Journalism’s New Propaganda Tool: Using ‘Confirmed’ to Mean its Opposite
By Glenn Greenwald | The Intercept | September 5, 2020
One of the most humiliating journalism debacles of the Trump era played out on December 8, 2017, first on CNN and then on MSNBC. The spectacle kicked off on that Friday morning at 11:00 a.m. when CNN, deploying its most melodramatic music and graphics designed to convey that a real bombshell was about to be dropped, announced that anonymous sources had provided the network with a smoking gun proving the Trump/Russia conspiracy once and for all: during the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump, Jr. had received a September 4 email with a secret encryption key that gave him advanced access to WikiLeaks’ servers containing the DNC emails which the group would subsequently release to the public ten days later. Cable news and online media spontaneously combusted, as is their wont, in shock, hysteria and awe over this proof that WikiLeaks and Trump were in cahoots.
CNN has ensured that no videos of the festivities are available on YouTube for anyone to watch. That’s because the claim was completely false in its most crucial respect. CNN misreported the date of the smoking gun email Trump, Jr. received: rather than being sent to him on September 4 — ten days prior to WikiLeaks’ public release, thus enabling secret access — the email was merely sent by a random member of the public after the public release by WikiLeaks (September 14), encouraging Trump, Jr. to look at those now-public emails.
Though the original false report cannot be viewed any longer (except in small snippets from other networks, principally Fox, discussing CNN’s debacle), one can view the cringe-inducing video of CNN’s Senior Congressional Correspondent Manu Raju explaining, after the Washington Post debunked the story, that “we are actually correcting” the reporting, doing his best to downplay what a massive blunder this was (though the whole thing is fantastic, my favorite line is when Raju says, with no small amount of understatement: “this appears to change the understanding of this story,” followed by: “perhaps the initial understanding of what this email was, perhaps is not as significant based on what we know now”: perhaps):
The CNN page which originally published the blockbuster story contains this rather significant correction at the top:
Washington (CNN) Correction: This story has been corrected to say the date of the email was September 14, 2016, not September 4, 2016. The story also changed the headline and removed a tweet from Donald Trump Jr., who posted a message about WikiLeaks on September 4, 2016.
So mistakes happen in journalism, even huge and embarrassing ones. Other than some petty schadenfreude, why is this worth remembering? The reason is that that sorry episode reflects a now-common but highly corrosive tactic of journalistic deceit.
Very shortly after CNN unveiled its false story, MSNBC’s intelligence community spokesman Ken Dilanian went on air and breathlessly announced that he had obtained independent confirmation that the CNN story was true. In a video segment I cannot recommend highly enough, Dilanian was introduced by an incredibly excited Hallie Jackson — who urged Dilanian to “tell us what we’ve just now learned,” adding: “I know you and some of our colleagues have confirmed some of this information: what’s up?” Dilanian then proceeded to explain what he had learned:
That’s right, Hallie. Two sources with direct knowledge of this are telling us that Congressional investigators have obtained an email from a man named “Mike Erickson” — obviously they don’t know if that’s his real name — offering Donald Trump and his son Donald Trump, Jr. access to WikiLeaks documents… It goes to the heart of the collusion question….. One of the big questions is: did [Trump Jr.] call the FBI?
How could that happen? How could MSNBC purport to confirm a false story from CNN? Shortly after, CBS News also purported to have “confirmed” the same false story: that Trump, Jr. received advanced access to the WikiLeaks documents. It’s one thing for a news outlet to make a mistake in reporting by, for instance, mis-reporting the date of an email and thus getting the story completely wrong. But how is it possible that multiple other outlets could “confirm” the same false report?
It’s possible because news outlets have completely distorted the term “confirmation” beyond all recognition. Indeed, they now use it to mean the exact opposite of what it actually means, thereby draping themselves in journalistic glory they have not earned and, worse, deceiving the public into believing that an unproven assertion has, in fact, been proven. With this disinformation method, they are doing the exact opposite of what journalism, at its core, is supposed to do: separate fact from speculation.
CNN ultimately blamed its anonymous sources for this error, but refused to out them by insisting that it was a somehow a good faith mistake rather than deliberate disinformation (how did multiple “good faith” sources all “accidentally misread” an email date in the same way? CNN, in the spirit of news outlets refusing to provide the accountability and transparency for themselves that they demand from others, refuses to this very day to address that question).
But what is clear is that the “confirmation” which both MSNBC and CBS claimed it had obtained for the story was anything but: all that happened was that the same sources which anonymously whispered these unverified, false claims to CNN then went and repeated the same unverified, false claims to other outlets, which then claimed that they “independently confirmed” the story even though they had done nothing of the sort.
It seems the same misleading tactic is now driving the supremely dumb but all-consuming news cycle centered on whether President Trump, as first reported by the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, made disparaging comments about The Troops. Goldberg claims that “four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day” — whom the magazine refuses to name because they fear “angry tweets” — told him that Trump made these comments. Trump, as well as former aides who were present that day (including Sarah Huckabee Sanders and John Bolton), deny that the report is accurate.
So we have anonymous sources making claims on one side, and Trump and former aides (including Bolton, now a harsh Trump critic) insisting that the story is inaccurate. Beyond deciding whether or not to believe Goldberg’s story based on what best advances one’s political interests, how can one resolve the factual dispute? If other media outlets could confirm the original claims from Goldberg, that would obviously be a significant advancement of the story. … Full article
Why is the GNA defunding the Lockerbie case despite it being close to a verdict of innocence?
Dr Mustafa Fetouri | MEMO | September 3, 2020
The only Lockerbie bombing convict is one step closer to his guilty verdict being overturned, however, posthumously. Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi died at home in Tripoli on 21 May, 2012, while protesting his innocence until his last breath. The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) allowed the family to proceed with an appeal to clear his name. The case was sent to the High Court of Justiciary, Scotland’s highest criminal court, and a date for the final hearing has been scheduled to start on 24 November.
His 27-year-old son Ali, who is leading the family’s long and arduous fight to clear his father’s name, is certain that justice will prevail this time and that his late father’s verdict will be reversed. During a telephone conversation in Tripoli last Monday, he assured me: “My father’s name will certainly be cleared this time.”
The family’s lawyer Aamer Anwar, a distinguished Scottish lawyer who volunteered to take the case, in a series of emails confidently communicated to me: “We have a robust appeal.”
Winning this time seems certain. Professor Robert Black, a Scottish law authority, and the mind behind the first Lockerbie court setup in the Netherlands in May 2000, agrees with this analysis. He believes the Scottish court will “overturn the verdict” against Al-Megrahi, however, on the “narrower ground” of the crown prosecutor “withholding materials” from the defence team that could have helped establish Al-Megrahi’s innocence from the outset. Professor Black is “disappointed” that the court might not go as far as “to find that no reasonable court would have convicted Al-Megrahi.” He added, “I hope I’m wrong about this” – which would restore some of the Scottish judiciary’s reputation tarnished by the Lockerbie case and its aftermath.
The Lockerbie bombing, since 1988, became negatively synonymous with Libya, Gaddafi and its entire population. Gaddafi, firmly believing in their innocence, refused to hand over his accused citizens, Lamin Fhimah and Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi, to stand trial in the UK. This led the United Nations (UN) to adopt a series of sanction resolutions, including Resolution 731, passed on 21 March, 1992, with harsh economic and political punitive measures that not only isolated Libya, but made life extremely difficult for its entire population.
