homecoming” aspect of Chan’s arrival on the scene, beginning with a characteristically sing-song remark by the grammatically challenged detective: “Most anxious to renew acquaintance with land of honorable ancestors.” The plot, however, unfolds in a fashion typical to the series, which features the peripatetic detective solving criminal cases in a smorgasbord of familiar and exotic locations. Nonetheless, this film casts into relief a contradiction underlying the entire Charlie Chan franchise: Here, a soft-spoken, diffident, and roly-poly “Chinaman” is cast in the role of the classic detective hero in pursuit of a band of white miscreants in the notorious Shanghai badlands. He accomplishes the mission with a minimum of gumshoeing, but evidently a great deal of ratiocination and cunning, all the while disarming and mystifying those around him with his aphoristic circumlocutions. This article seeks to make sense of the enigma of Charlie Chan by situating him at the intersection of critical legal studies, genre studies, cognitive psychology, and postcolonial critique. It contends that Chan is more than a shameful chapter in the history of American racism and Orientalism, rather a product of the legal Orientalist imagination’s exploitation of a peculiar genre schema of detective fiction. As such, he is a figure of ambivalence, equivocation, and exception. On the one hand, Chan fits the stereotype of the maverick detective who must operate within the penumbra of formal judicial apparatuses—in the zone of the exception—in order to match wits with the master criminal. On the other hand, it is his “race” that reifies the power of the exception, making him the unctuous alter ego of the insidious criminal mastermind Dr. Fu Manchu. Building on the works of Luc Boltanski, Judith Shklar, Teemu Ruskola, and others, I propose to see Chan as an auratic figure that feeds on the anxiety engendered by law’s inevitable intercourse with the extra-legal and its inadequacy in relation to or non-identity with justice. I invoke two examples from the Chan repertoire, one novel and one film, primarily for the purpose of illustrating my arguments rather than offering new readings of them: The House without a Key (1925) and Charlie Chan in Shanghai. [Orientalism] [Racism] [Detective story]
Amnesty International Stokes Syrian War
February 11, 2017 The West’s vast propaganda machine has pulled in many formerly respectable groups, such as Amnesty International, which just released a dubious “human rights” report aimed at stoking the war in Syria, reports Rick Sterling. By Rick Sterling Amnesty International (AI) has done some good investigations and reports over the years, which has won the group widespread support. However, less well recognized, Amnesty International has also carried out faulty investigations with bloody and disastrous consequences. U.S.-backed Syrian “moderate” rebels smile as they prepare to behead a 12-year-old boy (left), whose severed head is held aloft triumphantly in a later part of the video. [Screenshot from the YouTube video] One prominent example is in Iraq, where AI “corroborated” the false story that Iraqi soldiers were stealing incubators from Kuwait, leaving babies to die on the cold floor. The deception was planned and carried out in Washington to influence the U.S. public and Congress. [Amnesty International] [Propaganda] [Syria]
Amnesty International Admits Syrian "Saydnaya" Report Fabricated Entirely in UK
February 9, 2017 (Tony Cartalucci - LD) - Amnesty International's 48 page report titled, "Syria: Human Slaughterhouse: Mass Hangings and Extermination at Saydnaya Prison, Syria," boasts bold claims, concluding: ...the Syrian authorities’ violations at Saydnaya amount to crimes against humanity. Amnesty International urgently calls for an independent and impartial investigation into crimes committed at Saydnaya. However, even at a cursory glance, before even reading the full body of the report, under a section titled, "Methodology," Amnesty International admits it has no physical evidence whatsoever to substantiate what are admittedly only the testimony of alleged inmates and former workers at the prison, as well as figures within Syria's opposition. [Syria] [Amnesty International] [War crimes] [Evidence] [Propaganda]
Hearsay Extrapolated - Amnesty Claims Mass Executions In Syria, Provides Zero Proof
A new Amnesty International report claims that the Syrian government hanged between 5,000 and 13,000 prisoners in a military prison in Syria. The evidence for that claim is flimsy, based on hearsay of anonymous people outside of Syria. The numbers themselves are extrapolations that no scientist or court would ever accept. It is tabloid reporting and fiction style writing from its title "Human Slaughterhouse" down to the last paragraph. But the Amnesty report is still not propagandish enough for the anti-Syrian media. Inevitably only the highest number in the range Amnesty claims is quoted. For some even that is not yet enough. The Associate Press agency, copied by many outlets, headlines: Report: At least 13,000 hanged in Syrian prison since 2011: BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian authorities have killed at least 13,000 people since the start of the 2011 uprising in mass hangings at a prison north of Damascus known to detainees as "the slaughterhouse," Amnesty International said in a report Tuesday. How does "at least 13,000" conforms to an already questionable report which claims "13,000" as the top number of a very wide range? [Syria] [Executions] [Evidence]
