Pentagon fails another audit but comptroller insists they’ll pass soon… like in 2027
RT | November 17, 2020
The Pentagon has failed its third-ever audit as its budget grows to record size – but the Defense Department comptroller wants taxpayers to know the agency will almost certainly have its books in order by 2027.
Interim Pentagon comptroller Thomas Harker defended the Pentagon’s third failure in a row since the agency began conducting audits in 2018 during a briefing on Monday, explaining “this is something that’s never been done for an entity of the size and complexity of the Department of Defense.”
“We’ve been clear that this is a journey that will require a sustained effort over several years,” Harker continued, predicting the Pentagon might be able to pass an audit in 2027 and deeming that a “reasonable” target for an entity with $2.9 trillion in assets.
However, the Pentagon isn’t being audited as a whole – a ‘Pentagon audit’ actually comprises 24 smaller audits of the individual agencies that make up the Defense Department. Just seven of those agencies are expected to pass, Harker said – the same number as passed last year.
Harker had plenty of excuses handy for why the bloated agency failed its third audit, noting that the Department of Homeland Security – which has only existed since 2002 – took 10 years to pass an audit and complaining that “coronavirus-related travel restrictions” made things difficult for the auditors this year. He pinned the blame for the Marine Corps failing its audit despite making “a ton of progress” squarely on the pandemic, while praising the Defense Information Security Agency’s “working capital fund” for making improvements, expressing hope that the unit might even pass when its audit is completed in December.
While Harker is officially the top budget official at the Navy, he has been working double duty as Defense Department comptroller since July 2019 in the absence of a Senate-confirmed replacement for Elaine McCusker, who resigned after 18 months as acting comptroller when the White House withdrew her nomination for a permanent appointment.
Adding insult to injury, the failed Pentagon audit cost taxpayers $203 million in fees, paid out to public accounting firms. Harker insisted the changes inspired by the findings – “process improvements that we’re making around accountability for property accountability [sic], for inventory, that type of thing” – will save the Pentagon over $700 million.
Despite failing every audit since they began in 2017, Congress has continued to shovel money into the Pentagon at an unprecedented pace. Fiscal year 2020 saw the agency receive a record $738 billion, including allotments for cash-burning programs like the notoriously failure-prone F-35 jet that exceeded even President Donald Trump’s requests.
While federal law has required government agencies to be audited since 1990, no attempt was ever made to audit the Pentagon until 2017, despite the agency eating up more than half of every discretionary budget dollar. In 2016, it emerged that the department had tried to memory-hole an internal study exposing $125 billion in “administrative waste in its business operations” lest Congress use its fiscal ineptitude as an excuse to slash the budget. That the most expensive military in the world would spend a quarter of its gargantuan budget on administrative overhead was a national embarrassment.
Worse, a 2017 investigation found $21 trillion in “unsupported adjustments” for the Pentagon and the Department of Housing and Urban Development over the years 1998 to 2015 – a truly shocking sum of money. The finding implies the Pentagon has misplaced hundreds of times more taxpayer dollars than it has ever been legitimately allotted by Congress.
Despite this pattern of eye-popping fiscal malfeasance, the Pentagon quietly asked Congress earlier this year if it could both classify its future spending plans going forward and be relieved of the responsibility of certifying their accuracy. The department has been legally required since 1989 to submit publicly-viewable estimates of the next five years’ defense spending annually, called a “Future Years Defense Program.”
The election vote: the deeper you look, the worse it gets
By Jon Rappoport | November 16, 2020
In this article, I’m going to discuss two companies, Dominion, and ES&S. I would advise investigators not to go to sleep on ES&S.
I’m not going to repeat all charges that have been leveled at Dominion Voting Systems. But look at what happened in Texas, when the Secretary of State had an analysis done in the fall of 2019.
The report was titled, “Voting System Examination Dominion Voting Systems Democracy Suite 5.5-A.” [1] It was prepared by James Sneeringer, Ph.D. Designee of the Attorney General of Texas.
The devil is in the details, so here they are:
“Adjudication results can be lost. In the [prior] January exam, during adjudication of the ballots in the test election, one of the Dominion representatives made a series of mistakes that caused the entire batch of adjudication results to be lost. We did not see this problem again during this exam, but the adjudication system is unchanged, so this vulnerability is still present. Recommendation: Certification [approval of the Dominion system] should be denied.”
“Installation is complex, error prone, and tedious. I counted 184 steps in their installation manual before deciding to estimate the remaining steps. I estimate a total of about 500 steps are required to install the software. I did not count steps that merely said something like ‘Click OK’ or ‘Click Next.’ This installation manual is 412 pages long with an additional 23 pages of front matter — contents, lists of figures, and the like… Recommendation: Certification should be denied.”
“Test Voting. During our voting test, we discovered that some party names and proposition text were not displayed, and one scanner was not accepting some ballots. These all turned out to be errors Dominion made in setting up the standard test election used by the Secretary of State. In the case of the scanner, it had accidentally been configured not to accept machine-marked ballots. The other problems were caused by leaving some fields empty during election setup, something that the EMS software should not allow, or at least highlight. Recommendation: Certification should be denied.”
“Misleading Message. The ballot-marking devices incorrectly informed voters that they were casting their ballots, when in fact they were only printing them. The ballots are not be counted until they were scanned on a different device. Recommendation: Certification should be denied.”
“USB Port Vulnerability. The ICX ballot-marking device has an indicator light on top to show poll workers when the station is in use. That light is connected by a USB port. When Brian Mechler’s phone was attached to the USB port, the ICX scanned the files on his phone and did not complain, although Dominion later showed that the event was logged. When a USB drive with files was inserted, the ICX sometimes complained and sometimes did not, apparently according to the content of the USB drive and whether it was present when the ICX was first powered up or inserted later.”
The examiner’s final conclusion: “I cannot recommend certification. Computer systems should be designed to prevent or detect human error whenever possible and minimize the consequences of both human mistakes and equipment failure. Instead the Democracy Suite 5.5-A is fragile and error prone. In my opinion it should not be certified for use in Texas.”
If that doesn’t give pause for thought, nothing will.
Now we turn to ES&S, another voting machine company in use in the US. It has a long track record. The source here is a PROPUBLICA article, “The Market for Voting Machines Is Broken. This Company Has Thrived in It,” [2] dated October 28, 2019, by Jessica Huseman. Key excerpts:
“In Georgia, where the race for governor had drawn national interest amid concerns about election integrity, ES&S-owned technology was in use when more than 150,000 voters inexplicably did not cast a vote for lieutenant governor. In part because the aged ES&S-managed machines did not produce paper backups, it wasn’t clear whether mechanical or human errors were to blame. Litigation surrounding the vote endures to this day.”
“In Indiana, ES&S’ systems were plagued by mishaps at the local level. In Johnson County, for instance, the company’s brand-new machines faltered in ways that made it difficult to know whether some people had voted more than once.”
“The vote in 2006 in Sarasota, Florida… There, ES&S machines lost around 18,000 votes; it is still unclear why. The loss was far more than the margin of victory, and a lawsuit followed that ultimately resolved little. The company said in a statement that a variety of testing done on its machines supports its claim that the devices were not at fault, but the county wound up canceling its dealings with the firm shortly afterward.”
“Despite such stumbles, ES&S — based in Omaha, Nebraska, and employing roughly 500 people — controls around 50% of the country’s election system market, the company says, meaning that some 70 million Americans vote using the company’s equipment.”
“A ProPublica examination of ES&S shows it has fought hard to keep its dominance in the face of repeated controversies. The company has a reputation among both its competitors and election officials for routinely going to court when it fails to win contracts or has them taken away, suing voting jurisdictions, rivals, advocates for greater election security and others.”
“ES&S files many such suits. In May 2016, for instance, ES&S unsuccessfully sued Colorado over its decision to buy statewide uniform voting equipment after the state moved to a vote-by-mail system. The company also sued Colorado county over the issue, and it lost these cases as well.”
“In Wisconsin, after the 2016 national elections, ES&S sued to prevent Jill Stein, a Green Party candidate for president, from obtaining information about its machines that might have assisted her in her bid for a recount. A judge rejected ES&S’ argument that submitting to Stein’s request would compromise its proprietary technology.”
“ES&S has also threatened lawsuits against voting rights activists. In 2018, it warned it would sue Audit USA — a small nonprofit that advocates for election security — for posting the company’s manuals for scanners online (it hasn’t done so). The same year, the company repeatedly said it would initiate litigation against security researchers who bought old ES&S machines and attempted to hack them at a conference on cybersecurity. The company also sent letters to its own customers, saying it would sue them if they participated in such conferences or provided ES&S equipment to the events.”
HOW DO YOU LIKE ALL THAT?
I’ll close for now with excerpts from an American Thinker article by Jay Valentine, “Big Data to the Rescue: The Electoral College Meets Data Pattern,” [3] November 13, 2020:
“Here’s the summary: For the election returns in many precincts to happen the way they did, Biden would have to flip a coin 1,000 times and get heads every time. We aren’t done here.”
“He would also have to do it over and over again, in scores, perhaps hundreds of precincts.”
“Welcome to big data analysis.”
“Industrial fraud is always discovered with statistical analysis… Industrial fraud is pretty cool because from the outside, it is invisible…”
“When subject to statistical analysis against known patterns, industrial fraud stands out like a dinosaur walking through a field of peanut butter. It is unmistakable.”
“Is such analysis proof?”
“Yes, it is proof that there is an anomaly of such proportions that it must be investigated. And this isn’t hard. Remember, all the data you need to do the analysis is after-the-fact voting data. You do not need to see a single ballot.”
“… you just need to know that in precinct after precinct, there is an unmistakable pattern that the more people vote for Trump over Biden the greater the number of Trump votes the counting machines scoop from Trump to Biden.”
“The pattern [of vote-flipping] is one that can only be done by machines, like a computer. There are too many transactions, with too straight a line, across too many precincts, to be the guys with the ballot boxes arriving in the middle of the night. They are extra fraud.”
