LONDON – The Russian Embassy in London pointed Saturday to the contradictions in the article released by the Financial Times newspaper, which claimed that the Russian military intelligence service GRU had allegedly conducted a cyberattack on the UK-based Islam Channel TV broadcaster in 2015.
On Friday, the Financial Times reported, citing non-designated UK officials, that the GRU officers allegedly hacked the computer network of the UK-based TV station in 2015. The news outlet has not provided any evidence, proving the claims. The newspaper has not specified why Russia would “attack” the broadcaster either. In addition, all the sources of information mentioned in the article were anonymous.
“What is interesting about the article is that it claims that hackers, supposedly, had complete control over the TV channel’s infrastructure during the intrusion. Then [the article] claims that the [UK] Home Office staff called [the broadcaster] and informed it of the cyberattack and says that ‘we [the TV station’s staff] had not noticed any irregularities in the work of the channel until this call.’ The information in this article does not withstand the slightest criticism, it seems it was written in a hurry, and the logical pattern was disrupted. [The article’s] main goal is clear — to bring another accusation against Russia,” a representative of the embassy told reporters.
The representative stressed that the embassy usually refrained from commenting on newspaper articles based on leakages from the UK security services because nobody was willing to take responsibility for the allegations. He added that the UK Foreign Office habitually left Moscow’s requests concerning such publications without answer.
On Thursday, the UK Foreign Office said it assessed “with high confidence” that GRU was “almost certainly” responsible for a series of cyberattacks on political institutions, media outlets and infrastructure across the globe. The Foreign Office mentioned a UK-based TV station among the targets of the attacks.
Later on Thursday, the Dutch Defense Ministry claimed that four Russian citizens holding diplomatic passports had been expelled from the Netherlands in April on suspicion of an attempted cyberattack on the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
The Russian Foreign Ministry refuted the claims on Thursday and stressed that the “spymania campaign” unleashed in the Netherlands was seriously hurting bilateral relations with Russia. The ministry pointed out that the Netherlands made the statement ahead of the OPCW opening session, which could set up the “necessary’ political background” to push through some illegal initiatives that Russia opposed.
Canada and the United States subsequently joined the allegations against GRU, claiming that seven Russian military intelligence officials allegedly targeted with cyberattacks the US Westinghouse nuclear power company and multiple anti-doping agencies and athletes. Meanwhile, Russia’s proposal for the establishment of a joint task force on cybersecurity has been earlier rejected by Washington.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov has said that the United States “poisoned” Russian-US relations by its new allegations against Russian security services. The diplomat noted the danger of fueling tensions between two nuclear powers.
October 6, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | Financial Times, UK |
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In recent months Western media and the Washington Administration have begun to raise a hue and cry over alleged mass internment camps in China’s northwestern Xinjiang where supposedly up to one million ethnic Uyghur Chinese are being detained and submitted to various forms of “re-education.” Several things about the charges are notable, not the least that all originate from Western media or “democracy” NGOs such as Human Rights Watch whose record for veracity leaves something to be desired.
In August Reuters published an article under the headline, “UN says it has credible reports that China holds million Uighurs in secret camps.” A closer look at the article reveals no official UN policy statement, but rather a quote from one American member of an independent committee that does not speak for the UN, a member with no background in China. The source of the claim it turns out is a UN independent advisory NGO called Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination. The sole person making the charge, American committee member Gay McDougall, stated she was “deeply concerned” about “credible reports.” McDougall cited no source for the dramatic charge.
Reuters in their article boosts its claim by citing a murky Washington DC based NGO, the Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD). In an excellent background investigation, researchers at the Grayzone Project found that the CHRD gets hundreds of thousands of dollars from unnamed governments. The notorious US government NGO, National Endowment for Democracy, is high on the list of usual suspects. Notably, the CHRD official address is that of the Human Rights Watch which gets funds also from the Soros foundation.
The ‘Uyghur Problem’
The true state of affairs in China’s Xinjiang Province regarding Uyghurs is not possible to independently verify, whether such camps exist and if so who is there and under what conditions. What is known, however, is the fact that NATO intelligence agencies, including that of Turkey and of the US, along with Saudi Arabia, have been involved in recruiting and deploying thousands of Chinese Uyghur Muslims to join Al Qaeda and other terror groups in Syria in recent years. This side of the equation warrants a closer look, the side omitted by Reuters or UN Ambassador Haley.
According to Syrian media cited in Voltaire.net, there are presently an estimated 18,000 ethnic Uyghurs in Syria most concentrated in a village on the Turkish border to Syria. Since 2013 such Uyghur soldiers have gone from combat alongside Al Qaeda in Syria and returned to China’s Xinjiang where they have carried out various terrorist acts. This is the tip of a nasty NATO-linked project to plant the seeds of terror and unrest in China. Xinjiang is a lynchpin of China’s Belt Road Initiative, the crossroads of strategic oil and gas pipelines from Kazakhstan, Russia and a prime target of CIA intrigue since decades.