All the News That Fits the Agenda: Mainstream journalists have betrayed their calling
Philip Giraldi • February 7, 2017 The Editorial page of The Washington Post newspaper generally holds to its current progressive-dominated program consisting of anti-racism, pro-diversity plus multiculturalism, “choice,” LGBTQ “rights,” and, ironically, constant war. It is not noted for its sense of humor except on Saturday morning when it runs a number of cartoons ridiculing Donald Trump. All of which contributed to my surprise when I read a piece on January 29th penned by no less than Fred Hiatt, the Editorial and opinion pages editor. Fred, a Harvard graduate, of course, has been around at The Post since 2000. His foreign policy is pure John McCain and his domestic policy is Elizabeth Warren. Apparently kicking around people overseas is okay while in the United States white male Christian heterosexuals in particular can be targeted with impunity, but no one else. Hiatt’s piece entitled “Trump considers the media his enemy. We shouldn’t treat him as ours” is the type of faux high-minded nonsense that one expects from the new breed of journalist that considers that reporting a story is not enough. For them, it is far more important to actually be the story through selective use of available information and the random insertion of opinion disguised as fact. But back to Hiatt’s clearly robust sense of humor. He cited presidential adviser Stephen Bannon’s labeling the media the “opposition party,” noting that press-phobia is not exactly unusual for any White House, but warning “it is vital that we not become that party.” Rather than take on the Administration aggressively by exposing its lies, shutting it out or “be[ing] the voice of the other side,” the media should not “answer dishonest or partisan journalism” with “more partisan journalism, which would only harm our credibility.” Hiatt’s answer to the “dishonest or partisan” journalism problem is “professionalism: to do your jobs according to the highest standards, as always.” He then adds “So far, I believe The Post has been setting the standard in this difficult job. It is not boasting for me to say so…” Regarding his own particularly bailiwick the “opinion side of the house…it is important to maintain a thoughtful perspective.” Fred Hiatt cites a number of examples of Trump’s failings, including how, regarding immigration, “favoring one religion over another…defaces our democracy.” Surely Hiatt is aware that in practice immigration into the U.S. has frequently favored one religion or nationality or culture over others. During the past 50 years it has worked favorably for Cubans, Irishmen and Vietnamese Christians. Russian Jews benefited particularly as they were admitted as refugees under the 1975 Jackson-Vanik Amendment even though they were not notably persecuted and only had to prove that they were Jewish. Jackson-Vanik was one of the first public assertions of neoconism, having reportedly been drafted in the office of Senator Henry Jackson by no less than Richard Perle and Ben Wattenberg. Its provision favoring Jews was expanded by the 1990 Lautenberg Amendment which widened the field to include Iranian Jews. As refugees instead of immigrants they received welfare, health insurance, job placement, English language classes, and the opportunity to apply for U.S. citizenship after only five years. Hiatt’s apparent ignorance about how his Russian-Jewish neocon buddies like Max Boot arrived here is particularly noted as he is also Jewish. And Boot is far from alone. Steve Sailer reports that journalist Julia Ioffe, who complains regularly about American racism, Vladimir Putin and also Donald Trump, entered the U.S. under the Russian-Jewish waiver in 1990, bringing 60 of her family members along with her. One suspects that selective immigration policies are okay for Fred when it is one’s own tribe but immoral when it somehow involves Donald Trump. Hiatt’s editorial page has also roundly condemned Donald Trump for his decision to restrict immigration from seven Muslim majority countries, conveniently ignoring the fact that President Barack Obama first came up with the exact same list of Muslim countries for special vetting in the December 2015 Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act. [Media] [Hypocrisy]
New Adventures of “North Korean Hackers”
