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Julian Assange, WikiLeaks

UN Ruling On Assange Exposes UK Lawlessness

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“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

For any student of modern propaganda techniques, the ruling announced last week in favor of WikiLeaks founder and editor-in-chief Julian Assange by the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) has provided fertile ground for research. Indeed, the level of media frenzy sparked by the ruling can be regarded as a barometer of the power and extent of establishment forces ranged against him and his organization.

UNWGAD found that the predicament of Assange amounts to ‘arbitrary detention’, a legal term that is clearly defined, deriving from Article 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document that both the United Kingdom and Sweden are signatories to. Article 9 states that ‘no one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile’. Arbitrary arrest or detention ‘are the arrest or detention of an individual in a case in which there is no likelihood or evidence that they committed a crime against legal statute, or in which there has been no proper due process of law’. ‘Due process’ is defined as ‘the legal requirement that the state must respect all legal rights that are owed to a person’.

Dr. Roslyn Fuller, a lecturer in International Law based in Ireland, has this to say about the ruling:

The Working Group stated they considered Assange’s case to fall under Category III, which covers cases where a trial does not comply with international human rights norms. The Working Group found that Sweden and the UK have pursued Assange in a disproportionate manner, given that the Swedish prosecutors could have questioned Assange at any point and he had declared himself willing to cooperate.

The two claims against Assange that were ‘dropped’ by the prosecutor last year were dropped because they were about to become time-barred. The prosecutor chose to allow this rather than to question Assange. One would think that if the prosecution had the interests of the alleged victims at heart, they may have chosen to pursue questioning in the UK – a common enough activity – rather than let the investigation lapse.

So while Assange may be holding out, so is Sweden, and nations have obligations to move the wheels of justice along as swiftly as practicable. The Working Group’s assessment is basically, “how hard can it be to conduct a preliminary investigation?” with the implication that if the prosecutor were serious, they would have gotten this wrapped up by now.

Furthermore, the Working Group found that “the grant itself and the fear of persecution on the part of Mr Assange based on the possibility of extradition, should have been given fuller consideration in the determination and the exercise of criminal administration, instead of being subjected to a sweeping judgment as defining either merely hypothetical or irrelevant”.

In other words, British and Swedish authorities should have considered that Assange’s fear of persecution might be founded and questioned him in the embassy, something it was perfectly possible to do with minimal effort in the interests of pushing their case forward. Questioning Assange at the embassy would not have jeopardized their case, whereas coming out of the embassy could have jeopardized Assange’s life. Thus, it would be disproportional to force him to do so when there was nothing to be gained by it. Assange’s interest in being protected from extradition to the United States outweighed the Swedish prosecution’s interest that he only be questioned in Sweden. Dismissing these concerns out-of-hand was arbitrary.

Even before UNWGAD’s announcement, serious pressure will have been felt by members of the group not to rule for Assange, according to the former chair, Norwegian lawyer Mads Andenas, as he explains in this short radio interview. Although reluctant to provide specifics, he makes it clear that any ruling against ‘big’ nations like the UK or the US face considerable institutional resistance.

The media reported the ruling before its announcement, allowing the headlines to get the digs in early. This BBC article stated: ‘Julian Assange is being “arbitrarily held”, UN panel to say’. In casual speech, ‘arbitrarily’ is often used in a roughly synonymous manner to ‘randomly’, implying that the UK is randomly detaining Assange. Cue an avalanche of outrage and indignation on social media and elsewhere from casual news readers deeply offended at the suggestion that the UK is somehow behaving like a dictatorship and randomly applying justice, given that Assange is of course free to leave the embassy at any time and further given that through relentless media disinformation and misinformation for years, the average news consumer now believes that Assange must ‘face justice’.

A Downing Street spokesman was on hand to supply fuel for the fire: “We have been consistently clear that Mr Assange has never been arbitrarily detained by the UK but is, in fact, voluntarily avoiding lawful arrest by choosing to remain in the Ecuadorean embassy.”

This statement also employs the non-legal use of the term ‘arbitrary’. Readers, the vast majority of whom have little or no knowledge of or concern about the details of the Assange case, are therefore given validation of an already misleading statement by an authority figure: classic psychological manipulation.

UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond rejected the UN group ruling, condemning it as ‘ridiculous’. Mr. Hammond, who has no legal expertise or background, further made the false claim that the group is made up of ‘lay people, not lawyers’ and that the ruling is ‘flawed in law’. [Note: Former Guardian journalist Jonathon Cook expands on this point expertly here]

The corporate media was also on hand to deride and condemn the ruling. The Guardian’s Marina Hyde, who has form smearing Julian Assange, wrote a rambling, vindictive, error-strewn article that has to be read to be believed. She then engaged in a smug, arrogant and self-congratulatory round of ‘banter’ [here and here] with like-minded journalist mates on Twitter, displaying a staggering level of contempt for a man described by the United Nations as deprived of liberty (add sunlight to that) for years as well as an embarrassing lack of awareness of her own gatekeeper role. It raises serious questions about editorial integrity at the Guardian, a newspaper of record, that a journalist with such obvious dislike for the subject of her article (with precedent) was permitted to write an analysis of a major story like this, particularly in light of the fact that Hyde usually covers showbiz and, by her own admission, has no detailed familiarity with the Assange case.

Social media lit up as soon everyone became an expert on international law and the qualifications and credentials of the members of UNWGAD. Comments below the line of articles all over the world slammed Assange with the usual tired and long discredited arguments.

The first wave of attack generally concerns the allegations of rape. It takes only a short period of research to find out the facts. [Note: anyone who believes they know what they are talking about with regard to the Assange case should read this FAQ here]

From the FAQ [emphasis (bold) mine]:

[] new information has emerged that both women explicitly deny having been raped by Mr. Assange. In a statement to the UK Supreme Court, the prosecutor acknowledged that the complainants wished only to ask the police for advice about HIV tests, having discovered they’d had both had sex with Mr. Assange. (There has never been an allegation Mr. Assange has HIV.) Neither of the women wished to lodge a formal complaint.

The woman of whom Mr. Assange is accused of the offence of “lesser rape” (a technical term in Swedish law) sent an SMS to a friend saying that she “did not want to accuse JA [of] anything” and “it was the police who made up the charges”. The other woman tweeted in 2013 that she had never been raped. Both women’s testimonies say that they consented to the sex. A senior prosecutor already dismissed the ’rape’ accusation, saying that there were no grounds for accusing Mr. Assange on this basis. But a third prosecutor, lobbied by a politician who was running for attorney general, took over the investigation and resurrected the accusations against Mr. Assange. Due to the great number of incorrect reports [], it is best to rely on primary source documents in this matter, which are on the internet and the UK Supreme Court “Agreed Statements of Facts” agreed to by the UK, the Swedish authoritiesm and Mr. Assange’s legal team. (See here and here.)

The women themselves in their own words explicitly say they were not raped. The women themselves in their own words said they had no wish to lodge a complaint. Yet to the experts in the corporate media and on social media or below the line, Assange is apparently a ‘cowardly rapist’ who is ‘holed up’ in an embassy ‘evading justice’. They occasionally even remember to write ‘alleged’ before ‘rapist’.

The next line of attack concerns Assange’s alleged evasion of justice. Yet Assange left Sweden on 27th September 2010 without impediment from prosecutor Marianne Ny, who had been assigned to the case from September 1st. It is worth noting that if this case was so serious that it became an international incident leading to the (very unusual) issuance of an Interpol Red Notice, and if the well-being of the alleged rape victims was such a priority for the prosecutor, the fact that Ny did nothing to question Assange before he left as a matter of urgency is highly suspicious.

It is also notable that Assange’s Swedish lawyer, Bjorn Hurtig, made some very disturbing claims with regard to the two women involved:

Julian Assange’s Swedish lawyer was shown scores of text messages sent by the two women who accuse him of rape and sexual assault, in which they speak of “revenge” and extracting money from him, an extradition hearing was told.

Björn Hurtig, who represents the WikiLeaks founder in Sweden, told Belmarsh magistrates court that he had been shown “about 100” messages sent between the women and their friends while supervised by a Swedish police officer, but had not been permitted to make notes or share the contents with his client.

“I consider this to be contrary to the rules of a fair trial,” he said. A number of the messages “go against what the claimants have said”, he told the court.

…

One message referred to one of the women being “half asleep” while having sex with Assange, Hurtig said, as opposed to fully asleep. “That to my mind is the same as saying ‘half awake’.” One of the women alleges that Assange had sex with her while she was sleeping.

Before destroying a man’s reputation an objective, honorable or honest person would first look into the details and circumstances surrounding the case. Such considerations obviously do not apply to Assange.

One final line of attack is the idea that Assange is ‘voluntarily’ hiding in the embassy. It is insulting to the intelligence and legal abilities of the UNWGAD lawyers to think that they are incapable of correctly interpreting this unusual situation in legal terms. Anyone believing that they are in danger of political persecution, as Assange does, has the legal right under international law to seek protection on humanitarian grounds. From the FAQ:

International law says that a sovereign country has decided to recognise Mr. Assange as needing protection from political persecution on humanitarian grounds. Mr. Assange has a right to meaningfully exercise that protection through passage to Ecuador. Ecuador invoked a number of applicable conventions, including the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees. The United Kingdom and Sweden are also parties to the 1951 Convention and are obligated to recognise the asylum decision of Ecuador. While both states have been careful to avoid saying that they do not recognise the asylum, their actions can only be interpreted as a wilful violation of Mr. Assange’s right to ’seek, receive and enjoy’ his asylum. In international law, the obligation to protect persons from persecution under the 1951 Refugee Convention prevails over extradition agreements between states.

The United Kingdom says it has a treaty obligation to extradite Mr. Assange to Sweden even though he has not been charged with an offense. There is a conflict between the United Kingdom’s obligations to the 1951 UN refugee convention and its obligations under the European Arrest Warrant system. It is established law that these conflicts are to be resolved in favour of the higher obligation which is to the 1951 convention.

Rather than follow[] international law, the United Kingdom has chosen to interpret the conflict in favor of its geopolitical alliances. The United Kingdom has a history of breaking international law in this manner, for example, in its invasion of Iraq, its cooperation with US rendition operations, and its facilitation of global mass spying via its intelligence service GCHQ. Sweden is also a party to these last two violations.

Assange has reason to be concerned. A secret, long-running US investigation has been mounted against him, according to US Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd. “The grand jury is a serious business,” said Michael Ratner, a human rights lawyer advising Assange. “They’re all over this,” he added. [Sources here]

Reason for concern indeed given the US approach to whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning, who was tortured while awaiting trial, as well as the US’s clear contempt for international laws and conventions, highlighted dramatically when it forced down the plane carrying Bolivian President Evo Morales in the mistaken belief that Edward Snowden was aboard. That case also highlighted the powerful influence the US wields over European nations: France, Italy and Spain all denied airspace to Morales forcing the plane to land in Austria.

The UN ruling puts the UK and Sweden in a very sticky position as they recklessly try to play it both ways. In the past both nations have welcomed rulings by the same group when they benefited their geopolitical priorities, as this Crikey article explains:

What happens when the UN panel that you previously thought was excellent produces a verdict that you don’t like?

That was the problem facing UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond (little-known outside the Tory Party and best known for having been a Goth in his younger days, not that there’s anything wrong with that) when the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found in favour of Julian Assange’s complaint that he had been arbitrarily detained by the UK and Sweden.

…

But Hammond’s problem is the Cameron government had a very different view of the WGAD when it ruled that the Burmese regime’s ongoing detention of Aung San Suu Kyi was a breach of international human rights law. “As in its previous five ‘opinions’, the Working Group has found that the continuous deprivation of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s liberty is arbitrary, and has requested the government of Myanmar to implement its previous recommendations and to remedy the situation,” Hammond’s predecessor William Hague said in calling for her release. Indeed, it’s been only a few months since the British government was happy to quote the WGAD in its guidance on handling particular types of protection and human rights claims about China.

China is a constant target of the WGAD. Unlike other UN bodies that might be criticised for obsessing about Western governments while ignoring the human rights abuses of dictatorships, WGAD focuses almost entirely on non-Western countries. In the years while Assange has been detained, the Working Group has ruled against China 14 times — with most rulings dealing with multiple detainees — and against Iran nine times, as well as ruling against Cuba and North Korea (again, often covering multiple cases) four times each. Syria, Saudi Arabia, Russia and the Palestinian Authority have also been among its targets. It’s in such company the UK and Sweden now find themselves.

The United States was also happy to cite the WGAD in the case of Alan Gross, who spent several years in a Cuban jail after travelling to the country to provide Cuba’s Jewish community with internet access. US politicians and the State Department were happy to cite WGAD’s finding that Gross was arbitrarily detained. The US Justice Department also cites WGAD decisions in its criticisms of the human rights records of other countries. And the WGAD ruled last August that Iran was holding US journalist Jason Rezaian arbitrarily as well; the State Department also invokes the WGAD’s decision about other imprisoned journalists.

In short, the WGAD is usually a reliable source for Western countries eager to criticise the human rights records of countries like China, Iran and Cuba. But the moment it looks askance at Western practices, it’s “ludicrous” and dismissed.

This episode teaches some lessons. Essential among them is the fact that analysis in the corporate media is now crippled beyond repair, its credibility a smoking wreck. If one desired an analysis of an aspect of astronomy or cosmology, would one read the opinions of a writer who still advocates the Ptolemaic Model of the solar system? The same applies to an analysis of the complicated legal case of Assange by obviously biased and prejudiced non-experts who are given a platform to speak to millions nonetheless. This further applies to much of foreign policy and other areas that require ‘nuance’ in the corporate media because advertisers are so touchy about what reaches the general public. The only meaningful analyses now come from independent journalists and writers who are free from corporate or government/lobby-group influence.

We also learn that corporate journalists not only act as gatekeepers in their day job, but even in their free time, gleefully towing the establishment line and seemingly oblivious to the deadly consequences of their obfuscations as they help to bring liberal, anti-war opinion over to the ‘humanitarian interventionist’ camp of the imperialist ‘right to protect’ doctrine.

Disturbingly we can also acquire a sense of the enormous power wielded behind the scenes by those who want Assange. If the UK and Sweden are willing to reject the findings of a United Nations panel of legal experts, a panel they never had complaints with in the past when they were condemning China etc., then we know that the stakes are as high as they get. The recklessness of this rejection is staggering, as explained by the Center for Constitutional Rights [Emphasis (bold) mine]:

In our briefs to the WGAD, we argued that someone is effectively detained when they are forced to choose between confinement and running the risk of persecution. That is the precise dilemma faced by Mr. Assange, who would lose the protection of his asylum if he stepped out of the embassy. The risk of extradition is the ‘fourth wall’ for the now repudiated claim that he is free to leave the embassy. As a result, it has been years since Mr. Assange has had access to proper medical care, sunlight, or the ability to see his family.