Since at least 2011 at the start of the NATO war against Bashar al Assad’s Syria, Turkey had played a key role in facilitating the flow of Chinese Uyghur people to become Jihadists in Syria. I deliberately use “had” tense to give benefit of the doubt if it still is the case today or if it has become an embarrassment for Erdogan and Turkish intelligence. In any case it seems that thousands of Uyghurs are holed up in Syria, most around Idlib, the reported last outpost of anti-regime terrorists.
Washington and ETIM
In an excellent analysis of China’s Uyghur terror history, Steven Sahiounie, a Syrian journalist with 21st Century Wire, notes that a key organization behind the radicalization of Chinese Uyghur youth is the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) and its political front, the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP), which is also known as “Katibat Turkistani.” He cites a speech in Istanbul in 1995 by Turkey’s Erdogan, then Mayor, who declared, “Eastern Turkestan is not only the home of the Turkic peoples but also the cradle of Turkic history, civilization and culture…” Eastern Turkestan is Xinjiang.
ETIM today is headed by Anwar Yusuf Turani, self-proclaimed Prime Minister of a government in exile which notably is based in Washington DC. ETIM moved to Washington at a time the US State Department listed it as a terrorist organization, curiously enough. According to a report in a Turkish investigative magazine, Turk Pulse, Turani’s organization’s “activities for the government in exile are based on a report entitled ‘The Xinjiang Project.’ That was written by former senior CIA officer Graham E. Fuller in 1998 for the Rand Corporation and revised in 2003 under the title ‘The Xinjiang Problem.’”
I have written extensively in my book, The Lost Hegemon, about career senior CIA operative Graham Fuller. Former Istanbul CIA station chief, Fuller was one of the architects of the Reagan-Bush Iran-Contra affair, and a prime CIA sponsor or handler of Gülen who facilitated Gülen’s USA exile. He was also by his own admission, in Istanbul the night of the failed 2016 coup. In 1999 during the end of the Russian Yelstin era, Fuller declared, “The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping them against our adversaries worked marvelously well in Afghanistan against the Russians. The same doctrines can still be used to destabilize what remains of Russian power, and especially to counter the Chinese influence in Central Asia.” This is what the covert US weaponization of ETIM is aimed at. Like most radical Sunni Jihadist groups, Turani’s ETIM got funding as most radical Sunni Jihadist groups from Saudi Arabia.
In the late 1990s, Hasan Mahsum, also known as Abu-Muhammad al-Turkestani, founder of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, moved ETIM’s headquarters to Kabul, taking shelter under Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, ETIM leaders met with Osama bin Laden and other leaders of the CIA-trained Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan to coordinate actions across Central Asia. When the Pakistani military assassinated al-Turkestani in 2003 Turani became head of ETIM, and took his roadshow to Washington.
In his own study of Xinjiang, the CIA’s Graham E. Fuller noted that Saudi Arabian groups had disseminated extremist Wahhabi religious literature and possibly small arms through sympathizers in Xinjiang, and that young Turkic Muslims had been recruited to study at madrasas in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. He adds that Uyghurs from Xinjiang also fought alongside Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Fuller noted, “Uyghurs are indeed in touch with Muslim groups outside Xinjiang, some of them have been radicalized into broader jihadist politics in the process, a handful were earlier involved in guerrilla or terrorist training in Afghanistan, and some are in touch with international Muslim mujahideen struggling for Muslim causes of independence worldwide.”
The January 2018 Pentagon National Defense Strategy policy document explicitly named China along with Russia as main strategic “threats” to continued US supremacy. It states, “Inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the primary concern in US national security.” Explicitly, and this is new, the Pentagon paper does not cite a military threat but an economic one. It states, “China and Russia are now undermining the international order from within the system by exploiting its benefits while simultaneously undercutting its principles and ‘rules of the road.’” The escalating trade war against China, threats of sanctions over allegations of Uyghur detention camps in Xinjiang, threats of sanctions if China buys Russian defense equipment, are all aimed at disruption of the sole emerging threat to a Washington global order, one that is not based on freedom or justice but rather on fear and tyranny. How China’s authorities are trying to deal with this full assault is another issue. The context of events in Xinjiang however needs to be made clear. The West and especially Washington is engaged in full-scale irregular war against the stability of China.
October 6, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | Afghanistan, CIA, ETIM, HRW, Reuters, Turkey, United States, Xinjiang |
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On Thursday, the US Justice Department announced charges against seven alleged Russian military intelligence officers accused of hacking doping agencies and other international organizations.
Bloomberg has cited Britain’s de facto Deputy Prime Minister David Lidington as saying that London and Berlin may slap more punitive measures on Moscow over the alleged hacking activity of Russian military intelligence.
“We have to be ready to take action either on our own or preferably in concert with allies if appropriate,” Lidington pointed out.
He was echoed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief spokesman Steffen Seibert, who said that additional sanctions against Russia are currently under discussion between Germany and its European partners.