06.02.2017 Author: Konstantin Asmolov Against the backdrop of the scandalous stories about Russian hackers, the author returns to the topic of North Korean hackers seeing as the body evidence for charges in both cases is characterized by quasi arguments.675445345234 The story began with an ordinary list of scandalous news in March 2016, when the South Korean intelligence service reported an attempt to hack the network managing the transportation system made by hackers from the DPRK. On May 12, 2016, the web site of South Korea’s Air Forces suffered a cyber attack. They failed to prove the guilt of Pyongyang based on the preliminary results of investigation, but “its involvement could not be ruled out”. On the same day, the South Korean military and industrial companies and arms trading agents received emails with a computer virus allegedly sent from the address of the Defense Acquisition Program Administration. In late May 2016, the DPRK was charged with the involvement in the scandalous theft of 81 million dollars from the Central Bank of Bangladesh. The attack took place on February 4-5, when the Bangladeshi regulator was not working. In general, the malefactors planned to steal $951 million, but the withdrawal of the major part of funds was prevented. According to The New York Times that referred to the experts of the Symantec Company, there was irrefutable evidence that a series of hacker attacks on banks, as a result of which at least $ 81 million was stolen, was organized by one group. The code used by the criminals resembled the program used by the computer trespassers during the attack on Sony Pictures in 2014, as well as on the South Korean banks and media companies in 2013. [Hacking]
U.S. military scrambles to explain why it posted a 10-year-old video to show its Yemen raid was a success
By Dan Lamothe February 3 The U.S. military released a compendium of jihadi video Friday that it said showed “the sort of intelligence information” Navy SEALs seized in a deadly Jan. 29 raid in Yemen. There was just one problem: The clip included 10-year-old footage. The video was released to the media midday as U.S. military officials said it was obtained in the search of a compound operated by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), a terrorist group that has previously planned attacks in Western nations. “The videos released today are samples of a series of detailed, do-it-yourself lessons intended for aspiring terrorist bomb-makers and included an exhortation to use those techniques to attack the West,” U.S. Central Command officials said in a news release. “The full-length videos, from which these clips were extracted, were taken from a computer seized by U.S. Special Operations service members during the raid.” Air Force Col. John J. Thomas, a U.S. Central Command spokesman, said the video was taken down based on the reaction it received through social media. One clip in particular was previously published in 2007. The Pentagon had scheduled a 2 p.m. news briefing to discuss the raid, but canceled it after realizing the problem with the video, which already had aired on cable television news broadcasts and circulated online. [Propaganda]
Why does Japanese embassy 'act as a spy'?
By Wang Xiaohui China.org.cn, February 4, 2017 On Jan. 29, the second day of China's Lunar New Year, The Times, a British national newspaper, published a report entitled "Rifkind a stooge in secret PR war on China," saying that the Henry Jackson Society (HJS), a U.K. think tank, is paid a total of 15,000 pounds per month by the Japanese embassy in the U.K. to voice opposition to Chinese foreign policy. Former British Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind was approached by HJS and served as a stooge in this disgraceful deal. According to the report, a provisional proposal wanted the think tank to deliver a "communications strategy" for the embassy at a cost of 15,000 pounds per month. Written in early 2016, the proposal aimed to engage U.K. journalists and high-level politicians, including members of the Commons foreign affairs select committee, to focus on "the threat to western strategic interests posed by Chinese expansionism." It added that "as part of delivering the 'threat' message, we will have to counter the growing belief, particularly in the U.K. Treasury, that Chinese inward investment can provide the answer to the U.K.'s infrastructure problems." Chinese people who were celebrating the Spring Festival might have missed the report, but the problems it revealed are deep. Why does the Japanese embassy fund the spreading of anti-Chinese propaganda? [China confrontation] [Japan] [Front]
Misreporting Iraq and Syria
by Patrick Cockburn The nadir of Western media coverage of the wars in Iraq and Syria has been the reporting of the siege of East Aleppo, which began in earnest in July and ended in December, when Syrian government forces took control of the last rebel-held areas and more than 100,000 civilians were evacuated. During the bombardment, TV networks and many newspapers appeared to lose interest in whether any given report was true or false and instead competed with one another to publicise the most eye-catching atrocity story even when there was little evidence that it had taken place. NBC news reported that more than forty civilians had been burned alive by government troops, vaguely sourcing the story to ‘the Arab media’. Another widely publicised story – it made headlines everywhere from the Daily Express to the New York Times – was that twenty women had committed suicide on the same morning to avoid being raped by the arriving soldiers, the source in this case being a well-known insurgent, Abdullah Othman, in a one-sentence quote given to the Daily Beast. [Media] [Aleppo] [UNUS]
