Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

For The Record  

← Extremism in the Defense of Stupidity is a Vice, Part 3: The Bundy Brigade’s Doomed Manifest Destiny   |   Fahrvergnugen →

FTR #885 What the Hell Does Dave Emory Mean by “The Earth Island Boogie?,” Part 2: “The Conga-Line ‘Ops’ ”

Posted by Dave Emory ⋅ January 10, 2016Post a comment Email This Post Email This Post Print This Post Print This Post
Tags  , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Dave Emory’s entire life­time of work is avail­able on a flash dri­ve that can be obtained here. The new dri­ve is a 32-giga­byte dri­ve that is cur­rent as of the pro­grams and arti­cles post­ed by late spring of 2015. The new dri­ve (avail­able for a tax-deductible con­tri­bu­tion of $65.00 or more) is com­plete through the late spring of 2015.

WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE.

You can sub­scribe to e‑mail alerts from Spitfirelist.com HERE. 

You can sub­scribe to RSS feed from Spitfirelist.com HERE.

You can sub­scribe to the com­ments made on pro­grams and posts–an excel­lent source of infor­ma­tion in, and of, itself HERE.

This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Intro­duc­tion: For most of this decade, Mr. Emory has ana­lyzed an over­lap­ping series of “ops” that have deter­mined much of con­tem­po­rary polit­i­cal real­i­ty. At the epi­cen­ter of this dynam­ic is the Earth Island.

Stretch­ing from the Straits of Gibral­tar, all across Europe, most of the Mid­dle East, Eura­sia, Rus­sia, Chi­na and India, that stretch of land: com­pris­es most of the world’s land mass; con­tains most of the world’s pop­u­la­tion and most of the world’s nat­ur­al resources (includ­ing oil and nat­ur­al gas.) Geopoliti­cians have long seen con­trol­ling that land mass as the key to world dom­i­na­tion.  The pop­u­la­tion that occu­pies the mid­dle of that stretch of geog­ra­phy is large­ly Mus­lim.

Uti­liz­ing that Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion to con­trol the resources of the Earth Island is a strat­a­gem that has been in effect in the West for a cen­tu­ry.

This analy­sis is pre­sent­ed in con­junc­tion with, and against the back­ground of, the Earth Island or World Island as it is some­times known.

In recent years, we have not­ed grow­ing con­flu­ence between Mus­lim Broth­er­hood-based Islamism and Pan-Turk­ist ele­ments. As events in Ukraine, the Mid­dle East and Asia con­tin­ue to heat up, the Islamist/­Pan-Turk­ist con­nec­tion appears to be solid­i­fy­ing. The “cement” that is bring­ing them togeth­er appears to be ele­ments of West­ern intel­li­gence, the BND and asso­ci­at­ed Under­ground Reich/transnational cor­po­rate fac­tion of the CIA in par­tic­u­lar.

Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Coat of (ahem) Arms

We note that “The Earth Island Boo­gie” embraces an over­lap­ping series of “ops” includ­ing: the so-called “Orange Rev­o­lu­tion” of Ukraine, Wik­iLeaks, the so-called “Arab Spring,” “L’Af­faire Snow­den” and the Maid­an coup of 2014. ISIS is a direct out­growth of the so-called “Arab Spring.”

This intri­cate [per­haps] over­whelm­ing analy­sis is intend­ed as an overview and guide to this dynamic–as dev­as­tat­ing­ly impor­tant as it is byzan­tine and con­fus­ing.

1. John Young, one of Wik­iLeaks’ founders turned crit­ic of the orga­ni­za­tion har­bors deep sus­pi­cions con­cern­ing the group. Young har­bors many oth­er sus­pi­cions about the group as well.

“Wik­ileaks’ Estranged co-founder becomes a crit­ic (Q & A)” by Declan McCul­lagh; C/NET; 7/20/2010.

” . . . they’re act­ing like a cult. They’re act­ing like a reli­gion. They’re act­ing like a gov­ern­ment. They’re act­ing like a bunch of spies. They’re hid­ing their iden­ti­ty. They don’t account for the mon­ey. They promise all sorts of good things. They sel­dom let you know what they’re real­ly up to. . . There was sus­pi­cion from day one that this was entrap­ment run by some­one unknown to suck a num­ber of peo­ple into a trap. So we actu­al­ly don’t know. But it’s cer­tain­ly a stan­dard coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence tech­nique. And they’re usu­al­ly pret­ty elab­o­rate and pret­ty care­ful­ly run. They’ll even pros­e­cute peo­ple as part of the cov­er sto­ry. That actu­al­ly was talked about at (Sunday’s) pan­el. They’ll try to con­ceal who was inform­ing and betray­ing oth­ers by pre­tend­ing to pros­e­cute them. . . .”