The statement came a few days after the British Foreign Office stated that London had assessed “with high confidence” that the Russian military intelligence service was “almost certainly” responsible for a series of cyberattacks on political institutions, media outlets and infrastructure across the globe, including in Britain.
The Russian Embassy in the UK, in turn, urged British authorities to immediately provide information on Moscow’s alleged attempts to conduct cyberattacks against London.
Meanwhile, the Dutch Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the country’s intelligence had thwarted a hacking attack on the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which was allegedly carried out by four Russian citizens.
A Russian Foreign Ministry source, for its part, stated that there were no and there can’t be any attacks on the OPCW on behalf of Russia, because Moscow already has access to the organization’s files.
The source slammed the Dutch accusations as “an example of some Western states’ policies reaching the point of bigotry,” noting that Western “spy mania is gaining momentum.”
In the US, Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Demers said that the White House had announced “an indictment charging seven Russian military officers with violation of several US criminal laws for malicious cyber activities against the United States and its allies.”
He further claimed that Russia had carried out a cyberattack on a Swiss lab which was analyzing a toxic substance, allegedly used against former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, UK.
Demers also claimed that three Russian agents were previously accused of meddling in the 2016 US election.
Moscow has repeatedly denied claims that it has links to cyberactors attempting to meddle in other states’ domestic affairs, insisting that such claims were unfounded.
In early September, the European Union extended its current sanctions against certain Russian individuals and entities “over actions undermining or threatening the territorial integrity” of Ukraine for another six months.
October 6, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Economics, Russophobia | Germany, UK |
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‘Russian hackers’ have become the go-to bogeymen for Washington. There’s little mention of American hackers though – probably because they aren’t needed, since most of the internet is a branch of US intelligence.
The US, which is now raising massive alarm over Russia’s supposed efforts to hack everything Americans hold dear, has been refusing to sign a treaty on cyberspace behavior with Russia for almost a decade now. The reason is simple, one Russian-American author explains: Washington doesn’t need a treaty, because it dominates the digital space completely as it is.
Washington’s panic over ‘Russian hackers’ is just a reflection of what it’s been doing to the world for years, says Yasha Levine, the author of ‘Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet.’
And thanks to surveillance programs like PRISM, outed by Edward Snowden 2013, the US doesn’t even need hackers: just by being on social media or using Google, you’re voluntarily surrendering your data to the NSA.
Far from scaling back its snooping after Snowden pulled the curtain on PRISM, the US has multiplied its efforts. Citing ‘national security’, lawmakers renewed the NSA’s sweeping spying powers this year. Domestic phone surveillance tripled last year, user data requests to Apple doubled, and user data requests to Google were at an all-time high.
And just recently, the ‘Five eyes’ powers – the US, the UK, Canada, New Zealand and Australia – issued a memo demanding that tech giants implement ‘backdoors’ to allow governments direct access to users’ encrypted data.
The entire narrative of cyber threats to the “good guys” US is a smokescreen to hide the unenviable fact: it’s the US that’s the apex predator of the digital ocean.
October 6, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Russophobia | Google, NSA, PRISM, United States |
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The vast regime of torture created by the Bush administration after the 9/11 attacks continues to haunt America. The political class and most of the media have never dealt honestly with the profound constitutional corruption that such practices inflicted. Instead, torture enablers are permitted to pirouette as heroic figures on the flimsiest evidence.
Former FBI chief James Comey is the latest beneficiary of the media’s “no fault” scoring on the torture scandal. In his media interviews for his new memoir, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership, Comey is portraying himself as a Boy Scout who sought only to do good things. But his record is far more damning than most Americans realize.
Comey continues to use memos from his earlier government gigs to whitewash all of the abuses he sanctified. “Here I stand; I can do no other,” Comey told George W. Bush in 2004 when Bush pressured Comey, who was then Deputy Attorney General, to approve an unlawful anti-terrorist policy. Comey was quoting a line supposedly uttered by Martin Luther in 1521, when he told Emperor Charles V and an assembly of Church officials that he would not recant his sweeping criticisms of the Catholic Church.
The American Civil Liberties Union, Human Rights Watch, and other organizations did excellent reports prior to Comey’s becoming FBI chief that laid out his role in the torture scandal. Such hard facts, however, have long since vanished from the media radar screen. MSNBC host Chris Matthews recently declared, “James Comey made his bones by standing up against torture. He was a made man before Trump came along.” Washington Post columnist Fareed Zakaria, in a column declaring that Americans should be “deeply grateful” to lawyers such as Comey, declared, “The Bush administration wanted to claim that its ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ were lawful. Comey believed they were not…. So Comey pushed back as much as he could.”
Martin Luther risked death to fight against what he considered the scandalous religious practices of his time. Comey, a top Bush administration policymaker, found a safer way to oppose the worldwide secret U.S. torture regime widely considered a heresy against American values: he approved brutal practices and then wrote some memos and emails fretting about the optics.