Review: J. M. Lee’s “The Boy Who Escaped Paradise”
by Charles R. Larson February 3, 2017 Although we in the West know little about the Hermit Kingdom, I suspect that our governments have shaped much of what we believe we know. That remark is not to imply that life in North Korea is open, free, or even comfortable for most of its people. It’s simply that our sources are so limited and appear to focus, mostly, on the nuclear capability of its regime, now in its third generation. The opposite (what they understand about us) is equally true. Remember the Onion’s cover shortly after Kim Jong Un assumed power? The satirical publication identified him as the world’s most handsome man. And—and this is what is important—he apparently fell for the prank. Each side’s understanding of the other’s has been a disaster, though we can certainly point out numerous reasons why this has been so. Besides the East/West limitations, South Korean novelist, J. M. Lee, may also be contributing to the misunderstanding between the two Koreas, especially various stereotypes each has of the other. That is not necessarily a bad thing for fiction to do because there is plenty to admire in his novel, The Boy Who Escaped Paradise, particularly its suspense; yet I oddly couldn’t get Lisbeth Salander’s struggle against various evil forces out of my mind when I observed the antics, the obstacles, and the ruses Gilmo (Lee’s main character) employs to, ultimately, reach his success. Success might be defined here in the usual Western way: money, even though Gilmo appears to be uninterested in getting financial stability. But I don’t want to give away that much of the story’s outcome. [Propaganda]
US Peace Council press conference on visit to Syria
Sep 14, 2016 [Syria] [EWA]
Japan's alleged anti-China diplomatic scandal despicable
Xinhua, February 2, 2017 Ten thousand pounds per month. That's the money the Japanese Embassy in London has been paying to a British think tank for its work to hype up China threat and propagate against China-UK relations, said a Sunday Times report. As an official representative of a sovereign country in Britain, the Japanese Embassy's act, if proved to be true, is surprising and despicable. In this alleged diplomatic scandal, the embassy has hired the Henry Jackson Society (HJS), a right-wing think tank, to encourage high-level British politicians and journalists to "voice opposition to Chinese foreign policy." A recent example is an article published in August 2016 questioning China's involvement in Britain's Hinkley Point C nuclear plant. Former British Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind has confirmed that he had been approached by the HJS to put his name to the article. Fear over China's rapid development and its sound relations with Britain has been seen as a major motive behind the Japanese Embassy's indecent campaign against its neighbor. But such a trick will neither help Japan, whose economy is struggling, nor deter China's growing ties with Western countries. It only reveals a serious deficiency in Tokyo's self-confidence. Meanwhile, one cannot help wondering if there are other Japanese embassies that are working on similar projects to tarnish the image of China. Since the disclosure of the allegations, the Japanese government and media as well as the embassy in London have chosen to remain silent. Silence is by no means gold in this case. It probably means embarrassment. The trick carried out by the HJS did not work. The British government gave the green light to the Hinkley Point C project. It is a sign of bilateral confidence in and mutual commitment to a "golden era" of Britain's post-Brexit relations with China. For the HJS, which poses as "a policy shaping force fighting for the principles of free society," its involvement in this money-driven trick is a slap on its own face. {China confrontation] [Japan] [Front]
A Serious Human Rights Negotiation with North Korea