The WGAD’s decision in Mr. Assange’s case sets an important precedent for refugees. In our submissions we analogized the situation faced by Mr. Assange to that of asylum-seekers in detention facilities. States may claim that asylum-seekers held in subhuman conditions are not ‘detained’ because they are technically free to leave for their home country, but this is a non-choice, since the home country would persecute the asylum seeker.

In choosing to reject the UN ruling, not only are Sweden and the UK failing to live up to their treaty obligations because they do not suit their agendas – a working definition of an action of what Western nations traditionally call ‘rogue nations’ – but they are also putting their own citizens at risk by setting a dangerous precedent that will allow any evil dictator anywhere to also reject the findings of the UN in the future.

It is profoundly telling – a shocking demonstration of the power of media propaganda – that millions of people automatically side with governments who have lied time and time again on every issue imaginable, that have committed some of the most terrible crimes in history, against one man who has risked his freedom and life to expose some of those crimes. The idea that he might have been set up or has been persecuted is summarily dismissed despite the obvious motive for Western governments to do such a thing and despite the enormous amount of documented evidence demonstrating that this is precisely the case.

The Assange situation has long been a farce but now a ruling of the United Nations has been permitted to become a political football. This way utter lawlessness lies. The UK must immediately release and compensate Julian Assange as the UN ruling dictates. Failure to do this will only serve to confirm its status as a rogue nation and US lapdog.

Written by Simon Wood

Twitter: @simonwood11
Official Website: The Daily 99.99998271%

WikiLeaks

The Agenda To Destabilize Europe

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There is always a manufactured enemy – a scapegoat – behind which geopolitical puppeteers hide.

An ever-increasing concentration of anti-Muslim propaganda has been circulating in social media, more broadly since 9/11 but particularly over the last two years – gradually seeping into the common verbiage of citizens in ‘First World’ societies.

Tolerance hard won over multiple generations, has been lost within one.

Diversity is again being made a dirty word, rather than an integral, structural pillar of any ethical society.

Those who take fixed positions either pro or anti refugee – pro or anti Muslim – are being divided and conquered. Rather than be pitched against each other, we must examine what lies beneath the propaganda.

For the true bi-polar, diametric positions are that of pro or anti Western intelligence agencies and their interests. Interests that seldom align with that of the general public they are supposed to serve, but more often align with the wishes of the comptrollers in economics and industry and the insatiable governmental aspirations of empirical power.

Tony Gosling, an investigative journalist from Bristol in the UK, was interviewed by RT in 2013 and talked about this acceleration and the origins of the mentality, laying the blame squarely at the feet of intelligence agencies like Britain’s MI5:

“Western intelligence services have been involved in criminal acts in the past which have actually fueled this kind of sectarian violence which seems to be beginning again here in Britain. There’s some serious questions that MI5 have got to answer…”

“…we’ve got other extremists here in Britain, that is to say, anti-Islamic extremists. Two weeks ago a pensioner coming home from his mosque in Birmingham, in the Midlands of Britain, was murdered, and this got almost no coverage whatsoever and we need to make sure the security services are taking exactly the same sort of measures against the anti-Muslims like the English Defense League and these kinds of organisations, as they are against the Islamic organisations…”

“…what they’re actually trying to do is demonise Muslims in a similar way to the Nazis demonising Jews back in the 1930s and its ridiculous. We’ve got to stop that, and we don’t want that from MI5 thank you very much!”

Gosling makes great points, but MI5 is just one of countless agencies hiding behind the anti-immigrant curtain.

American Hostility Towards The EU

The root of American contempt for the European Union is likely not just political, but also economic. The total gross domestic product (GDP) of the European Union is slightly larger than that of the United States, although the per capita GDP is approximately one-third less.

This means the two super-powers are not simply allies, or trading partners, but are also competitors.

The European Union has, to date, proven resistant to many of the ills of American economic convention; largely remaining GE/GMO-free, and acting to regulate lobbying by interest groups.

Such constraints are abrasive to the corporate power of the United States.

While the United States has brought many of the world’s countries to heel through military adventure or economic coercion, the European Union has, in some ways, remained legislatively impervious to those pressures.

The contempt of US diplomats towards the European Union was never more blatant than that revealed by the leak of the now-infamous “Fuck The EU” tape.

Revealing the culpability and craftiness of US diplomats in converting the Maidan protests into an opportunity for a pro-US regime change and then micro-managing the formation of the new Ukrainian government, the tape more broadly illustrates their general contempt for the European Union.

While it is difficult to verify the efficacy of the associated Twitter accounts, a quick search makes it clear that the ‘Fuck The EU‘ sentiment is becoming increasingly widespread.

Signs Of Schengen Fracturing (Again)

According to The Economist: “various studies over the years have argued that the Schengen agreement led members to form closer trading partnerships, boosted both imports and exports, and drew tourists.”

This opinion has been ratified by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the German Economy Minister at the Economic Summit in Davos, Switzerland, this week.

Their comments were made in the wake of Austria having recently “temporarily” suspended Schengen.

As Reuters reports:

reuters

The cracks were apparent at least as far back as August, 2015, but were not the first existential pressure on the Schengen pact, as explained by The Economist:

This is not the first time that the Schengen agreement has appeared to be in danger of fraying. In 2011, fearing an influx of North African refugees, Italy and France pushed for a review of the agreement. Earlier this year the Dutch prime minister threatened Greece with expulsion if it allowed migrants free passage to the rest of Europe. Neither eventuality came to pass.

So why did those countries expect “an influx” of migrants from North Africa, as far back as 2011? What caused this original threat to Schengen?

The destruction of Libya.

The True Roots Of The Migrant Crisis

NATO’s official story about the bombing of Libya is, of course, that it was a humanitarian intervention. However, there is ample evidence that it was actually a war fought for economic reasons and the control of resources.

Regardless of the ‘why’, the end result was foreordained by none other than Muammar Gaddafi himself.

In Part 4 of the new documentary “World Order”, hosted by LiveLeak, Gaddafi is shown saying:

“Negligence of the stability in Libya will result in collapse due to instability in the Mediterranean. In case our power in Libya were to stop, millions of Africans will illegally flow to Italy, to France. Europe would become ‘black’ within the shortest possible period. We prevent migration by resisting Al-Qaeda. If the stability in Libya is disrupted, it will immediately cause bad consequences for Europe and Mediterranean countries. Everyone will be in danger.”

This suggests that it was known well in advance of the destabilization of Libya, that failure to secure that country would result in a human tidal wave of economic migrants from the North of Africa that, compounded by the Iraqi, Syrian and other refugees that have resulted from the many military misadventures of Western interventions in the Middle East, might ultimately overwhelm Europe.

At 05:00 in the same segment of the documentary, Russian President Vladimir Putin sub-textually ratifies the theory that the United States sees a unified European Union as an economic foe.

“The united Europe is more than 300 million people, the biggest economy. The Euro keeps its position stable… It recovers the space for itself as a world reserve currency. It is good, because when there is only one reserve currency, the USD, it restricts the space for maneuver for the whole world economy.”

EU Introduction Of Biometric Databases Threatens The CIA

Wikileaks’ 2014 releases of ‘The CIA Travel Documents‘ shed light on further benefits to the United States intelligence agencies, were Schengen to be collectively abandoned by European states.

As stated in the accompanying press release:

“The documents show that the CIA has developed an extreme concern over how biometric databases will put CIA clandestine operations at risk – databases other parts of the US government made prevalent post-9/11.”

From within the leaked documents themselves (specifically, the ‘Infiltrating Schengen‘ document):

The European Commission is considering requiring travelers who do not require visas to provide biometric data at their first place of entry into the Schengen area, which would increase the identity threat level for all US travelers.

So it seems that what is good for the goose is not good for the gander. While the US pushes the advances of biometrics for security purposes, the adoption of those same technologies by other states, in this case the European Union as a whole, threatens the cover of its intelligence agents.

With Friends Like These, Who Needs Enemies?

Agitating for the termination of the border-less zone isn’t just about prioritizing American economic interests, or protecting US intelligence assets. It is also about pressuring the EU into sharing more of its citizen’s data with intelligence agencies.

There are some very high-profile talking heads that have been predicting that the end of Schengen is nigh, and who have fascinating input on the subject.

On November 22nd, 2015, in the wake of the Paris attacks, and just as Belgium was being locked down due to alleged terror threats, CNN hosted two such guests on a panel with anchor Fareed Zakaria.

Namely, Richard Haass – the President of the Council on Foreign Relations and Philip Mudd; CNN Counter-terrorism analyst, former deputy director of the CIA’s Counter Terrorist Center and the ex FBI deputy director of the National Security Branch.

Haass directly declared the end of the Schengen Zone, stating “those days are over“.

Zakaria: Richard, you’ve dealt with the Europeans for many years. This is a case where, you know, you need more Europe in a sense. You need the Europeans to share more, to deepen the ties, but the politics is less Europe.

Haass: Absolutely right. You need much more sharing. You’re not seeing it. We’re also going to see a whole change, I think, to what’s called the Schengen area, the idea that once you get into Europe you’re essentially free to move around. Those days are over. So rather than European – the European project moving forward in some ways, Fareed, I think we’re actually more likely to see it move backwards where the balance between nationalism and Europeanism is about to move more in the direction of nationalism.

Zakaria: Fascinating. When we come back I’m going to ask Richard about Hillary Clinton who gave a big speech about ISIS hosted by him. Stay with us.

So the President of the Council on Foreign Relations – an entity whose membership, according to Wikipedia, “has included senior politicians, more than a dozen secretaries of state, CIA directors, bankers, lawyers, professors, and senior media figures” not only predicts that Schengen is already done and dusted, but that Europe as a whole is moving backwards and heading in the direction of nationalism – a phenomena not seen since pre World War II.

But wait, there’s more.

Haass: Well, I actually think not just in Europe but here in the United States we’re on the cusp of what will be a second great debate about the balance between individual privacy and collective security. And the sorts of questions you just raised are going to come to the fore. And the answer is I think the pendulum is going to have to swing. Not dramatically. We’re not talking going to the other end but somewhat in the direction of greater collective security. So we are going to have to gather more data, more information about societies and about our populations.

So the country whose intelligence mantra has been ‘Collect It All‘ wants yet more data – but rather than collect it, it wants Europe to hand it over on a silver platter, on the premise that this will somehow improve their security situation.

And to what end?

Zakaria: Do you think that this will extend to being able to kill a French citizen on a battlefield if, you know, again, they haven’t committed a crime. You know, we’ve crossed that bridge with Anwar al-Awlaki. The British just did. Are the French now facing this issue?

Mudd: I do. I think this is one of the great untold stories of this war. People debated, it’s not widely known. Presidents of countries having the authority to authorize the killing of a citizen on foreign soil when that citizen can’t be brought in for the judicial process. We’ve had, as you said, with an American, with the British citizen. If you’re the French president and you find with the Americans because the Americans are likely to develop intelligence on this, that you can locate the perpetrators, you then have the choice, do you allow that plot or plotters to continue because you can’t bring them home to justice immediately or do you authorize a targeted killing? And I think given what the French president said after this event you’re going to have a third country say, it is appropriate for the leader of a country to authorize the killing of a citizen on foreign soil without a judicial process.

The implications are enormous. Mudd’s suggestion is that the Americans will supply intelligence to European countries (in this case, France) which will lead to them authorising targeted killings of their own citizens on foreign soil, without judicial process.

Just how does one go from being Deputy Director of the CIA, to a CNN analyst?

While Mudd doesn’t appear to have a Wikipedia page dedicated to him, he does appear in several references. Including the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture.

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The use of the term ‘get out and sell‘ is puzzling, until you dig a little deeper. In a video of a presentation by Mudd to his alma mater, Villanova University, he constantly refers to the CIA as ‘the business’, and repeatedly references himself as having decades of experience ‘in the business’.

Bringing us full circle to the real agenda behind the attrition of European unity and the increase in intelligence sharing – solidifying and expanding America’s financial and economic power.

Sure enough – according to Mudd he does “a week a month at a boutique wealth management firm” – which appears to map to his CNN biography which states “Mudd is the Director of Enterprise Risk at SouthernSun Asset Management in Memphis, Tennessee.”

The last 10 minutes of his Villanova speech gets really interesting. When asked what was his biggest mistake, Mudd sheds light on the impetus for his transition from the public to private sectors.

“I quit government, I didn’t retire. I quit in 2010 because I was nominated by the President to take over Homeland Security Intelligence. Which is a low budget Presidential nomination – although when you join government as an entry level guy – the President doesn’t have that many nominees…

…that Presidential nomination requires Senate confirmation. You’ve got to sit in front of the Senate on C-SPAN and get your ass handed to you. I quit because the Senate at the end of the confirmation process, which is about a six-month process, said ‘this guy knows about CIA and what they did to CIA prisoners, and we’re going to hammer him’…

…professionally, I’m like, this is going to be front page news, I’m not doing it. That’s an embarrassment to the President. I allowed the Congressional Affairs Office to handle the six months with the Congress, and they let it get out of hand. I’m happy I quit, I have a great life, I don’t work very hard and I make a lot of money. And I drink a lot of wine… [laughter]

…so I pulled my nomination. It was front page news for one day, which is the right thing. I don’t have very many regrets but I probably should not have trusted the Congressional Affairs Office, so I lost the career…

…Can you turn the camera off?” [Cameraman stops tape]

Wikipedia is less kind: “CIA Deputy Director Philip Mudd deliberately lied to Congress about the [torture] program…”

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Multiple Government Agencies Hiring ‘Cyber-Warriors’ By The Thousands

According to Ms Victoria ‘Fuck The EU’ Nuland in her “first Twitter briefing of 2012” (seriously) – she says of the State Department:

“…we’re also developing and distributing new technologies – more than 20 of them – to empower activists around the globe to access uncensored content on the internet and to communicate with each other and to tell their stories. And to date, we’ve funded the training of more than 7,500 activists around the world in these programs.”

Wired appears to reference the same State Department program, but is less kind about its purposes – the article is titled “Newest U.S. CounterTerrorism Strategy: Trolling.”

The Pentagon and FBI are looking for 6,000 cyber-warriors between the two agencies, but having trouble finding them.

The “Warrior-To-Cyber-Warrior” program looks to convert existing military personnel and veterans into ‘cyber-warriors’, and states that “cyber security experience is not required…”

The US Navy wants 1,000 more cyber warriors.