Losing sleep
Comey became deputy attorney general in late 2003 and “had oversight of the legal justification used to authorize” key Bush programs in the war on terror, as a Bloomberg News analysis noted. At that time, the Bush White House was pushing the Justice Department to again sign off on an array of extreme practices that had begun shortly after the 9/11 attacks. A 2002 Justice Department memo had leaked out that declared that the federal Anti-Torture Act “would be unconstitutional if it impermissibly encroached on the President’s constitutional power to conduct a military campaign.” The same Justice Department policy spurred a secret 2003 Pentagon document on interrogation policies that openly encouraged contempt for the law: “Sometimes the greater good for society will be accomplished by violating the literal language of the criminal law.”
Photos had also leaked from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq showing the stacking of naked prisoners with bags over their heads, mock electrocution from a wire connected to a man’s penis, guard dogs on the verge of ripping into naked men, and grinning U.S. male and female soldiers celebrating the sordid degradation. Legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh published extracts in the New Yorker from a March 2004 report by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba that catalogued other U.S. interrogation abuses: “Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape … sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.”
The Bush administration responded to the revelations with a torrent of falsehoods, complemented by attacks on the character of critics. Bush declared, “Let me make very clear the position of my government and our country…. The values of this country are such that torture is not a part of our soul and our being.” Bush had the audacity to run for reelection as the anti-torture candidate, boasting that “for decades, Saddam tormented and tortured the people of Iraq. Because we acted, Iraq is free and a sovereign nation.” He was hammering this theme despite a confidential CIA Inspector General report warning that post–9/11 CIA interrogation methods might violate the international Convention Against Torture.
James Comey had the opportunity to condemn the outrageous practices and pledge that the Justice Department would cease providing the color of law to medieval-era abuses. Instead, Comey merely repudiated the controversial 2002 memo. Speaking to the media in a not-for-attribution session on June 22, 2004, he declared that the 2002 memo was “overbroad,” “abstract academic theory,” and “legally unnecessary.” He helped oversee crafting a new memo with different legal footing to justify the same interrogation methods.
Comey twice gave explicit approval for waterboarding, which sought to break detainees with near-drowning. This practice had been recognized as a war crime by the U.S. government since the Spanish-American War. A practice that was notorious when inflicted by the Spanish Inquisition was adopted by the CIA with the Justice Department’s blessing. (When Barack Obama nominated Comey to be FBI chief in 2013, he testified that he had belatedly recognized that waterboarding was actually torture.)
Comey wrote in his memoir that he was losing sleep over concern about Bush-administration torture polices. But losing sleep was not an option for detainees, because Comey approved sleep deprivation as an interrogation technique. Detainees could be forcibly kept awake for 180 hours until they confessed their crimes. How did that work? At Abu Ghraib, one FBI agent reported seeing a detainee “handcuffed to a railing with a nylon sack on his head and a shower curtain draped around him, being slapped by a soldier to keep him awake.” Numerous FBI agents protested the extreme interrogation methods they saw at Guantanamo and elsewhere, but their warnings were ignored.
Comey also approved “wall slamming” — which, as law professor David Cole wrote, meant that detainees could be thrown against a wall up to 30 times. Comey also signed off on the CIA’s using “interrogation” methods such as facial slaps, locking detainees in small boxes for 18 hours, and forced nudity. When the secret Comey memo approving those methods finally became public in 2009, many Americans were aghast — and relieved that the Obama administration had repudiated Bush policies.
When it came to opposing torture, Comey’s version of “Here I stand” had more loopholes than a reverse-mortgage contract. Though Comey in 2005 approved each of 13 controversial extreme interrogation methods, he objected to combining multiple methods on one detainee.
The torture guy
In his memoir, Comey relates that his wife told him, “Don’t be the torture guy!” Comey apparently feels that he satisfied her dictate by writing memos that opposed combining multiple extreme interrogation methods. And since the vast majority of the American media agree with him, he must be right.
Comey’s cheerleaders seem uninterested in the damning evidence that has surfaced since his time as a torture enabler in the Bush administration. In 2014, the Senate Intelligence Committee finally released a massive report on the CIA torture regime — including death resulting from hypothermia, rape-like rectal feeding of detainees, compelling detainees to stand long periods on broken legs, and dozens of cases where innocent people were pointlessly brutalized. Psychologists aided the torture regime, offering hints on how to destroy the will and resistance of prisoners. From the start, the program was protected by phalanxes of lying federal officials.
When he first campaigned for president, Barack Obama pledged to vigorously investigate the Bush torture regime for criminal violations. Instead, the Obama administration proffered one excuse after another to suppress the vast majority of the evidence, pardon all U.S. government torturers, and throttle all torture-related lawsuits. The only CIA official to go to prison for the torture scandal was courageous whistleblower John Kiriakou. Kiriakou’s fate illustrates that telling the truth is treated as the most unforgivable atrocity in Washington.