BUT OF COURSE, NOTHING STRANGE HAPPENED IN THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. NO REASON TO INVESTIGATE. JUST WATCH THE NEWS NETWORKS. THEY’LL TELL YOU BIDEN IS THE PRESIDENT. EVERYTHING IS FINE. GO BACK TO SLEEP. YOUR MASTERS ARE IN CHARGE.
SOURCES:
[1] https://www.sos.texas.gov/elections/forms/sysexam/oct2019-sneeringer.pdf
“The First Thing We Do”: The Lawless Campaign To Harass Lawyers Representing The Trump Campaign
By Jonathan Turley | The Hill | November 16, 2020
Less than a week after the election being called for President-elect Biden, supporters are turning to Shakespeare’s “Henry VI” for their first priority: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” That lawless fantasy of the character “Dick the Butcher” appears to have found acceptance not only among some of the public but some lawyers themselves.
Within 24 hours of the election being called, the media and an array of legal analysts declared no evidence of voter fraud to change the outcome. The problem was that we had not even seen the Trump campaign’s filings or evidence. As Trump lawyers began to file cases, alleging everything from deceased voters to biased authentication, the solution became clear: Get rid of the lawyers. No lawyers, no cases, no Trump.
What is most unsettling is that this effort is led or cheered on by lawyers. Take Washington Post columnist Randall Eliason, who gained notoriety supporting an array of theories on impeachment or criminal claims against Trump, including a bribery interpretation long rejected by the Supreme Court and not adopted even by the impeachment-eager House Judiciary Committee. Eliason wrote a column, “Yes, going after Trump’s law firms is fair game.” (Everything seems fair game if the ultimate target is Trump.) Eliason shrugged off the notion that attacking a person’s lawyers, rather than his positions, is beyond the pale: “Law is a profession, but these mega-law firms are also big businesses. Like any business, they can be held accountable by the public — and by their other customers.”
The law is not like any other business, however. Lawyers speak for others, including some of the least popular among us. I have represented clients ranging from judges, members of Congress and whistleblowers to spies, terrorists and polygamists. Many were hated by the public, who demanded that I be fired from my law school — but I have never seen such a campaign led by lawyers against lawyers.
Our legal system works best when competent lawyers present cases to dispassionate judges. In this case, some 72 million Americans voted for Trump, and many believe changes in the process — particularly the massive increase of mail-in voting — undermined the election’s integrity. That is why these cases are important: Faith in our legal and political systems depends on fair access to and representation in the courts.
As in the past, there is a disturbing symbiosis of the media and activists feeding off each other. When Biden was viewed as the likely winner, theories of voting irregularities instantly became “conspiracy theories.” Groups like the Lincoln Project targeted law firms and launched a campaign to force lawyers to abandon Trump as a client.
This effort resulted in Twitter blocking the Lincoln Project for targeting individual Trump lawyers in a tweet (accompanied by a skull-and-crossbones emoji) that was deemed threatening and abusive. That only seemed to thrill the Lincoln Project. It reportedly joined Democrats in targeting law firms like Porter, Wright, Morris & Arthur and threatening its lawyers with professional ruin. It claimed that any firm working for Trump on election litigation was part of a “dangerous attack on our democracy.” Trying to strip people of their counsel, of course, is the real attack on our democracy — and it worked: The firm buckled and withdrew, saying the pressure caused internal struggles and at least one lawyer’s resignation.
Other campaigns have targeted individual lawyers and what used to be called “fellow travelers” during the McCarthy period. After the election, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) called for liberals to assemble enemies lists of those “complicit” in the Trump administration. (Ironically, the first entry by a Bernie Sanders surrogate were the Republicans who founded the Lincoln Project). Former Obama spokesman Hari Sevugan proudly tweeted: “WH staff are starting to look for jobs. Employers considering them should know there are consequences for hiring anyone who helped Trump attack American values.”
However, the effort to intimidate lawyers representing Trump or his campaign is not about vengeance. It is about insurance. Even though the success of these challenges is small and shrinking, opponents do not want to risk any judicial scrutiny of the vote. Social media campaigns targeted the clients of firms like Jones Day, while the Lincoln Project pledged $500,000 to make the lives of these lawyers a living hell. It is the kind of tactic used by Antifa and other activists to “deplatform” speakers or harass individuals at their homes.
Trump is highly unpopular with many Americans — and virtually all of the media — so it is popular to harass anyone who supports or represents him. It is mob justice targeting the justice system itself. Yet, lawyers like Eliason are applauding the effort.
Eliason justifies such harassment by saying the Trump campaign and Republican groups “have filed lawsuits that appear to contain baseless allegations of fraud and that seek to have lawful votes rejected.” Note the word “appear.” Eliason did not know when he wrote the column because he has not seen the evidence. Neither have I. We only began to see underlying evidence (or the lack thereof) this week as courts held hearings into pending motions. It is the difference between wanting something to be true and knowing something to be true. That is generally what courts determine.
Yet, there is little patience for discussing, let alone litigating, these legal issues. On Friday, I discussed these challenges, including a Michigan district where thousands of Trump votes were initially tallied as Biden votes; the district used the same voting software that has been the subject of much national debate. While I explained that the mistaken tally resulted from human error and nothing “nefarious,” the question remains whether such new systems or software might be vulnerable to human errors. Despite my stating there was no evidence of systemic problems, Colorado Law Professor Paul Campos denounced me as akin to a “Holocaust denier” who should be fired. I was accused of “both sideism” for discussing the claims of the Trump campaign, even when noting that Biden appears the duly elected president.
Notably, the person most undermined by these efforts is Joe Biden. Rather than call for a transparent review of these cases to affirm his legitimacy as president-elect, his supporters are harassing lawyers and running a hysterical campaign of retaliation. It is an ironic twist: For years, many of us marveled at how guilty Trump looked in his efforts to bully accusers and scuttle the Russia investigation. The best thing for Trump would have been to support a full, open investigation. Likewise, there is no compelling evidence of systemic election fraud now, and the best thing for Biden would be to support a full, open investigation. Threats and biased media coverage only deepen the suspicions of Trump voters.
There is an alternative. We can all agree that every vote should be counted and every voting case be heard. Our political and legal systems both require a leap of faith — and this crisis of faith has now moved from the political to the legal system. Courts are supposed to be where reason transcends the rage that reigns outside the courthouse. However, it still requires lawyers.
How the British government secretly funded Syrian cartoons and comic books as anti-Assad propaganda aimed at children
By Kit Klarenberg | RT | November 16, 2020
Leaked documents show how the Foreign & Commonwealth Office spent millions setting up a clandestine network to churn out pro-rebel material, much of it aimed at winning the hearts and minds of kids.
A swath of internal UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) files have exposed a number of covert ways in which London sought to both propagandize Syrian children and turn them into weapons, in a vast, long-running information warfare campaign at home and abroad.
The documents are just some of the bombshell papers released by hacktivist collective Anonymous, outlining a variety of cloak-and-dagger actions undertaken by the UK government against the Syrian state over many years.
The overriding objective behind them all was to destabilize the government of Bashar Assad, convince Syrians, Western citizens, foreign governments, and international bodies that the Free Syrian Army (FSA) was a legitimate alternative, and flood media the world over with pro-opposition propaganda.
Children figured prominently in a number of the plans, in more ways than one. ARK, a shadowy firm headed by veteran FCO operative Alistair Harris, was central to many of these covert efforts, which may have cost the FCO many millions in total.
Undermining government legitimacy
In one file, the company outlines pricing for runs of propaganda material including “public service announcement animations” (£4,570), “political cartoons” (£1,200), and “comic books (24 colored pages)” (£30,200).
A separate proposal submitted to the FCO by communications firm Albany details ways of offering clandestine support to “oppositionist grassroots media activism.” The company conducted numerous psyops in Syria – including managing the Syrian National Coalition’s communications during the 2014 Geneva II peace conference – and collaborated extensively with ARK in the process.
Creating “fictional material” such as radio dramas and “digital comic strips for internet deployment” was listed one of the key ways the firm would “bolster the values and reputation of the Syrian opposition,” and undermine the government’s “core narrative and legitimacy.”
Precisely which projects emerged from these pitches, if any, isn’t clear from the files themselves, but in May journalist Ian Cobain revealed Hentawi, a comic aimed at 9-to-15 year-old Syrians, was a clandestine creation of the FCO, and its founder Naji Jerf was an employee of a firm contracted by the department.
The files released by Anonymous indicate that the company in question was ARK, who provided Jerf’s CV – it reveals that from 2006 to 2007, he was Editor of a UAE-based magazine, Attfal Al Yaom (Children of Today).
Such experience undoubtedly assisted in the production of Hentawi, which featured very slick comic strips slyly extolling equality and democracy and other values, quizzes and games, and inspiring stories of athletes, celebrities and the like.
Cobain also exposed how FCO contractors produced animated films for Syrian children, such as Goal to Syria, about a young footballer who scores the winning goal in the 2027 Asia Cup final, leading the Syrian team to victory.
As the player prepares to attempt a deciding penalty, his mind flashes back to Aleppo in 2014. In the wake of a bombing raid, the White Helmets rush in an ambulance to rescue him from rubble – en-route they pass a local man who screams, “first they bombed us with chemicals, and now barrel bombs!”
After prising the boy free and carrying him to safety, a White Helmet shoots him the peace sign. Back in 2027, he shoots and scores, with the commentators praising the “lion of Damascus” for his heroic victory. As the screen fades to black, viewers are presented with text hailing the White Helmets’ achievements during the conflict, claiming the group “represent the humanity and spirit of the Syrian people.”
Other leaked FCO files make clear ARK played a pivotal role in constructing and promoting the White Helmets’ benevolent image worldwide, developing “an internationally-focused communications campaign to raise global awareness” of the group in order to “keep Syria in the news.” Goal to Syria was shown at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, and can thus be considered another example of this effort in practice, on top of the clip’s domestic purpose.
Somebody think of the children
The same file listing Naji Jerf’s resumé indicates that ARK worked with civil society organizations “to develop products for children” in Syria, including “mobile cinema screenings.”