The long-held belief that the late Gaddafi was behind the attack still echoes within Western mainstream media, despite the mounting evidence to the contrary emerging over the years.
Now, it can be disclosed that Libya’s Government of National Accord (GNA), the only UN-recognised authority in the country, wants the mud to keep sticking to Gaddafi, Libya and its people too. The GNA is not enthusiastic about this latest development. The GNA have, illegally, cut the funding for the case over the last three years.
Al-Megrahi’s son Ali and the family lawyer are puzzled as to why the GNA cut funding at this critical junction of the case – when winning seems all but certain.
Lawyer Anwar does not disqualify the assumption that the GNA came under pressure from both the UK and the US to steer away from the case. The British and American narrative of the Lockerbie tragedy has always been that Libya is responsible and “that narrative must be maintained”, Anwar informs me.
However, suspension of defanging goes much deeper within the GNA, where corruption is rampant. A Scottish consultant to the legal team, speaking on condition of anonymity, yesterday clarified: “I believe funding is still budgeted, but the money disappears before getting to its intended final destination.”
Despite writing several times to the GNA to resume funding to meet the substantial mounting legal fees, Anwar received no replies until a few months ago, when his consultant was told that the GNA did not receive any messages relating to the funding of the case.
However, the consultant strongly disputes this, asserting that she “personally” handed over the file to the “highest official in the GNA” in a December 2017 meeting in Tripoli. When asked if “the highest official” meant Fayez Al-Sarraj, the GNA’s prime minister, she replied: “You think about it.”
It is not wholly unusual for the GNA to take such a position. Part of the political legitimacy in new Libya rests on the claim that Gaddafi was a supporter of international terror, and the Lockerbie bombing must have been his evil work too.
In November of 2019, the GNA’s Minister of Justice Mohamed Lamlum, personally stood before the International Criminal Court (ICC) to ask Saif Al-Islam, Gaddafi’s son, to face trial before the ICC, tarnishing the very judiciary he is supposed to protect and defend. Gaddafi Junior is wanted by the ICC for his – broadly disputed – role in quelling the 2011 troubles that ended his father’s rule over Libya.
According to different legal experts, the Libyan state is obliged to help its citizens abroad by all means necessary, including through funding in the event of legal issues. The Lockerbie case is much more than a petty case about a Libyan citizen, but it concerns the entire nation, its history and its reputation. This should elevate the case to a “national cause” for all Libyans, according to Anwar.
Indeed, Libyans across the political spectrum now consider the Lockerbie case a national issue and that Libya must continue funding the legal team, just as it did before 2011.
During the Gaddafi era, the government even established a consulate in Glasgow to closely monitor the case, and to help Al-Megrahi’s family who had to relocate to Scotland to be near their father while in jail.
It is not clear if the GNA will honour its legal obligations towards its own citizen, Al-Megrahi, albeit posthumously, but the legal team is not surrendering. They have already established a liaising team inside Libya to follow up with the chaotic authorities in Tripoli.
A group of volunteers inside and outside Libya are gearing up to explore other funding avenues if the GNA continues to reject meeting its legal obligations. In any eventuality, Al-Megrahi’s reputation, and that of Libya, will soon be restored.
Head of Russian Intelligence Service on Navalny: Western Provocation Cannot Be Ruled Out
Sputnik – 03.09.2020
MOSCOW – A provocation of Western special services cannot be ruled out in the situation with Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny, the head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Agency (SVR) Sergey Naryshkin said Thursday.
“This cannot be excluded,” Naryshkin said when asked if the situation with Navalny could be a provocation of Western special services.
Regarding the statement of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko that Germany’s claim of Navalny’s poisoning was based on false information, the SVR head said that “if president Lukashenko said so, he had reasons to do so.”
Earlier in the day, Lukashenko said during a meeting with Russian Prime Minister Mishustin that a phone call between Warsaw and Berlin was intercepted by Belarusian radar intelligence, showing that Merkel’s statements on Navalny were false in order to “make sure Putin won’t interfere in Belarusian affairs.”
“I for one, see this as a possibility,” Naryshkin said.
“Yesterday’s statement by the German authorities raises more questions than it gives answers,” Naryshkin said, stressing that Russian doctors had carried out all tests before Navalny was transferred to a clinic in Berlin and they found no poison in his system.
Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny remains at the Charite hospital in Berlin after he was flown there from Russia’s Omsk on 22 August. On Wednesday, German doctors said that Navalny’s health condition remains serious. “The symptoms triggered by what has been confirmed as poisoning with a cholinesterase inhibitor are waning. The reason for this is a gradual regeneration of cholinesterase activity,” the clinic said in a statement.
Navalny fell gravely ill during a flight from Tomsk to Moscow on 20 August. Following an emergency landing in Omsk, he was taken to a local hospital where for the next 44 hours doctors fought for his life. According to Russian doctors, they did not rule out poisoning at the beginning but after multiple tests were conducted they found no traces of poisonous substances in Navalny’s system. They suggested that his condition was caused by an abrupt drop of glucose in his blood due to a metabolic imbalance.
Navalny Novichok Poisoning: The (Very Unlikely) Story So Far
“Maybe the Russians failed on purpose because they want to scare us”
By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | September 2, 2020
For those of you who haven’t been following the news – Russian politician (or “opposition figure”, as he is universally referred to in the Western press) Alexei Navalny was taken ill two weeks ago. It is now being reported he was “poisoned” with “novichok”.
Here’s a quick rundown of the official story as it currently stands (bearing in mind that, as with most “official stories” it will likely be subject to instant, contradictory and retroactive changes in the coming weeks):
- Alexei Navalny has never held any elected office, his political party doesn’t have a single MP in the Duma, and he polls at roughly 2% support with the Russian people.
- Despite this, and in the middle of an alleged “pandemic”, Vladimir Putin deems the man a threat and orders him killed.
- The State apparatus responsible for unnecessary and seemingly arbitrary acts of political murder decide to use novichok to poison him.
- This decision is taken in spite of the facts that a) Novichok totally and utterly failed to work in their alleged murder of the Skripals and b) It has already been widely publicly associated with Russia.
- Rather unsurprisingly, the novichok which didn’t kill its alleged target last time, doesn’t kill its alleged target this time either.
- Compounding their poor decision making, the Russians not only perform an emergency landing and take Navalny straight to a hospital for medical care.
- Despite Navalny being helpless and comatose in a Russian hospital, the powerful state-backed assassination team make no further attempts on his life.
- In fact, seemingly determined to under no circumstances successfully kill their intended victim, the Russian government, allow him to leave the country and get medical help from one of the countries which previously accused them of using novichok.
- To absolutely no one’s surprise, the Germans claim to have detected novichok in Navalny’s system.
- Vladimir Putin and the Russian government are immediately blamed for the attempted murder.
If all this seems unlikely to you, don’t worry Luke Harding is here to explain it all.
He doesn’t have any evidence, of course. Instead we get sentences like this one [our emphasis]:
Over the past decade Moscow has produced and stockpiled small quantities, western intelligence agencies believe.
However, never let it be said that Luke isn’t aware of the contradictions in his story:
One other unresolved question is why Moscow granted permission for Navalny to be treated abroad, knowing that sooner or later the novichok inside his body would be detected.