2. “The Earth Island Boo­gie” embraces an over­lap­ping series of “ops” includ­ing: the so-called “Orange Rev­o­lu­tion” of Ukraine, Wik­iLeaks, the so-called “Arab Spring,” “L’Af­faire Snow­den” and the Maid­an coup of 2014.

Dur­ing what we call “The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Spring” of 2011, Amer­i­can media pun­dits were gush­ing about how what oth­ers termed the Arab Spring would bring about mod­er­ate Islam­ic democ­ra­cies sim­i­lar to Turkey’s and fea­tur­ing the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood as the cen­ter­piece of those “democ­ra­cies.” We had a dif­fer­ent take.

Let’s review the bul­let points from the descrip­tion of FTR #737 (record­ed on 4/2/2011.):

  • Wik­iLeaks appears to have played a role in the events, with a pur­port­ed “leaked” State Depart­ment memo hav­ing helped spur the upris­ing in Tunisia which, in turn, helped to gal­va­nize events in Egypt. Far from being the “pro­gres­sive,” “whis­tle-blow­ing” enti­ty it pur­ports to be, Wik­iLeaks is a far-right, Nazi-influ­enced pro­pa­gan­da and data min­ing oper­a­tion.
  • Karl Rove’s dom­i­nant pres­ence in Swe­den as the Wik­iLeaks “op” was gain­ing momen­tum may well have much to do with the “leak­ing” of State Depart­ment cables from the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion that are undoubt­ed­ly mak­ing the suc­cess­ful exe­cu­tion of state­craft even more dif­fi­cult under the cir­cum­stances.
  • Far from being a spon­ta­neous event, the Mid­dle East upris­ings appear to have stemmed, in part at least, from a covert oper­a­tion begun under the Bush admin­is­tra­tion and con­tin­ued under Oba­ma’s tenure. (Oba­ma may well have been set up to take the fall for neg­a­tive con­se­quences of the event. It is unclear just how “on top of it” his admin­is­tra­tion is. In this regard, the event is very much like the Bay of Pigs oper­a­tion, begun under Eisen­how­er’s admin­is­tra­tion and con­tin­ued under JFK.)
  • The oper­a­tion may well be intend­ed to desta­bi­lize the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion, paving the way for the ascent of the GOP in the Unit­ed States. In this respect, it is very much like what has come to be known as the Octo­ber Sur­prise.
  • Cour­tesy of Wik­iLeaks, the oper­a­tion’s exis­tence was “blown”–con­tacts between U.S. Embassy per­son­nel in Cairo and lead­ers of the April 6 move­ment dur­ing the last months of the Bush admin­is­tra­tion came to light cour­tesy of more alleged­ly “leaked” State Depart­ment mem­os made pub­lic by Wik­Leaks. Pre­vi­ous­ly, the U.S. embassy in Cairo had been in con­tact with lead­ers of the Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood.
  • Loom­ing large in the unfold­ing sce­nario are the the­o­ries of non-vio­lent the­o­reti­cian Gene Sharp, who held posi­tions asso­ci­at­ed with the “lib­er­al” ele­ment of the U.S. intel­li­gence appa­ra­tus.
  • Sharp’s activ­i­ties have been under­writ­ten by junk bond king Michael Milken’s for­mer right-hand man Peter Ack­er­man, who has served as an advi­sor to the Unit­ed States Insti­tute of Peace, an agency of the U.S. gov­ern­ment.
  • The Unit­ed States Insti­tute of Peace’s Mus­lim World Ini­tia­tive–charged by crit­ics with legit­imiz­ing jihadists–may well have been the ini­ti­at­ing ele­ment in these devel­op­ments.
  • High tech firms with links to the U.S. intel­li­gence estab­lish­ment appear to have facil­i­tat­ed the Pig­gy-Back Coup.
  • The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s free-mar­ket eco­nom­ic per­spec­tive has endeared it to lais­sez-faire the­o­reti­cians around the world. Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty in Cairo, at which Broth­er­hood affil­i­at­ed the­o­reti­cians hold forth, is an epi­cen­ter of the eco­nom­ic phi­los­o­phy of Ibn Khal­dun, the Ikhwan’s eco­nom­ic god­fa­ther.
  • Despite assur­ances from many “expert” sources, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood seems poised to ben­e­fit the most from the unfold­ing events in the Mid­dle East.
  • The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood-con­trolled Al Jazeera net­work has also had much to do with the upris­ings.
  • The youth­ful ide­al­ists of the Anonymous/Pirate Bay/Pirate Par­ty milieu appear to have been cyn­i­cal­ly deceived and manip­u­lat­ed into sup­port­ing an oper­a­tion that fig­ures to empow­er some tru­ly dark forces. Those dark forces are fun­da­men­tal­ly opposed to the Utopi­an val­ues dear to the Anonymous/Pirate Bay folks.
  • Those same reas­sur­ing voic­es have told us that the Broth­er­hood aspires to a polit­i­cal agen­da to the “mod­er­ate” agen­da of the Turk­ish AK par­ty. That par­ty is close­ly affil­i­at­ed with the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. The “mod­er­a­tion” of the AK Par­ty was eval­u­at­ed in FTR #884, among oth­er pro­grams.
  • Pre­cip­i­tat­ing the ascent of the fas­cist Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in the Mid­dle East may well be an attempt at using the Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion of the Earth Island as a proxy force against Rus­sia and Chi­na. The goal, ulti­mate­ly, is to peel away strate­gic, resource-rich areas such, as the petro­le­um-rich areas of the Cau­ca­sus and Xin­jiang province.