The company’s expansive network of freelancers in the country, which ARK itself extensively trained at quite some cost to the FCO, were said to “frequently cover such events.” These reports would then be fed to ARK’s “well-established contacts” at major news outlets including Al Jazeera, BBC, CNN, Guardian, New York Times, and Reuters, “further amplifying their effect.”
These outlets similarly “amplified” the impactful propaganda of other FCO contractors working in Syria. In July 2019, an image of two young Syrian girls trapped in rubble in Idlib attempting to haul their sister to safety as she dangled off the precipice of a dilapidated building, their father looking on in horror above, spread far and wide on social media.
The photo, snapped by a photographer for popular Syrian news service SY24, was reported the world over. Unbeknownst to readers, SY24 was created and funded by The Global Strategy Network (TGSN), founded by Richard Barrett, a former MI6 counter-terrorism director.
In a file submitted to the FCO, TGSN boasted of how “campaigns” it broadcast via SY24 generated “huge global coverage,” having been seen by “many hundreds of millions of people,” and “attracting comment as far as the UN Security Council.”
SY24 content was produced by a network of stringers TGSN both trained and provided with equipment, including “cameras and video editing software.” The firm drew particular attention to a team of female stringers it tutored, “who provide about 40 percent of all SY content,” and were part of “a broad ‘network of networks’” enabling TGSN “to drive stories into the mainstream.”
As with Albany and ARK, TGSN engaged in activities to propagandize Syria’s youth, offering to bring projectors to refugee camps and “rural areas” to screen material to young residents, including “prosocial cartoons for children, films chosen with regard to conflict sensitivity and gender, and popular football events to drive participation.”
The company also conspired with ARK on several surreptitious endeavors, including a campaign dubbed ‘Back to School.’ As its name implies, under its auspices young Syrians in opposition-occupied Idlib returned to school – the two FCO accomplices promised to ensure it was a major media event.
In conjunction with Idlib City Council, opposition commanders, and other elements on the ground, ARK and TGSN planned a comprehensive, “unified” communications campaign using “shared slogans, hashtags and branding.” Rebel fighters were to be engaged in order to “clear roads” and “enable children and teachers to get to schools,” all the while filmed by the pair’s voluminous stringer network, footage which would be “disseminated online and on broadcast channels.”
Junior war propagandists
It is in the context of such cynical, heartstring-tugging child exploitation by the FCO that the phenomenon of Bana Alabed gains an even more suspicious, sinister dimension.
In 2016, at the age of just seven, Bana briefly became a celebrated figure among advocates of Western military intervention in Syria, for tweets she allegedly posted documenting the siege of Aleppo.
Within days of her account being registered in September that year, she amassed a sizeable following, firing messages at Assad, Vladimir Putin, and Barack Obama, using hashtags such as #StandWithAleppo, #HolocaustAleppo, #MassacreInAleppo and #StopAleppoMassacre. She also gained a prominent media profile, was dubbed by more than one pundit the “Anne Frank” of the Syrian crisis, and was invited on to major news networks to denounce Assad and the Syrian Arab Army.
Nonetheless, critics were puzzled as to how such a young girl in a city subject to frequent power cuts could have acquired such an apparent mastery of the English language, and tweet so frequently. Concerns were also raised about the interventionist nature of some of the tweets ostensibly posted by Bana, including an apparent endorsement of the prospect of World War III.
Even mainstream journalists acknowledged her video statements were almost undoubtedly scripted, The New Yorker stating Bana was clearly “being coached… to communicate her thoughts in a language she is only beginning to learn.”
Bana went on to ink a lucrative deal with publishing giant Simon & Schuster, after signing up with talent and marketing agency The Blair Partnership, founded by Neil Blair, board member of the UK branch of the Abraham Fund, a group sponsored by Israeli bank Hapoalim, which finances the construction of Jewish-only settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Bana had largely disappeared by July the next year, when Syrian journalist Khaled Iskef visited the Alabeds’ abandoned home. He found it was situated round the corner from an al-Nusra headquarters, and less than 400 meters from Al-Qaeda’s Aleppo nerve-center. Inside, he discovered a notebook documenting her father Ghassan’s work with extremist elements, as a result of his position as military trainer for Islamic Sawfa Brigade.
During that period, he worked in the Shariah Council in the Aleppo state Eye Hospital, which was under the control of al-Nusra. The notebook indicated the Council passed decisions on imprisonment and assassination of captured civilians to the terorrist group.
Since-deleted social media posts reveal Bana’s grandfather Mohammed was an arms dealer and had a weapons maintenance shop in Sha’ar, at which he serviced killing apparatuses for terrorist factions, situated opposite a school-turned-base for al-Nusra.
Bana’s Twitter account frequently complained of her inability to go ‘back to school’ – in a perverse irony, Iskef found al-Nusra used a former school near her home as a headquarters.
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. Follow Kit on Twitter @KitKlarenberg
President of Soros-Linked Voting Software Firm on Biden Transition Team – Trump Lawyers
By James Tweedie – Sputnik – 15.11.2020
Trump’s attorneys said the Smartmatic software used in the Dominion voting machines – which ‘flipped’ 6,000 votes cast for President Donald Trump to rival Joe Biden in one Michigan county alone – had ‘back doors’ allowing corrupt officials to rig elections.
US President Donald Trump’s legal team has named a retired US Navy admiral as the link between Joe Biden and the software for controversial e-voting machines.
Trump’s attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell alleged Smartmatic – whose chairman of the board, retired Admiral Peter Neffenger, is part of Joe Biden’s transition team – was at the heart of the vote-rigging in the November 3 election.
Smartmatic’s holding company is chaired by an associate of influential Hungarian-born billionaire George Soros. Neffenger is also a member of a think-tank that recently received funding from the Ukrainian firm that employed Biden’s son.
Giuliani told Fox News’ Mornings with Maria on Sunday that Smartmatic supplied the software for the Dominion Voting Systems machines that ‘glitched’ and transferred 6,000 votes cast for Trump to Democratic candidate Biden in one rural Michigan county alone.
Powell pointed out to host Maria Bartiromo that Neffenger is president of Smartmatic and also sits on its board of directors.
“It just so happens he’s on Mr Biden’s presidential transition team – which is going to be non-existent, because we’re fixing to overturn the results of the election in multiple states,” Powell said. “President Trump won by not just hundreds of thousands of votes, but by millions of votes that were shifted by this software that was designed expressly for that purpose.”
“We have sworn witness testimony of why the software was designed. It was designed to rig elections,” she added. The witness “was fully briefed on it, he saw it happen in other countries, it was exported internationally for profit by the people who are behind Smartmatic and Dominion.”
“They did this on purpose. It was calculated. They’ve done it before,” Powell said. “We have evidence from 2016 in California. We have so much evidence, I feel like it’s coming in through a fire hose.”
Powell also claimed Smartmatic paid “kickbacks” to public servants in return for lucrative state contracts. She said several whistle-blowers had come forward to say “substantial sums of money were given to family members of state officials” who bought the software.
Dominion machines were used in 28 states, including the six key battlegrounds of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
“We’re talking hundred-million dollar packages for new voting machines, suddenly, in multiple states,” Powell said. The “benefits” to officials ranged from cash to “what I would call election insurance, because they know they can win the election if they are using that software.”
Powell said she was “livid” that successive governments had failed to act on many complaints about the hardware and software – including from senior Democrats Carolyn Maloney, Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar.
“Which makes me wonder how much the CIA has used it for its own benefit in different places,” Powell said. She added that it was incomprehensible that Central Intelligence Agency Director Gina Haspel was still in her post, asserting: “She should be fired immediately.”
Bartiromo quoted a “senior intelligence official” as saying Smartmatic’s software has a “back door” that allows it to be “mirrored and monitored” to give an “intervening party a real-time understanding of how many votes will be needed to gain an electoral advantage.”
“I can prove that they did it in Michigan, I can prove it with witnesses,” Giuliani said. “We’re investigating the rest. In every one of those states though, we have more than enough illegal ballots, already documented, to overturn the result in that state.”
“Yes there is a back door, and we actually have proof of some of the connections to it,” Giuliani said. “Right now our cases are most developed in Pennsylvania and Michigan.”
Asked if he needed the Dominion hardware or Smartmatic software to prove his case, Giuliani said he had witnesses who “can describe the hardware in great detail,” along with government employees and others who “were there at the creation of Smartmatic. They can describe it, they can draw it, they can show it.”
“Beyond this election, this whole thing has to be examined as a national security matter,” Giuliani stressed. “The governors who gave contracts to this company never bothered to do any due diligence.”
“I can’t imagine you would give a contract to a company if you went one step further and found out it’s really being run by people that are close to [Nicolas] Maduro and [Hugo] Chávez” – the current and former Socialist presidents of Venezuela.” (see below)
Neffenger was made a ‘distinguished fellow’ at the Atlantic Council think tank after he left the US government in 2017. In 2019, the Wall Street Journal reported that Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings, which employed Biden’s son Hunter in controversial circumstances, donated $100,000 a year to the council from 2016 to 2018.
Smartmatic’s founder and CEO is Venezuelan Antonio Mugica, while Britain’s Lord Mark Malloch-Brown – a long-standing associate of Soros – is the chairman of Smartmatic’s London-based holding company SGO Corporation Limited.
Smartmatic equipment was used in the 2017 elections to the Venezuelan National Constituent Assembly, after which Mugica turned against Maduro – contrary to Giuliani’s claim that the two are in cahoots.
Mugica admitted his software could be hacked to rig an election when he told a press conference in London that Maduro’s government had inflated the turnout by around a million. But he revealed he had failed to inform the proper authorities in Venezuela before his press conference, claiming “I guess we probably thought that the authorities would not be sympathetic to what we had to say.”
Malloch Brown was a junior minister from 2007 to 2009 in former British PM Gordon Brown’s short-lived government and has several links to Soros. He was a member of the billionaire’s advisory committee on Bosnia from 1993-94. In 2002, while working as an administrator for the United Nations Development Fund, he suggested the agency work with Soros’ Open Society Institute. In May 2007, he was hired as vice-president of Soros’s Quantum Fund but quit four months later to join the UK government.