But he has an answer for this:
The logical conclusion: Moscow wants the world to know.
You see, Putin wants everyone to know he did it, so he’s making it obvious. And the Kremlin’s denials are being done with “a wink and smile”. This must be some new meaning of the word “logical” I wasn’t previously aware of.
One wonders what the Russians would have done if the novichok had worked as intended, and killed Navalny before he could get to a hospital.
They couldn’t send him to Berlin then, so who announces the novichok was there? Do they do it themselves?
Oh well, at least now people will have something to talk about that isn’t the rapidly crumbling Covid narrative.
China Firmly Opposes US Report on Chinese Military
teleSUR | September 2, 2020
China’s Defense Ministry Wednesday firmly opposed an “extremely erroneous” report by the U.S. Defense Department on China’s military, saying it is fraught with a zero-sum game mindset and Cold-war mentality.
The Defense Ministry’s Information Office came in response to the U.S. report that hyped up the so-called “Chinese military threat” and misinterpreted China’s national defense policy and military strategies.
The office noted that the U.S. report had slandered China’s military modernization, defense expenditure and nuclear policy, aggravated tensions across the Taiwan Strait and instigated cross-Strait confrontations.
“China has always pursued a defensive national defence policy and everyone knows that China is a builder of world peace,” Foreign Affairs Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Wednesday, as reported by the Economic Times.
On Tuesday, the Pentagon published its annual study on the evolution of Chinese military power. In this document, the U.S. authorities hold that the Asian country has equaled or exceeded U.S. military capabilities in several areas of defense.
Besides believing that China seeks to double the number of nuclear warheads in its arsenal over the next decade, Washington suggests that Beijing has made significant advances in its technical capabilities to build ships, cruise missiles, and integrated air defense systems.
The Pentagon report was released amid tensions that President Donald Trump has been generating through military exercises in the South Sea and bans to WeChat and TikTok, which the Republican politician considers a threat to his country’s national security.
Point-by-point rebuttal of Kamala Harris’s unscientific climate tweet
By Joe Bastardi | CFACT | September 1, 2020
It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.
Outrageous statements such as this are gifts that keeps on giving.
Let’s check the facts:
1) wildfires less than 20% of earlier 20th century in acreage burned.
2) Hurricane ace index/storm near record lows this year, Globally no increase. EPAC/WPAC well below average So is total Global production this season.
3) Much worse storms than what we see now have always run rampant. The list is legion and too numerous to name.
4) Heatwaves are nothing compared to the 1930s , and if you didn’t have rolling blackouts due to energy policy, there would be less problems, Why the rest of the nation would want to adopt the example of California is beyond any rational person. Besides cold kills more than warm, another fact ignored.
Obviously the person making this statement either does not know these facts, or does and simply seeks to hide them to push a false missive. There can be no other conclusion.
Apparently Kamala Harris does not understand that previous times as warm as today were known as climate optimums, not climate emergencies. We can go on and on, but in this case brevity makes the point.
Biden’s chances rest on a John Podesta-Planned Military Coup, Ballot Harvesting, Police Shootings, and a False Flag
By Joaquin Flores | Strategic Culture Foundation | August 30, 2020
Our early August prognosis published by SCF on August 23rd, that Joe Biden would not concede the election even if Trump wins, was confirmed by Hillary Clinton herself on August 25th.
This piece will follow up on the strategy involved in that piece, and develop these in light of John Podesta’s election war-game and the situation in Kenosha, Wisconsin. In the Kenosha situation, we have armed groups on both sides, creating a volatile situation in what increasingly looks like a pre-civil war scenario. All together, we can now see the following is evident:
Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential bid now depends on a combination of a.) severe social media and search engine censorship of book-burning proportions, b.) signs from the military that they will back Biden (per John Podesta ) on the heels of c.) an inconclusive election (mailed-out blank ballots), and d.) (the Soros wing of) BLM’s ability engage in rioting and to pose as Trump-like supporters (QAnon and adjacent, such as ‘Save The Children’) in order to e.) conduct a dangerous or illegal public stunt (false flag).
Trump’s deep campaign has revolved around Christian, Gnostic, and New Age themes, which (with regard to the latter two) intersect themes of spirituality previously in the domain of the coastal left. These will form the substrate of a focus on this election being a contest of Good vs. Evil, of Light vs. Dark, of the champions of children against sexual predators, as well as anti-war and anti-vax themes; wherein ‘war mongers’ like ‘Hillary Clinton’, alleged child abusers like ‘John Podesta’, and regulatory capturers of healthcare like ‘Bill Gates’, serve as anthropomorphic reifications of unadulterated evil.
This is a novel phenomenon, and does not represent pre-Trump Republican tropes and organizing issues. Mainstream Republican tropes were represented at the RNC convention, and work to establish a continuity – even if ill fitted – between traditional conservatism (previously opposed to Trump) and Trump’s hardcore base.
[Image – Alleged Soros-BLM posing as a pro-Trump ‘Save the Children’ demonstration in what some fear foreshadows a false flag]
The Coup – Color Revolution and Arab Spring
Past political contests after the assassination of Kennedy appear to be based upon a consensus on key issues on international relations among elected officials, because the permanent administration had consensus on these themselves. But the rise of Trump, and the great lengths a part of the permanent administration has gone to frustrate his efforts, strongly indicate that there is now a political crisis and division so great, at the level of leadership, that all the soft-power and coup methods (used by the CIA abroad) are now being used within the U.S. against the executive branch.
A part of this permanent administration appears to back Trump, or rather Trump appears to be ‘their candidate’, and this may well in part explain his electoral success in 2016 despite what appeared as overwhelming odds to the contrary.
Perhaps the most visible permutation of this division and crisis were events in the deserts of Syria and Iraq, where Pentagon backed Kurdish YPG forces fought against CIA backed ISIS forces, with Americans in the employ of these institutions embedded on either side, firing at each other and taking losses. It would make sense that to military intelligence, such an incoherent and openly corrosive dynamic would need to be finally headed off.
Therefore, all of the lessons drawn from the Color Revolution, Fourth Generational Warfare (4GW), counter-insurgency and hybrid warfare, learned in our study of the events of Yugoslavia, Occupy Wall Street, BLM, Libya, Syria, Egypt, Ukraine, Brazil, Venezuela and lately Belarus, all become necessary reading in order to understand the absolutely destabilized position that the U.S. finds itself in as we approach the 2020 election.
We should expect, in line with the color-springs tactic, that police will engage in the killings of black men, orchestrated by police secret societies operating on behest of the permanent administration (known colloquially and hereafter as the ‘deep state’). These will be timed in such a way for maximum utility with regard to high/low points in the campaigns of the two candidates.
Kenosha On Fire
Such an incident just occurred on August 23rd in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in the shooting of a black man, Jacob Blake. Standard and divisive motifs followed: the event was not clear cut, and definitive aspects of the case are open to interpretation and subject to confirmation bias in the public’s eye. This will provoke reaction and polarization, with the nuances and facts of the situation and its context often traded in for political expedience. Pro law enforcement types more closely associated with conservative politics will say the shooting was justified prior to a hearing of the facts, and will include biographical information about Blake which demonstrates his past criminal offenses, while ignoring that these past offenses do not form the basis for legitimizing a ‘summary execution’. Likewise, anti-police liberals will condemn the shooting as racist and unjustified, without regard to the views on race of the police involved, and without a review of the actual facts that anti-Trump corporate media was reluctant to expose but which were contained in the police report. At the same time, there is a long history of police falsifying evidence and statements to justify shootings such as these.