3. As of the spring of 2011, the “con­ga-line” ops entailed the so-called “Orange Rev­o­lu­tion” in Ukraine, Wik­iLeaks and the Arab Spring. In the years since that time, “L’Af­faire Snow­den,” the Maid­an coup of 2014 and the rise of ISIS have sup­ple­ment­ed the con­ga line. In our next (hope­ful­ly con­clud­ing) pro­gram in this series, we will exam­ine the rise of ISIS and the geopo­lit­i­cal impli­ca­tions of these devel­op­ments for the Unit­ed States.

Updat­ing analy­sis of the “con­ga-line” ops, not­ing aspects of resonance/commonality between ele­ments of these var­i­ous man­i­fes­ta­tions, as well as the 9/11 attacks:

  • The Snow­den “op” is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with Wik­iLeaks. Snow­den’s jour­ney from Hawaii to Hong Kong appears to have been facil­i­tat­ed by Jacob Apple­baum, a close Wik­iLeaks asso­ciate. (For more about this, see FTR #771.)
  • Glenn Green­wald is very close to Wik­iLeaks.
  • Snow­den’s jour­ney from Hong Kong to Rus­sia was engi­neered by Wik­iLeaks per­son­nel, lead­ing to the can­cel­la­tion of a sum­mit meet­ing between Oba­ma and Putin. This was the end of Oba­ma’s attempts at “reboot with Rus­sia.” Fol­low­ing on the heels of the death of the “reboot with Rus­sia,” the Maid­an coup took place.
  • The Maid­an coup was a very obvi­ous covert oper­a­tion.
  • Pierre Omidyar–bankrolling the jour­nal­is­tic efforts of Snow­den’s jour­nal­is­tic asso­ciates Glenn Green­wald and Lau­ra Poitras–also helped bankroll the Maid­an Coup through the Agency for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment, a fre­quent cut-out for U.S. intel­li­gence.
  • Omid­yar also bankrolled Ukrain­ian MP Svit­lana Zal­ishchuk, who has been push­ing the Nazi-inspired “lus­tra­tion laws.” Osten­si­bly aimed at curb­ing cor­rup­tion, the lus­tra­tion laws have been used as an excuse to purge eth­nic Russ­ian and pro-Rus­sians from the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment. Zal­ishchuk has been a liai­son per­son between so-called “mod­er­ates” and Nazi ele­ments in Ukraine.
  • Gene Sharp’s “non-vio­lent” the­o­ries were used by the PORA orga­ni­za­tion in the so-called “Orange Rev­o­lu­tion,” that brought OUN/B front man Vic­tor Yuschenko to pow­er in Ukraine. His min­is­ter of jus­tice was Roman Svarych, Jaroslav Stet­sko’s per­son­al sec­re­tary in the 1980’s. (Stet­sko was the wartime head of state for the Nazi-col­lab­o­ra­tionist Ukraine.) Svarych is an advis­er to Poroshenko. Volodomir V’i­a­tro­vych head­ed up the Orwellian “Insti­tute for Nation­al Mem­o­ry.” Under Poroshenko and the Maid­an regime, V’i­a­tro­vych per­forms the same func­tion. Under Yuschenko Valen­tyn Naly­vaichenko head­ed up the SBU, the Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence ser­vice. He also head­ed it under Poroshenko and the Maid­an regime(s.
  • Joran Jer­mas, a.k.a. “Israel Shamir,” was the Holo­caust-deny­ing top aide to Julian Assange why“o arranged for Wik­iLeaks to oper­ate on the Pirate Bay web­site. He is an asso­ciate of MAUP, the largest pri­vate Uni­ver­si­ty in Ukraine and an insti­tu­tion that espous­es a doc­tri­naire anti-Semi­tism. Vic­tor Yuschenko–the OUN/B front man who came to pow­er through the so-called “Orange Rev­o­lu­tion” is on MAUP’s board of direc­tors. David Duke teach­es there.