Open Society Institute legal counsel Kenneth Anderson has also been a council member of the Human Rights Foundation – whose founder and president Thor Halvorssen is the cousin of fugitive Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez. Lopez was jailed in 2015 for inciting violence in the deadly 2014 Guarimba riots aimed at overthrowing Maduro’s government.
UK Labour Party demands online crackdown on ‘anti-vax disinformation’ ahead of Covid-19 vaccine rollout
RT | November 15, 2020
With the UK preparing for a Covid-19 vaccine rollout, the Labour Party is calling for emergency censorship legislation to punish social-media companies if they allow posting of what it considers to be “anti-vax disinformation.”
“Social-media companies have a pitiful record of tackling disinformation,” shadow culture secretary Jo Stevens said Sunday on Twitter.
“The government needs to stop dragging its heels and force companies to remove this dangerous content ahead of the rollout of the coronavirus vaccine.”
Stevens and Labour’s shadow health secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, have co-authored a letter demanding that the government impose financial and criminal penalties on social-media platforms that fail to censor anti-vaccine posts.
The government must “deal with some of the dangerous nonsense, nonsensical anti-vax stuff that we’ve seen spreading on social media, which erodes trust in the vaccine,” Ashworth said. He added that the government will need “strong public-health messaging” to ensure that legitimate questions are answered and fears are allayed.
Facebook, Twitter and Google agreed last week to help the UK’s government blunt the spread of vaccine misinformation and disinformation. The companies promised to help spread government-promoted messaging about vaccine safety and to ensure quick response to content that has been flagged by health officials. They also agreed to block people from profiting on anti-vaccine content. But Stevens and Ashworth said that anti-vax groups that were flagged months ago to social-media platforms remain active.
The UK has ordered 40 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, and it aims to get emergency approval to start distribution by next month. But Labour’s push to censor discussion that it deems false is raising concern that proper scrutiny of the vaccine won’t be allowed in a country that was forced to pay settlements to patients who suffered brain damage resulting from the H1N1 vaccine in 2009.
“This is scary,” writer Sue Cook tweeted. “Censorship? If we objectively want to investigate issues around the safety of a particular vaccination before rolling it out, surely that’s good. It is not a matter of being ‘anti-vax.’”
Former Labour MP Ruth Smeeth, who now heads a free-speech group called the Index on Censorship, argued that “rational argument will be lost” if anti-vaccine discussion is pushed underground. “Surely the answer isn’t to ban the anti-vaxxers but to explain why they are wrong on every available platform,” she said.
More on the Strange Demise of The American Herald Tribune
By Tony Hall • Unz Review • November 13, 2020
In recent days many news sites, including Unz Review, have highlighted the role of the US Department of Justice (DOJ), the FBI and the CIA in removing web sites from the Internet. For five years I have worked as Editor in Chief of one of the targeted sites that was killed as a result of specious claims concocted by the US intelligence agencies and their media extensions. American Herald Tribune is a victim of a drive-by shooting inflicted by many of the same people seeking to impose the outcome of this presidential election. AHT is now a fallen soldier in the increasingly contentious Battle for Reality.
Initiated in 2015, AHT was made to disappear through the destructiveness of those presently vandalizing the Internet and much else besides. This modern-day version of book burning is based on a closed process where imperatives of the Empire of Deception are expressed. The imperatives of deception must be made to prevail no matter what; no matter who gets hurt or killed in the process
The destruction of the web site that I worked on with others was destroyed on the basis of a ridiculous claim from on high. American Herald Tribune was grouped together with dozens of other web sites said to form what was described as a worldwide propaganda scheme directed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The IRGC is well integrated into the larger structures of the Iranian Armed Forces.
Based on a directive given in 2019 by Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu to US President Donald Trump, IRGC was added to the US list of terror organizations. Netanyahu thanked Trump for “responding to another important request of mine.” For one country to designate the Armed Forces of another country as “terrorists” is pretty much the same as a Declaration of War. It creates something new with no precedent or formal place in the constitutional inheritance of international law.
While it can be dangerous to say so out loud, it is well known among the attentive that the government of Israel holds seemingly unlimited sway over many aspects of US lives and US governance. The areas of Israeli and Jewish dominance include strategic communications and foreign policy.
Within this framework of power relations the dominant unfulfilled action sought by Israel First partisans is to maneuver the US Armed Forces into invading and destroying Iran. Sheldon Adelson has specifically called for the use of nukes to bomb Iran “half way into the stone age.”
The prospect of such a war, one that came very close to happening in the opening days of 2020, is one of the most destabilizing factors in global geopolitics. At its strategic nexus in the heart of Eurasia, the Islamic Republic of Iran is allied with China and Russia. Moreover Iran has its own highly sophisticated military apparatus. Many of its senior soldiers and commanders are battle hardened especially from the legacy of decade-long war with US-backed Iraq. Iran is the home of a well-educated population of Persians with a great sense of rootedness in one of the world’s most ancient and accomplished civilizations.
The assault on American Herald Tribune and other web sites was justified as a step along the lethal trajectory meant to lead to a military invasion on Iran. The US attack on web sites is better understood as part of a well orchestrated domestic attack not only on the free speech rights codified in the First Amendment but on the whole underlying essence of Constitutional governance in the beleaguered United States..
The very parties engaged in censoring the Internet and shaping it to advance their own self-interested agendas are themselves deeply implicated in perpetrating major international and domestic crimes. The pre-emptive disappearance of the American Herald Tribune is one small but telling example of a ritual of exorcism. Its dynamic includes an effort to protect the guilty from the incursions that can arise from genuine investigative journalism.
The crimes being pressed from within the US intelligence agencies are extensive, elaborate and devastating in their consequence. The role of the FBI in perpetrating and covering up crime is especially obvious. As Gareth Porter has demonstrated, the FBI was engaged at all stages in a process that disabled and eventually destroyed AHT. The destruction began with the FBI ordering the disabling of AHT first on the strategic platforms of Facebook, Instagram Twitter and Google.
On Nov. 4, just as the tsunami of dirty tricks entailed in election fraud began rolling into the American heartland, American Herald Tribune was removed altogether from the Internet. The site itself along with its archives were plunged into oblivion
It seemed that CIA skills in rigging many elections around the world are now being deployed domestically. The imperial chickens were coming home to roost. The USA is itself now the site of a George Soros-backed Color Revolution. The residue of democracy still barely alive in United Sates is thereby being flattened and killed as the media pushes aside due process to anoint “President Elect Joe Biden.”
US Department of Justice (DOJ) took the lead in justifying the purge that eliminated AHT from the mix of Internet offering. This assault on a small but symbolically significant vehicle of investigative journalism speaks of the rapid ascent of authoritarian milieu where the law-defying media cartels appointed themselves top government deciders.
The Post-Mafia Character of Organized Crime
Many of the agencies engaged in the ritual assassination of AHT are engaged in a range of operations that are taking place far outside the gamut of the rule of law. Organizations charged to counter high-level crimes are instead engaged in committing and covering up organized crime. Some of the crimes that the big US intelligence agencies are promoting rather than prohibiting include, for starters, aggressive warfare as well as drug dealing, money laundering, stock market manipulation, bribery, blackmail and fraud. This list is far from complete.
The inability of the US Justice Department to keep an incarcerated Jeffrey Epstein alive long enough to face his accusers in a trial is suggestive of many things to come. The demise of the Epstein case on the issues Mr. Epstein had come to embody points to the great power of those that traffic in the exploitation of sex slaves, including children.
It seems that one of the big payoffs in this gruesome category of crime involves the filming of influential figures having sex with children. Apparently the threat of exposing these films to public view forms one of the most reliable means for the intelligence agencies to blackmail trendsetters, opinion makers, financiers and deciders into compliance.
The systemic involvement of the big intelligence agencies in organized crime extends to the massive deceptions pressed on the public through the 24/7 dissemination of disinformation by agglomerated media cartels. These cartels have been working in concert with the tax-free and indemnified corporate monopolies presently engaged in seizing illicit control of the Internet.
The scope of the media Mafioso’s power grab is epitomized by its attempt to install Joe Biden as US President by ignoring or downplaying massive and growing evidence of widespread election fraud.
In the days leading up to the US election, Rudy Giuliani, former NY City mayor and one of the most successful prosecutors in US history, was pictured in the media busily marshalling evidence. The evidence he was amassing should be more than enough to trigger a full-fledged FBI investigation into the well-documented case swirling around the possible criminal conduct of Joe Biden’s and much of his family. A considerable amount of evidence is already on the public record. It illuminates the nature of a political career that seems deeply bound up, at the very least, with illicit influence peddling conducted by Joe Biden’s son and his brothers.
The findings of Rudolf Giuliani cannot be easily dismissed. As a federal prosecutor Giuliani succeeded in winning convictions of America’s leading mafia families. It is hard to counter Giuliani’s insistence concerning the broader implications of Hunter Biden’s escapades. Hunter’s conduct was especially significant when he was for all intents and purposes a foreign affairs emissary of the Obama-Biden White House.
Giuliani effectively makes the case that he, together with a small coterie of other experienced investigators, have already identified the broad outlines of a crime spree and a national security scandal involving the many-faceted infractions committed collectively by the racketeering members of the Biden Crime Family.
The publicity attending reports of the Laptop from Hell have helped draw attention to the Biden scandal as articulated by Giuliani and also by Steve Bannon, Senator Ron Johnson, Peter Scweitzer, Maria Bartiromo, and, for a time, by reporters at the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal and Fox News. The FBI is apparently holding the original hard drive of the Hunter Biden’s discarded Laptop from Hell.
Hence the receptacle of a significant part of the smoking-gun-evidence in the Biden scandal has apparently been gathering dust throughout 2020 in the office of FBI Director, Christopher Wray. This revelation has particular significance for me especially in light of the FBI cavalier removal of Internet content containing some of my best investigative work developed over a period of five years. Christopher Wray sat on the Biden laptop during the very months when his office was showering attention on the process leading to AHT’s removal from cyberspace .