The private sector is in the same business. Wired reported that Raytheon had advertised for 250 cyber-warriors including “media sanitation specialists.”

Even the banks are in on it – with JP Morgan building a cyber-security staff of over 1,000 people “more than twice the size of Google’s security group”. As Bloomberg writes: “To make it easier to woo military talent, the bank built a security services facility in Maryland near Fort Meade, home of the National Security Agency.”

George Monbiot for Alternet wrote: “..about the daily attempts to control and influence content in the interests of the state and corporations..”

“This is not a police state – it is a thought police state” wrote Rona Kuperboim in YNetNews, of the Israeli government’s legion of online propagandists:

“Imposters on behalf of the government are threatening free discourse even if they only wander through the virtual space. The Internet was meant to serve as an open platform for dialogue between people, rather than as a propaganda means”…

…”Any attempt to plant talkbacks online must fail. Especially if the State is behind it. Not only because it’s easy to identify responses made on behalf of someone, but also because it’s anti-democratic. When the Israel Electric Company or other companies do it, it’s annoying. Yet when the State does it, it’s dangerous.“

Michael Snyder for Washington’s Blog says that “Government Trolls Are Using ‘Psychology-based Influence Techniques On YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.”

Wikipedia calls these troll armies ‘Web Brigades’ yet despite the reams of information available regarding other state and non-state actors, somehow only references Russian examples of them.

This truly is a global phenomenon of epic proportions: if the statistics Business Insider reports are factual, then China has hired some 300,000 trolls to defend the Chinese government and its political stances online.

Are The Troll Armies Behind The Anti-EU Propaganda?

Especially given the prevalence of factually incorrect posts and astro-turf media circulating on the topics, it stands to reason that at least a portion of the myriad social media accounts posting anti-Muslim, anti-Islam, anti-migrant and anti-refugee content may be the work of the troll armies.

The remainder are likely those regular internet users who they have influenced, or who were already inclined towards similar biases or opinions.

Likewise with the anti-Schengen and anti-EU content that now abounds, leading one to wonder whether we will ever again be able to re-establish trust in the efficacy of the internet, or to have online debates that genuinely reflect the opinions of legitimate users, rather than promoting the political agendas of paymasters.

As for whether the Schengen Agreement will indeed become a relic of the past and whether the European Union will somehow be able to reestablish a unified front and keep itself together despite the monolithic and powerful interests hell bent on tearing them apart – that remains to be seen.

Written by Suzie Dawson

Twitter: @Suzi3D

Official Website: Suzi3d.com

Journalists who write truth pay a high price to do so. If you respect and value this work, please consider supporting Suzie’s efforts via credit card or Bitcoin donation at this link. Thank you!

[Update/January 2018] This post is now available at my Steemit blog

Refugees

What Lies Beneath: The Agenda To Demonise Refugees

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The recent saturation of the Internet in anti-refugee propaganda, including via hashtags like #Rapefugees, #WhiteGenocide & #IStandWithSweden, have shocked and appalled users worldwide.

Long-held and widely-touted constitutional principles of inclusion and multi-culturalism are laying in tatters and the democratic ‘Left’ of Europe is reeling, as the hate speech extends beyond the digital realm to the formation of nationalistic vigilante mobs who are demonstrating en masse, burning down refugee centres and attacking migrants throughout Europe, Scandinavia and the entire Western World.

Echoing events and rhetoric of 1930s Germany, many cannot believe that a return to the widespread and popular denunciation of entire ethnic groups is again occurring, or that such behaviour is achieving political results.

When populations are implored to detest a demographically diverse sub-sector of society, that group is homogenised by the use of caustic and derogatory blanket terminology. That language of fascism is again manifesting.

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Utterances of highly abrasive terms like ‘cockroaches‘ in reference to migrants and refugees is reminiscent of the lead-up to multiple genocides where the same word was employed as justification for the attacks – from Hitler deeming Jews ‘cockroaches‘, to Hutus using the same term to describe the Tutsis that they were massacring in Rwanda, to Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who called the Palestinian people ‘cockroaches‘ when openly proposing their wholesale annihilation.

The practice of using a repeated and heinous invective to socialise a citizenry into villifying and ultimately acting against other groups has been extensively studied.

It is well established that the precursor is the formulation and circulation of propaganda.

Anti-Muslim, Anti-Refugee, Anti-Immigrant Propaganda

Tweets like this have been appearing in their thousands, and are then copied and circulated exponentially.

Depicting what is implied to be a blonde European girl being accosted by males of Middle Eastern origin, it is easily taken at face value. However, the picture isn’t at all what it seems. The girl is not European. She is also Middle Eastern; and it isn’t a photograph at all. It is in fact, a still shot taken from a comedy video, a parody – where in the next scene, the girl is rescued by an Arabic ‘Superman’ figure, replete with costume.

In a ‘Last Week Tonight‘ episode from September, 2015 titled ‘Migrants and Refugees‘, host John Oliver calls out Fox News’ circulation of a video of what is purported to be refugees chanting ‘Allahu Akhbar‘ (God is great) on a train within Europe’s borders.

“Describing that as a new video that sheds light on the migrant crisis is a little misleading because in researching this story, we found a version of that same video uploaded onto You Tube back in 2010, well before the migrant crisis even began.” – John Oliver

Some of the propaganda comes from the obvious sources – such as Trump supporters. But a lot of it is derived from places that are less obvious, or more obscure.

Refugees Under Attack, Smeared As Rapists

You Tube is awash with countless examples of anti-Muslim/anti-refugee propaganda. The content is often obscene in nature, and although they won’t be directly linked to here, the uploads feature inflammatory titles such as:

* ‘Sweden Being Raped To Death By Muslim Migrants’

* ‘Sweden Now Rape Capital of Europe Thanks To Muslim Migrants!’

* ‘ISIS Using Refugee Crisis As A Trojan Horse’

* ‘Refugee Tsunami Will End National Sovereignty’

* ‘Why Global Elite Want To Collapse Countries Using Illegals’

* ‘NWO Using Refugee Crisis As Endgame To Create Eurabia’

* ‘Islam Is The Religion Of The NWO’

* ‘Pope Uses Migrant Crisis To Escalate Race War’

Given that Europe is directly embroiled in the turmoil, you would expect these videos to be posted by Europeans. However, a closer look at the accounts posting the content, frequently leads back to American, British and Israeli sources.

The titles mentioned above are all featured on the channel “THEINFOWARRIOR” which is an off-shoot of Alex Jones’ Info Wars. Info war indeed.

Alex Jones’ main channel also carries similar content, featuring titles like ‘Muslims Engage In Sexual Terrorism Across Europe’.

Journalist Kit O’Connell exposed how damaging Alex Jones’ content can be.

Unfortunately, that damage is also being inflicted by a multitude of other actors pushing politically-charged propaganda, to the detriment of refugees, migrants, Muslims and Islam as a whole.

‘Islamic Invasion Of Sweden Has Led To Rape Crisis‘ declares the ‘Patriots Global Alliance’ (UK).

‘Muslims Have Made Sweden The Rape Capital Of The West Vs Japan‘ says ‘thetruthdamit’, who is ostensibly an African American Trump supporter.

One of the most prolific (and apparently widely-watched) channels, is by British ex-comedian Pat Condell.

Featuring titles like ‘Message To Offended Muslims’, ‘It’s Good To Be Anti-Islam’, ‘Why I Support Israel’, ‘Sweden Goes Insane’, ‘Boo Hoo Palestine’, ‘The Rape Of Sweden’, ‘The Invasion Of Europe’ and ‘How To Insult A Progressive’, one might wish he had never quit comedy so that they could give him the benefit of the doubt.

However, the nature of his politics is abundanty clear and Condell also has a Twitter account, featuring some 47,000+ followers, on which he has posted this fascinating breakdown of the geolocations of his viewing audience.

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Of his top six viewing countries, four are members of the Five Eyes alliance and one is Israel.

The Elephant In The Room

The elephant in the room is that the REAL rape epidemic is global in nature and pre-dates the migrant crisis by, frankly, eons.

Rape being used to push a political agenda that is to the benefit of governmental and military interests, rather than the interests of rape victims themselves, is an oft-employed information warfare tactic that has been used in everything from passing legislation that is unfavourable to civil liberties, to smearing Julian Assange.

On Twitter, accounts featuring traumatising and emotive profile pictures of rape victims are used to push xenophobia and notions of white supremacy.

This is the reality that none of them will dare acknowledge: that sexual violence and rape is and always has been at epidemic levels in Western civilisation – where assaults are frequent and widespread; reporting, arrest and conviction statistics are abysmal and sexual aggression, misogyny and rape apologism are commonplace and tacitly endorsed if not constantly celebrated and perpetuated by mainstream media, political and pop culture.

This recent portrayal of rape, gang rape and sexual assault as being a ‘Muslim’, ‘Islam’, ‘Middle Eastern’, ‘Third World’ or ‘refugee’ problem is a completely disingenuous display of wanton ignorance.

While some may argue that the alleged scale of the attacks seen in Cologne and elsewhere mark a turning point – and they certainly are heinous and deplorable crimes – the statistics demonstrate that in fact the United States remains the global center of rape and sexual assault, with 1 in 6 women experiencing sexual assault within their lifetime, and 1 in 4 college students.

According to this link Sweden already was the so-called ‘rape capital of Europe’ in 2010, despite the fact that its rape statistics are constantly touted as being a result of the recent influx of migrants.

So what, or more pertinently, who is behind the refugee propaganda? Whose interests do the rise of nationalism and the far-Right really serve?

[Author’s note: this article was originally composed on January 18th, 2016. It was the prequel to “The Agenda To Destabilise Europe” but sat on a publishing queue of another website for some months before now being published here.]

Written by Suzie Dawson

Twitter: @Suzi3D

Official Website: Suzi3d.com

Journalists who write truth pay a high price to do so. If you respect and value this work, please consider supporting Suzie’s efforts via credit card or Bitcoin donation at this link. Thank you!

 

Jeremy Corbyn

Music To The Ears Of Entitlement

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“We have allowed our party to be hijacked by people joining by text for three quid” – Unknown Labour MP (quoted by Guardian columnist Andrew Rawnsley)

As any career journalist will tell you, the first paragraph of your article must have a killer hook in these days of fickle, easily bored readerships. Tim Ross, senior political correspondent at The Daily Telegraph doesn’t disappoint:

Jeremy Corbyn’s close associates are secretly planning to purge the shadow cabinet of moderate MPs who disagree with his radical, anti-war policies, as he seeks to impose his will on the Labour Party.

It’s a masterpiece:

Secret: Sly/underhand/undemocratic.

Purge: Echoes of Stalin.

Moderate MPs: Supporters of a war that – by any even slightly honest and accurate examination of the actual situation in Syria – is insane.

Disagree: Implies Corbyn is acting in a dictatorial manner in choosing his cabinet when leaders of all political parties routinely do so.

Radical anti-war policies: Standing against yet more mass slaughter (and taking into account other recent catastrophic interventions) that serves only to send stocks in arms manufacturers higher is ‘radical’ in this enlightened era.

Impose his will: Just in case you missed it a few words earlier: Corbyn acts like a dictator – Stalin, subtly foreshadowed by our intrepid keeper of the sacred trust of the fourth estate, is the man Mr. Ross has in mind for us.

One should not expect anything different from this particular newspaper, but inversion of the concepts of ‘moderate’ and ‘radical’ lies at the heart of corporate media propaganda. In order to protect and sustain the crony capitalist system that is condemning billions to inescapable poverty and dozens of nations to war and chaos while enriching a tiny, privileged class all as the environment is ravaged, the single key issue that must be hammered relentlessly home is that the system as it stands, while not perfect, is nonetheless the only option we have; the only viable way of allocating the resources of the planet. Any alternative vision, no matter how well conceived or by whom, is unanimously condemned as naive, idiotic, clueless and even as a dire threat to national or global security. As for the brave soul proposing such an alternative, he or she can look forward to being smeared in every way imaginable until they are no longer a threat.

An integral part of this obscenely skewed version of reality is the concept of ‘leadership’, the unquestioned and unquestionable idea that some among us are endowed with certain intangible qualities of character that can lead us through the dark and into the light. By an astounding coincidence, in Western democracies, these people who are portrayed as born to lead must also toe the establishment line.

In the US this means unqualified support for foreign policy: the continuation of the operation of hundreds of bases in foreign nations; unconditional backing of Israel no matter how murderous and insane the actions of its government may be; the continuation of the drone campaign that has killed thousands of completely innocent people including kids, toddlers and babies; and support of the status quo with regard to blanket surveillance as well as the electoral system and campaign donations.

In the UK it is broadly the same: support for foreign adventures and Israel along with the US as well as the UK’s electoral system that ensures only establishment-friendly political parties and their filtered representatives have any chance of power. [It is worth noting here that the reason Jeremy Corbyn has been subjected to the most comprehensive media smear campaign in history is because he has slipped through the cracks and must be stopped at all costs, as the quotation at the beginning of this article demonstrates.] It also means support of the British royal family.

From a Guardian report:

Britain is “deeply elitist” according to a report by the government’s Social Mobility and Child Poverty commission, with people educated at public school and Oxbridge creating a “closed shop at the top”.

Andrew Sparrow writes today: The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission said its study of the social background of those “running Britain” was the most detailed of its kind ever undertaken and showed that elitism was so embedded in Britain “that it could be called ‘social engineering’”.

The report shows that in many of the UK’s top professions there is a hugely disproportionate proportion of privately educated people compared to the general profile of the UK population.

Just 7% of the UK public attended private school, which compares to 71% of senior judges, 62% of senior armed forces officers, 55% of Whitehall permanent secretaries and 50% of members of the House of Lords.

The rate is also disproportionately high in other influential roles: 44% of people on the Sunday Times Rich List, 43% of newspaper columnists and 26% of BBC executives were all educated privately.

Just one in 100 members of the UK public was educated at Oxbridge, however graduates from those two universities make up 75% of senior judges, 59% of cabinet posts, 57% of permanent secretaries, 50% of diplomatics, 47% of newspaper columnists, 44% of public body chairs and 33% of BBC executives.

There is a massive disparity in representation of the public at large. The enormous influence over politics and the public discourse as depicted in the media is one born of a demographic that has no experience or understanding of poverty and many of the ills that result from it. The utterly false and self-flattering idea that hard work always leads to success [and the converse] holds sway among them, their own enormous headstart that came from being born into a wealthy family or benefiting from the advantages that come from being privately educated notwithstanding:

From another article:

The report says: “Our examination of who gets the top jobs in Britain today found elitism so stark that it could be called ‘social engineering’.”