By Roberta Cohen 01 February 2017 Open hand raised, North Korea flag paintedNorth Korea’s accelerated nuclear weapons development and threats to test inter-continental ballistic missiles to target American cities have prompted calls to the Trump administration to initiate negotiations on denuclearization.[1],[2] But denuclearization talks alone will not be sufficient. The threat to the United States emanates not only from North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction but also from the nature of the regime. A nuclear empowered country with North Korea’s unparalleled human rights record is a danger to the rest of the world. If a denuclearization agreement is to inspire confidence and trust, it would have to be matched by efforts to mitigate serious human rights abuses at the foundation of the regime. During the Cold War, the United States did not limit its discussions with the USSR to one subject—arms reduction. Instead, it insisted upon an expanded information flow between the communist bloc and the West and a more open society; and advocated for core human rights concerns—Soviet Jewish emigration, the protection of Pentecostals and other Christians, the release of political dissidents, the unification of families and the formation of human rights organizations to monitor the Helsinki Final Act. It raised these concerns in bilateral discussions and in the multilateral Helsinki process. [Human rights] [Softwar] [US NK policy] [Manipulation]

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JANUARY 2017

Japan pays British think tank to propagate against China
Xinhua, January 30, 2017 Japan has been paying 10,000 pounds per month to a British think tank to hype up "China threat" among British high-level politicians, local media reported Sunday. A detailed report carried out by The Sunday Times said that the Japanese Embassy in London reached a deal with the Henry Jackson Society (HJS), a registered charity, to wage a propaganda campaign against China. It said that the deal was reached in response to growing cooperation between China and Britain. This weekend, the former British foreign secretary Malcolm Rifkind acknowledged that the HJS, founded in 2005, had approached him to put his name to an article published by the Daily Telegraph last August expressing concerns about China's involvement in Britain's Hinkley Point C nuclear plant. The article, titled "How China could switch off Britain's lights in a crisis if we let them build Hinkley C", raised fears that "no one knows what 'blackdoor' technologies might be able to be introduced into the building of a power plant." The Sunday Times said Japan's secret PR (public relations) war on China reflects Tokyo's concerns about the "golden decade" of Sino-British cooperation. The HJS has not responded to Xinhua's interview request. [China confrontation] [Japan] [Think tank] [Front]
Libyan Labels: a journey through the Guardian’s coverage of the Libyan disaster
by Ricardo Vaz from InvestigAction In this analysis we examine Libya’s recent history looking through the eyes of the Guardian, the flagship of liberal western outlets, and its reporting. As with most other western media, the Guardian was an enthusiastic supporter of the NATO intervention that overthrew Gaddafi and threw the country into the disaster that we are about to describe. Faithful to western interests then, the Guardian remains faithful afterwards as well. But imperial designs are laden with contradictions and sometimes drastically change course, but the Guardian dutifully follows. More interestingly, in light of the complex Libyan situation, the Guardian resorts to labels, adjectives, to distinguish the “good” (i.e. western-supported) actors from the “bad” ones. And as western powers stumble from one strategy to the next, these labels change accordingly. [Libya] [Guardian] [Media]
How Tulsi Gabbard became Assad’s mouthpiece in Washington
By Josh Rogin Global Opinions January 29 at 7:46 PM ? The Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria has had a quiet but well-funded lobbying effort in Washington since well before he began murdering his own people. But that influence campaign’s clearest triumph came only this month, when it succeeded in bringing Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) to Damascus and having her parrot Assad’s propaganda on her return. Gabbard was not the first U.S. elected official to meet Assad. In the early years of Assad’s presidency, several senior U.S. lawmakers publicly traveled to see the young English-speaking optometrist-turned-ruler, in the hope that he might be a reformer, break with Iran and even make peace with Israel. Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) visited Assad in 2007. Then-Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) led a delegation in 2009. [EWA] [Syria] [Propaganda] [Media]
N. Korea behind spread of malicious code posing as news on scandal
North Korea was behind the spread of malicious codes through e-mails in November posing as news reports on the influence-peddling scandal involving President Park Geun-hye, police said Wednesday, The National Police Agency said the Internet Protocol (IP) address used by the first sender was found to be located in Pyongyang. Attached to the e-mail was a file entitled "A worrying Republic of Korea." Inside the document was content related to the scandal on Park and her confidante Choi Soon-sil. Once a user opens the document, the program installs itself in the target computer and leeches information. The hackers used a proxy server provided from the United States, according to the cyber investigation division. [Cyberwar] [Attribution] [North Wind] [Choi Sun-sil]