Who thinks that the FBI Director Wray got his priorities wrong? Who is willing to take on a federal police force possessing, no doubt, abundant surveillance files on every individual of consequence? This intrusive approach to federal policing was pioneered by J. Edgar Hoover. For almost half a century Hoover was the FBI’s notorious Director. No doubt the data-collecting capacities during Hoover’s time pale in comparison with government spying activities carried out by the post-9/11 surveillance state.
When I think of the FBI a flood of images of government malfeasance come to mind. I think, for instance, of the FBI’s involvement in the murders of the Kennedy brothers, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X. I think of J. Edgar Hoover. I think of the farce of the FBI’s fake investigation into the 9/11 fiasco under the auspices of FBI Director Robert Mueller.
In 2017 Mueller returned to his role as a master of the FBI propensity to cover the tracks of high-ranking criminals. Mueller was brought in to clean up the mess created by the Clinton-Obama losers after they handed over the keys to the White House to the new Donald Trump administration.
The departing oligarchs acted on the principle that the best defence is a good offence. Donald Trump, it turned out, did not dare as he had promised to set in motion the jailing of Hillary Clinton. Instead Donald Trump was subjected to the Russiagate deception, a prelude to the current Irangate deception. A telling symbol of the Irangate deception is the FBI’s knife in the back of AHT.
When I think of the effort to undermine all possible platforms for aggressive investigative journalism, I am reminded of probable FBI-CIA collaboration in the murder of perennial truth teller, John Lennon. I think of the FBI’s role in the police killing in 1969 of the Black Panther activist Fred Hampton and of the FBI’s direct assassination of Lavoy Finicum in 2016.
Finicum was a rancher and an outspoken critic of the federal role in land management in the western US. Like Hampton, Finicum was a gifted speaker with a talent for widening the discussion from the grievances of particular groups to the grievances shared by people in general. Both Hampton and Finicum were victims of governmental homicide aimed at killing the messengers of popular discontent.
During the university winter break in 2016 I drove from my home in Lethbridge Alberta to investigate in Oregon the murder of Finicum as well as popular responses to it. In the course of my research I tried to visit the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, federal land that had been occupied in the protest movement led by Finicum, the Bundies and other members of the Citizens for Constitutional Freedoms.
As I approached the site of the Malheur protest I was stopped at a roadblock. I was suddenly confronted by about 6 machinegun-wielding officials all wearing overalls with the FBI crests. I was patted down and threatened and instructed in no uncertain terms to turn around and head back to where I had come from.
I wrote about the whole experience at some length as part of the process of taking on my new responsibilities as Editor in Chief of American Herald Tribune. Because of the FBI’s recent assault on AHT, the articles explaining my encounter in 2016 with FBI officials are no longer readily accessible. Some digital fragments of my writing on the Finicum affair survive here and there.
My point is not that the FBI helped to assassinate AHT in order to hide the FBI’s own crimes and misdemeanors. My point is that this federal police force has a history of committing crimes and covering up crimes so that the FBI is no longer a credible instrument of law enforcement. The history of FBI crimes via COINTELPRO that have been directed at, for instance, the peace movement, the American Indian Movement, the Black Panthers, the civil rights movement, the environment movement, and the Nation of Islam.
There are some very dark sides to the history of undercover assaults by the FBI and its accomplices on people and organizations pressing for needed changes to existing social, economic and political orders. The protesters in Black Lives Matter need to take seriously the politics of their siding with some of the primary opponents of the very principles they claim to be advancing in 2020. As always, its important to follow the large sums of money that are helping to fuel the sometimes violent BLM and Antifa actions.
The attack on AHT is quite well aligned with the FBI’s history of seeking the repression of progressive movements. The FBI is a failing federal police agency that should indeed be defunded. The FBI should be replaced with another entity designed to reflect the findings of an investigation into federal policing, an investigation that is long past due.
The Seeds of American Herald Tribune
I have never made any secret of the fact that I have visited Iran several times in the last six years. One of these visits arose from my agreement to deliver an invited paper at a history conference at the University of Tehran. I also attended an event in the Iranian Parliament where Muslim solidarity was expressed by many delegations including many that represented national governments. The shared cause that brought us together was justice for the Palestinians. My other visits involved attendance at New Horizon Conferences.
The most recent New Horizon conference took place in Beirut in the autumn of 2019. Invited US delegates including Dr. Philip Giraldi and Dr. Kevin Barrett. They were threatened by FBI officers promising harsh consequences if they attended the Beirut gathering.
My initial participation in a New Horizon conference took place in 2014. I was one of about 60 foreign delegates invited from throughout North America and Europe. The delegates included Pepe Escobar, Medea Benjamin, Ken O’Keefe, Imran Hussein, Thierry Meyssan, and Wayne Madsen.
One of the featured speakers was Gareth Porter. Dr. Porter introduced his book, Manufactured Crisis, where he exposed the errors in much US and Israeli alarmism concerning Iran’s nuclear energy program.
As I would later realize, the New Horizon conference of 2014 can be seen as a part of the political negotiations that would culminate in 2015 in the agreement of Iran with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany. The aim of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was intended to enable the Iranian government to continue with its nuclear energy program with international monitoring.
Another aspect of the deal involved some reduction in economic sanctions imposed on the basis of the international power derived from the Federal Reserve banking system headquartered on Wall Street. To get a deal, US President Barak Obama had to invest considerable political capital in what could be seen as a move aimed at normalizing relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
When President Donald J. Trump came to power he very publicly renounced the deal on behalf of the US government. Much to the pleasure of the Israeli government, the resulting deterioration in US-Iran relations has become more and more severe right up to the present.
The whole experience of being part of a very significant event in Tehran was for me something of a revelation with many layers of meaning. As my time in Tehran passed I could see in my mind’s eye a melting away of media-generated caricatures embodied in popular stereotypes of the most demonized country on earth.
The agenda of the 2014 New Horizon conference included some very lively academic sessions. The exchanges among colleagues caused me to become more aware of subtle prohibitions on free speech in North America. I witnessed how the delegates in Tehran were able to converse on some contentious issues in a relaxed and poised way. I reflected on the irony of how difficult it would be to replicate this quality of open debate in academic conferences in North America.
As I ingested the basics of what was to me a new discourse, it seemed I had entered the vortex of very profound antagonisms between Israel and the Islamic Republic of Iran. I could sense that these antagonisms were reverberating far beyond the region. Prototypes and patterns were being set that help shape many facets of international relations.
In the process of returning from Tehran to Lethbridge I saw from computer searches conducted in airports various versions of a much-mirrored report conveying unflattering things about the New Horizon conference. The same story was replicated across many influential venues.
The highlighted story featured angry condemnations hurled aggressively by Abe Foxman, then National Director of Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. Foxman described the whole conference as a hate fest of anti-Semites, conspiracy theorists, Holocaust deniers and 9/11 truthers.
Seeing this combination of weaponized phrases alerted me to how such terms can be combined to compound the harshness of defamatory smears. To be accused of any one of the ADL’s condemnations implied that the whole set of accusations applied to the entire conference and to every delegate who took part.
This crash course in the techniques of Israel First propaganda extended to shocking illustrations meant to indicate what the conference was supposedly all about. Accompanying text presenting hostile commentary on the New Horizon event I saw published images of angry demonstrators burning the Israeli flag. No such demonstration took place. But adherence to the truth of what did or didn’t happen has not been a priority for the authors of a smear campaign the likes of which I had never seen, let alone experienced up until that point
As I settled back into my usual routine in Canada I resolved to look more deeply into a research problem that had come into greater focus during my time in Iran. Since 1982 the academic focus of my research, publication, and teaching was centered on studying encounters between Indigenous peoples and the societies of the colonizing newcomers they encountered.
Over time I worked on expanding this study from Canada to North America and then to the Western Hemisphere. A reasonable extension of this approach, I determined, would be to expand this trajectory of study to the treatment of the indigenous Arabs of Palestine by the Zionist founders and builders of Israel.
A major thread of continuity in this study linking US and Israeli history was the Calvinist views of New England founder’s who saw themselves as God’s Chosen people, as Israelites seeking to establish a New Jerusalem. This vision of Manifest Destiny runs from the creation of New England to the transcontinental expansion of the United States to the US-backed expansion of Israeli settlements eastward to the West Bank and beyond.
Ze’ev Jabotinsky is the founder of revisionist Zionism, the version of imperial Zionism that today dominates the Israeli Knesset. In developing his vision of Greater Israel, or Eretz Israel, Jabotinsky drew heavily on his reading of US expansion into Indian Country. He provided the essential metaphor of the “Iron Wall” as the essential condition for Israeli security and for the Jewish state’s acquisition of new territory. Military force, not compromises and reciprocity with Indigenous peoples, was to provide the basis of the Iron Wall on the moving frontiers of the Jewish state.
The Life and Times of American Herald Tribune
In the months following my return to Canada I engaged in E-mail exchanges with a thoughtful Iranian graduate student who reached out to me based on what he saw at the New Horizon conference. Out of that exchange emerged the idea of the American Herald Tribune, a project we worked on together over a five-year period. During most of those years Donald Trump has been US President who adopted the specious 9/11 narrative and as well as the caricature of Iran as a country of ruthless terrorists.
The Zionist design to poison the minds of Westerners against the government and people of the Islamic Republic of Iran has been unrelenting especially since 2001. In the days following the 9/11 debacle, recall that George W. Bush characterized Iran, along with Iraq and North Korea, as members of“the axis of evil.”
After 9/11 the Israel First architects of the Global War on Terror were especially fast and zealous to pin the label of “terrorist” on the Palestinians and Iranians. After the New Horizon conference in Beirut in 2019 I addressed the meme of Israeliocentric allegation that Iran is the world’s biggest exporter of terrorism.
The misrepresentation of of 9/11 and many subsequent false flag terror events was systematically deployed to pave the way for the invasion of several Muslim-majority countries including Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen.