It adds that the “sheer scale of the dominance of certain backgrounds” raises questions about whether getting a top job is about ability or knowing the right people.

[Commission Chair] Mr Milburn said: “Where institutions rely on too narrow a range of people from too narrow a range of backgrounds with too narrow a range of experiences they risk behaving in ways and focusing on issues that are of salience only to a minority but not the majority in society.

“Our research shows it is entirely possible for politicians to rely on advisors to advise, civil servants to devise policy solutions and journalists to report on their actions having all studied the same courses at the same universities, having read the same books, heard the same lectures and even being taught by the same tutors.

“This risks narrowing the conduct of public life to a small few, who are very familiar with each other but far less familiar with the day-to-day challenges facing ordinary people in the country.”

All of which brings us to the much-lauded closing speech in the House of Commons by Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn. The reactions from within the media class were almost unanimously gushing.

A selection:

“Quite extraordinary scenes: some Tory MPs even giving Hilary Benn a standing ovation” – Deputy Political Editor of BBC News, James Landale.

“For those of us who thought Hilary Benn had failed to inherit his father’s rhetorical gifts, it’s time to reconsider” – The Guardian columnist (and 2014 Orwell Prize winner) Jonathan Freedland.

“I think that is the finest speech I’ve ever heard in the Commons, and delivered under such pressure” – The Spectator political editor James Forsyth.

“Long after most have forgotten the detail of the House of Commons debate…many will remember the words of Hilary Benn.” – The Times

[Sources: Media Lens Twitter timeline]

But what did Benn actually say?

Now I share the concerns that have been expressed this evening about potential civilian casualties. However, unlike Daesh, none of us today act with the intent to harm civilians. Rather we act to protect civilians from Daesh, who target innocent people.

See how the civilian deaths that are certain to occur (and already have occurred) are so deftly brushed off. We apparently protect civilians by bombing the places where they live, but that’s OK because Daesh target innocent people; unlike us, who will in fact be targeting people who will certainly be completely innocent. Could Kafka have done better?

With the delicate consciences of the UK’s elected representatives expertly salved, Benn moved to close the deal:

Now Mr Speaker, I hope the House will bear with me if I direct my closing remarks to my Labour friends and colleagues on this side of the House. As a party, we have always been defined by our internationalism. We believe we have a responsibility one to another. We never have and we never should walk by on the other side of the road. And we are here faced by fascists. Not just their calculated brutality, but their belief that they are superior to every single one of us here tonight, and all of the people that we represent. They hold us in contempt. They hold our values in contempt. They hold our belief in tolerance and decency in contempt. They hold our democracy, the means by which we will make our decision tonight, in contempt. And what we know about fascists is that they need to be defeated. And it is why, as we have heard tonight, socialists and trade unionists and others joined the International Brigade in the 1930s to fight against Franco. It’s why this entire House stood up against Hitler and Mussolini. It is why our party has always stood up against the denial of human rights and for justice. And my view, Mr Speaker, is that we must now confront this evil. It is now time for us to do our bit in Syria. And that is why I ask my colleagues to vote for this motion tonight.

Contempt! All a great orator needs to do, it appears, is keep repeating an emotive noun that feeds into the false notions of an ignorant, fearful and confused populace. This was George Bush all over again telling us that they hate us for our freedoms, an ignorant and simplistic assertion. Writer Sheldon Richman explains:

Let’s give these members of the American elite their due: one has to work hard to make a mystery of anti-American (and anti-Western) terrorism emanating from the Middle East. It takes prodigious effort to maintain an air of innocence about San Bernardino and Paris, because no one who claims to be informed can plead ignorance of the long history of U.S. and Western imperialism in the Muslim world. This includes the CIA’s subversion of Iranian democracy in 1953, the U.S. government’s systematic support of compliant autocratic and corrupt Arab monarchies and dictatorships, its empowering of Iraqi Shi’ite Muslims, and its unconditional backing of Israel’s brutal anti-Palestinian policies. (The savage 2014 war on Gaza killed many noncombatants.)

In the 10 years before the 9/11 attacks the administrations of George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton bombed Iraq while maintaining an embargo, most especially on equipment for the water and sanitation infrastructure the U.S. Air Force had destroyed during the Gulf War. Half a million children died. This was also when U.S. officials promised, then reneged on the promise, to remove U.S. forces from the Islamic holy sites in Saudi Arabia.

From the air Americans routinely kill noncombatants in Syria and Iraq, most recently this week, when “at least 36 civilians, including 20 children, in a village in eastern Syria” were reportedly killed, according to McClatchyDC. Do Americans notice? Of course not. That’s why San Bernardino and Paris can be made to appear so mysterious.

Things like this happen all the time. The U.S. attack on the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, was especially egregious against this background of war crimes.

The UK’s establishment media love Hilary Benn and despise Jeremy Corbyn. They love the rhetoric and reserve no patience for the detailed facts and expert analysis (as urged by Corbyn) a situation as complex as this requires. We simply have to do something because they have contempt for our values. These are the words of a real leader – decisive, strong, born…entitled…to rule and it is music to their ears because that is how they also think. Democracy is all well and good until it gets in the way of the people who know by their very nature what is best for all of us. The wise caution exhibited by Corbyn and other opponents is easily depicted as ‘weak’ and ‘doing nothing in the face of an implacable enemy’. Benn is their vision of a real leader because he keeps it simple and speaks like one of them, facts and caution be damned. Benn is one of us: welcome to our exclusive club.

The adulation poured over Benn has nothing to do with love or concern for the nation and its security: indeed, it is entirely cynical. The media need a viable replacement for Corbyn if they succeed in bringing him down and what better preparation than to build someone up as Churchillian, someone who can return the Labour Party to ‘grown-up’ politics and put the naive children like Corbyn back in their playpen where they can’t do any damage? In other words, to ensure that the fake duopoly that ensures the rich remain in control whoever wins the election is restored.

Supporters of the airstrikes on Syria are deeply ignorant – wilfully or otherwise – of the facts on the ground. They may or may not be aware of the vast geopolitical/commercial interests in the region, interests that will be opened to plunder with Assad out and a Washington-friendly administration installed. Lack of awareness may be forgivable for the average person on the street, but it most certainly is not for those tasked with making such momentous decisions or reporting on them, officials and watchdogs entrusted by the public to ensure that decisions made in their name are done so with honest, objective and exhaustive consideration of all the information available. With Syria, this has demonstrably not occurred, with politicians and the bulk of the media keen instead to focus on the tub-thumping, substance-free oratory of a warmonger.

The politicians and journalists who sold this war have the blood of innocents on their hands, as they did with Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and dozens of other ‘interventions’ throughout history. They remain unrepentant and serve in effect as shills for the deeply corrupt arms industry: armed and dangerous.

[Note: For more on Benn’s speech, read the latest Media Lens analysis].

Written by Simon Wood

Twitter: @simonwood11

Kim Dotcom

FVEY vs Kim Dotcom

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Here is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth: The Five Eyes are after Kim Dotcom and the litigation against him is effectively a circus performance for media and the public because in private, the system has already been meting out his extra-judicial punishment for years.

The corporate, law enforcement and military infrastructure in play against him has virtually unlimited resources, little to no accountability, twisted, vengeful tactics and a very long memory.

With his extradition hearing presently unfolding in an Auckland Court, it is a critical moment for Kim Dotcom, his co-defendants and their families. But the mechanics of the lawsuit and extradition process are just a drop in the bucket of what has been inflicted upon them.

The real story isn’t about a prosecution at all. It is about illegal surveillance, slashed tyres, dead pets, electoral sabotage, infiltration, suspicious car accidents and a drive-by shooting.

Gone Rogue

For all intents and purposes, whether it’s because they’ve gone rogue or are off the leash or whether it is just unofficial deep state policy; New Zealand intelligence agencies have been acting “arguably at the behest of a foreign power” according to Bryce Edwards. Including against their own countrymen.

That used to be called treason. Now it is called international co-operation and is self-justified by a secret treaty that was hidden from the public for 60 years: known only as the UK/USA Agreement. According to this link detailing the complex history of the agreement, which instituted and eventually encompassed the Five Eyes, the full text only became available in 2010 – some 64 years after its genesis.

The very existence of the respective intelligence agencies remained secret for years and was only ever (eventually) confirmed due to public inquiries and investigative journalism.

In more recent years, the UK/USA Agreement  was further enhanced by a string of post-9/11 “War on Terror” counter-terrorism and ‘intelligence sharing agreements’.

New Zealand

In the light of Edward Snowden’s revelations of secret NSA facilities in New Zealand, it is common knowledge that the country has effectively become a client state of the USA. A political and economic Mini-Me replete with fracking and GMO‘s. Run by a banker – an ex Member of the United States Federal Reserve who was also Minister in charge of the intelligence agency caught illegally spying on its own citizens – the GCSB.

As with the rest of the Five Eyes, New Zealand is a country where under-regulated private investigation and security interests work hand-in-hand alongside the state intelligence agencies. For those agencies, increasing the pool of targets has a monetary gain attached to it, in these days of state surveillance turning a profit.

Stalking Kiwis on the basis of political belief or association is a commercial enterprise. A well-funded and well-armed industry.

The East Stasi tactics of the past, as memorialised by a museum in Berlin, Germany, are a short-list of what is in play against dissidents in the Five Eyes countries.

Each time spy agencies are caught out red-handed, they pass a law to retrospectively legalise their illegal activities, then continue them unabated.

We have police filing thousands of warrantless data requests to companies which then hand over the private data of citizens without true legal compulsion. Intelligence agencies openly filming Kiwis and their families, inside their own homes, Orwell-style.

This is the environment in which the litigation against Kim Dotcom and co is unfolding.

Capitalism and The Great Lie of Meritocracy

The children of capitalism are taught that anyone can become a millionaire. If you are clever, apply yourself and take risks, you could one day make the rich list.

But this is extremely deceptive and misleading because the millionaires club is full of bullies with a pedigree and/or government connections. Once a person reaches a certain level of business success, raising their head above the parapet, gaining a profile, the powers that be hand-select who will be allowed to take the next step up, or who will have the full weight of the state thrown at them and be ruined.

Billionaires don’t become billionaires under their own steam. They are pre-selected, accepted or rejected by the system. Millionaires who don’t directly serve capital interests, or who disrupt them, are not allowed to remain millionaires, or become billionaires.

Thus, old money corrals and controls new money. If you don’t play the game, you will never be passed the ball. You will instead be red-carded and/or blacklisted.

This kind of economic bullying is used against entire countries in the form of “economic sanctions“. When used against individuals, it takes the form of character assassination, malicious commercial interference and/or persecution by Financial Crimes Agencies operating under the “Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009” legislation, as have been investigating Kim Dotcom.

The same police investigation team was used to investigate the Urewera activists in the Operation 8 “terrorism” debacle. The case against Dotcom has not only been fraught with illegal spying but with other anomalies and examples of puzzling ineptitude on the part of the Crown.

This year, a lead Inspector in the investigations, Grant Wormald, was found not guilty of perjury.

Fueling Dissent

The tactics of oppression being utilised – which are literally a Global War on Terror counterinsurgency strategy that can be and has been academically studied – actually fuels dissent. The persecuted only grow more determined and the protests grow bigger and more frequent with every injustice inflicted.

In New Zealand and Europe, this is most visibly seen with the mass movements against the TPPA and against the TTIP respectively. In America, it has been most pronounced in the mass civil unrest and police curfews of Ferguson and Baltimore.

The groans of public pain and insistence have become so loud that occasionally people have seized back the media narratives as, in alternately blacking out and distorting information related to the public interest, major media outlets have stretched their credibility to breaking point.

In New Zealand the movements have come in waves, each bigger than the last. The intensive state targeting of political dissidents, while forever altering individual lives, has failed in stemming the tide of anti-government sentiment and public derision for John Key’s government is now widespread, even amongst its own traditional support base.

Media Duplicity

Thanks to the duplicity and maliciousness of corporate media towards the entire political left, in particular, the Mana Party and the Internet Party, I was the only journalist granted a video interview with Hone Harawira at the Mana Party Annual General Meeting where the alliance with Dotcom’s Internet Party was announced.

Our media team had made a name for ourselves producing unedited, unmanipulated, raw, live footage. In doing so, we provided people with what they couldn’t get out of mainstream media: unadulterated truth. Those we interviewed appreciated the fact that they wouldn’t be misquoted, spliced, edited or misrepresented.

A Mandela confidante and indigenous leader, Harawira quoted Malcolm X straight into my camera.

“‘By Any Means Necessary’ is a book written by Malcolm X and I’ve always liked that phrase; that when you struggle, you don’t struggle politely. You don’t ask politely, for something that is yours by right. You go and say, ‘this is my right. I would like it back. If you’re not prepared to give it back, I’ll fucking take it off you. Set aside the protocols of a civilised society. Chase that which is yours. Stand up for your rights.”

The following day, I was the only journalist granted a video interview with Kim Dotcom at his Mansion for the Internet Party #SwimWithKim event.

I asked him what was the one thing that he would love to be asked by the mainstream media, that he had not been asked to date. He answered:

“I would want to be asked how we are going to select our candidates. How we are going to develop our policies. How are we a truly democratic party compared to all the other operators that basically just tell their members what they are doing instead of asking them and involving them in the whole process. I think the media has not asked the right questions around that. Today is the best example.. we are sitting here listening to you because we want to make this a truly democratic process.”

Media ignored the actual content of Kim’s speech at the event, where he referenced the technological savvy the Internet Party employed; from being the first political party to allow sign-ups via mobile app, to their crowd-sourced Loomio policy platform and their internet-generation candidates.

Where the paid media flailed at their lost access and printed conjecture-laden hit pieces, unpaid independent media and citizen journalists discussed the real issues. We created an elaborate mosaic of pics, vids and commentary to memorialise the events.

As I reported previously, corporate media were far comfier with fireworks and super-yachts. Where tabloid angles didn’t exist, they were manufactured.

I took this picture of Kim Dotcom, Chris Yong and Miriam Pierard for Occupy NZ, at the Internet Party #PartyParty event on Auckland’s famous K’Road. A picture that was then misappropriated by Rachel Glucina and published unaccredited in a poorly-executed smear of Pierard in the New Zealand Herald.

I was the only journalist to get a video interview (with then Internet Party Leader Laila Harre) at the tumultuous press conference that immediately followed the ‘Moment of Truth‘ event. A press conference where the New Zealand media refused to ask Glenn Greenwald about the content of the revelations or his Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism, completely ignoring the Snowden revelations about NSA bases on New Zealand soil and XKeyscore being used against New Zealanders, instead obsessively honing in on attacking Kim Dotcom.