If Comey had resigned in 2004 or 2005 to protest the torture techniques he now claims to abhor, he would deserve some of the praise he is now receiving. Instead, he remained in the Bush administration but wrote an email summarizing his objections, declaring that “it was my job to protect the department and the A.G. [Attorney General] and that I could not agree to this because it was wrong.” A 2009 New York Times analysis noted that Comey and two colleagues “have largely escaped criticism [for approving torture] because they raised questions about interrogation and the law.” In Washington, writing emails is “close enough for government work” to confer sainthood.
When Comey finally exited the Justice Department in August 2005 to become a lavishly paid senior vice president for Lockheed Martin, he proclaimed in a farewell speech that protecting the Justice Department’s “reservoir” of “trust and credibility” requires “vigilance” and “an unerring commitment to truth.” But he had perpetuated policies that shattered the moral credibility of both the Justice Department and the U.S. government. He failed to heed Martin Luther’s admonition, “You are not only responsible for what you say, but also for what you do not say.”
Comey is likely to go to his grave without paying any price for his role in perpetuating appalling U.S. government abuses. It is far more important to recognize the profound danger that torture and the exoneration of torturers pose to the United States. “No free government can survive that is not based on the supremacy of the law,” is one of the mottoes chiseled into the façade of Justice Department headquarters. Unfortunately, politicians nowadays can choose which laws they obey and which laws they trample. And Americans are supposed to presume that we still have the rule of law as long as politicians and bureaucrats deny their crimes.
October 5, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | CIA, James Comey, United States |
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The Russian Upper House speaker described the Norwegian spy probe against one of the chamber’s employees as absurd and arbitrary. She speculated that the man is being held so that evidence could be fabricated to back the charges.
Russian Upper House Speaker Valentina Matviyenko told reporters that she addressed the issue of Mikhail Bochkarev’s detention in a personal message to the head of the Norwegian Parliament, but only received a polite, formal reply.
She added that Bochkarev has worked in the Russian Upper House for 25 years and was never involved with any special services.
You know, this resembles the theater of the absurd. He was arrested on invented charges and the fact that the court has recently extended his detention gives the impression that someone is now fabricating some non-existing proof in this case.
Matviyenko went on to describe Norway’s behavior in this situation as an attempt to pressure Bochkarev, and hinted that the whole story could be the result of a planned provocation.
She also promised that the Russian side would continue to defend its citizens and said that both the Russian Foreign Ministry and the Upper House would demand Bochkarev’s immediate release. The top Russian senator also insisted that nothing would ever come out of this story, comparing it to a soap bubble.
Mikail Bochkarev, a member of the Russian Upper House staff, was detained in late September in the Norwegian capital, Oslo, where he took part in an event hosted by the European Center for Parliamentary Research and Documentation.
He was accused of “gathering data.” The Norwegian media said the charges against him were based on the fact that he moved through the building where the event was being held, rather than staying in one place. The Norwegian special services saw this behavior as a possible sign of illegal data gathering.
In subsequent press comments, Norwegian PM Erna Solberg emphasized that the probe into the Russian citizen’s alleged wrongdoings is purely criminal in nature and has nothing to do with politics.
Earlier this week, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said that the charges against Bochkarev were false, speculating that Norway started the case in hopes of blackmailing Russia into swapping its citizen for Norwegian national Frode Berg, who was detained in Moscow in December 2017 and remains in custody to this day. The Russian authorities suspect him of espionage.
Zakharova said, however, that unlike Mikhail Bochkarev, who was arrested while leaving Norway, Frode Berg was caught in the act.
October 5, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Russophobia | Norway |
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The US, Britain and other NATO allies upped the ante this week with a coordinated campaign of information war to criminalize Russia. Moscow dismissed the wide-ranging claims as “spy mania”. But the implications amount to a grave assault recklessly escalating international tensions with Russia.
The accusations that the Kremlin is running a global cyberattack operation are tantamount to accusing Russia of “acts of war”. That, in turn, is creating a pretext for NATO powers to carry out “defensive” actions on Moscow, including increased economic and diplomatic sanctions against Russia, as well as “counter” cyberattacks on Russian territory.
This is a highly dangerous dynamic that could ultimately lead to military confrontation between nuclear-armed states.
There are notably suspicious signs that the latest accusations against Russia are a coordinated effort to contrive false charges.
First, there is the concerted nature of the claims. British state intelligence initiated the latest phase of information war by claiming that Russian military intelligence, GRU, was conducting cyberattacks on infrastructure and industries in various countries, costing national economies “millions of pounds” in damages.
Then, within hours of the British claims, the United States and Canada, as well as NATO partners Australia and New Zealand followed up with similar highly publicized accusations against Russia. It is significant that those Anglophone countries, known as the “Five Eyes”, have a long history of intelligence collaboration going back to the Cold War years against the Soviet Union.
The Netherlands, another NATO member, added to the “spy mania” by claiming it had expelled four members of Russian state intelligence earlier this year for allegedly trying to hack into the headquarters of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), based in The Hague.
There then followed predictable condemnations of Russia from the NATO leadership and the European Union. NATO was holding a summit in Brussels this week. It is therefore plausible that the timing of the latest claims of Russian “malign activity” was meant to coordinate with the NATO summit.