When the blood is a lie
by BlackCatte On December 26 the UK Independent revealed that five people had been arrested in Egypt for faking footage of civilian suffering in east Aleppo. The Indy commented: Five people in Port Said allegedly making fake videos purporting to show the wreckage of air strikes in the Syrian city of Aleppo have been arrested, the Egyptian Interior Ministry has said. The videographer, his assistants and the parents of two children who appear in the footage were detained after police managed to trail the would-be camera crew to a building site awaiting demolition, a statement on Monday said. The team reportedly admitted they had planned to distribute their work on social media, pretending it showed scenes of the injured and destruction in Aleppo, the embattled northern Syrian city which has just fallen back under government control after four years of fighting between the regime and Sunni rebels. The footage in question was widely discussed in non-western outlets. According to Sputnik: [Propaganda]
Alexander Soros Donates $500,000 for Crisis Group Fellowships on the Economics of Conflict
The International Crisis Group is pleased to announce the launch of a new initiative on the Economics of Conflict, made possible by an initial challenge grant of $500,000 from Alexander Soros. This gift will strengthen Crisis Group’s capacity to address both the political and economic factors that can increase the risk of deadly conflict. [Soros] [NGO] [Softwar]
Julian Assange and Sean Hannity exaggerate media ‘collusion’
By Callum Borchers January 4 at 12:56 PM WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange agrees with Sean Hannity's assessment that the media colluded with Hillary Clinton throughout the 2016 presidential election. He must not have read his own website's disclosures very carefully. In an interview that aired Tuesday night on Fox News, Assange called the media “dishonest” (Donald Trump's favorite label) and “ethically corrupt,” and he endorsed Hannity's claim that WikiLeaks had revealed a press corps secretly in cahoots with Clinton when it published hacked emails belonging to Democrats. “They're colluding, yes,” Assange said of the media and Clinton, adding that he believes the arrangement worked like this: “You rub my back; I'll rub yours.” The trouble for Assange and Hannity is that the emails published by WikiLeaks during the campaign didn't really support such a breathless conclusion. [US_Election16] [Media]
“Repeater Journalism” versus the Biggest Underreported Stories of 2016
By Eresh Omar Jamal Global Research, January 04, 2017 “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society…is the true ruling power…we are governed, our minds are moulded, our tastes formed…it is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.” Thus wrote Edward Bernays in his book Propaganda, the nephew of Sigmund Freud and the father of modern propaganda, at whose suggestion, the United States’ War Department, at the time called the National Military Establishment, was renamed the Department of Defence in 1949. In the ‘age of the corporate media’, where 90 percent of the American media is owned by six corporations — General Electric, News Corp., Disney, Viacom, Time Warner and CBS — down from 50 back in 1983, it is not difficult to understand how what the majority of the ‘public see and doesn’t see’ depends and is controlled by the agenda of a small number of corporations and ultimately, by those who control them. This is especially the case as it is also the ‘age of the repeater journalists’. Where you have the majority of mainstream journalists worldwide simply ‘repeating the narrative’ portrayed in the powerful quarters of the world media, namely the Western (American) media, and the information they receive from the biggest news agencies (Western mostly), instead of doing their job — ‘questioning what happened’ and ‘investigating how’ it did. When such impervious power rests in the hands of a handful of individuals, you will of course have a select number of stories being regularly reported by the media. And some stories, never. So what were some of those stories worthy of being covered in the news that were not? Well one of them is related to the story perhaps most covered in the world media — the US elections. Or rather one who contested the elections — Hillary Rodham Clinton. Throughout 2016, as she was campaigning to become the next US President, Wikileaks constantly proved to be a thorn in her side. But the revelations made public by Wikileaks have largely gone unreported in the mainstream press. And one of the main reasons is because they involved the media itself. For example, according to Wikileaks, 65 mainstream reporters were working “hand-in-glove with the Hillary Clinton campaign to rig the US elections” (Wikileaks exposes secret list of 65 mainstream media reporters who are part of the Clinton mafia, The Duran, October 28, 2016). And for those who find it hard to believe that she, or the Democratic Party itself, would dare to do something so un-democratic, 20,000 e-mails released by Wikileaks also showed how the Democratic Party worked against Bernie Sanders and “derailed his campaign” (Wikileaks Proves Primary Was Rigged: DNC Undermined Democracy, The Observer, July 22, 2016). Despite the near media blackout, the incident was so scandalous that the Democratic National Committee Chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, was quietly forced to step down from her position. [Media]