Much has been written about the media’s malicious vendettas – at length by Nicky Hager in Dirty Politics, and in shorter form by Giovanni Tiso and Mandy Hager.

The issues are complex, unresolved and involve a large cast of characters – an insidious web of political interference in media.

Extra-judicial Punishment

To say that I am uniquely placed to comment on the topic of extra-judicial punishment would be an understatement. A barrage of it was imposed upon me ostensibly for my post FBI-raid interest in, coverage of and satellite involvement in the Dotcom saga and it is a part of why I am now effectively exiled in Berlin.

The list of economic, psychological and physical assaults on me is a long one and similar to some of what has been endured by the central figures in the Dotcom saga.

In my interview with Hone the shakiness in my voice is very apparent. The quality of my voice is a cross between intense anxiety and a dogged determination to steel myself and continue forward stoically.

What isn’t so visible are the reasons why I was proverbially crapping myself: I was wholly aware of the historical importance of the footage I was capturing and aware that I and others would continue to pay a high personal price for doing so.

As a result of my journalism, my house had been repeatedly broken into, my car tyres had been slashed, my family’s personal details and photographs of my home and vehicle published on the internet along with false accusations of me being a police officer. (Had I been a police officer the material would have been removed immediately; because I am not, and am in fact a target, the Police refused to get it removed and the completely false claims remained online for years).

I was harrassed at home, at events, by email, by phone and on Facebook. I had been followed on foot, tailed by vehicles, stalked and repeatedly photographed by strangers. My mail had been tampered with and my telecommunications intercepted.

When complaints to Police went nowhere, I was blatantly told to my face by an officer at our local police station that “as long as you are an activist these things will happen to you.”

As if that wasn’t creepy enough – things were about to get even more crazy in the lead-up to the 2014 general election and beyond. Here’s a partial timeline.

April 12 & 13, 2014: Hone Harawira spurns mainstream media and quotes Malcolm X to my camera, Kim speaks with me.

April 26, 2014: While holidaying in a remote location with my children, the oil cap was removed from our vehicle overnight by persons unknown, resulting in oil spilling all over the engine, catching fire and burning, stranding us.

May 11, 2014: The children and I are returning from Northland when we are boxed in by multiple unknown vehicles and “dazzlers” are used to attempt to cause us to cross the center-line/drive off the cliff in a blind spot of a cellular deadzone in Dome Valley, north of Auckland. It is Mother’s Day.

May 12, 2014: I call journalist Andrea Vance and report the attempt on my life. The Department of Immigration, meanwhile, is busy issuing deportation notices to Dotcom’s children’s nannies.

May 17, 2014: Kim and Mona Dotcom announce their separation.

June 25, 2014: Hone Harawira’s electorate office is the site of a drive-by shooting. The media takes nearly a week to report on it. Although Harawira is a sitting Member of Parliament at the time, very little is said about it in the mainstream media.

August, 2014: Hone Harawira’s car is driven off a cliff in a cellular deadzone in Northland. Details are sparse, other than that he is no longer present at the scene when police arrive. Given their past conduct towards him, and that he likely would have had no cellphone communications at the location, that is hardly surprising.

14 September 2014: In the week leading up to the Kim Dotcom/Glenn Greenwald/Julian Assange/Edward Snowden ‘Moment of Truth’ event, the constant intrusion of physical surveillance on me especially while I was circulating the event media resources got so intensive that I took refuge at a friend’s house and somehow kept it together enough to record this live radio segment a day ahead of the event.

20 September, 2014: in the wake of a media snow-job on Snowden’s revelations, coupled with low-voter turnout, the ruling government win re-election. The persecution of Kim Dotcom is to continue relentlessly.

22 September, 2014: Having received several death threats and relentless piggy-backing of my communications, I file numerous and ultimately largely fruitless official information act requests in an attempt to discover who is behind the threats.

Valentines Day, 2015: One of Kim Dotcom’s pet swans is killed.

kd1

[1/1/2016:  CORRECTION / UPDATE]  Kim says it is safe to say the swan was not shot dead as initially reported. He says:

kdcreply

 

The Glimmer Of Hope

…is that Dotcom wins at the Supreme Court resoundingly enough for his persecutors to have to leave him alone and/or pay costs. It seems this largely depends on the degree to which the Courts value the sovereignty of New Zealand and remain free of corruption. Whether Court orders that go against their interests hold weight with and would be enforced or respected by the partially-privatised military industrial complex is another thing entirely. They may continue to do what they damn well please regardless of whether Kim Dotcom is ultimately found ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty’.

If someone(s) can continue to make money off stalking and surveilling Dotcom and anyone else within two degrees of separation of him then that is highly likely to continue regardless of any court outcome. Unless the cumulative geopolitic, financial and socio-political cost of them doing so becomes too great however, and some form of amnesty if not asylum is granted him.

The Perceived Threat of Innovation and Technology

Certainly, few in New Zealand can outproduce Kim in the tech space, both in innovation and organisational ability. FVEY despise him because he is viewed as competition by the corporations and because he is a wildcard. Unpredictable, experienced and resourceful.

The Internet Revolution doesn’t fit their risk management strategy, after all.

Unfortunately, the Kiwi public are the losers in the transaction, if we abide by domestic and international intelligence agencies who protect the interests of multi-national corporations, despite the fact that they threaten public access to future technologies and deprive the growth of the local tech sector.

Like the intelligence agencies, the corporations have a total disregard for democracy. Political sway, influence and representation is merely an entry on the general ledger to them – business transactions.

Politics after all is just one column of the structure of power and control outlined in the counterinsurgency theory – the others columns being economics and security.

If the political column falls, the Empire still reigns.

It is only when the base of the structure – information – turns against them, that all three columns are affected.

The Information Activists and the War on Journalism

Kim Dotcom said long ago that he believed a donation he had made to Wikileaks triggered the investigations into him.

Julian Assange recently revealed that it is the same Eastern District Court of Alexandria, Virginia Prosecuting Attorney involved in the investigations into Assange, Edward Snowden and Kim Dotcom.

According to this infographic, the grand jury investigation into Wikileaks and its supporters has now extended over five years.

Given this wider context, it is clear that the vendetta against Kim Dotcom is about much, much more than copyright.

This Is The Story You Will Not Hear In Court

The law that everyone attends Kim’s High Court hearing to debate at length is just one of the avenues that his oppressors use to hurt him.

Whether he wins or loses the case may be irrelevant to their ultimate intent. The Court action was a method to deprive him of resources, to attempt to malign his character, divide his family and friends. But it is just one piece of the counterintelligence pie.

It is pretty clear that this case isn’t about what it appears to be on the surface. Instead, it is and has been for years, FVEY vs Kim Dotcom.

It didn’t start in a Court room, isn’t always played out in one and regardless of the outcome, state interests and spies have long since judged Kim guilty and meted out their diverse and horrific punishments accordingly.

With no small amount of collateral damage and blowback.

Written by Suzie Dawson

Twitter: @Suzi3D

Official Website: Suzi3d.com

Journalists who write truth pay a high price to do so. If you respect and value this work, please consider supporting Suzie’s efforts via credit card or Bitcoin donation at this link. Thank you!

[Update/January 2016] This is what Kim Dotcom had to say about this article:

[Update/January 2018] This post is now available at my Steemit blog.

Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, Julian Assange, Sarah Harrison, WikiLeaks

In Plain Sight: Why WikiLeaks Is Clearly Not In Bed With Russia

50 Comments

With Glenn Greenwald debating General Keith Alexander live on stage as I write this, it is rather convenient timing for this insipid hit piece to emerge claiming definitively that Edward Snowden, WikiLeaks and anyone who supports them are “in bed with the Russians”.

wlr2

John Schindler’s tweet is just plain irresponsible and dangerous as well as untrue. The smear is an old one; the tactic timeless; the source/author dubious but several angles are worth addressing that I don’t think have been properly before.

The Primary Lie: That WikiLeaks Censors Itself For Russia

The biggest lie is the easiest to disprove. Heard so many times it’s impossible to count – that WikiLeaks doesn’t print documents on/about Russia or that aren’t in its interests… that they somehow exclude Russia from their databases or only print approved messages.

Using the most basic investigative method available, let’s see whether this is true: by going to WikiLeaks official website and typing “Russia” into the search bar.

wlr

In case you can’t see that writing at the bottom – there are 647,208 results for ‘Russia’ in WikiLeaks’ database.

Let’s look a little closer.

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So. Just in the first few results alone we have:

  • an article exposing Russian investigations into Tor users – from the Edward Snowden files no less
  • an article describing a Russian government decision as ‘foolish’
  • a report on Russian attempts to regulate the blogsophere/new media
  • a report on Russian censorship of a BBC interview

I think it’s safe to say we won’t have to analyse the entire 647k docs to find more that are critical of Kremlin political views and positions.

WikiLeaks’ Solidarity With Russian Activists

The Russian activists and performance artists known as “Pussy Riot” aren’t just friendly to the cause – they even sit on the advisory board of the Courage Foundation.

None of the detractors explain why, if WikiLeaks is so far “in bed with the Russians”, they work with Russian dissidents who have been targeted for arrest and prosecuted by the State.

Stuck In The Airport For 39 Days

In the pro-NSA anti-Snowden “counterintelligence” fantasy-land of John Schindler, WikiLeaks sent one lone woman to take Snowden ‘from Hawaii to Moscow’ to “defect” only so that he could be… stuck in a Moscow airport with no valid passport for 39 days, desperately applying for asylum, to a whole host of countries?

No, if he was defecting, he’d be welcomed with a parade. Not stuck in civil and physical limbo for over a month. He would have had entire teams of security guys flying him around in military or private jets – instead his entire transit was on civilian airliners.

What makes far more sense is that Edward and Sarah Harrison’s lack of co-operation is what effected their circumstance, leaving them stranded in the airport.

Even after asylum was granted, Sarah stayed on with Edward for several months… this too, indicates that WikiLeaks provided aftercare for him; he was not simply abandoned or left to fend for himself.

A Long Look In The Mirror

Central to the claims that Snowden is colluding with the Russians is the suggestion that intelligence agencies are just so badass that non-cooperation with them is not an option.

This may be true for those without public visibility and a high profile, but as Sarah herself pointed out, Russian authorities were aware that she had access to a platform with millions of followers able to rally in defense of their rights at a moment’s notice.

I can’t help but wonder – who is Julian Assange supposed to hire for bodyguards? Americans? Why is the mere presence of people of Russian origin in one’s life basis for a conspiracy theory?

But any smear will do and smear they have. If the constant boasting of Schindler’s “counterintelligence” / “counterterrorism” background isn’t enough of a clue, a quick look through the author’s past posts exposes his agenda.

He entreats;

“Ever since the Snowden saga broke a few weeks back I’ve defended the Department of Defense (DoD) and the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) against the most scurrilous charges in the media..”

Like clockwork, derisive, salacious and defamatory posts date from June 2013 to the present day, making wild accusations. That Snowden is working with the Chinese – that he is working with the Russians – that WikiLeaks is working for the Russians – with the grave nature of what Snowden actually leaked ignored in an attempt to deflect blame away from the elites in control of the intelligence agencies.

One of the author’s smear pieces claims Snowden did no damage and is irrelevant – the next that he did vast, lasting and unforgivable damage. Snowden’s position and access is minimised to him being “just an IT guy”; the next minute it is complained that he took over a million documents. The story is ever-changing and in aggregate, discredits itself.

Snowden’s True Significance

Edward Snowden did many remarkable things – countless things. That he managed to extricate so much information, get it out to the public, and make his “escape” is in itself incredible.

But his greatest achievements are the least talked about.

Snowden is solution-focused. Rather than merely inform the public, he presents them with an array of tools and resources with which to protect themselves.

It is this engagement that is next level. Not just standing on a stage and giving a speech but taking steps to implement actual change. Not merely educating his audience, but changing their practical behaviours, impacting their decision-making.

As much as his critics downplay him as “just an I.T. guy” Snowden’s words and actions are reminiscent of every individual role in a development team. He is the tester – testing the safety and suitability of open source products for public use. He is the analyst… mapping and understanding systems and making recommendations. He is the database administrator… the networker… the technical writer… the architect… the development manager… the delivery manager… the CTO.

Yet it is not these roles he is recognised for so much as his less tangible qualities. Truth-telling. Bravery. Valour, in its truest sense – ‘great courage in the face of extreme danger‘.

Snowden has brought back a time when celebrity meant more than vain idolatry. When statues were carved, or buildings were named, not for those of elite birthright, great wealth or superficial beauty but for those of daring, heroic deeds undertaken for a greater good.

False promises of corrupted political systems aside – when our children aspire to be more like Edward Snowden than Justin Bieber; or Jesselyn Radack than Britney Spears; there is hope and there will be change.

The World Grows Weary

While humans bicker and slander, steal, oppress, tax and incite, the Earth grows weary. There is ecological devastation wherever we look. Apocalyptic weather patterns, extinctions of multiple species and constant natural disasters.

Refugees are fleeing war-torn countries in their millions while financial systems inflict poverty upon billions.

Pretty soon there will be no amount of anti-Snowden op-eds sufficient to bedazzle us in the face of our reality: humankind is in big fucking trouble and it will take more than words to get us out of it.

Critical thought, research and dissemination of information are the foundations to change but we are now past the point where action is required. Our support for whistleblowers needs to be more material than effortlessly debunking the libel of the status quo’s talking heads. To that end, this article is going to be about more than just the critics.

WikiLeaks is doing a brilliant job of directly confronting the system by holding a mirror up to it. Now we need to show our solidarity and not just declare it. Let our actions combine in beautiful, complex ways.

Effecting change where the State refuses to do so, creating new systems that bypass it entirely.

For we should not aspire just to slowing the pace of human destruction, but to creating new pathways of preservation, new avenues of possibility…

…to literally birth a new world. The evidence of the unsuitability and unsustainability of the old one is all around us.

No longer do we need to debate it.

We need to create it.

Successes

There have been three recent geographically-disparate and diverse political actions that have produced immediate results.

Glenn Greenwald and First Look Media co-ordinated a brilliant fundraising effort to raise contributions for the legal defense of whistleblower Chelsea Manning, resulting in over $100,000 being donated within the first 48 hours.

Aspects of Manning’s case are precedent-setting and will have ramifications for future whistle-blowers therefore empowering her to pursue her rights to their full extent now may become even more consequential later.

Berliners responded to a treason investigation into two journalists from Netzpolitik by taking to the streets, and launching an online solidarity statement signed by local and international journalists, publishers, academics and various luminaries in support.

The investigation was dropped and the investigating prosecutor fired.