  • “The four­teen words” is an inter­na­tion­al­ly-pop­u­lar white supremacist/Nazi slo­gan mint­ed by David Lane, who drove the get­away car in the mur­der of Den­ver talk show host Alan Berg. The slo­gan is appar­ent­ly pop­u­lar among Ukrain­ian Nazis. Glenn Greenwald–Snowden’s leak­ing jour­nal­ist of choice–ran legal inter­fer­ence for the lead­er­less resis­tance strat­e­gy and the teach­ing mate­ri­als of the Nation­al Alliance, pub­lish­er of the Turn­er Diaries. That tract inspired David Lane’s asso­ci­a­tion “The Order,” as well as the Okala­homa City bombers.
  • Green­wald is also close to CAIR, which is inex­tri­ca­bly linked to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood.
  • The UNA-UNSO is the lat­est man­i­fes­ta­tion of the UPA, the mil­i­tary wing of the OUN/B and a col­lab­o­ra­tor of the Waf­fen SS. It spawned the Pravy Sek­tor Nazi polit­i­cal front in Ukraine. The UNA-UNSO fought with the Chechen Islamists in the Cau­ca­sus. Pravy Sek­tor now has admin­is­tra­tive com­mand Chechen ISIS fight­ers who have decamped to Ukraine.
  • Pravy Sek­tor is also col­lab­o­rat­ing with Crimean Tatars who enjoy the sup­port of Turkey. Turkey is sup­port­ing ISIS, despite their rep­re­sen­ta­tions to the con­trary.
  • The fas­cist/­Pan-Turk­ist Grey Wolves have been active in Chech­nya. They are also sup­port­ing the Uighurs in Chi­na. The Grey Wolves are impli­cat­ed in a Uighur-con­nect­ed ter­ror­ist bomb­ing in Bangkok.
  • His­tor­i­cal­ly, Ukraine and Pan-Turk­ism have joint­ly fac­tored into Ger­man geo-pol­i­tics.
  • Michael Boci­urkiw, head of the OSCE’s Spe­cial Study Mis­sion in Ukraine has links to both a Malaysian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood nexus that fig­ures strong­ly in the back­ground of the dis­ap­pear­ance of Malaysian Air­lines flight 370 and the OUN/B. Boci­urkiw has been a point ele­ment in the so-called “inves­ti­ga­tion” of the down­ing of Malaysian Air­lines Flight 17.
  • “L’Af­faire Snow­den” direct­ly pre­saged both mil­i­tary and eco­nom­ic pres­sure exert­ed through­out the Earth Island. Just before Pres­i­dent Oba­ma was sched­uled to meet with Pres­i­dent Xi of Chi­na, Snow­den decamps to Hong Kong (cour­tesy of Wik­iLeaks) and leaks infor­ma­tion about NSA spy­ing on Chi­na, there­by com­pli­cat­ing this coun­try’s rela­tion­ship with Chi­na. In the after­math of Snow­den’s Hong Kong trip, we have seen de-fac­to eco­nom­ic pres­sure on Chi­na, the poten­tial­ly dev­as­tat­ing Trans-Pacif­ic Part­ner­ship (which excludes Chi­na, as well as a U.S. mil­i­tary build-up in the Pacif­ic, aimed at “con­tain­ing Chi­na.” The Pan-Turk­ist/Uighur/­Grey Wolf axis has ramped up activ­i­ty against Chi­na as well. Snow­den decamped from Hong Kong to Moscow (again cour­tesy of Wik­iLeaks), deal­ing a death blow to Oba­ma’s “reboot with Rus­sia.” In the wake of Snow­den’s jour­ney to Moscow, we have seen open war­fare break out in Ukraine in the after­math of the Maid­an coup, cou­pled with eco­nom­ic sanc­tions against Rus­sia. We note that Sau­di Ara­bia, whose poten­tates finance the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and its off­shoots (includ­ing ISIS) have kept the price of oil low, harm­ing the Russ­ian econ­o­my.
  • ISIS is a direct out­growth of the so-called “Arab Spring” in Syr­ia. ISIS is deeply entrenched in Libya, as well–another out­growth of the so-called Arab Spring.
  • The pro­gram con­cludes with a re-broad­cast of a brief quote from Zbig­niew Brzezin­s­ki read by Eliz­a­beth Gould in FTR #872.