The Top Ten Under-Reported News Stories of 2016
By Neil Clark Global Research, January 04, 2017 Sputnik 3 January 2017 What would George Orwell have made of 2016? Some of the biggest news stories of the year, promoted by pro-Establishment media, were either false, such as the claims made in December that a ‘Holocaust’ was taking place in eastern Aleppo, or not backed up by any hard evidence, such as the allegations that Russia interfered in the US election. Ironically, these stories were pushed most aggressively by media outlets that expressed the most concern about ‘fake news’ and the urgent need to take action against it! At the same time some very important real news was either ignored altogether — or given only the scantiest coverage. Here are ten of the biggest under-reported news stories of 2016. I’ll leave you to come to your own conclusions as to why they didn’t get the coverage they should have. [Media]
We Do Not Live in “Post Truth” World, We Live in a World of Lies and We Always Have
by Robert Fisk December 30, 2016 We do not live in a “post-truth” world, neither in the Middle East nor in the West – nor in Russia, for that matter. We live in a world of lies. And we always have lived in a world of lies. Just take a look at the wreckage of the Middle East with its history of people’s popular republics and its hateful dictators. They feast on dishonesty, although they all – bar the late Muammar al-Gaddafi – demand regular elections to make-believe their way back to power. Now, I suppose, it is we who have regular elections based on lies. So maybe Trump and the Arab autocrats will get on rather well. Trump already likes Field Marshal/President al-Sissi of Egypt, and he’s already got a golf course in Dubai. That he deals in lies, that he manufactures facts, should make him quite at home in the Middle East. Misogyny, bullying, threats to political opponents, authoritarianism, tyranny, torture, sneers at minorities: it’s part and parcel of the Arab world. And look at Israel. The new US ambassador-to-be – who might as well be the Israeli ambassador to the US – can’t wait to move the American embassy to Jerusalem. He seems to feel more antagonism towards the Jewish left in America than the Palestinians who claim East Jerusalem as a capital and whose state he has no interest in. Will Trump enrage the Arabs? Or will he get away with a little domestic rearrangement of the Israel embassy on the grounds that the Gulf Arabs, at least, know that Israel’s anti-Shiism – against Syria, Iran and Hezbollah – fits in rather well with the Sunni potentates who’ve been funding Isis and Jabhat al-Nusrah and all the other jolly jihadis? [Media] [Disinformation] [Propaganda]
The Guardian’s Summary of Julian Assange’s Interview Went Viral and Was Completely False
Glenn Greenwald
December 30 2016, 2:41 a.m. (updated below [Fri.]) Julian Assange is a deeply polarizing figure. Many admire him and many despise him (into which category one falls in any given year typically depends on one’s feelings about the subject of his most recent publication of leaked documents). But one’s views of Assange are completely irrelevant to this article, which is not about Assange. This article, instead, is about a report published this week by The Guardian that recklessly attributed to Assange comments that he did not make. This article is about how those false claims — fabrications, really — were spread all over the internet by journalists, causing hundreds of thousands of people (if not millions) to consume false news. The purpose of this article is to underscore, yet again, that those who most flamboyantly denounce Fake News, and want Facebook and other tech giants to suppress content in the name of combating it, are often the most aggressive and self-serving perpetrators of it. One’s views of Assange are completely irrelevant to this article because, presumably, everyone agrees that publication of false claims by a media outlet is very bad, even when it’s designed to malign someone you hate. Journalistic recklessness does not become noble or tolerable if it serves the right agenda or cause. The only way one’s views of Assange are relevant to this article is if one finds journalistic falsehoods and Fake News objectionable only when deployed against figures one likes. The shoddy and misleading Guardian article, written by Ben Jacobs, was published on December 24. It made two primary claims — both of which are demonstrably false. [Media] [Guardian] [Assange]

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