  • Transsexual Kiwi Prisoner Wins Transfer To Female Prison

A group of activists in New Zealand who began a hunger strike and various online initiatives in protest at a transsexual woman being incarcerated in a men’s prison has achieved a resounding victory.

Prisoner Jade Follett has now been transferred to a womens prison and is to receive an apology from the Department of Corrections. The Twitter account of protest group No Pride In Prisons that organised the actions, is calling for more than an apology.

In their press release celebrating success, the group states:

‘The fact that the policy places trans women almost always in men’s prisons by default shows how much needs to be changed…

That it took a hunger strike to get Corrections’ attention to this urgent issue indicates just how little regard they have for prisoners’ safety…

‘If it emerges that other trans prisoners have been treated in a similar manner, we will not hesitate to take action’

In Conclusion

The above is proof that diversity of tactics is more than a catch-phrase; ends can be achieved by a variety of means.

It is also proof that people power is winning battles.

These victories are won when actions are organised and carried out speedily, loudly and on hot-button issues, where the State has insufficient time to prepare countermeasures and is forced to opt for ‘damage control’ tactics that can ultimately count in the favour of protesters and effect change.

With all the problems of the present and uncertainties of the future it is WikiLeaks, independent media and whistleblowers informing us; open-source technological initiatives protecting us; and real people opening their hearts, raising their voices and taking action on the streets, that are the difference between certain human self-destruction and social evolution.

Written by Suzie Dawson

Twitter: @Suzi3D

Official Website: Suzi3d.com

Journalists who write truth pay a high price to do so. If you respect and value this work, please consider supporting Suzie’s efforts via credit card or Bitcoin donation at this link. Thank you!

[Update/January 2018] This post is now available at my Steemit blog

Edward Snowden

Debunking The Dinosaurs: Dismantling Snowden’s Detractors

32 Comments

With the Sunday Times Snowden smear completely, utterly and thoroughly debunked, notably if not inadvertently by the journalist and editor themselves, it is time to move on to some of the logical fallacies and prevailing attitudes that continue to support the (albeit-dwindling) anti-Snowden sentiment lingering among certain political hangers-on.

While there were a number of humble apologies made in the Twittersphere and eventually, a “correction“, the most stubborn of establishment sycophants seem determined to press their case.

In particular, the below 15-point Twitter diatribe by columnist Michael Cohen was unmissable and he raised a number of easily dispellable falsehoods that less astute observers appear to have fallen victim to. Let’s take a closer look.

sb1

Given that the journalist himself openly stated that that’s precisely what they were doing. it is Cohen’s tweet that is absurd, rather than Greenwald’s theorum.

viness

sb2

But what about that Vine. The journalist says, direct quote:

We just publish what we believe to be the position of the British Government – Tom Harper, Sunday Times journalist

There we have it. Straight from the horse’s mouth.

sb3

Many national security reporters, analysts and correspondents have far closer, more incestuous and uncritical relationships with the security state that they are supposed to investigate. Public relations executives have invaded the management structure of major print publications and the public relations industry has grown while journalism as a whole has atrophied. State corruption of mainstream media dates back at least half a century.

What Michael Cohen is really accusing Glenn Greenwald of is loyalty to his source, national security whistle-blower Edward Snowden; an accusation which conversely espouses a disloyalty to the establishment which seeks to manipulate public discourse in favour of government policies – policies which include pervasive secrecy and the withholding of information in the public interest from the public arena.

Greenwald’s adversarial role is precisely what real journalism is about. His loyalty absolutely should be with his well-respected and internationally-renowned source, whose veracity and historic significance are long-since established, rather than with Democrat or Republican party lines trumpeted by those with a financial and political interest in the continuation of the status quo.

sb4Glenn Greenwald has been very open from the outset about the interrogation that went into vetting Snowden. Quoting from Greenwald’s interview with PBS’s Frontline:

Having been a lawyer before I was a journalist, and having been a litigator, and therefore having taken a lot of depositions, the purpose of which is to take somebody’s story and just break it down through hours of relentless questioning, where you just ask them similar questions but from different angles and different contexts to ask how reliable those claims are, because if somebody is lying, that process will usually ultimately reveal that, I decided to use those tactics, because I had to be 100 percent certain that I kicked the tires as hard as I could on his story.

The hotel room was relatively small. He sat on his bed. I sat on a chair, probably three feet away from him, maybe four or five feet, and I just looked at him, and I just asked him one question after the next. He didn’t go to the bathroom. He didn’t eat. He didn’t stop and have water. It was really a very rigorous interrogation. I think he later said that it was much more intense than debriefing sessions that he had at the CIA.

I wanted it to be that way by design, because I felt confident that if there was some mendacity or deceit or something scripted, that I would be able to discover it through that process. By the end of that five or six hours, I had zero doubt that he was completely real.

Greenwald went on to spend a further two weeks interviewing Snowden in Hong Kong, and countless hours since. This hardly seems like ‘publishing Snowden’s statements at face value’. Given the origin of the materials Snowden leaked, much of what he says isn’t even a matter of opinion, but a matter of provable fact.

To complain that Greenwald has subsequently become an advocate for Snowden is to ignore the rest of the political landscape and both paid and informal advocacy occurring on all sides. The President of the United States has a Press Secretary, who advocates for and articulates White House positions to the press. Corporations have lobbyists, who advocate for and articulate the positions of big business, to politicians. Politicians have public relation teams, who advocate for and advise them.

Until the launch of the Courage Foundation, whistle-blowers really had very little direct advocacy support. There was some measure of legal support, and limited if any direct governmental support. What is so offensive about journalists who advocate for the weak against the strong? I doubt it’s offensive at all, but rather the impact they are having is growing to be so huge that it is minimising the effectiveness of the disinformation campaigns run by their opponents.

No one, least of all Snowden himself, could have imagined the international sensation he would grow to become. All and sundry expected his fate to be much different. That the advocacy work undertaken on his behalf by his supporters has been achieving spectacular results seems to have provoked some professional jealousy from a political quarter who are used to controlling the media narratives themselves – a quarter that is being displaced by the rising groundswell of public opinion set against them.

sb5

The keystone of journalism is access. Access is forming and maintaining a close connection to a source or subject. Those who have access are fundamental to shaping the public narrative. For a mainstream political columnist to suggest this is an unusual arrangement is rather precious. Who does Michael Cohen think should be shaping the narrative? People who don’t have access or who have an alternate agenda? Like Snowden’s opponents? Or who have no moral investment, no stake in the outcome and no clue? Like these guys?

Cohen must know all about access. His timeline is full of Jeb Bush this, Hilary Clinton that. Campaign agendas are all about access. From fundraising to policy announcements to interviews. As a columnist for the Boston Globe, World Politics Review and the London Observer as well as an avid follower of mainstream political campaigns, surely Cohen understands full well the necessity, import and impact of access.

sb6

All media eats at Snowden’s table, regardless of whether they are pro-Snowden or anti-Snowden. The entire international media has been profiting off him for the last two years. They ALL have a financial stake in him, one way or the other. He has been the single largest recurring news story in memory, both for organisations and freelancers.

To that end, why should anyone for whom Snowden represents a meal ticket be trusted?

Beneficiaries can be divided into three groups:

* Those who take risks to support Snowden against the full weight of the state and get paid for it

* Those who take risks to support Snowden against the full weight of the state and don’t get paid for it

* Those who kick the shit out of Snowden and get paid for it, while getting kudos (if not additional funding) from the security state for doing so.

No points for guessing which group is the most heavily populated by the affluent, predominantly white cis male, dinosaurs of conventional media.

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There is no greater irony than when those who would proclaim themselves the least inclined to put stock in conspiracy theories, begin inventing their own. At this point, Cohen launches headlong into supposition and innuendo.

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Rather than playing Pin The Tail On Edward Snowden, Cohen could remove his blindfold with some simple research – reading Greenwald’s ‘No Place To Hide‘ would be a great start, as would watching Sarah Harrison and Julian Assange’s interviews about Snowden’s transition from Hong Kong to Russia.

In doing so he would realise that Snowden didn’t choose to be exiled in Russia, but was stranded there by the American government when it revoked his passport, presumably for exactly this reason – leaving him in Russia bereft of travel documentation created an easy opportunity to smear him as somehow being improperly affiliated with the Russians. And smear him they have, as Julian Assange explains clearly in this interview with Democracy Now. Julian’s answer is prefaced by a clip of Hillary Clinton leveling precisely the same accusation as Michael Cohen.

Hillary says:

Mr. Snowden took all this material, he fled to Hong Kong, he spent time with the Russians in their consulate, uh, and then he went to Moscow seeking the protection of Vladimir Putin — Hillary Clinton

Julian Assange responds:

This is sadly typical of Hillary Clinton… not even the National Security Agency accuses [Snowden] of working with the Russians. In fact, the NSA, formally in its investigation, has said that they don’t think he was working with the Russians, at least not before he left the agency. Hillary Clinton, however, tries to reshape the chronology in order to smear Edward Snowden with being a Russian spy. The actual chronology is that Edward Snowden went to Hong Kong, he then saw that the situation was very difficult, reached out to us for help, and we were intimately involved from that point on, so I know precisely myself and our staff know, what happened. We submitted 20 asylum applications on behalf of Edward Snowden, to a range of different countries… it was [Snowden’s] intent to go to Latin America… Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador was also looking favourable and Bolivia offered him asylum. En route to Latin America the U.S. State Department canceled his passport, leaving him marooned in Russia, unable to catch his next flight. Which had already been booked from the very beginning. His whole path had been booked while he was in Hong Kong.

…

Hillary says that he went to the Russian consulate in Hong Kong – I don’t know about that but I’m sure that, perhaps he was looking at all different kinds of asylum options and that would have made perfect sense for anyone to do that in such a severe situation.

Hillary Clinton was of course, Secretary of State from January 2009 until February 2013, with her tenure ending just a few short months before the State Department would cancel Snowden’s passport while he attempted to transit Russia.

And that is of course, the same State Department who won’t be launching an internal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s missing emails.

sb9

Cohen’s “how long is a piece of string” argument is best answered by a commenter on the thread:

sbcomment

No one can prove anything in the negative. Proof is supposed to require evidence and evidence can’t be non-existent or it wouldn’t be evidence at all. What questions like these are really intended to do is to obfuscate, distract and smear. They are completely unbecoming.

sb10

As with much of Cohen’s commentary, he fails to back up his accusations with references so this point has been particularly difficult to research. Many hours of reading South China Morning Post’s Snowden archive later, and the only ‘operational info’ I’ve been able to establish that Snowden discussed with them, was wholesale spying on Chinese university students and on the SMS messages of the general population. Unless he is referring to the mention of mass surveillance being undertaken at-cable, which is a worldwide phenomenon that has been reported consistently around the globe, in many regions..

Indeed, the SCMP revelations fit perfectly with the ongoing theme of Snowden’s leaks; where the public of various countries (most of the countries in the world in fact) are spied on in by the U.S. in a wholesale fashion, without warrants or individual suspicion to justify the targeting.

Snowden’s releases have not been about military versus military – but military versus civilians: mass surveillance. To expect him to exclude Chinese civilians, or Russian civilians, or any other, just because the names of those countries are incendiary to the U.S. political mainstream, would be to expect him to discriminate on the basis of nationality, the way his government does. Yet Snowden has very much proved to be a global citizen, and clearly does not adhere to the inherently unjust principle of ‘American exceptionalism’. This does not detract from, but enhances his efficacy in the eyes of the global public.

sb11

Funnily enough, even the South China Morning Post has repeated this mainstream echo-chamber claim that Snowden somehow reversed his position about whether he had read the documents he leaked, during his interview with Last Week Tonight. Business Insider also claimed that host John Oliver had caught Snowden in a ‘lie’. Yet that itself is a lie, because the wording used by the echo chamber was never Snowden’s wording at all and the heavy editing in the segment makes it clear that whatever his real answers were, they lay on the cutting room floor.

Transcription from the relevant section of the John Oliver interview:

JO: How many of those documents have you actually read?

ES: I’ve evaluated all of the documents that are in the archive.

JO: You’ve read every single one?

ES: <edit>Well, I do understand what I turned over.

JO: <edit>There’s a difference between understanding what’s in the documents and reading what’s in the documents.

ES: <edit>I recognise the concern

JO: Right cos when you’re handing over thousands of NSA documents the last thing you want to do is read them.

ES: I think it’s fair to be concerned about, did this person do enough, were they careful enough, were they thorough

JO: Especially when you’re handling material like we know you were handling

ES: Well, in my defense, I’m not handling anything anymore, that’s been passed to the journalists and they’re using extraordinary security measures to make sure this is reported in the most responsible way.

Oliver uses the word ‘read’. Snowden immediately qualifies it with the word ‘evaluated’. The same word he had used all along. Yet in this ridiculous Business Insider article the onus is again flipped back to the word ‘read’ and a hyper-inflammatory tweet is included, to raise the drama a notch:

RFT

The outright accusation that Snowden is lying is way beyond the pale. It is clear that by his continuing use of the word ‘evaluate‘ that Snowden assessed (whether by computer script or manually) the content of the documents, likely considering their provenance, affiliation, meta-data or otherwise and then entrusted the documents to the journalists, instructing them to only publish what is in the public interest.

To try to split hairs by suggesting he should have read every single word on every single page prior to leaking it is nonsense and in the case of the “many tens of thousands of documents” Greenwald describes having received, outright impossible.

Were Last Week Tonight‘s editing not so appallingly obvious and heavy-handed, the misconception that Snowden lied may not be so easily clung to by his detractors and the content of his full answers could be known. However, the short, snappy style of the interviewer (which I wholly accept is for comedic effect) was clearly carried over to the editing of Snowden’s responses, to his detriment.

sb12

Having spent upwards of 15 hours researching this article and hundreds upon hundreds more studying and writing about Snowden’s releases “on my own”, I’m pretty sure I qualify. As with many others who are intrigued by the revelations, I have turned every possibility in my mind over, and over again, while reading, watching and analysing everything that is available in the public sphere.