Note that the governor of Wisconsin, the Democrat Tony Evers, is the one who declared a state of emergency for Covid-19 and an unpopular lockdown. He is a career government bureaucrat, and was met by a mobilization of armed citizens against those diktats. Yet the fall-out and riots in the aftermath of the Blake shooting, of which the Evers-mandated high unemployment (per lockdown) forms the substrate but yet expressed through BLM/Antifa riots, will be blamed on Trump, whose years in public service can be counted on a single hand, and whose general efforts have been to end the lockdown and ‘re-open the economy’. Evers will not call on rioters to observe social distancing, and will call the armed detachments involved in arson and looting, ‘protesters’, and the constitutionalist militias who deployed to protect the rights of both protestors (from police excess) and civilians (from protestor-arsonists) as ‘right wing’.
The increasing emergence of ‘armed peaceful protestors’, an Orwellian oxymoron as a phrase in itself, first appeared in the Syrian conflict, where American corporate media and fake-left publications like Counterpunch regularly referred to armed Al Qaeda/ISIS/FSA groups engaged in shootings and killings as ‘peaceful protesters’.
[Video, Photo – an ‘armed peaceful protestor’ stands off with an armored Sheriff vehicle.]
In our past pieces, we have explored the mechanisms that the DNC and the permanent administration will use to nullify or falsify the outcome of the 2020 U.S. presidential election in November. This included the use of Democrat governors in certain states, as we previously wrote, to declare a state winner so that its electors go to Biden, in manufactured cases where the desired vote by state citizens could not be determined. It included the use of NGO employees, Labor/BLM/Antifa activists alongside contact tracers to use the coronavirus and social upheaval around manufactured racial justice issues to interfere with voters’ access to polls, and voters’ use of mailed-out ballots and ballot harvesting schemes.
In our last piece we disclosed that the DNC plans to have Biden declare himself the winner of the election, whatever the pending (inconclusive, tampered, stolen, etc.) outcome may be.
In a separate piece published on FRN, this author explained that for the Trump strategy against the riots to work, would require a plan that involved the co-opting of the BLM hashtag by his supporters. This would mean a separation of the BLM from Antifa, the latter being a designated terrorist group.
We explained there that this approach would be similar to that taken by Russia and Syria in the Syrian war, where certain Free Syrian Army (FSA) units had to be separated from ISIS, so that these FSA units could be considered ‘legitimate opposition’ (a change of tact in itself, previously all armed opposition were considered illegitimate by the Syrian government), and even incorporated into joint attacks with the Syrian Arab Army (SAA – Assad’s forces) against ISIS.
Of particular interest will be how the public and courts view the actions of Kenosha Guard militia member Kyle Rittenhouse. These two videos, the news commentary dubbed over and to the contrary, show Rittenhouse acting in self-defense. It also shows that those with him provided first responder assistance to the man who pulled a gun on Rittenhouse and who was subsequently shot in the arm.
Censorship
We now know, per the New York Times, that Facebook execs have been meeting to implement a strategy to censor information that Donald Trump has won the 2020 election, because of the working contingency plan (which appears to still be in operation) that Biden will declare victory regardless of a determinable outcome, as we previously wrote. This, however as we explained, would result in a vote in the Congress and Senate where it is likely that Nancy Pelosi may assume the presidency.
Simultaneously, Facebook execs have had a difficult time pushing against a terrified DNC which has been making irrational demands to further censorship.
Why are the DNC’s Censorship demands on Facebook irrational?
The DNC demands are fear-based and reactionary, and while Facebook execs have been happy to do the bidding of the DNC and pro-deep state Republicans (still a majority), they know the requests to further censor pro-Trump twitter accounts are known to produce the opposite effect. This is confirmed by the known science on the subject.
Studies of social revolutions and regime legitimacy show that further censorship in an environment where citizens have access to alternate informational lines, only erodes the legitimacy of the regime. Such a study was conducted on how the DDR tried to cover up the mass exodus of citizens into West Germany some thirty years ago [Sometimes Less Is More: Censorship, News Falsification, and Disapproval in 1989 East Germany . Christian Gläßel Katrin Paula , 2019].
Facebook execs called upon MIT to conduct a study to help establish their case, and a layman’s version of these conclusions were published in MIT’s online magazine Technology Review in a piece titled, It’s Too Late to Stop QAnon with Fact Checks and Account Bans.
In this article by MIT, it is reported that: “Friedberg, who has studied the movement deeply, says he believes it is “absolutely” too late for mainstream social-media platforms to stop QAnon, although there are some things they could do to, say, limit its adherents’ ability to evangelize on Twitter.”
Like the study of the DDR and regime legitimacy, the DNC finds that the more they push for censorship, the more popular the pro-Trump conspiracy theories grow.
What appears to be a work-around for this conundrum the deep state faces, is a new development, where the Soros wing of BLM has been instructed to stage at least one rally (so far) in Chicago that took place during the week of August 17th. In this, a group wearing what looked like Soros wing BLM uniforms actually carried placards associated with QAnon – such as WWG1WGA, #SaveTheChildren, #EndHumanTrafficking, and were replete with signs calling for ‘ending the pedophile Satanic cabal’.
Podesta’s Simulation Sees Public Looking to Military for a Sign
Of particular interest is that John Podesta recently ran a simulation on the DNC’s approach and response to election 2020, where he played the role of Biden. This war-game exercise was covered by David Frum for the Atlantic. Despite its counter-factual ‘facts’ and erroneous presumptions (poll based, etc.), the findings were startling.
Neither side would concede, courts would be too slow to act, Antifa and QAnon groups would clash in the streets, and the actions of the military, in either direction, or as with the National Guard – as deployed by the Justice Department under AG Barr, would be the deciding factor.
In that simulation there were a total of 67 players who met on Zoom in the first week of June 2020. This was composed of high-profile critics of President Donald Trump, including law professors, retired military officers, former senior U.S. officials, political strategists, attorneys, and cable news room editors.
We have to reiterate that Podesta, playing the role of Biden, understands that the real outcome of the election will therefore be the position that the military takes.
A wing of Trump’s supporters – Qanon – are adamant that military intelligence, or at least an operation within the NSA, will not only back Trump, but have been backing Trump since before the 2016 election. They believe this partly explains Trump’s victory despite what they see as an election ‘rigged’ by Clinton – thereby explaining Clinton’s otherwise unfounded confidence that she would win by a landslide in that fateful election now four years ago.
On the other side have been several notable members of the deep state, such as Colin Powell and former CIA chief John Brennan.
This all gels with the insider information that we have written about from SEIU, which as explained previously, forms the nexus between the Biden ground campaign and its GOTV, Bernie’s ‘Our Revolution’ and ‘Working Families Party’, Antifa, and BLM.
Conclusion
The likelihood that the 2020 election will not produce an agreed winner, barring effective active measures from Trump, is nearly certain. Based on the Northop/Standard model, Trump has an over 90% chance at winning an election if following the rules in place in the past dozen election cycles. This explains why the DNC has introduced as many X factors as possible – a politicized Covid-19 response, slanted news which riles up reliable protest movement assets towards rioting and looting, and a mailed-out ballots scheme which is indistinguishable in effect from known problem vote riggings techniques like ballot harvesting.