More sanctions against Moscow are expected – further intensifying tensions from already existing sanctions. More sinister were NATO warnings that the military alliance would take collective action over what it asserts are Russian cyberattacks.
This is creating a “casus belli” situation whereby the 29 NATO members can invoke a common defense clause for punitive actions against Russia. Given the rampant nature of the claims of “Russian interference” and that certain NATO members are rabidly Russophobic, it is all too easily dangerous for cyber “false flags” to be mounted in order to criminalize Moscow.
Another telltale factor is that the claims made this week by Britain and the other NATO partners are an attempt to integrate all previous claims of Russian “malign activity”.
The alleged cyber hacking by Russia, it is claimed, was intended to disrupt OPCW investigations into the purported poison-assassination plot against Sergei Skripal, the former Russian spy living in Britain; the alleged hacking was also claimed to be aimed at disrupting investigations into alleged chemical weapons atrocities committed by the Syrian government and by extension Syria’s ally Russia; the alleged Russian hacking claims were also linked to charges of Olympic athletes doping, as well as “interference in US elections”; and even, it was asserted, Russia trying to sabotage investigations into the downing of the Malaysian civilian airliner over Ukraine in 2014.
Up to now, it seems, all such wildly speculative anti-Russia narratives have failed to gain traction among world public opinion. Simply due to the lack of evidence to support these Western accusations. The Skripal affair has perhaps turned into the biggest farce. British government claims that the Kremlin ordered an assassination have floundered to the point of ridicule.
It is hardly coincidence that Britain and its NATO allies are compelled to shore up the Skripal narrative and other anti-Russian narratives with the ramped up “global cyberattack” claims made this week.
Photographs of alleged Russian intelligence operatives have been published. Potboiler indictments have been filed – again – by US law enforcement agencies. Verdicts have been cast by NATO governments and compliant news media of Russian state culpability, without Moscow being given a fair chance to respond to the “highly likely” claims. Claims and narratives are being accelerated, integrated and railroaded.
It is well-established from the explosive disclosures by Edward Snowden, among other whistleblowers, that the American CIA and its partners have the cyber tools to create false “digital fingerprints” for the purpose of framing up enemies. Moreover, the vast cyber surveillance operations carried out by the US and its “Five Eyes” partners – much of which is illegal – is an ironic counterpoint to accusations being made against Russia.
It is also possible in the murky world of all foreign states conducting espionage and information-gathering that attribution of wrongdoing by Russia can be easily exaggerated and made to look like a campaign of cyberattacks.
There is a lawless climate today in the US and other Western states where mere allegations are cited as “proof”. The legal principle of being innocent until proven guilty has been jettisoned. The debacle in the US over a Supreme Court judge nominee is testament to the erosion of due process and legal standards.
But what is all the more reprehensible and reckless is the intensification of criminalization of Russia – based on flimsy “evidence” or none at all. When such criminalization is then used to “justify” calls for a US-led naval blockade of Russian commercial oil trade the conditions are moving inevitably towards military confrontation. The blame for belligerence lies squarely with the NATO powers.
A further irony is that the “spy mania” demonizing Russia is being made necessary because of the wholly unsubstantiated previous claims of Moscow’s malfeasance and “aggression”. Illusions and lies are being compounded with yet more bombastic, illusory claims.
NATO’s information war against Russia is becoming a self-fulfilling “psy-op”. In the deplorable absence of normal diplomatic conduct and respect for international law, NATO’s information war is out of control. It is pushing relations with Russia to the abyss.
October 5, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Militarism, Russophobia | Australia, Canada, Cyber Security, NATO, New Zealand, UK, United States |
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A US military program dubbed ‘Insect Allies’ could be used as a biological weapon, a group of European scientists warns. The Pentagon’s research arm claims they are intended to defend crops, but doesn’t deny ‘dual-use’ potential.
Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology and the University of Freiburg in Germany, as well as the University of Montpellier, France, have published a critique of the program, dubbed “Insect Allies,” in the October 5 edition of Science.
They argue that “the knowledge to be gained from this program appears very limited in its capacity to enhance US agriculture or respond to national emergencies” and therefore the program “may be widely perceived as an effort to develop biological agents for hostile purposes and their means of delivery,” which would mean a breach of the Biological Weapons Convention.
Speaking to Gizmodo on Thursday, Dr. Blake Bextine, program manager of Insect Allies, said that DARPA was “not producing biological weapons, and we reject the hypothetical scenario,” though they “accept and agree with concerns about potential dual use of technology.”
However, Bextine’s two-page response, released by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency later in the day, did not contain the forceful denial of bioweapons charges. Instead, Bextine argued the program was intended to “respond rapidly to threats to the food supply” and that it was subject to government regulation and transparency rules.
Nothing could possibly go wrong, Bextine firmly emphasized, simply because “every performer in the program is required to include at least three independent kill switches in their systems to shut down functionality of the technology.”