These invasions were deemed acceptable in the West because of the toxification of the mental environment with poisonous inducements in popular culture to fear all Arabs and Muslims as potential jihadists. The result has been elevated levels of Arabophobia and Islamophobia. The Zionist Lobby worked especially hard, however, to stimulate attitudes of Iranophobia,
Iranophobia can flourish in societies where most people have very little knowledge of Iran and its deep Persian heritage. This ignorance of Iran is not inadvertent. Only very rarely do we see Iranians loyal to Iran’s present government invited to represent their country in the Western media. Increasingly the rule seems to be that Iran can only be spoken about by lobbyists actively promoting aggressive war against the Islamic Republic. There seems to be no room in the media for Iranians to represent their own country on their own terms. Nor is there room for proponents of peace with Iran to counter the messages of the war hawks.
My Iranian colleague and I have since 2015 worked together to build up American Herald Tribune. I was surprised myself by the growth of a large constituency of authors from around the world who became enthusiastic to contribute on a wide array of subjects. Initially some of the authors were paid small amounts and many contributors receive no recompense at all.
Some of the published pieces were contributions written especially for AHT and some of the items were mirrored from other sites. Some of the authors are experienced and well known and some of the authors were neophytes submitting their first attempts at journalism. All in all AHT became very multinational and international in character with a fairly frequent focus on West Asia and Eurasia.
In recent years whatever amounts of money were originally available apparently dried up. Like many Internet initiatives, the AHT project was by and large a labor of love, not a money-making enterprise. I made a point of contributing my modest talents and services for free. I did not seek and I was not offered any material gain. In my role as Editor in Chief I would intervene from time to time to sort out various contentions.
The subject of homosexuality, for instance, generated contrasting treatments by AHT contributors Miko Peled and Gearoid O’Colmain. My advice was not to pick sides but to publish the different perspectives of both commentators. The decision was not well received by some. AHT’s then-regular columnist, George Galloway, for instance, chose to withdraw from AHT because of how we handled this matter.
While AHT had developed over time a genuinely international personality, the project continued to hold my interest largely because of my desire to promote the ideals of peace over the contentions of war. As part of this commitment I have become an advocate in Canada of the resumption of normal diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The Israel First sycophant, Canadian PM Stephen Harper, had unilaterally severed diplomatic relations with Iran in 2012. Justin Trudeau has promised to restore diplomatic relations but has failed to do so.
I have intervened against interventions by B’nai Brith Canada and its MEK partners to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, the IRGC, as a terrorist organization. I my view, President Trump made a big mistake when he gave into Netanyahu’s demand to designate the Armed Forces of a sovereign government as a terrorist organization. If that approach was to catch on, how many peoples in the world would have good reason to designate the US Armed Forces as a terrorist organization?
I completely reject as absurd any notion that AHT is a venue somehow operated by the IRGC as part of a worldwide Iranian influence network. That hallucination is the product of the kind of twisted thinking that tends to develop in those whose perceptions have been distorted by too much war game strategizing. As for me, I am comfortable in my skin as an advocate of peace who makes a point of getting in the way of the intrigues of war mongers.
I took on the war mongers, for instance, at CNN and the Washington Post when earlier this years they both published articles aimed at stigmatizing AHT as a crude instrument of Iranian propaganda. My two responses originally published at AHT have been made to disappear. The articles, however, were picked up by other sources where they can still be found.
As I wrote in AHT’s response to the Washington Post’s smear of the targeted venue,
I proudly affirm that AHT is opposed to any US-led war with Iran. For those seeking to avoid the scourge of war, the pursuit of peace obviously favors dialogue and exchange rather than animosity and sword-rattling. AHT intends to continue favoring dialogue and exchange.
In answering the criticisms of CNN and WaPo, I was very much aware that I was responding to two media venues well known for their close relations with the US intelligence establishment but especially the CIA. While CNN was not established until 1980, both venues extend into contemporary times the older heritage of Operation Mockingbird, the mother lode of CIA-engineered propaganda establishing much of the narrative of the US-led side in the Cold War. CIA operatives and assets continue to be well represented within the staffs of many big media venues.
The Washington Post’s essay on AHT was written as an account of the decision of the newspaper’s Iranophobic Editorial Board. I accused this Board of
… rattling off jargon paraphrasing a deeply flawed study that provides no evidence whatsoever for the extravagant claims being irresponsibly asserted.
The basis for the Washington Post’s claim goes back to a glossy document put together in Milpitas California by an organization named Fire Eye. Fire Eye’s CEO is Kevin Mandia who cryptically describes his company’s specialty as the defense against “cyberattacks.”
The title of the Fire Eye report is Suspected Iranian Influence Operation: Leveraging Inauthentic News Sites and Social Media Aimed at U.S., U.K., Other Audiences. No specific individuals have permitted their names to appear as authors. Thus no one takes specific responsibility for the report’s contents, an understandable absence given the shoddy quality of the study.
There is absolutely no information given about the funders of the report. Why? What is there to hide? Did CNN or the Washington Post or a subsidiary company help fund the study? Did the Israeli or US government pay the piper? The question of the sponsorship of such an investigation is crucial to an assessment of its credibility. Everything points to the fact that there is apparently much about the origins and genesis of this mysterious study that is being kept under lock and key.
There is no clear explanation or justification of the methodology used. There are no specific references to other studies of a similar nature except for vague references to the Democratic Party’s hunt for Russian influences on US politics. There are no scholarly references nor is there a bibliography.
I did not see anywhere in the anonymously authored document a single reference to American Herald Tribune. Not one. Instead the report is organized as individual studies devoting a few pages including screen shots to several sites. These sites are Liberty Front Press, US Journal, Real Progressive Front, British Left, Critics Chronicle and Instituto Manquehue. Before doing research for this essay I had not heard of any of these sites. When I looked them up on Internet search engines, I found in several places adjacent to the named sites results linking to the Fire Eye document.
Propaganda Directed at Iran and Iranians: Prof. Marandi Speaks
The allegations from the US intelligence agencies and their extensions in mainstream media devote enormous attention to what they see as inward-flowing propaganda from Russia and Iran. Those that make this case, however, fail to consider the reverse of what they are arguing. Very concerted efforts are being mounted to bring via media venues foreign influences into the formulation of the attitudes and behaviour of Iranians in Iran. Double standards are in effect. Iranians are being flooded with alien propaganda while any Iranian influence in US media is treated as necessarily evil and illegitimate.
Earlier this year by Professor Seyed Mohammed Marandi provided a very telling account of this inundation of Iran with hostile propaganda from the United States and Britain. Prof. Marandi was interviewed by Anya Parampilaya on Max Blumenthall’s social media operation, the Grayzone. Prof. Marandi did his Ph.D at the University of Birmingham. He is currently Professor of English Literature and Orientalism at the University of Tehran.
Prof. Marandi explained that tens of TV networks including BBC Persia broadcast into his country programming that often is rife with hostile depictions of Iranian society and government. With significant backing from US, Israeli and European sources, some of this propaganda is produced by MEK, an organization that joined with the Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq’s war with Iran during the 1980s.
MEK is known to have assassinated Iranian scientists. The MEK organization is widely perceived within Iran as a terrorist group supported by some Iranians who wish for a return to a regime similar to that of the Shah of Iran.
Before the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the Shah was an instrument of Iran’s friendly integration with the West. Many saw the Shah as a puppet of US, British and Israeli interests.
As the primary source of oil for Royal Navy, Iran had played a crucial role in the history of the British empire throughout the first half of the twentieth century. The cycles of history that have made Iran a site of contention in global affairs gained momentum in 1953. The CIA and British intelligence interests organized a coup to fend off a bid to nationalize Iranian oil supplies. That hostile intervention by the West continues to reverberate across generations right up to present times.
Prof. Marandi explained that much of Farsi (Persian) language propaganda material emanating from foreign sources is engineered to instigate anti-Arab prejudices. Alternatively, much of the Arab-language propaganda generated by the Western-aligned monarchies in the Persian Gulf region is directed at engendering anti-Iranian, anti-Persian prejudices.
The interview with Prof. Marandi took place in the wake of the decision of Facebook and other social media to deplatform him. Prior to 2020 this Iranian academic was a frequent guest on many mainstream media outlets in the US, Great Britain and Australia. The effort to block Iranian perspectives in Western media hardened, however, after an unprovoked and lethal US drone attack in Baghdad that started the process of making 2020 a year like no other.
When Does a ‘Glitch’ Become a Coup? It’s Time to Regulate America’s Fly-by-Night Voting Machine Monopoly
By Robert Bridge | Strategic Culture Foundation | November 15, 2020
It’s a frightening thing to consider, but the ultimate success of democracy in the United States largely hinges on the integrity of just three voting machine companies, which conduct their affairs with almost no government oversight and regulation. Unless that changes, the greatest democracy will start looking like a banana republic in the eyes of the world.
In January 2020, the CEOs of the three companies that produce over 80 percent of voting machines in the U.S. – Election Systems & Software (ES&S), Dominion Voting Systems and Hart InterCivic – were grilled by members of Congress over the question of security at the ballot box. Perhaps it would surprise exactly nobody that the 90-minute discussion focused almost entirely on the possibility of foreign actors, specifically China and Russia, interfering in the U.S. election system. Within such a predictably narrow frame of reference – Russia! Russia! Russia! – it becomes much easier to eliminate the possibility that domestic actors may also be tempted to tamper with the vote. At the same time, Russia provides the perfect smokescreen in the event someone gets caught with their hand in the election cookie jar. But already I digress.
Currently, Dominion Voting Systems, the supplier of voting machines in 28 states, is coming under fierce scrutiny after it was reported that thousands of votes in one Michigan country intended for Donald Trump went to his challenger, Joe Biden. Officials were quick to point out that the ‘glitch’ was due to silly “human error,” as opposed to any mechanical flaws with the voting machines.
According to Michigan state government website, “[T]he erroneous reporting of unofficial results … was a result of accidental error on the part of the Antrim County Clerk (who) accidentally did not update the software used to collect voting machine data and report unofficial results.”
While I am no computer specialist, it is hard to imagine how a software update would have done anything to prevent one candidate from receiving the votes intended for another unless it was originally programmed to behave that way. But again, I am no expert.