It is clear that the DNC wants to produce no clear winner, and use some combination of article XX, XII, and provisions as reinforced by related constitutional provisions for the continuation of government, and NSDP 51.
Because there are so many variables, possible counter measures, and new ‘X factors’ that can be introduced, this is a developing story with no clear outcome now estimable. If it is true that the NSA is backing Trump, then this provides strong reason to believe that this candidate will emerge the winner out of the fray. In either event, future X factors are almost certain.
Meet the IDF-Linked Cybersecurity Group “Protecting” US Hospitals ‘Pro Bono’
By Whitney Webb –
UNLIMITED HANGOUT– August 27, 2020
Since the Coronavirus crisis began in earnest earlier this year, the strain on hospitals in the US and around the world has been the subject of a considerable number of media reports. However, hardly any media attention has been given to the dramatic and unsettling changes that have been made to hospital and healthcare information technology (IT) systems and infrastructure under the guise of helping the US healthcare system “cope” with the surge in data as well as an unsettling uptick in cyberattacks.
Over the past several months, 80% of healthcare institutions in the US have reported being targeted by some sort of cyberattack, ranging from minor to severe, with an uptick in phishing attempts and spam specifically. Most of these attempts have been aimed at illegally acquiring troves of patient data, including the recent hacks of hospitals in Chicago and Utah. About 20% of the hacks and cyberattacks reported by hospitals and medical facilities since March directly affected the facilities’ capacity to function optimally, with a much smaller percentage of those including ransomware attacks.
One of the reasons for the increase in the success of these attacks has been the fact that more healthcare IT workers are working remotely as well as the fact that many IT staffers have been laid off or let go completely. In several recent instances, the removal of entire hospital system IT staffs have been tied to a larger effort by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to consolidate control over patient data, including Coronavirus-related data, with the assistance of secretive government contractors with longstanding ties to HHS.
The surge of cyberattacks combined with major budget cuts has made hospitals even more vulnerable as many are compelled to do more with less. As a result, there has been a renewed push for the improvement of cybersecurity at hospitals, clinics and other healthcare institutions throughout the country over the course of the Coronavirus (Covid-19) crisis.
Amid this backdrop, an odd group of “cyber threat intelligence” analysts with ties to the US government, Israeli intelligence and tech giant Microsoft have “volunteered” to protect US healthcare institutions for free and have even directly partnered with US federal agencies to do so. They have also recently expanded to offer their services to governments and social media platforms to target, analyze and “neutralize” alleged “disinformation campaigns” related to the Coronavirus crisis.
While these analysts have claimed to have altruistic motives, its members who have identified themselves publicly have notably dedicated much of their private sector careers to blaming nation states, namely Iran but also China, for hacking and, most recently, for cyberattacks related to the Coronavirus crisis, as well as the 2020 presidential campaign. These individuals and their employers rarely, if ever, make their reasons for assigning blame to state actors available to public scrutiny and also have close ties to the very governments, namely the US and Israel, that have been attempting to gin up hostilities with those countries in recent years, particularly Iran, suggesting a potential conflict of interest.
The Cyber Justice League?
Calling themselves the cyber version of “Justice League,” the Covid-19 Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) League was created earlier this year in March and has described itself as “the first Global Volunteer Emergency Response Community, defending and neutralizing cybersecurity threats and vulnerabilities to the life-saving sectors related to the current Covid-19 pandemic.” They now claim to have over 1,400 members hailing from 76 different countries.
According to their website, they seek “to protect medical organizations, public healthcare facilities, and emergency organizations from threats from the cyber domain” and offer their services “pro-bono” to major hospitals, healthcare and pharmaceutical companies as well as U.S. law enforcement and federal agencies. Upon their creation, they sent an “open letter to the healthcare community,” offering to volunteer “their time and efforts to mitigate [cyber] threats and protect our healthcare system.”
However, since its creation, the CTI League has offered its services to sectors entirely unrelated to healthcare systems, companies and institutions. For instance, they now offer their services to critical infrastructure systems throughout the US, including dams, nuclear reactors, chemical plants and others, according to their inaugural report and their contact form. This is particularly concerning given that there is no oversight regarding who can become a member of the League, as one must merely be approved for entrance or “vetted” by the league’s four founding members, whose conflicts of interests and ties to the US and Israeli national security states are detailed later on in this report.
In addition, the league’s team of “expert” volunteers also tackle alleged disinformation campaigns related to Covid-19. Some examples of the “disinformation” campaigns the CTI league has been investigating on behalf of its private sector and federal partners include those that “associate Covid-19 spread with the distribution of 5G equipment,” “encourage citizens to break quarantine”, and one that “incited” a “1st and 2nd amendment rally” in Texas.
Regarding their disinformation “workstream,” the CTI league states the following:
“The CTI League neutralizes any threat in the cyber domain regarding the current pandemic, including disinformation. The mission of this effort is to find, analyze, and coordinate responses to the current pandemic disinformation incidents as they happen, and where our specialist skills and connections are most useful.”
The CTI League has offered its services “pro bono” to a variety of groups in the private and public sector, which has allowed the League’s members access to the critical systems of each. For instance, they work closely with the Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center (H-ISAC), whose members include Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Merck, Amgen, Blue Cross Blue Shield and Athenahealth, among others. H-ISAC’s president, Denise Anderson, works closely with the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center, part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). According to H-ISAC’s Chief Security Officer (CSO), Errol Weiss, the organization has been partnered with the CTI League since “very early on” in the Coronavirus crisis.
The CTI League also works with unspecified law enforcement partners in the US and works particularly closely with the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), an independent federal agency overseen by DHS. The current CISA director, Christopher Krebs – who was previously the Director of Cybersecurity for Microsoft, told CSO Online in April that “CISA is working around the clock with our public and private sector partners to combat this threat. This includes longstanding partnerships, as well as new ones that have formed as a direct result of Covid-19, including the Covid-19 Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) League.”
Since they began “working with US authorities,” the CTI League has increasingly taken to assigning blame to nation states, specifically Russia, China and Iran, for various cyber-intrusions just as the US federal authorities began to do the same. In late April, for instance, the Justice Department began claiming Chinese hackers planned to target “US hospitals and labs to steal research related to coronavirus” and anonymous US officials blamed China for a hack of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and COVID-19 research. Yet, no evidence tying China to the hacks was provided and only anonymous government officials were willing to imply blame in statements given to the press, suggesting that there was not enough evidence to justify going public with the accusation or to even open an official investigation against specific foreign entities.
Notably, that same week in April, CTI League’s founder Ohad Zaidenberg claimed that China, Iran and Russia “are trying to steal everything,” telling CBS News that they “can steal information regarding the coronavirus information that they don’t have, (if) they believe someone is creating a vaccine and they want to steal information about it. Or they can use the pandemic as leverage so they (can) to steal any other type of information.”
Yet, upon looking more closely at the CTI league’s membership and co-founders, particularly Mr. Zaidenberg, much of the league’s leadership has a rather dubious track record regarding past claims linking state actors to cyberattacks. In addition, they also possess rather glaring conflicts of interests that undermine the CTI League’s professed desire to protect critical health and other infrastructure “free of charge” as well as ties to foreign governments with a history of espionage targeting the United States.