Discussion

2 comments for “FTR #885 What the Hell Does Dave Emory Mean by “The Earth Island Boogie?,” Part 2: “The Conga-Line ‘Ops’ ””

  1. Jacob Appel­baum, the Wik­ileaks hack­er/data-pri­va­cy activist/Cyper­punk utopi­an who has been one of the key tech­ni­cal ana­lysts to review and write about the Snow­den cache, had a series of tweets back in 2011 singing the prais­es of soft-rev­o­lu­tion expert Gene Sharp:

    See here:

    Jacob Appel­baum
    @ioerror

    The high­light of my day was meet­ing Gene Sharp and dis­cussing rev­o­lu­tions. I feel real­ly inspired.

    4:33 PM — 18 Feb 2011

    here:

    Jacob Appel­baum
    @ioerror

    While ask­ing ques­tions, they locat­ed Gene Sharp books about author­i­tar­i­an­ism and obe­di­ence. Appar­ent­ly, some­thing some pas­sen­gers lack.

    12:58 AM — 12 Apr 2011

    and here:

    Jacob Appel­baum
    @ioerror

    If any­thing — Gene Sharp deserves cred­it for his help with many of the col­or rev­o­lu­tions; those influ­enced mod­ern events. #Gene­Sharp­TaughtMe

    12:17 PM — 15 Apr 2011

    It cer­tain­ly appears that Gene Sharp taught Appel­baum a num­ber of valu­able lessons, which is in no way sur­pris­ing giv­en the rev­o­lu­tion­ary nature of Appel­baum’s Cyper­punk activ­i­ties.

    What is more sur­pris­ing, and rather notable when try­ing to make sense of the world of spooks, hack­tivists, and hack­tivist spooks, is that Appel­baum is just one of many hack­tivists who are build­ing today’s cut­ting-edge pri­va­cy tools and they’re not doing it for free. No, these Cypher­punk utopi­ans are work­ing for the same enti­ty Gene Sharp has assist­ed so ably over the years: the US intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty:

    Pan­do Dai­ly
    Inter­net pri­va­cy, fund­ed by spooks: A brief his­to­ry of the BBG

    By Yasha Levine
    March 1, 2015

    For the past few months I’ve been cov­er­ing U.S. gov­ern­ment fund­ing of pop­u­lar Inter­net pri­va­cy tools like Tor, Cryp­to­Cat and Open Whis­per Sys­tems. Dur­ing my report­ing, one agency in par­tic­u­lar keeps pop­ping up: An agency with one of those real­ly bland names that masks its wild, bizarre his­to­ry: the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors, or BBG.

    The BBG was formed in 1999 and runs on a $721 mil­lion annu­al bud­get. It reports direct­ly to Sec­re­tary of State John Ker­ry and oper­ates like a hold­ing com­pa­ny for a host of Cold War-era CIA spin­offs and old school “psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare” projects: Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, Radio Martí, Voice of Amer­i­ca, Radio Lib­er­a­tion from Bol­she­vism (since renamed “Radio Lib­er­ty”) and a dozen oth­er gov­ern­ment-fund­ed radio sta­tions and media out­lets pump­ing out pro-Amer­i­can pro­pa­gan­da across the globe.