Another state that relies heavily on Dominion Voting Systems is Georgia, which received 30,000 new voting machines last year – “the largest rollout of elections equipment in U.S. history,” according to the Government Technology newsletter. Following the announcement of the $107 million contract, the same newsletter foretold of problems down the road, saying the “new voting system is expected to be quickly challenged in court by voters who say it remains vulnerable to hacking and tampering, despite the addition of paper ballots.”
Those fears were quickly realized on the morning of Nov. 3, Election Day, when a technological glitch wreaked havoc on voting in two Georgia counties (a side note to this story is that Georgia officials blamed the abrupt pause in vote counting on a burst pipe at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena. Thus far, however, officials have not been able to produce any evidence that such an incident took place).
While the source of the ‘glitch’ is still under investigation, one state ballot supervisor, Marcia Ridley, initially told POLITICO on Nov. 3 that Dominion, which prepares the poll books for counties before elections, “uploaded something last night, which is not normal, and it caused a glitch.” That reported incident prevented staff from programming the voter smart cards for the voting machines. Ridley continued, “That is something that they don’t ever do. I’ve never seen them update anything the day before the election.”
However, Dominion officials, while admitting there was a problem with the poll books, deny there was any last-minute update made to the poll books after Oct. 31 (a press release by Dominion countered this and other allegations, including that the Pelosi family, the Feinstein family, or the Clinton Global Initiative has any relationship with the company).
And here is where things get interesting.
Ridley went on to say that Dominion assured her that “no system can be updated remotely without the knowledge of [the company],” indicating that an update could not have been made without detection. In other words, there appears to be a backdoor channel for Dominion Voting Systems to connect to the internet, and, as everybody knows, whatever appears on the internet is fair game for hackers.
Pennsylvania Department of State requested a function from Dominion Voting Software to allow local “Operators” with access to “totally blank ballots” to examine, RE-MARK IF NEEDED and allowed, and then re-scan into the tabulator.https://t.co/Iusf55hfqL pic.twitter.com/m7Hkxvigq7
— Ron (@CodeMonkeyZ) November 12, 2020
In fact, it was exactly that concern that helped dissuade the state of Texas from also purchasing the dodgy Dominion system.
In a letter from Brandon Hurley, a voting systems examiner, addressed to Keith Ingram, Director of Elections in Texas, it was determined that “some of the hardware in the Democracy 5.5-A System can be connected to the internet through Ethernet ports.”
Later in the letter, it was emphasized again that “[W]ithout question, one or more of the components of the 5.5-A System can be connected to an external communication network and this can only be avoided if the end-user takes the proper precautions to prevent such a connection.”
On Wednesday, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced the state would perform a hand-recount of presidential ballots before certifying the results of its election. According to the New York Times, Biden leads the incumbent Trump by 14,000 votes.
In hindsight, how could voting software named Dominion not have a nefarious purpose?
— Keith Preston (@KeithPreston) November 12, 2020
Whatever the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, which also had to wrangle with the influx of millions of mail-in ballots amid a pandemic, it will certainly go down in the history books as one of the most chaotic, controversial and fraud-prone contests in U.S. history. The tragedy is that this fiasco, which is making America look ridiculous on the global stage, could have been avoided. There have been numerous attempts to sound the alarm on the vulnerability of voting machines to accurately tabulate the results of an election, and not least of all the ongoing Trump-Biden showdown, which will determine the political, cultural and economic trajectory of the United States long into the future.
It is the opinion here that, judging by everything we know and don’t know about how the 2020 presidential election was organized, the only realistic option is to hold a nationwide recount. It is simply impossible to expect millions of American voters from either side of the political aisle to hold any doubts over an election of such tremendous consequence. Yes, a recount would be a massive undertaking, but the future peace and tranquility of the nation, already partisan to the breaking point, depends upon it. Once the recount is accomplished, the next task should be a congressional task force to examine ways of securing U.S. elections in the future, while holding the voting machine companies to severe government control and regulation. The days of monkey-wrenching U.S. elections must end.
Biden Cancer Initiative Reportedly Gave Out No Grants in First Two Years, Spent Money on Salaries
By Asya Geydarova – Sputnik – 15.11.2020
The charity, founded in 2017 by the former vice president and his wife, Jill Biden, saw its staff – many of whom are former officials of the Obama administration – making hundreds of thousands of dollars in just two years.
The Biden Cancer Initiative, aimed at finding a cure for cancer, finances no research, but spent millions of dollars on its staff’s salaries instead, the New York Post reported on Saturday, citing federal filings.
In the fiscal years 2017 and 2018, the charity spent $3,070,301 of the $4,809,619 in contributions it took in on salaries, of which its president Gregory Simon made $429,850 in fiscal 2018, which was nearly double his salary in fiscal 2017.
The rest of the money the charity spent on conferences and travel expenses, but no grants are mentioned.
During Obama’s tenure, Biden headed the Cancer Moonshot Task Force, which initially set its goal as ending cancer, but later softened the rhetoric, apparently having considered the complexity of such an objective. Biden became Moonshot chief just seven months after his son Beau died from brain cancer at the age of 42.
Following the outcome of the 2016 race, Biden left the White House and founded the Biden Cancer Initiate together with his wife, as an extension of the work the Cancer Moonshot Task Force was doing. However, in July 2019, the charity put its operations on pause indefinitely, citing “unique circumstances”, as Biden announced his presidential bid and diverted efforts to the 2020 election campaign.
Trump, COVID-19, UK Lockdowns, And The Great Reset
By Andrew Korbyko | One World | November 14, 2020
COVID-19 And Lockdown
[…] the onus is on Johnson and his government to prove that lockdowns and social distancing measures work. And we are now 8 months down the line and the picture is clearer.
The statistics show that this virus has a mortality rate comparable with the flu. There has been no evidence which shows that lockdown measures such as social distancing or masks have had any effect. And numerous scientists confirm that the pandemic ended in late spring and there is no ‘second wave’. The government is conducting huge numbers of PCR tests with false positive rates which cast doubt over their use.
These tests are identifying more ’cases’, the majority of which have no symptoms or are picking up other remnants of virus in our bodies.
My judgement is that Johnson and his government have not discharged the onus of proof at any level since the virus took hold in early spring. In fact, the sheer volume of evidence which has been produced since has made a mockery of the government’s data, its interpretation, the ‘science’, and perhaps most crucially in terms of the totally disproportionate effect on physical and mental health, education, and the economy.
In summary, the government hasn’t produced a bare morsel of evidence and at times their arguments have been akin to saying the moon is made of cheese and expecting everyone to believe it, this illusion sustained by the fear and panic they’ve created. Even if their figures stood up to proper scrutiny, the effects of the measures in terms of collateral damage far outweigh any benefits the measures have had. Put simply, it is a scandal on a scale never seen before.
The Great Reset
The Great Reset is an agenda which promotes a social and economic ‘reset’ in countries around the world. It’s a not a new agenda and this is not meant to be some new revelation. The question is, does the evidence now suggest this agenda is currently being implemented under the guise of a pandemic?
Following a more recent look at the so-called ‘reset’ agenda, for me the puzzle pieces have now slotted in place.
Earlier on, I believed that gross stupidity, incompetence, and trying to find an exit strategy without exposure were the most logical reasons behind the COVID-19 decision making.
Initially, I couldn’t reconcile the differences in states in the world and measures taken by each government towards even a loosely co-ordinated agenda of economic and social reset.
The first reason I believe we are heading towards some type of economic and social reset promoted by unelected billionaires and other technocrats is because after 8 months it is now too much of a stretch to accept repeated stupidity and incompetence as reasons. The decision-making at every turn has been the opposite of what would have made the most sense when dealing with a pandemic.
My view is that they have used COVID-19 as a convenient vehicle to push through the reset agenda.
The mainly circumstantial but I think strong evidence concerns the agenda of the World Economic Forum (WEF), particularly (Klaus Schwab, who resembles a James Bond villain. This organisation makes no secret of the reset and the discussions it held at previous events attended by world leaders.
Biden and Johnson have adopted the same slogans of this organisation, such as ‘build back better’. The agenda is presented as dealing with climate change and other challenges such as sustainability, wealth distribution, and social justice. But it is all very sinister when you realise who might be involved and what the likely details are.
The World Health Organisation, the United Nations, and unelected billionaires like Bill Gates and Prince Charles seem to be driving this agenda.
As many of us will be aware, the state-affiliated giants Twitter and Facebook are censoring and banning people, including scientists who dispute the COVID-19 narrative and question lockdowns.
The BBC and mainstream media have taken it upon themselves to ‘fact-check’ the more outlandish theories about COVID-19 while ignoring valid concerns over the accuracy of government data and proportion. Therefore, the impression is created that all people who oppose lockdowns are anti-vaccine or conspiracy theorists. This coverage is now very noticeable for its bias, suggesting co-ordination between state and media.
The many references to COVID-19 by the WEF and administering vaccines and talk of issuing health passports are probably one of the most disturbing aspects and resemble China’s social credit system, a system which operates on social control, compliance, and sanctions.
This so-called ‘New World Order’ seems to be geared towards transferring wealth to the elites running it in exchange for debt relief and eventually to a society where individuals don’t own property.
In order to create this new world and get people’s acceptance, I believe a climate of fear, control, and dependence on the state is their early goal. Small businesses have been destroyed and health ruined under the cloak of a false ‘second wave’ pandemic. The constant exaggeration and misrepresentation of the data and science by the government is to keep the fraud going towards implementation of these plans.
The global elites haven’t yet fully declared their hand. But the subtle messages appearing all around us and collective material about the reset are there in plain sight for those who care to look. The circumstantial evidence, including how the COVID-19 pandemic has played out to fit in with this agenda, is too substantial to ignore.
In summary, if this is the agenda, then it is nothing less than a global coup.
Conclusion
In my previous article, I suggested that the general public should take time to calmly reflect on the evidence. Since then, there has been an awakening with more people calling out the faulty science and destructive measures.
But as we move into a worrying new phase, I think we need to put the message out that a sinister agenda seems to be playing out in the shadows. Our economy, health, and lives have been deliberately wrecked in its pursuit. I don’t believe this is about COVID-19, if it ever was.