ClearSky and the manufactured Iranian threat
The public face of the CTI League and its original founder is a young Israeli named Ohad Zaidenberg, who was previously an “award-winning” commander in Israeli military intelligence’s Unit 8200, a key component of Israel’s military intelligence apparatus that is often compared to the U.S.’ National Security Agency (NSA). While serving in Unit 8200, Zaidenberg specialized in acts of cyberwarfare targeting the Iranian state, serving first as a Persian analyst in the Unit before becoming commander. His current biography states that he continues to remain “focused on Iran as a strategic intelligence target” and describes him as “an authority in the operations of key Iranian APTs [Advanced Persistent Threats].”
In addition to his leading role at the CTI League, Zaidenberg is also the lead cyber intelligence researcher at ClearSky Cybersecurity, an Israeli company directly partnered with the Unit 8200-linked Checkpoint and Verint Inc., formerly known as Comverse Infosys – a company with a long history of fraud and espionage targeting the US federal government. ClearSky also collaborates “daily” with Elta Systems, an Israeli state-owned subsidiary of Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), and was founded by Boaz Dolev, the former head of the Israeli government’s “e-Government” platform.
Aside from his work at CTI League and ClearSky, Zaidenberg is also a researcher for Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS). Zaidenberg is specifically affiliated with the INSS’ Lipkin-Shahak Program, which is named after the former head of Israeli military intelligence and which focuses on “national security and democracy in an era of Post-Truth and Fake News.” According to the INSS website, the program works directly with the Israeli government and the IDF and is currently headed by Brigadier General (Ret.) Itai Brun, the former head of the Israel Defense Intelligence (IDI) Analysis Division.
Prior to the creation of CTI League, ClearSky – and Zaidenberg, specifically – were often cited by US mainstream media outlets as the sole source for dubious claims that “Iranian hackers” were responsible for a series of high-profile hacks and “disinformation” campaigns. In every mainstream media report that has covered ClearSky’s and Zaidenberg’s claims regarding “Iranian hackers” to date, their connections to the Israeli government and Israeli intelligence services have been left unmentioned. Also unmentioned was the fact that the only state actor that ClearSky has ever blamed for hacks or other online attacks has been Iran, suggesting that the government-linked cybersecurity firm has a rather myopic focus on the Islamic Republic.
Ohad Zaidenberg
For instance, in February 2018, Forbes reported on ClearSky’s claim, citing only Zaidenberg by name, that an individual linked to Iran’s government had been responsible for an “Iranian propaganda machine” producing “fake news” and attempting to imitate BBC Persian. Zaidenberg claimed that the individual behind the three “fake news” websites, which largely published criticisms of the BBC as opposed to false news stories, is “believed to have worked for [Iran’s] National Ministry of Communications.” Based merely on the Iranian national’s “believed” (i.e. unconfirmed) work history, Zaidenberg then asserts with “medium-high certainty that the operation was funded by the Iranian government.” Zaidenberg’s history as a commander in Unit 8200 targeting Iran and his continued, self-admitted work in pursuing Iran as a “strategic intelligence target” while working at the Israeli government-affiliated ClearSky are left unmentioned by Forbes.
More recently, right before the founding of the CTI League, Zaidenberg and ClearSky were the sole source of claims that “Iranian hackers” were “exploiting VPN servers to plan backdoors” in companies around the world as well as targeting the networks of certain governments, mainly in the U.S. and Israel. ClearSky’s assertion that the hackers in question were tied to Iran’s government was solely based on their finding of “medium-high probability” that the hackers’ activities overlapped with the past “activity of an [unspecified] Iranian offensive group.” They declined to specify what the nature of the overlap was or its extent.
A clear conflict of interest
Notably, ClearSky’s February report on “Iranian hackers” targeting governments and major international companies in the US and elsewhere came right on the heels of speculation that Iran would target the US with a cyberattack following the US’ January assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, an act that was greatly influenced and allegedly prompted by Israeli intelligence. In the aftermath of the Soleimani assassination, mainstream media outlets in the US had heavily promoted the claim that Iran’s government would soon respond with a “cyberattack” as retaliation and that “financial institutions and major American corporations may be in the crosshairs.”
President Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had both threatened, at the time, to dramatically respond to any Iran-launched attack, including one launched in the cyber domain, presumably with military force. While Iran’s much-hyped “cyber retaliation” failed to materialize, ClearSky, with its dubious claims that “Iranian hackers” were targeting major corporations and governments, created the impression that Iran’s government was involved in cyberattacks against U.S. interests at this sensitive time.
ClearSky and Zaidenberg’s claims regarding Iran only intensified after the CTI League was founded, with ClearSky and Zaidenberg being the only source for the claim made earlier this year in May that Iran had been responsible for the hacking of US biopharmaceutical company Gilead (a company which boasts close links to the Pentagon). The hack itself, which was widely reported by US media, is said to have consisted of a Gilead executive receiving a single “fake email login page designed to steal passwords” and it is unknown if the attack was even successful, per Reuters, which first broke the story in May. ClearSky subsequently claimed to have single-handedly “foiled” the Gilead hack. Notably, Gilead is part of H-ISAC, which had been partnered with Zaidenberg’s CTI League weeks prior to the alleged hack.
The alleged Iranian-led hack received considerable media attention as the cyberattack was said to have targeted Gilead’s antiviral medication remdesivir, which had received a Covid-19-related emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) just a week before the hack allegedly took place. Only Zaidenberg is cited by name in the report on Iran’s alleged links to the Gilead hack, with Reuters citing two other, yet anonymous, cybersecurity researchers who told the outlet that they concurred with Zaidenberg’s assertion “that the web domains and hosting servers used in the hacking attempts were linked to Iran.”
Then, earlier this month, the FBI sent out a security alert claiming that Iranian government-aligned hackers were targeting F5 networking devices in the US public and private sector, with some media outlets citing anonymous sources tying the hackers in question to those previously identified by ClearSky. The FBI alert was issued right after an alert from CISA (which works directly with the CTI League and Zaidenberg) regarding vulnerabilities in F5 devices that did not mention the involvement of any state actors. Just a few days before the FBI alert, the director of the US intelligence community’s National Counterintelligence and Security Center, William Evanina, had alleged that Iran was “likely” to use online tactics to “discredit U.S. institutions” and “to stir up U.S. voters’ discontent.”
Aside from citing only ClearSky and Zaidenberg for claims linking Iran’s government to cyberattacks, it is also worth noting that the media reports that accused Iranian government-linked groups of committing those attacks declined to even mention the extreme extent to which Iran itself has been the subject of cyberattacks over the course of 2020. For instance, in February, a cyberattack took down an estimated 25% of Iran’s internet, with some alleging US involvement in a similar attack that had targeted Iran just months prior. More recently, a series of several mysterious fires and other acts of industrial sabotage across Iran over the past few months have been linked to Israeli intelligence operations. In some cases, Israeli officials have acknowledged the Zionist state’s role in these events.
In addition, there is the fact that top Israeli intelligence officials have attempted for years to goad the US into making the “first move” against Iran, both covertly and overtly. Indeed, for much of the last twenty years, Mossad has had access to “virtually unlimited funds and powers” for a “five-front strategy,” involving “political pressure, covert measures, proliferation, sanctions and regime change” in order to target Iran. Some Mossad officials have openly stated that part of this “five-front” strategy involves directly influencing the US’ Iran policy, including lobbying the U.S. to conduct a military strike on Iran. For instance, former Mossad director Meir Dagan, who pushed the US State Department to pursue “covert measures” and “urged more attention on regime change” in Iran while head of Mossad, is on record in 2012 stating that, in his view, the US needs to strike Iran first so Israel doesn’t have to.