DARPA’s insect allies would work by injecting the affected crops with gene-editing viruses intended to target whatever ailment affects them, using CRISPR technology. The researchers point out this mechanism could also be used to introduce viruses into healthy organisms, however.
The question is not whether the program can be weaponized; it already has been. DARPA has been one of the major sources of funding for a project to release genetically modified mosquitoes into the wild, armed with a gene-editing virus intended to sterilize the species that transmits malaria. There have been plans to release these GMO mosquitoes in the Florida Keys.
The dispute over Insect Allies comes as Russia has raised concerns about a US biological research facility in Tbilisi, Georgia. A former government minister has recently published online some 100,000 pages of documents about the facility.
The Russian military is now looking into the outbreaks of African swine fever since 2007 that originated in Georgia and spread into Russia, Europe and China.
“The infection strain in the samples collected from animals killed by the disease in those nations was identical to the Georgia-2007 strain,” Igor Kirillov, commander of the Russian military branch responsible for defending troops from radiological, chemical and biological weapons, said on Thursday.
The Pentagon, however, rejected Moscow’s concerns as part of “a Russian disinformation campaign directed against the West.”
For some obscure reason, a US Air Force contract in July 2017 sought samples of ribonucleic acid (RNA) and synovial fluid from Russian subjects who “must be Caucasian.” It also sought information on the donor’s sex, age, ethnicity, weight, height and medical history, and specifically disqualified tissue samples from Ukraine.
In October that year, Russian President Vladimir Putin told the country’s Human Rights Council that someone was collecting “biological material” from various ethnic groups and regions of the Russian Federation, wondering at the purpose behind this.
Despite worrisome scientific breakthroughs and controversial research programs, so far the notion of a genetically tailored virus being used as a bioweapon has been confined to science fiction. A story published in 2015, titled “Seven Kill Tiger,” posited the nightmare scenario of China using such a weapon to wipe out much of Africa.
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October 5, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | United States, US Air Force |
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The Russian Defense Ministry has spoken about the biological threats coming from the US, saying that the latter has at least 30 laboratories under its control all over the world.
The Russian Defense Ministry stated Thursday that Washington was highly likely boosting its military and biological potential under the cover of peace research.
“The United States is consistently increasing its biological potential and control of national collections of pathogenic microorganisms not only in the former Soviet republics. More than 30 US-controlled laboratories with a high level of biological protection are functioning and are being constantly modernized today, which has been confirmed by official UN data,” Maj. Gen. Igor Kirillov said.
He said US bio labs are a constant source of biological threats to Russia and China.
The official stated that the Russian Defense Ministry was aware of the United States researching ways to deliver and unleash biological weapons in breach of international accords, stressing that there were images of munition the United States considered using to deliver chemical and biological agents.
“This is in line with the US concept of ‘contactless warfare’… They [images] show how capsules can be filled with poisonous, radioactive or narcotic substances, and pathogens. Such munitions are not listed among conventional or humane weapons, while any publishing of such data runs against international accords on nonproliferation of biological weapons,” Kirillov said.
He went on saying that research documents were stored at the Lugar Center for Public Health Research in Georgia, and Russia intended to ask the US and former Soviet republic’s authorities what was their purpose.
As Kirillov specified, the Pentagon continues to reconstruct laboratories under its control in Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan.
“The Lugar Center is only a small element of the extensive US military-biological program. Vigorous activity has been launched on the territory of the states adjacent to Russia, where the Pentagon-controlled laboratories also function,” he stated.
US Labs in Georgia
The military official went on to say that the materials at the Lugar Center for Public Health Research in Georgia, released by former Georgian State Security Minister Igor Giorgadze, shed light on the biological situation in Russia’s south, including the spread of the African swine fever (ASF) virus.
“The published materials allow us to take a fresh look at the biological situation in the south of Russia. Referring to slide 7 to examine the situation around the African swine fever in 2007-2018, which spread from Georgia to the territory of the Russian Federation, European countries and China. Strains of the ASF virus identical to the Georgia-2007 strain were found in samples from dead animals in these countries,” Kirillov said.
Kirillov announced that a total of 24 people died in December 2015 during tests in Georgia of an anti-hepatitis C drug produced by Gilead Sciences, a company once chaired by former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and later another 49 people died.
“Now we will consider another urgent problem raised by [former Georgian State Security Minister] Igor Giorgadze. He presented reports on the results of tests on Georgian citizens of a drug that is registered in documents as Sovaldi by American company Gilead Sciences,” Kirillov said.
He said one of the company’s main shareholders is former US Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld.
“Note… From the documents shown, it is clear that the tests ended in mass deaths among patients. At the same time, despite the death of 24 people in December 2015 alone, clinical studies were continued in violation of international standards and contrary to the wishes of patients. This led to the deaths of another 49 people,” Kirillov said.
He also said the fact that the Gilead Sciences drug, Sovaldi, caused no deaths in Russia, suggests that a toxic chemical was tested on Georgian citizens under the guise of medical treatment.