The questions which remain for me are how far developed is this plan, how powerful are those behind it, and how far have their tentacles spread within the corridors of power and state institutions?
Once these plans become more obvious to us through awakening and realisation or through implementation, the question will then be whether it can be stopped in its tracks or if mass civil unrest be the scenario?
I believe the US election is tied into the COVID-19 pandemic. If Biden steps into power, then the reset could be a reality. With Trump, there’s perhaps a chance it can be stopped.
It wouldn’t surprise me with this going on that the forces which have been trying to remove Trump for 4 years have massively rigged the election.
No matter what political side you are on, it’s important not to dismiss the likelihood that there has been an assault on democracy in the US and certainly a high probability that it’s already well underway here and elsewhere. – Full article
UK undercover cops foiled ISM activists using deceit & abuse… were there shady deals with Mossad?
By Kit Klarenberg | RT | November 13, 2020
Evidence presented to an ongoing inquiry into UK police operations that infiltrated ‘extremist’ activist groups fuels questions over whether the intelligence they garnered was passed on to Israel.
Founded in 2001, the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) is a pro-Palestinian political campaign group, dedicated to the use of nonviolent protest.
ISM has chapters around the world, which regularly train and dispatch volunteers to Palestine, to assist locals with activities such as protests, chaperoning and olive-picking. Despite the movement’s peaceful nature, two volunteers – Rachel Corrie and Tom Hurndall – died after coming into contact with occupation forces, both in 2003. Corrie was crushed by a bulldozer, Hurndall shot in the head by an Israeli military sniper.
In December 2018, the Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI), which investigates numerous controversies surrounding the British state’s use of clandestine operatives, revealed ISM’s London branch was infiltrated by Special Branch spy ‘Rob Harrison’ (a pseudonym).
He penetrated the group 2004-2006, and was concurrently involved in a number of left-wing and anarchist movements in the UK capital, his activities even taking him overseas, and resulting in his arrest by uniformed officers under his cover name.
The DJ detective
Harrison’s undercover identity was extensive and colourful, a key strand of his ‘legend’ being his moonlighting as a professional DJ, under the moniker ‘Boogie Knight’. He also posted on the popular left-wing online forum urban75 as ‘Boogie Boy’, typically on the subject of music, but occasionally about politics.
On the forum, he was involved in a regular music sharing scheme whereby members would create CD compilations and send them to other users. Through this scheme he would have learned posters’ identities and addresses.
In any event, as a consequence of this background, he frequently performed DJ sets at ISM London fundraising events, and also parties convened by activists and their friends.
His generally affable, sociable nature, and readiness to buy others drinks down the pub, also meant he was frequently invited into private homes for gatherings and social events large and small. Many were disarmed by his ready admissions of being politically under-educated relative to those around him, and this avowed lack of assurance led them to open up in confidence to Harrison.
Three of the London ISM activists he spied on – Asa Winstanley, Atif Chodhury, and the pseudonymous ‘MCD’ – are all core participants in the ongoing UCPI. Two years after Harrison’s unmasking, Asa still finds the subject difficult to talk about.
“It’s the worst feeling in the world,” he recalls. “A person you trusted, you spent time with, a friend, was actually the complete opposite of everything you thought they were. He joined ISM London before I did and some people now say they were wary of him, but to my mind he was the absolute last guy you’d suspect of being an infiltrator. He was quiet but friendly, helpful and enthusiastic, always willing to go the extra mile.”
Still, despite Asa’s contemporary confidence, reviewing old emails sent by the undercover cop to members of the group, he now sees clearly that Harrison was trying to sabotage the group, subtly stirring up internal trouble. His email address also remained on ISM London’s internal mailing lists until 2013, meaning police could have retained covert access to the group’s private discussions years after his deployment ended.
Asa also says Harrison was largely a silent, passive presence at meetings, although he was highly proactive when it came to mailing the group’s merchandise, offering to drive activists to the airport when they left for Palestine, and other hands-on assistance.
Such activities would have provided him with extensive intelligence on ISM London activists and supporters, their names, addresses and more – information particularly valued by the authorities, as, due to security concerns, ISM members rarely revealed their surnames, or when they were planning to leave.
Passing on secrets to Mossad?
There are indications that the information Harrison collected on ISM may have been passed by British security services to the Israeli government. By 2008, Tel Aviv had managed to obtain such good intelligence on Palestinian solidarity activists that many who attempted to visit Palestine from the UK were quickly deported after arrival or blocked from entering altogether. As ISM London’s primary raison d’etre was to get people into the occupied territories, its value and impact was significantly curtailed.
In 2005, four ISM London activists visited Palestine – one was let in, the others weren’t. Subsequently, the volunteer who gained entry was told by an Israeli human rights lawyer, Gaby Lasky, that the authorities had “international security” records on at least one of the three denied entry.
Whatever the truth of the matter, after the UCPI released Harrison’s cover name, researchers set about tracking down members of the groups he infiltrated. While several echoed Asa’s characterisation, others recalled him behaving in a predatory, creepy manner around female activists, being excessively flirtatious and suggestive to an extent that made them feel extremely uncomfortable.
Such behaviour, which extended to accusations that he groped someone at a party, exacerbated distrust of Harrison in certain circles. Still, the only documented instance of widespread suspicion that he was an undercover officer occurred while he was infiltrating State of Emergency Collective, a direct action group which sought to push anti-war protests beyond mere demonstrations.
Harrison, among other things, helped transport its members to numerous actions by car, including the paint-bombing of election offices. One group scheduled to take part in the attack was eventually unable to attend, and he was said to have gotten very angry at their failure to take part, causing friction between members.
General misgivings about this and other disruptive tendencies on the part of Harrison led to numerous people abandoning the group, and in August 2007, he was asked to leave. Its membership eviscerated, State of Emergency Collective disbanded not long after – it’s an open question whether the movement would have endured were it not for his presence.
Deception & abuse
Like many other undercover officers, Harrison deceived a woman into a long-term romantic relationship during his deployment – somewhat uniquely though, she wasn’t an activist.
His courtship with ‘Maya’ (a pseudonym), nonetheless furthered his covert objectives, as she was the friend and neighbour of Atif Chodhury. This gave him legitimate reason to frequently be in the same area as Atif, and to become close friends with him in the process. Atif divulged much intimate personal information to the police spy. It’s the first example to emerge from the UCPI so far of an operative deceiving a non-activist into a relationship in order to surveil a target.
In a statement to the UCPI on November 9, Phillippa Kaufmann QC laid out in shocking detail the exploitation, manipulation and abuse Maya was subjected to by Harrison, not merely over the course of their relationship, but for many years afterwards.
The pair met through the sprawling social scene surrounding ISM London, with Harrison frequently visiting a housing cooperative where she lived with other activists. Their relationship began in May 2006, following an encounter at a fundraising event at which he was DJing.
Maya was initially reluctant for their connection to progress further, but Harrison subjected her to intense pressure, responding angrily to her not wanting to rush into things.
Harrison’s harassment was only just beginning, however. Kaufmann stated that throughout the relationship, he subjected Maya to significant emotional abuse and coercion, engaging in highly controlling behaviour, some of which was clearly calculated to cause Maya to suffer feelings of guilt and low self-esteem.
He regularly accused her of infidelity or promiscuity, bombarding her with texts accusing her of sleeping with other men, and becoming aggressively furious whenever she spent time with other men. Such was Harrison’s bullying, Maya began self-harming, which he was well-aware of, and isolating herself from male friends. Today, she believes his controlling conduct was a means of coercing her into proving her commitment to him.
Harrison would never take her on dates, and rarely see her anywhere other than her flat. Moreover, despite his obsessive, paranoid nature, he would frequently disappear for long periods, not responding to messages or answering his phone, occasionally blocking her number.
Self-harm & suicidal thoughts
He ended the relationship abruptly around Easter 2007, claiming his mother was dying of cancer, and disappeared without trace. Devastated by Harrison’s abrupt departure, Kaufmann said Maya began using hard drugs as a way of coping with the loss, and to suppress memories of his abuse. Eventually, she had to travel abroad and stay with family to recover from the shock of the break up, and to kick her drug habit.
Upon returning to the UK, the trauma Harrison inflicted continued to impact her psychologically and emotionally. A Master’s degree that she began in 2006 would take five years to complete – throughout, he continued to intermittently send Maya emails and text messages, and leaving comments on her blog, only ceasing contact in 2011.
Out of the blue, he got in touch with her again in August 2014, asking to meet, which they did. They communicated online regularly thereafter and met several times over the next few months, Harrison frequently speaking about the future, expressing a desire to resume their relationship and one day marry, even discussing what names to give their children.
As a result of his reappearance, Maya broke up with her partner of five years, whom she was living with at the time, and in February 2015, she and Harrison slept together for the first time since their separation almost eight years earlier.
“They had unprotected sex and Maya had to take emergency contraception the following day. The same day Rob disappeared and with the exception of one email he sent to her in 2016, he has never contacted Maya since,” Kaufmann revealed.
Maya learned Harrison was an undercover officer only in March 2019, when a friend informed her. She has struggled to come to terms with how such an important part of her life was based on lies and exploitation, and how such an important person in her life didn’t actually exist. Her mental health deteriorated sharply; she experienced suicidal feelings, and began self-harming again.
In common with all other undercover officers being probed by the UCPI, Harrison initially applied for blanket anonymity, meaning not even his victims could learn his real name. Inquiry chair John Mitting was initially “minded to” accept it, however, upon Maya gaining core participant status in June 2019, the former High Court judge reversed his decision.
Harrison, via his solicitors, acquiesced to her being provided his real name, but only on the understanding that she and her lawyers weren’t permitted to release it publicly. The request was robustly denied, with Mitting stating Maya was “entitled to make such use as she thinks right of personal information which she is entitled to know.”
It was a rare example of the chair appearing to favour the needs of undercover officers’ victims over the officers themselves. Overwhelmingly, real names haven’t been released, despite legitimate and clear grounds for doing so, and in some cases not even cover names have been disclosed.
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. Follow Kit on Twitter @KitKlarenberg
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The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | January 17, 2023
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