Ultimately, what convinces me of Snowden’s authenticity is not his supporters but his detractors. They run the exact same establishment ‘deny, degrade, distract, disrupt, destroy‘ playbook against him that his revelations showed are being used against every other significant activist or political opponent in the Five Eyes. This in itself demonstrates how much of a threat he is perceived to be. The voraciousness with which he is attacked by sock puppet accounts and the uniformity of the disparagements they make about him is telling, as is the cast of characters trotted out to discredit him. Cheney. Clinton. Hayden. Current and past directors of this, that and the other agency including proponents of the Iraq war; the disinformation dinosaurs. As usual, the issues are interlinked. The arbiters of American exceptionalism and international economic exploitation detest Snowden and everything he stands for, which, when assessing his credibility, weighs heavily in his favour.

sb12b

Even if they were trying to protect Snowden and/or their images – how is this any different to the journalists who try to shield the U.S. government from scrutiny, and thus protect their own images? I’ll tell you how – because they are protecting a vulnerable whistle-blower in an unprecedented situation, rather than protecting the behemoth, colossal machine of war, economic bullying and austerity, racism, colonisation and Empire of the U.S. Government and the world is a better place for it. Those who get paid defending empire are hypocrites when finger-pointing at those who get paid to confront it.

sb13

There is a vast difference. Journalists who protect vulnerable sources, at great personal risk, cannot be equated with journalists who seek to protect their own government and in doing so uphold cushy, privileged lifestyles and self-justify their positions.

sb14

No. What is an incredible insult to a journalist is having a pro-government shill boast that they would like to write a defense of the journalist being droned to death. Or to have a journalist write an article about all the ways in which their pro-government military sources would like to murder a whistle-blower.

If being called a stenographer hurts your feelings, perhaps it is time to walk a mile in a whistleblower’s shoes before casting judgement.

Finally, one more fallacious argument amplified by Cohen:

Screenshot from 2015-06-26 02:44:11

Anonymity is not the problem. The motivation for acquiring the anonymity and the institution benefiting from it is the problem, alongside the willingness of the media outlet to provide it when it is aware that the source has a personal interest in propagating opinions which are of direct benefit to their employers; sources for which there is a clear financial and social gain.

Which is diametrically opposed to the motivations of Edward Snowden, as evidenced in the very same John Oliver interview.

JO: So, did you do this to solve a problem?
ES: I did this to give the American people the chance to decide for themselves, the type of Government that they want to have. That is a conversation that I think the American people deserve to decide.
JO: There is no doubt it is a critical conversation…

…and it’s one that without Edward Snowden, we may never have had.

Written by Suzie Dawson

Twitter: @Suzi3D
Official Website: suzi3d.com

Edward Snowden

Sign Of The Times

17 Comments

“We don’t go into that level of detail in the story; we just publish what we believe to be the position of the British government at the moment” – Tom Harper (lead reporter on latest Sunday Times Edward Snowden article)

Controversy has arisen around a recent Sunday Times story on NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. The article claims that the NSA documents leaked by Snowden have been hacked by Russia and China, putting the lives of agents in the field at risk. It is also a mixture of serious errors, outright falsehoods and unfounded claims made by anonymous sources. One source is quoted as saying that Snowden has ‘blood on his hands’, not the first time that such a claim has been mendaciously deployed for dramatic effect.

Many of the claims in the article have already been debunked by serious critics here, here, and most powerfully here by Glenn Greenwald, the journalist Snowden chose to give his documents to.

One also needs to ask why, if it is true that UK intelligence knew that there was a possibility that the files could be hacked (and momentarily putting aside Craig Murray’s note that names of agents would never be written down) potentially compromised agents were not withdrawn immediately and replaced where possible. If they really were so concerned about the threat to the lives of their agents, why wait until after the documents were hacked (if they were as claimed). The obvious course of action in such a scenario would be to withdraw any such agents from the field as soon as possible in order to minimize the damage.

The focus of this analysis, however, is on the widespread use of anonymous sources, especially within newspapers of record. The Snowden furor is the tip of the iceberg. One recent example of the use of anonymous sources is the repeated evidence-free assertions of build-ups of Russian troops on the border of Ukraine, usually accompanied by a strong implication that Russia is about to invade. When such assertions are published on Reuters or the other major ‘wires’, the financial and methodological realities of modern media ensure that the stories will be republished word-for-word everywhere, not only on internet news sites like Yahoo and Google, but also on major blogs and in low-quality independent media. [Aside: High-quality independent media would only print such claims with strong disclaimers while pointing out similar instances in the past].

In other words millions will read and ingest parts of the story and, when the next drama in the news cycle comes along, will forget everything apart from the few soundbites they vaguely recall: ‘blood on his hands’, for instance. As the vast majority of casual news readers have no familiarity with or serious interest in the details of the Snowden case (with some falsely believing, for example, that he gave the documents to WikiLeaks) or indeed in most other serious political or social issues, the damage will have already been done. This, in a nutshell, is why soundbites are so prized and ubiquitously used by PR and advertising firms.

Anonymous sources have been used in several important stories over the years and the most instructive example of how devastating such irresponsible media reporting can be is the destruction wrought upon Iraq. The New York Times and other newspapers relied on anonymous sources to allege the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The term WMD itself is one of the most successful soundbites of all time, with the acronym widely used at the time and even now in casual discourse.

The claims were reported uncritically and little or no questioning of the official government position could be found as the drums beat relentlessly for war. We now know that these claims were fed to the media in full knowledge that they were false or amplified, and history tells us that no WMDs were there.

Fast forward to 2015. Nobel Prize recipient Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) released a report entitled ‘Body Count’ this year that concluded that over a million people had been killed in Iraq since 2003 as a result of the invasion. Sectarian violence continues to rip the nation apart and the outlook is bleak with the ascendance of IS in the nation. The city of Fallujah lives with the legacy of US chemical warfare, with hideous genetic deformities and other serious health issues out of control. Meanwhile Judith Miller, the star New York Times reporter, recently embarked on a media tour to promote her book explaining how she really believed what she was writing at the time, employing classic tactics of obfuscation to defuse questioning on her culpability.

The dangers of using anonymous sources are clear:

1. They allow governments, institutions and major corporations to selectively leak information that benefits their agenda.

2. They lead to a situation where no one can be meaningfully challenged on the claims. Spokesmen can plead ‘national security’ and other excuses to avoid addressing questions.

3. A claim without evidence is just that: a claim – only a starting point for a journalistic investigation; not a green light for an explosive, defamatory headline piece that will grab instant worldwide attention.

Nonetheless, there are many cases where the use of anonymous sources is unavoidable, though given the above hazards, great care must be taken. There are several types of anonymous source. A credible source could be someone with whom a journalist has cultivated a long relationship, one whose credibility has been proven time and again on the basis of accurate past stories. A first-time source, perhaps an idealistic employee like Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden, can also be credible if they provide genuine evidence for their claims and are or have also been in a position to obtain such information.

Acting on information from first-time or even known sources – even with evidence (which may be fabricated) – is risky as Newsweek discovered in 2005 when a story (now retracted) it ran about a US Guantanamo interrogator flushing a copy of the Koran down a toilet turned out to be baseless. The story sparked violent riots in Afghanistan and other nations and at least 16 people were killed.

This is where journalistic instinct and experience all come into play. A good journalist will try to corroborate a story and name as many informants as possible, while at the same time appreciating that many sources have extremely good reasons for not being named. This, of course, damages the credibility of the story and makes it only a claim. A reporter and his/her editors must bear in mind the level of credibility when presenting the story to the public, considering factors such as the availability of publishable evidence (like pictures) and the extent of credibility of sources and corroboration and give an appropriate level of prominence to any article published based on this information.

There are, however, cases when it would be irresponsible to publish; namely when a source or even multiple sources have a track record of providing false information or when a source or sources have something to gain financially or politically from the story.

In the case of the Snowden article and the UK government, it’s two for two. The UK government has lied to or misled the public in the past on numerous occasions and its assertions therefore can not be reported uncritically. Further, GCHQ has been greatly embarrassed by the exposure of its Stasi-like operations thanks to Snowden, meaning the government would therefore benefit from discrediting or smearing him.

The Sunday Times responded to criticisms of its article in the form of a ‘has-to-be-seen-to-be-believed’ interview on CNN with the lead reporter on the story, Tom Harper, taking questions from host George Howell.

Gist (significant comments in bold):

Howell: How do senior officials at 10 Downing Street know that these files were breached?

Harper: Well, uhh, I don’t know the answer to that George. All we know is that this is effectively the official position of the British government.

…

Howell: How do they know what was in them [the files], if they were encrypted? Has the British government also gotten into these files?

Harper: Well, the files came from America and the UK, so they may already have known for some time what Snowden took — uhh, again, that’s not something we’re clear on … we don’t go into that level of detail in the story we just publish what we believe to be the position of the British government at the moment.

Howell: Your article asserts that it is not clear if the files were hacked or if he just gave these files over when he was in Hong Kong or Russia, so which is it?

Harper: Well again sorry to just repeat myself George, but we don’t know so we haven’t written that in the paper. It could be either, it could be another scenario.

…

Howell: The article mentions these MI6 agents … were they directly under threat as a result of the information leaked or was this a precautionary measure?

Harper: Uhh, again, I’m afraid to disappoint you, we don’t know…there was a suggestion some of them may have been under threat but the statement from senior Downing Street sources suggests that no one has come to any harm, which is obviously a positive thing from the point of view of the West.

In short, Tom Harper knows quite literally nothing about the story. He also says that ‘no one has come to harm’, which makes the inclusion of the term ‘blood on his hands’ unconscionable. He only knows what government officials hiding behind anonymity told him. Yet armed with this spectacular lack of knowledge, he published a headline article that claimed that the files had been ‘cracked’ by the Russians and Chinese (although he doesn’t know that) and also that Snowden has ‘blood on his hands’, while again having no evidence that this is true. These are extremely serious, dangerous and defamatory claims so one would expect the inclusion of a comment from the Snowden side, or at least from one of his prominent supporters or associates. No such opportunity was provided. This also is a fundamental breach of journalistic ethics.

If one were searching for a working definition of ‘government propaganda mouthpiece’, the actions of Tom Harper and – by extension – the Sunday Times are as close as one can get. While the Sunday Times and any media outlet are at liberty at any time to publish the ‘official position of the British government’ on any issue they choose, depicting it as bombshell breaking news complete with deliberately emotive language is the height of irresponsibility.

This is a serious embarrassment for a major newspaper. A retraction, apology and full explanation must be issued for any credibility whatsoever to be regained. As the Sunday Times is unlikely to accept such an assertion, and is indeed standing by its story, can we now expect a similarly aggressive and blockbusting article on the ‘official position of the British government’ on, say, its arms sales to the Saudi regime? At least in this case the term ‘blood on its hands’ would be demonstrably accurate.

It takes a special level of indoctrination to report with a straight face righteous accusations by British government officials that anyone at all has blood on their hands. The UK, both in its colonial and modern eras, has attacked, invaded, occupied or interfered with almost every nation on the planet. Such indoctrination is a common element of establishment journalists in the UK, with many seeming to possess no awareness of how ludicrous some of their claims about the crimes of current enemies are when weighed up against the similar, documented crimes of their own nation, which they almost unfailingly depict as a benign force in the world.

For the Sunday Times to stand by this obviously bogus story, there are only two possible interpretations of its role: it is either naive about or complicit in the actions of its government. As one does not become a decision-maker in a Rupert Murdoch-owned enterprise by being a shrinking violet, the first option can be safely eliminated. The unavoidable conclusion, therefore, is that the Sunday Times in publishing this article is complicit in the aims of the UK government.

Written by Simon Wood

Twitter: @simonwood11

Laura Poitras

Et Tu, Counterpunch?

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Laura Poitras was smart to stay out of the limelight so long. Her flowering emergence into the mainstream media sphere has been perfectly timed and her diligent work ultimately rewarded with CitizenFour earning the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature at the 2015 Academy Awards.

But as soon as one sticks their head up above the parapet they are instantly subject to organised, concerted detractors, waiting to punish them for it.  It appears Poitras is no exception.

The long-standing publication Counterpunch has some amazing work under its belt – especially pertinent, its reporting surrounding information gleaned from the outcome of the Partnership for Civil Justice FBI FOIA requests in the wake of the Occupy movement.

To citizen journalists in the movement, the name Counterpunch was synonymous with fearless and intrepid political journalism.

It could be counted on to provide cutting-edge counter-narrative to the political mainstream. Yet with recent attempts to debunk the work of Glenn Greenwald, Edward Snowden and now Laura Poitras, Counterpunch seems to have shifted its critical focus from major political figures to those whose work exposes them.

It is extremely distressing to watch publications you have great respect for, printing wanton disparagement of those who have had to subject themselves to massive personal risk and sacrifice in order to raise valid issues and propel important ideas into the public domain.

In ‘Et Tu, Poitras?‘ ‘independent investigator’ Bill Blunden uses scraps of translated narrative to nail Poitras to the wall, rehashing the same title phrasing and acidic tone as an earlier Counterpunch piece entitled ‘Et Tu, Obama?‘

Coming from New Zealand, where the Maori ‘E Tu’ is a motivational call to action, “Stand Up”; the title of the article wasn’t initially distressing. However, ‘Et Tu‘ is in fact Latin and translates to a derisive “And, you?” Scanning through the preceding Obama take-down, it is clear the use of the title implies insult, indeed the provenance of the term is an accusation of betrayal.

The gall of invoking Poitras’ name if not in sequence with, then foreshadowing it by the name of the President of the United States of America, Barack Obama, is noteworthy. Laura Poitras is well known for going out on a limb to protect whistle-blowers, whereas Obama is the overseer of an administration that uses the archaic Espionage Act to prosecute them with unprecedented frequency.

Scratching below the surface of the negative analysis in the ‘Et Tu, Poitras?’ article, the logical transgressions are frequent and the flaws in the construction, transparent.

Blunden starts by explaining that his article relates to an interview Laura Poitras participated in with a Dutch news outlet. Blunden then points the readers to “a rough English translation” via Cryptome.

Yet astonishingly, he does not utilize the transcript he linked to, instead quoting from an unattributed translation with contextual framing that is a substantial departure from the Cryptome text.

Blunden’s version quotes Poitras as saying “Google’s servers are secure: that’s a big change” – which sounds like an absolute statement of personal endorsement which he then immediately lambasts her for at length.

Yet his own Cryptome reference quotes her as actually saying “Google securing its servers – that’s a big change“; an observation of progress made by Google rather than a carte blanche endorsement of Google’s services.

Blunden’s explosion of disgust at her position extrapolates to insinuate that Poitras is burying her head in the sand about everything from child slave labor to tax avoidance; ridiculous and reckless hyperbole given the innocence of her observation when absorbed in context.

Moving straight into a one-two punch by invoking Facebook, Blunden again violates the Cryptome translation by providing yet another skewed and uncredited version.

Blunden quotes Poitras as saying: “Facebook has its website available through the anonymous network Tor. Everyone has appreciation for it, while Facebook is always seen as the enemy of privacy.”

Yet the Cryptome translation reads “Facebook made its website available through the anonymizing network Tor. Everyone appreciates that, while Facebook is always seen as the enemy of privacy.”