    Today, the Con­gres­sion­al­ly-fund­ed fed­er­al agency is also one of the biggest back­ers of grass­roots and open-source Inter­net pri­va­cy tech­nol­o­gy. These invest­ments start­ed in 2012, when the BBG launched the “Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund” (OTF) — an ini­tia­tive housed with­in and run by Radio Free Asia (RFA), a pre­mier BBG prop­er­ty that broad­casts into com­mu­nist coun­tries like North Korea, Viet­nam, Laos, Chi­na and Myan­mar. The BBG endowed Radio Free Asi­a’s Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund with a mul­ti­mil­lion dol­lar bud­get and a sin­gle task: “to ful­fill the U.S. Con­gres­sion­al glob­al man­date for Inter­net free­dom.”

    It’s already a mouth­ful of prover­bial Wash­ing­ton alpha­bet soup — Con­gress funds BBG to fund RFA to fund OTF — but, regard­less of which sub-group ulti­mate­ly writes the check, the impor­tant thing to under­stand is that all this fed­er­al gov­ern­ment mon­ey flows, direct­ly or indi­rect­ly, from the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors.

    Between 2012 and 2014, Radio Free Asi­a’s Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund poured more than $10 mil­lion into Inter­net pri­va­cy projects big and small: open-source encrypt­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tion apps, next-gen­er­a­tion secure email ini­tia­tives, anti-cen­sor­ship mesh net­work­ing plat­forms, encryp­tion secu­ri­ty audits, secure cloud host­ing, a net­work of “high-capac­i­ty” Tor exit nodes and even an anony­mous Tor-based tool for leak­ers and whistle­blow­ers that com­pet­ed with Wik­ileaks.

    Though many of the apps and tech backed by Radio Free Asi­a’s OTF are unknown to the gen­er­al pub­lic, they are high­ly respect­ed and extreme­ly pop­u­lar among the anti-sur­veil­lance Inter­net activist crowd. OTF-fund­ed apps have been rec­om­mend­ed by Edward Snow­den, cov­ered favor­ably by ProP­ub­li­ca and The New York Times’ tech­nol­o­gy reporters, and repeat­ed­ly pro­mot­ed by the Elec­tron­ic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion. Every­one seems to agree that OTF-fund­ed pri­va­cy apps offer some of the best pro­tec­tion from gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance you can get. In fact, just about all the fea­tured open-source apps on EFF’s recent “Secure Mes­sag­ing Score­card” were fund­ed by OTF.

    Here’s a small sam­ple of what the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors fund­ed (through Radio Free Asia and then through the Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund) between 2012 and 2014:

    * Open Whis­per Sys­tems, mak­er of free encrypt­ed text and voice mobile apps like TextSe­cure and Signal/RedPhone, got a gen­er­ous $1.35-million infu­sion. (Face­book recent­ly start­ed using Open Whis­per Sys­tems to secure its What­sApp mes­sages.)
    * Cryp­to­Cat, an encrypt­ed chat app made by Nadim Kobeis­si and pro­mot­ed by EFF, received $184,000.
    * LEAP, an email encryp­tion start­up, got just over $1 mil­lion. LEAP is cur­rent­ly being used to run secure VPN ser­vices at RiseUp.net, the rad­i­cal anar­chist com­mu­ni­ca­tion col­lec­tive.
    * A Wik­ileaks alter­na­tive called Glob­aLeaks (which was endorsed by the folks at Tor, includ­ing Jacob Appel­baum) received just under $350,000.
    * The Guardian Project — which makes an encrypt­ed chat app called Chat­Se­cure, as well a mobile ver­sion of Tor called Orbot — got $388,500.
    * The Tor Project received over $1 mil­lion from OTF to pay for secu­ri­ty audits, traf­fic analy­sis tools and set up fast Tor exit nodes in the Mid­dle East and South East Asia.

    In 2014, Con­gress mas­sive­ly upped the BBG’s “Inter­net free­dom” bud­get to $25 mil­lion, with half of that mon­ey flow­ing through RFA and into the Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund. This $12.75 mil­lion rep­re­sent­ed a three-fold increase in OTF’s bud­get from 2013 — a con­sid­er­able expan­sion for an out­fit that was just a few years old. Clear­ly, it’s doing some­thing that the gov­ern­ment likes. A lot.