“An analysis of the materials provided by [former Georgian State Security Minister] Igor Giorgadze is a matter of concern for the Russian Defense Ministry as it gives evidence that the United States is highly likely continuing to increase its military-biological potential, carrying out its activities in circumvention of international agreements, under the guise of implementing protective or other peaceful research,” Maj. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the commander of the Russian Armed Forces’ Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defense Troops, said.
US Air Force’s attempt to harvest biomaterials of Russian citizens residing in North Caucasus two years ago looks suspicious, Kirillov noted.
“The threat to Russia’s security is the collection and export of the biological materials of Russian citizens with the undeclared goals. In accordance with the data of the US federal contract system, an attempt was made to collect the synovial tissues of Russians in 2016 on the order of the Air Force,” Kirillov underlined.
US Military Biologists Can Bypass Georgian Law
The military official stated that US military biologists working in Georgia are protected by diplomatic immunity, which enables them to carry out US government tasks while bypassing Georgian laws.
“US military biologists, working in the [Richard Lugar] Center [in Georgia] are protected by diplomatic immunity… The diplomatic immunity allows the US armed forces’ officials to carry out tasks assigned by their government bypassing Georgian laws,” Kirillov said.
He added that Georgian experts working in the Richard Lugar Center for Public Health Research in Georgia did not have access to certain parts of the laboratory as well as to its documents.
Lugar Center for Public Health Research
In September, former Georgian State Security Minister Igor Giorgadze claimed that he had reports of deaths that could be the result of vaccine tests in a US-funded laboratory in the country known as the Richard G. Lugar Center for Public Health Research. According to the ex-minister, the laboratory could be running experiments related to Hepatitis Type C.
Moscow, addressing the statement, has requested information about the facility from Washington, but Department of Defense spokesman Eric Pahon stressed that the center has nothing to do with biological weapons.
October 4, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Russia, United States |
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China has rejected an allegation by the United States that Beijing has canceled security talks with Washington planned for this month, saying that US officials have “distorted the facts.”
An unnamed US official had told Reuters on Sunday that China had canceled the security meeting between American Secretary of Defense James Mattis and his Chinese counterpart, alleging that China had been unable to make its defense secretary available for the scheduled talks.
On Wednesday, Beijing effectively said that that assertion was a lie.
“Such an argument completely distorts the fact with ulterior motives and is extremely irresponsible,” said China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying in a statement. “The Chinese side expresses strong dissatisfaction.”
Hua said Washington had recently told Beijing that it hoped to postpone the talks.
“The facts are that the United States a few days ago told China it hoped to postpone the second round of the China Diplomatic and Security Dialogue,” she said, adding, “We request [that] related parties stop this sort of behavior of making something out of nothing and spreading rumors.”
Earlier, on Tuesday, Hua said China and the US had previously agreed in principle to hold the dialogue in mid-October.
The security meeting’s first round was held in Washington last year, and its second round was scheduled to take place in Beijing.
Military tensions have surged between China and the US in recent weeks.
Washington often angers Beijing by sending warplanes and warships to territory claimed by China but disputed by other regional countries. The US says that with those deployments, it is practicing what it calls its right to freedom of navigation.
On Tuesday, China condemned that practice.
Additionally, the US has used its domestic laws to impose sanctions on China over Beijing’s decision to purchase military equipment from Russia, including advanced S-400 missile defense systems.
By applying its domestic laws to influence relations between China and Russia, the US is effectively in breach of their sovereignty.
The US has also initiated a trade war with China and has accused it of seeking to influence the US congressional mid-term elections, something that Beijing has strongly denied.
October 4, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | China, United States |
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Spain’s Supreme Court sentenced the former International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Rodrigo Rato to four-and-a-half years imprisonment Wednesday on charges of misusing funds.
In February 2017, Rato was found guilty by Spain’s Supreme Court of paying for personal expenses with company credit cards when he was the chief of Caja Madrid and the state-owned lender Bankia during a time when both the banks faced financial difficulties.
Rato was an economy minister in Spain between 1996 and 2004 and a prominent politician in the ruling People’s Party before becoming the IMF chief. He was free on bail since 2017 pending an appeal, but was found guilty alongside 64 former executives and board members for embezzling a total of US$13.8 million between 2003 and 2012.
Spanish political party Podemos welcomed the court decision, saying Spaniards had long demanded justice, tweeting, “the citizens demanded justice for those who robbed public money, ripped off thousands of families, and burdened us with debt for life.”
The embezzlment — famously known as the “black-cards” scandal — broke in 2014 resulting in public outrage. It was discovered that the cards were used to buy jewelry and clothes, and pay for vacations, according to documents filed with Spain’s high court.
Thousands of small-scale investors lost their money after they were persuaded to convert their savings to shares ahead of the flotation of Bankia in 2011, with Rato at the reins. Less than a year later, he resigned when it became public knowledge that Bankia was in dire straits.
October 4, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception | Spain |
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