Currently, Israeli officials have been relatively candid about their role in several of the recent cyberattacks that have befallen Iran as well as the fact that powerful elements of the Israeli state are trying to get the US to join a conflict against Iran before the 2020 presidential election while Trump remains in power. The effort has reportedly led to concern among EU officials that Israel’s government may be seeking to provoke an event whereby the US would engage Iran militarily.
This context highlights why solely citing a firm like ClearSky and an individual like Ohad Zaidenberg in linking a cyber attack to the Iranian government is dangerous, given that ClearSky and Zaidenberg’s ties to the Israeli national security state presents a conflict of interest. This is especially true given that Zaidenberg’s old unit in Unit 8200 is directly involved in conducting cyber attacks on Iran, like those that have been recently taking place as part of the strategy to provoke a military engagement between the US and Iran prior to the November elections.
While Iran’s government could have been involved in recent cyberattacks, especially considering the extent to which Iran has been recently targeted by cyberwarfare, using a firm tied to the very government and military intelligence apparatus actively seeking to embroil the US in a war with Iran as the sole source linking Iran to a cyberattack is not only ill advised, but dangerous and reckless.
Furthermore, given Zaidenberg’s key role in the CTI League, allowing faceless “volunteers” vetted by Zaidenberg and the league’s three other founding members (whose affiliations are discussed below) onto critical private and public networks under the guise of “aiding” their security amid the Covid-19 crisis is similarly reckless.
CTI, Microsoft & 2020
While Zaidenberg has made himself the public face and spokesperson of the CTI League, it is worth examining the other three individuals that are listed as founding members on the League’s website, if only because only these four individuals “vet” those who join the CTI League.
One of these other founding members is Marc Rogers, who began his career as a hacker and later “hacktivist” before deciding that “ethical hacking” was “more likely to have a positive outcome.” For Rogers, “ethical hacking” meant pursuing a cybersecurity career with multi-national corporations like Vodafone and Cloudfare as well as asset management firms like Asian Investment & Asset Management (AIAM).
Rogers is currently the Vice President of Cybersecurity Strategy at Okta, an enterprise identity solution platform, co-founded by former Salesforce executives and largely funded by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Andreessen Horowitz is advised by former Secretary of the Treasury and Jeffery Epstein friend Larry Summers and is also a major investor in Toka, a company closely tied to Israel’s military intelligence apparatus and led by former Israeli Prime Minister (and a close friend of Epstein’s), Ehud Barak.
Aside from Rogers and Zaidenberg, the other founding members of the CTI League are Nate Warfield and Chris Mills. Warfield is a former self-described “Grey Hat” hacker (defined as “a hacker or cybersecurity professional who violates laws or common ethical standards but without malicious intent”) who now works as a senior program manager for the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC). Mills also currently works for the MSRC as a senior program manager and he previously created the US Navy Computer Forensics Lab while serving in the Navy’s Cyber Defense Operations Command.
The MSRC “proactively builds a collective defense working with industry and government security organizations to fend off cyberattacks” and works within the Cyber Defense Operations Center and Microsoft’s other cybersecurity teams, including that previously overseen by Chris Krebs when he was in charge of “Microsoft’s US policy work on cybersecurity and technology issues.” Krebs, as previously mentioned, is now the head of the federal agency CISA, which oversees the protection of critical electronic infrastructure in the US, including the voting system. In addition to the above, MSRC is heavily focused on pursuing the cybersecurity needs of Microsoft customers, which includes the US government, specifically the US Department of Defense.
It is worth noting that the MSRC is also directly affiliated with Microsoft’s ElectionGuard, a voting machine software program that was developed by companies closely tied to the Pentagon’s infamous research branch DARPA and Israeli military intelligence Unit 8200 and creates several risks to voting security despite claiming to make it “safer.” The push for the adoption of ElectionGuard software in the US has been largely spearheaded by the Chris Krebs-led CISA.
Perhaps more telling, however, is that Microsoft and the MSRC have been at the center, alongside ClearSky, of claims linking Iran’s government to recent hacking events and assertions that Iranian government-linked hackers will soon target the US power grid and other critical infrastructure with cyberattacks. For instance, last year, Microsoft penned a blog post about a “threat group” it named Phosphorus, sometimes also called APT35 or “Charming Kitten”, and Microsoft claimed that they “believe [the group] originates from Iran and is linked to the Iranian government.” Microsoft did not provide more details as to why they hold that “belief,” despite the implications of the claim.
Microsoft went on to assert that the “Iranian” Phosphorus group attempted to target a US presidential campaign, which subsequent media reports revealed was President Trump’s re-election campaign. Microsoft concluded that the attempt was “not technically sophisticated” and was ultimately unsuccessful, but the company felt compelled, not only to disclose the event, but to attempt to link it to Iran’s government. Notably, the Trump campaign was later identified as the only major presidential campaign using Microsoft’s “AccountGuard” software, part of its suspect “Defending Democracy” program that also spawned NewsGuard and ElectionGuard. AccountGuard claims to protect campaign-linked emails and data from hackers.
Though it provided no evidence for the hack or its reasons for “believing” that the attack originated from Iran, media reports treated Microsoft’s declaration as proof that Iran had begun actively meddling in the US’ 2020 presidential election. Headlines such as “Iranian Hackers Target Trump Campaign as 2020 Threats Mount,” “Iran-linked Hackers Target Trump 2020 Campaign, Microsoft says”, “Microsoft: Iran government-linked hacker targeted 2020 presidential campaign” and “Microsoft Says Iranians Tried To Hack U.S. Presidential Campaign,” were commonplace following Microsoft’s statements. None of those reports scrutinized Microsoft’s claims or noted the clear conflict of interest Microsoft had in making such claims due to its efforts to see its own ElectionGuard Software adopted nationwide or the fact that the company has close ties to Israel’s Unit 8200 and 8200-linked Israeli tech start-ups.
Coincidentally, Phosphorus, as Microsoft calls them, is also the group at the center of the “Iranian hacker” allegations promoted by ClearSky and Zaidenberg, which refers to this same group by the name “Charming Kitten.” The overlap is not very surprising given Microsoft’s long-standing ties to Israel’s Unit 8200 as well as the fact that Microsoft as a company and its two co-founders, Paul Allen and Bill Gates, personally ensured the success of an Israeli intelligence-linked tech company then-led by Isabel Maxwell, Ghislaine Maxwell’s sister who boasts close ties to Israel’s national security state. It is certainly interesting that the four founding members of CTI League share ties to the same military intelligence agencies and associated corporations as well as an interest in the same group of alleged “Iranian hackers.”
While CTI League only publicly identifies the names of its four founding members, further investigation reveals that another member of the league is its program lead for combating Covid-19-related “disinformation” — Sara-Jayne Terp. Terp is a former computer scientist for the UK military and the United Nations and, in addition to her role at the CTI League, she currently co-leads the “misinfosec” (i.e. a combination of misinformation analysis and information security) working group for an organization known as the Credibility Coalition.