    With those resources, the Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund’s moth­er-agency, Radio Free Asia, plans to cre­ate a ver­ti­cal­ly inte­grat­ed incu­ba­tor for bud­ding pri­va­cy tech­nol­o­gists around the globe — pro­vid­ing every­thing from train­ing and men­tor­ship, to offer­ing them a secure glob­al cloud host­ing envi­ron­ment to run their apps, to legal assis­tance.

    ...

    Read­ers might find it odd that a US gov­ern­ment agency estab­lished as a way to laun­der the image of var­i­ous shady pro­pa­gan­da out­fits (more on that soon) is now keen to fund tech­nolo­gies designed to pro­tect us from the US gov­ern­ment. More­over, it might seem curi­ous that its mon­ey would be so warm­ly wel­comed by some of the Inter­net’s fiercest antigov­ern­ment activists.

    But, as folks in the open-source pri­va­cy com­mu­ni­ty will tell you, fund­ing for open-source encryp­tion/an­ti-sur­veil­lance tech has been hard to come by. So they’ve wel­comed mon­ey from Radio Free Asi­a’s Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund with open pock­ets. Devel­op­ers and groups sub­mit­ted their projects for fund­ing, while lib­er­tar­i­ans and anti-gov­ern­men­t/an­ti-sur­veil­lance activists enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly joined OTF’s advi­so­ry coun­cil, sit­ting along­side rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Google and the US State Depart­ment, tech lob­by­ists, and mil­i­tary con­sul­tants.

    But why is a fed­er­al­ly-fund­ed CIA spin­off with decades of expe­ri­ence in “psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare” sud­den­ly blow­ing tens of mil­lions in gov­ern­ment funds on pri­va­cy tools meant to pro­tect peo­ple from being sur­veilled by anoth­er arm of the very same gov­ern­ment? To answer that ques­tion, we have to pull the cam­era back and exam­ine how all of those Cold War pro­pa­gan­da out­lets begat the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors begat Radio Free Asia begat the Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund. The sto­ry begins in the late 1940’s.

    The ori­gins of the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors

    The Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors traces its begin­nings to the ear­ly Cold War years, as a covert pro­pa­gan­da project of the new­ly-cre­at­ed Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency to wage “psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare” against Com­mu­nist regimes and oth­ers deemed a threat to US inter­ests.

    George Ken­nan — the key archi­tect of post-WWII for­eign pol­i­cy — pushed for expand­ing the role of covert peace­time pro­grams. And so, in 1948, Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil Direc­tive 10/2 offi­cial­ly autho­rized the CIA to engage in “covert oper­a­tions” against the Com­mu­nist Men­ace. Clause 5 of the direc­tivee defined “covert oper­a­tions” as “pro­pa­gan­da, eco­nom­ic war­fare; pre­ven­tive direct action, includ­ing sab­o­tage, anti-sab­o­tage, demo­li­tion and evac­u­a­tion mea­sures; sub­ver­sion against hos­tile states, includ­ing assis­tance to under­ground resis­tance move­ments, guer­ril­las and refugee lib­er­a­tion groups, and sup­port of indige­nous anti-com­mu­nist ele­ments in threat­ened coun­tries of the free world.”

    Pro­pa­gan­da quick­ly became one of the key weapons in the CIA’s covert oper­a­tions arse­nal. The agency estab­lished and fund­ed radio sta­tions, news­pa­pers, mag­a­zines, his­tor­i­cal soci­eties, emi­gre “research insti­tutes,” and cul­tur­al pro­grams all over Europe. In many cas­es, it fun­neled mon­ey to out­fits run and staffed by known World War II war crim­i­nals and Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors, both in Europe and here in the Unit­ed States.