The word “made” inferring progress from their prior positions; rather than the static stance implied in Blunden’s quote. His inflection – “appreciation for it” – insinuates Poitras is stating appreciation for Facebook, whereas Cryptome’s “appreciates that” clearly refers to appreciation for the Tor anonymity network rather than for Facebook.

But it gets worse. Much worse. As the Cryptome translation shows, these two individual quotes Blunden has bludgeoned in order to lampoon Poitras, featured a conjoining sentence which he has completely failed to mention in his article and which invalidates his entire premise for it.

Omitted by Blunden but revealed by Cryptome –

“Whether it is 100 percent secure or not, it means that a growing market for privacy exists, and that businesses will respond to that.”

Demonstrating that Poitras was not intending to argue security of the services at all but only to observe their changing positions in the wake of the Snowden revelations.

Indeed the second and third leaked documents from Edward Snowden ever published implicated Google and Facebook in the now infamous PRISM program. The authors of the resulting 6 June 2013 Washington Post article were Barton Gellman and… Laura Poitras! (For trivia purposes; PRISM was also written about in The Guardian by Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill 7 June 2013 which due to time zones was within the same 24 hour period, indeed a simultaneous release.)

So the very woman Bill Blunden attempts to smear as being pro-Google and Facebook was in fact a co-author of the articles which exposed those corporation’s participation in government mass surveillance in the first place.

Ironic huh?

Given the historic significance of her many achievements it is no surprise Poitras is both envied and reviled in unsavory circles.

According to TruthDig, Poitras is “a model for a new generation of investigative journalists bent on protecting their sources while uncovering wrongdoing“.

Her film work pre-Snowden saw her named 2012 MacArthur Fellow by the MacArthur Foundation, an award which she says reduced her to tears at the outpouring of support and recognition from her peers. Doubtless because extracting oneself from the matrix of conventional Western suburban existence to participate in revealing its many geopolitical crimes and hypocrisies, is a long, lonely and arduous road seldom rewarded with anything more than invasion of privacy and violation of human rights and civil liberties, if not outright derision and ostracism.

In this Village Voice article aptly titled ‘Laura Poitras Explains Why Edward Snowden Did It And Asks You To Consider Your Relationship With Google‘, Poitras discusses some of the risks and her motivations for taking them:

“I’ve been working on these issues for a long time, so the feeling, as an American, that this country is drifting — morally — away from basic principles like the rule of law is very concerning,” she explains. “I feel like I’m in a position where I can contribute to a conversation that may shed some light on the human implications of some of these policies. I’ve been on this path for a while. There was a high degree of risk in this, but I also felt that with the magnitude of these disclosures, moving forward was a no-brainer…there were risks for the journalists, but the risks were far greater for the source.”

That’s not to diminish the sacrifice Poitras herself has made — as she admits, “There were moments of real tension and stress, thinking about how the implications of this stuff would be really intense and dangerous. It will change my life moving forward.” — Laura Poitras, interviewed by The Village Voice

The conclusion to the Village Voice article is perfection – they summarise, “Indeed, [Poitras’] life has changed — but due to the risks she and her source have undertaken, the lives of every American citizen have changed as well.”

By contrast, Below Gotham Labs’ Bill Blunden, ‘professional investigator’, certainly hasn’t impacted the lives of every American citizen and the subtle manipulations within his articles substantially drag down the efficacy of Counterpunch’s publication. The BGL website is in fact little more than a blog aggregator, featuring such easily disputed sources as Pando and underpinned by the same  prominent and recurring anti-Tor themes.

Anti-climatically the grand finale` of ‘Et Tu Poitras‘ widens his net of disparagement to include Pierre Omidyar, Glenn Greenwald and even Snowden himself.

One need not think too hard to imagine which persons and/or organisations might have a motive to malign Poitras, Omidyar, Greenwald, Snowden and the Tor network in one fell swoop, or how a market might easily exist for authors willing to do so.

Had he performed even the most rudimentary web searches on the aforementioned in conjunction with the keywords ‘Google’ and ‘Facebook’, Blunden might have had to publish what they really think, some rudimentary examples being:

Laura Poitras: ‘Facebook is a gift to intelligence agencies‘

Edward Snowden: ‘called networks like Facebook and Google “dangerous” for being hostile to privacy‘

Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald’s book about his experiences with Poitras and Snowden, ‘No Place To Hide‘, discusses Google’s culpability in mass surveillance and other related factors on pages 18, 20, 21, 74-75, 94, 108-111, 135, 153, 156, 170-171, and 252.

The “techno-libertarians”, Blunden calls them, and suggests they believe privacy can come from “the next app”. Well he must not have watched too many Edward Snowden videos then.

Snowden has repeatedly stated that if individually targeted by the agencies, that they will subvert your communications regardless of your methods of communication. They will locate and subvert your hardware, monitoring and violating your physical environment, and invest significant resources to do so, given political or criminal imperative.

The reason he advocates encryption is not to prevent individual targeting, no matter how fairly or unfairly it is applied, but to prevent MASS surveillance, where entire populations are caught in a wholesale, illegal and immoral dragnet.

At this point it’s difficult to tell what is more disappointing – that there are authors who still refuse to acknowledge this point or that they continue to get publishing credits while doing so.

Written by Suzie Dawson

Twitter: @Suzi3D

 

The Tor Project

Deciphering The Tor Project

3 Comments

The recent OMG-Tor-is-government-funded #TorGate “scandal” and the on-going anti-Tor Pando/Yasha Levine campaign has disturbing parallels and despite thousands of words spilled onto digital pages, the most significant implications have been largely ignored.

Governments Using Tails/Tor

This should not come as a surprise to anyone. When I recently applied for a passport renewal, the staff at the Department of Internal Affairs operated their computer from a USB stick. When I made this observation on Twitter, Yasha Levine himself retweeted it.

Why are  our governments using these technologies? There is only one rational answer. They are best practice. When operated correctly, they actually work.

If Tails/Tor etc are being entrusted with the most sensitive data that governments hold, then they clearly are among the best tools currently available for protecting data integrity and privacy.

As they are being used by governments, it is not surprising that the funding for their inception came from government agencies. Nor is it surprising that government would continue to subsidize technologies upon which they are reliant, going forward.

The Level Playing Field

So what’s the problem?  Why all the fuss? Well it’s pretty simple. If use of these tools is best practice, it doesn’t mean the government wants you to use them.

Widespread uptake and competent use of these tools would create a level playing field that is inherently unattractive to power. Access to technology has always been the great divide between the have’s and the have-not’s.

While some argue that because the larger the number of nodes, the greater Tor increases in potency, this strengthens Tor as a program and network, but makes it less controllable by government.

These days, Tor is entirely open-source, which gives it the ability to muster significant voluntary manpower that could theoretically rival the resources of government.  That the recent TorGate attacks are focused upon the developers – those at the coal face of the architecture, development, testing and strategic direction of Tor, is rather telling.

Recent disclosures of NSA documents have demonstrated that all you need to do to get yourself on a watch-list these days is to run Linux or to be a commercial sys admin (systems administrator) by trade. In this environment, is it surprising that the government is both targeting users of Tails/Tor etc, while simultaneously enjoying the benefits of the technologies, itself?

Or is its desire to stonewall public access to anonymizing tools indicative of a greater complex of privilege and entitlement, as evidenced in many other sociopolitical areas of modern life?

In the days of “Collect It All” it seems that if you aren’t using Tor, all your communications and files are being collected by the government anyway – explaining why if you are using it, you get relegated to the watch-list to be targeted individually. The occurrence of this targeting lends to both the efficacy of Tor and the unquenchable desire of the state to retain and purview all of your private information, at whim.

The Open Source Movement  & The War on Innovation

Anyone who thinks open source developers aren’t targets of the state should try becoming an effective one and see what happens to you. The Open Source Movement is both a source of pure hope for the betterment of humanity, and a perceived threat to industry and government.

Developers that bow out of the corporate arena to pursue open source projects are often maligned and attacked and preyed upon by detractors and competitors.

Yet despite this, both industry and government utilize open source tools for their own benefit. This is a hypocrisy that has been demonstrated elsewhere.

In the recent Dirty Politics scandal in New Zealand, Wikileaks partner Nicky Hager blew the whistle on a number of major misdeeds being performed by government Ministers and employees in New Zealand.

One of the revelations is that these political operatives bragged to each other of using Tor/Tails.  Yet they are ideologically and actively set against the proponents of internet privacy and net neutrality.

They despise and ridicule Kim Dotcom. They have written dozens of smear posts about him, despite his incredible contributions to software development in New Zealand, and Mega’s advances in anonymizing technologies. They equally dislike and work to undermine the Julian Assange’s, Edward Snowden’s and Jacob Appelbaum’s of this world.

The Dirty Politics cabal continue to act against the public interest and exclusively for private and political interests and they do it all while using Tor/Tails.

The irony is thick. The reality is, the attacks on independent entrepreneurs and high profile advocates for the Open Source movement is first and foremost about controlling innovation, mitigating perceived corporate risk and managing change. Protecting monopolies by stifling digital evolution. Protecting the dynasties, the old boys’ club.

Serving the general public is barely on the radar. They are at the bottom of the access spectrum where technology is concerned. First comes the military – then the military-industrial complex (these days easier to think of it as the military-commercial complex thanks to the wonders of privatization of functions that were traditionally performed within the realm of government) – then comes commercial, then comes the American public and select others – then follows the rest of the first world countries in the order in which they are favored by the Americans, and then follows the rest of the world.

This is precisely why projects like Tor are initially government-funded, and why  the attacks on them begin at the point at which the technology is finally open-source and filtering through into the public sphere.

In the rare situation where a technology makes it to public access while still being a part of the critical infrastructure of the upper echelon, such as appears to be the case with Tor, the undermining becomes even more venomous, as the stakes are considered to be higher for those in the seat of power and privilege.

It also results in an ongoing stake in the maintenance and further development of the software. For the beauty of open source is that it provides a free ‘core’. A platform upon which governments, and anyone, can build, customize and deploy their own tailored solutions.

Therefore there can be countless extensions or plug-ins to Tor, which, dependent upon license conditions and the willingness of various parties to adhere to them, can allow infinite versions of the software to exist other than that which is freely available to users via the official website.

It is of course, also about how it is used in conjunction with other things – a connector rather than the entire proverbial pie.

Other Recent Criticisms of Tor

It must be frustrating to be Jacob Appelbaum. He gets up on stages as at #30c3, tells the world incredible and important things, hopes like hell they understand what he’s talking about, works his butt off to advance open source technologies, and still gets crapped on regardless.

His often-touted ‘six figure salary’ is a fraction of what he could clearly earn contracting in the corporate sector and yet a dedicated set of detractors – ironically many within the halls  of government and not just random troll personas on Twitter – constantly try to take him, and Tor, down a few notches.

And they are prepared to sink to any low to do it. One of the troll themes is that Tor enables child predators/abusers/pornographers. Tweets and no-name blog-posts that aren’t worthy of being linked to here, accuse Tor developers of being somehow responsible for facilitating the most disturbing perversions of mankind.

This accusation can also be found in the comments section of Quinn Norton’s Pando piece: Clearing The Air Around Tor. The obvious rebuttal is absent. Almost every internet platform in history has been used by child predators and pornographers.

From #horsesex, #dogsex and #familysex on IRC throughout the 90s (and probably 00s), to Yahoo! chat, to Craigslist – to even Second Life and a variety of online children’s gaming platforms, virtually no software community has been free of the invasion of unsavory characters using technology to commit crimes.

Are all to be equally punished? Or only those whom it is en vogue to attack?

While Quinn promoted her article on Twitter as being “about what makes very good indeed, & how the community can make it better” it contains a number of criticisms and appears on a website that features an entire slew of anti-Tor conjecture.  The first internal hyperlink Pando has added to the article leads to Yasha Levine’s piece “Tor Spooks” – pretty much rendering Quinn’s fence-sitting posturing moot by association.

Scroll to the bottom of the article and not only will you find that Quinn Norton is a “Social Justice Navy Seal” but that there is a whole row of other related anti-Tor articles for you to select from. In fact they are coming thick and fast, with another Pando op-ed implying that Quinn’s critical assessments of Tor posted to an anti-Tor website were despite her being “pro-hacker”. Very interesting that they would create this internal polarity – an illusion of opposing views, for Quinn claims:

“The Tor team and general information security community have not proven to be good at communicating with regular people. Tor is no magic bullet”

This comment is remarkable, given that when you launch the Tor browser, you immediately see:

Tor Homepage

It is difficult to imagine how Tor could be any more matter of fact than that. Regardless of whether it has a pretty interface, Tor has struck a great balance between low word count and high quality content. It is actually very approachable linguistically and easy to navigate. The standard of documentation is excellent.

Is it marketing-driven corporate drivel? No. You can accuse them of not campaigning like Coca-Cola but it is unfair to suggest they are less than upfront about the capabilities (and liabilities) of Tor, or to hold their geek status against them when it comes to their ability to communicate with users.

Quinn summarises;

“I’d also like the community of Tor supporters and Tor developers to tell a better story, more true to what Tor is and does, so that we don’t run into these kinds of misunderstandings. And even more important, so that users at risk don’t misunderstand and misuse this powerful but specific tool.”

At this point, other than cutesy little animated videos explaining things in a reeeeeeeeeeeally slow voice, it’s debatable whether the Tor story can get much more approachable than is apparent in its ongoing penetration into the mainstream.  As for ‘misunderstandings’ – if there were one or two comments about Tor on Pando that may be a valid adjective, however with the persistence and sheer quantity of the anti-Tor material posted on Pando, it is clear there is such a heavy investment in lambasting Tor that they are unlikely to cool their heels anytime soon.

Pando have the nerve to claim they are the victims of a “smear”. When we see a Tor website with a sliding gallery of anti-Pando articles that may seem more plausible. But for now the proof is in the pudding, and Pando’s counter-revolutionary tabloid-style narratives (yes, this is the publication that once referred to Justine Tunney as the “leader” of Occupy Wall Street, a leaderless movement) are very much transparent to even the most casual of observers.

But putting the haters aside – it really is time to ask, why have open source engineers becoming political targets? Why will rogue trolls and stalkers try to mess with your life if you work for the Tor Project?  What is standing in the way of human innovation and how can we stop the suppression of evolution?

Most important of all – how can we close the technological access gap to keep a level playing field between both ourselves and those government employees who claim to act in our interest – without being labelled criminals or terrorists or being added to watch-lists, all for the audacity of having aspired to the enjoyment of the same privacy protections as our esteemed political representatives?

Written by Suzie Dawson

Twitter: @Suzi3D

Official Website: Suzi3d.com

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