The Credibility Coalition describes itself as an effort to “address online misinformation by defining factors that communicate information reliability to readers” and is backed by Google’s News Lab, Facebook’s Journalism Project as well as Craig Newmark Philanthropies and the Knight Foundation. The latter two organizations also back the Orwellian anti-“fake news” initiatives called the Trust Project and the Microsoft-affiliated Newsguard, respectively.
Questionable access granted
Through claims of altruism and partnerships with powerful corporations and government agencies, the CTI League has been able to position itself within the critical infrastructure of hospitals and the U.S. healthcare system as well as attempting to expand into other key networks, such as those tied to dams and even nuclear reactors. It is truly stunning that a group whose unnamed members are “vetted” only by Zaidenberg, Warfield, Mills and Rogers, has been cleared to access critical private and public networks all because of the pandemonium caused by the Coronavirus crisis and the league’s offering of their services “pro bono.”
Notably, a considerable part of the strain that led hospitals and healthcare institutions to request the league’s services, such as budget cuts or the firings of IT staffers, were actually the result of government policy, either due to state or federal budget cuts for healthcare systems or HHS’ efforts to consolidate control over patient data flows into the hands of a few. In other words, these government policies directly led to a situation where hospitals and healthcare institutions would, out of desperation, be more likely to accept the “pro bono” offer of the CTI League than they otherwise would have been under more “normal” conditions.
Another critical fact worth pointing out is that the U.S. and Israeli intelligence communities have been seeding the narrative for over a year regarding the upcoming hacks of critical U.S. infrastructure on or around the US 2020 election, scheduled for November 3rd, by groups affiliated with the governments of Iran, Russia and/or China. As described above, many of the same groups and individuals behind the CTI League have played key roles in seeding aspects of that narrative.
Despite its massive conflict of interest, this opaque group is now nestled within much of the US’ critical infrastructure enjoying little, if any, oversight – ostensibly justified by the league’s “altruism.” As a consequence, the group’s opaqueness could easily lend itself to be used as the springboard for a “false flag” cyberattack to fit the very narrative pushed by Zaidenberg and his affiliates. From a national security perspective, allowing CTI League to operate in this capacity would normally be unthinkable. Yet, instead, this suspect organization is openly partnered with the US government and US law enforcement.
With US intelligence already having conducted such “false flag” cyberattacks through its UMBRAGE program, which allows them to place the “fingerprints” of Chinese, Russian and Iranian-affiliated hackers on cyberattacks that the U.S. actually conducts, any forthcoming cyberattack should be thoroughly investigated before blame is assigned to any state actor. Any such investigation would do well to first look at whether the CTI League was given access to the targets.
I was set up by ‘MAFIA’ & media served up misleading tapes: Austria’s Russiagate victim, ex-vice-chancellor Strache
RT | August 28, 2020
It took one “leaked” tape of a right-wing politician’s meeting with a fake Russian oligarch’s niece to topple the Austrian government in 2019. Ex-vice-chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache now says it was a “criminal network” plot.
Austria’s right-wing government imploded in spectacular fashion last summer, after two German newspapers, Der Spiegel and the Suddeutsche Zeitung, published excerpts from a videotape of Vice-Chancellor Strache negotiating a ‘quid pro quo’ deal with the supposed “niece of a Russian oligarch” in Ibiza.
The woman was later revealed to be a Bosnian student, posing as a Russian femme fatale, and the tapes turned out to be from 2017, but that didn’t save Austria’s ruling coalition.
Strache resigned and snap elections were called. His ex-coalition partner, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, eventually regained power, but this time partnered with the environmentalist Green Party, and not the right-wing Freedom Party (FPO).
Strache has been fighting a court battle against the media to clear his name, and his lawyers have apparently obtained the full contents of the tape. He now says the unabridged transcripts – partly published in the media this week – prove that he’s been framed and misrepresented in the “leaks.”
“It was a manipulative extermination campaign that was launched on several levels,” Strache told RT Deutsch in an interview.
Indeed, much of the so-called “Ibiza affair” is still shrouded in mystery. Strache initially accused unnamed “intelligence agencies” of orchestrating the recording, while Kurz pointed the finger at an Israeli spin doctor, Tal Silberstein. A newspaper report last May blamed an Iranian-born lawyer, Ramin Mirfakhrai, who admitted his involvement but described the sting as a “civil society” project.
“This group of perpetrators is likely to be a very large one; one could perhaps also speak of a criminal network,” Strache told RT. He then claimed that a member of his own security team was apparently working with this “mafia” for nearly a decade and that the male escort of the ‘oligarch’s niece’ was allegedly working with Strache’s companion on the night – FPO deputy leader Johann Gudenus – to entrap him.
Strache also alleges that he was drunk – or maybe even “drugged” – during the “illegal” recording.
It is not clear if Strache’s assessment matches that of the committee of inquiry, which has been investigating the affair since June. Strache has little confidence in the inquiry, though, and told RT that he expects it to be derailed by “political tactics.” However, prosecutors in Austria are currently investigating the woman’s male companion – identified as “private investigator” Julian H. – for entrapment, while the newly-surfaced tapes appear to paint a different picture of the night in Ibiza.
In these, Strache can be heard rejecting some of the corrupt offers from the “Russian oligarch’s niece.” When she lays out the deal – favorable press coverage in a newspaper owned by her family in exchange for lucrative construction contracts – Strache responds: “No way, I won’t do it.”
“I don’t want to be vulnerable,” he says. “I want to sleep peacefully. I want to get up in the morning and say: I’m clean.”
While some of these lines were mentioned during the 2019 coverage, they did not appear in the “leaked” video – and Strache suspects this is no coincidence. He claims the additional footage now proves he is “neither corrupt nor for sale,” even despite the fact that he was plied with alcohol. He said he’s unsure whether to blame the two German newspapers for airing the original, selectively-edited footage, or the masterminds of the sting operation who sold them this footage.
Some of the German-language media that previously reported on the “Ibiza affair” have been left unimpressed by the new transcripts, and it remains to be seen whether the investigation sides with the so-called “civil society” project or condemns what Strache likes to call the “Stasi methods,” in reference to the infamous East German secret police. But given the alleged scope of the operation, Strache says he’s happy that at least he got out of it alive.
“I’m glad I’m alive,” he told RT. “I have the opportunity every day to experience the sun rising again, and also to defend myself and to fight such mechanisms. Because I say that such methods have no place in political debate.”
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Villains of Judea
Samuel Zemurray
The ruthless businessman who financed coups in Central America and shaped Israeli statehood
José Niño Unfiltered | May 7, 2026
Leftist commentators consistently push a shallow and economically reductive narrative that frames American foreign policy as the sole domain of greedy White capitalists while choosing to ignore the obvious Jewish power structure directing these events. When the veneer of this supposed corporate imperialism is stripped away, it becomes clear that the United States has often served as a vehicle for the specific goals of organized Jewry. The life of Samuel Zemurray stands as prime evidence of this hidden mechanism.
Few figures in American business history wielded power as ruthlessly or as secretly as Zemurray. Born Schmiel Zmurri on January 18, 1877, to a poor Jewish family in Imperial Russia, this teenage immigrant would rise from peddling rotting bananas off railroad cars in Alabama to become the controlling force behind the United Fruit Company, the most powerful agricultural corporation on earth. Along the way he overthrew governments, bribed presidents, hired mercenaries, and played a pivotal behind-the-scenes role in the creation of the State of Israel. … continue
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