    Christo­pher Simp­son, author of “Blow­back: Amer­i­ca’s Recruit­ment of Nazis and Its Destruc­tive Impact on Our Domes­tic and For­eign Pol­i­cy”, details the extent of these “psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare projects”:

    CIA-fund­ed psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare projects employ­ing East­ern Euro­pean émi­grés became major oper­a­tions dur­ing the 1950s, con­sum­ing tens and even hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars. . . .This includ­ed under­writ­ing most of the French Paix et Lib­erté move­ment, pay­ing the bills of the Ger­man League for Strug­gle Against Inhu­man­i­ty , and financ­ing a half dozen free jurists asso­ci­a­tions, a vari­ety of Euro­pean fed­er­al­ist groups, the Con­gress for Cul­tur­al Free­dom, mag­a­zines, news ser­vices, book pub­lish­ers, and much more. These were very broad pro­grams designed to influ­ence world pub­lic opin­ion at vir­tu­al­ly every lev­el, from illit­er­ate peas­ants in the fields to the most sophis­ti­cat­ed schol­ars in pres­ti­gious uni­ver­si­ties. They drew on a wide range of resources: labor unions, adver­tis­ing agen­cies, col­lege pro­fes­sors, jour­nal­ists, and stu­dent lead­ers, to name a few. [empha­sis added]

    In Europe, the CIA set up “Radio Free Europe” and “Radio Lib­er­a­tion From Bol­she­vism” (lat­er renamed “Radio Lib­er­ty”), which beamed pro­pa­gan­da in sev­er­al lan­guages into the Sovi­et Union and Sovi­et satel­lite states of East­ern Europe. The CIA lat­er expand­ed its radio pro­pa­gan­da oper­a­tions into Asia, tar­get­ing com­mu­nist Chi­na, North Korea and Viet­nam. The spy agency also fund­ed sev­er­al radio projects aimed at sub­vert­ing left­ist gov­ern­ments in Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca, includ­ing Radio Free Cuba and Radio Swan — which was run by the CIA and employed some of the same Cuban exiles that took part in the failed Bay of Pigs inva­sion. Even today, the CIA boasts that these ear­ly “psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare” projects “would become one of the longest run­ning and suc­cess­ful covert action cam­paigns ever mount­ed by the Unit­ed States.”

    Offi­cial­ly, the CIA’s direct role in this glob­al “psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare” project dimin­ished in the 1970s, after the spy agen­cy’s ties to Cold War pro­pa­gan­da arms like Radio Free Europe were exposed. Con­gress agreed to take over fund­ing of these projects from the CIA, and even­tu­al­ly Wash­ing­ton expand­ed them into a mas­sive fed­er­al­ly-fund­ed pro­pa­gan­da appa­ra­tus.

    The names of the var­i­ous CIA spin­offs and non­prof­its changed over the years, cul­mi­nat­ing in a 1999 reor­ga­ni­za­tion under Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton which cre­at­ed the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors, a par­ent hold­ing com­pa­ny to group new broad­cast­ing oper­a­tions around the world togeth­er with Cold War-era pro­pa­gan­da out­fits with spooky pasts—including Radio Free Europe/Radio Lib­er­ty, Voice of Amer­i­ca and Radio Free Asia.

    Today, the BBG has a $721 mil­lion bud­get pro­vid­ed by Con­gress, reports to the Sec­re­tary of State and is man­aged by a revolv­ing crew of neo­cons and mil­i­tary think-tank experts. Among them: Ken­neth Wein­stein, head of the Hud­son Insti­tute, the arch-con­ser­v­a­tive Cold War-era mil­i­tary think tank; and Ryan C. Crock­er, for­mer ambas­sador to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syr­ia.

    Although today’s BBG is no longer covert­ly fund­ed via the CIA’s black bud­get, its role as a soft pow­er “psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare” oper­a­tion hasn’t real­ly changed since its incep­tion. The BBG and its sub­sidiaries still engage in pro­pa­gan­da war­fare, sub­ver­sion and soft-pow­er pro­jec­tion against coun­tries and for­eign polit­i­cal move­ments deemed hos­tile to US inter­ests. And it is still deeply inter­twined with the same mil­i­tary and CIA-con­nect­ed intel­li­gence orga­ni­za­tions — from USAID to DARPA to the Nation­al Endow­ment for Democ­ra­cy.

    Today, the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors runs a pro­pa­gan­da net­work that blan­kets the globe: Radio Martí (aimed at Cuba), Radio Far­da (aimed at Iran), Radio Sawa (which broad­casts in Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Moroc­co, and Sudan), Radio Aza­di (tar­get­ing Afghanistan), Radio Free Europe/Radio Lib­er­ty (which has tai­lored broad­casts in over a dozen lan­guages into Rus­sia, Ukraine, Ser­bia, Azer­bai­jan, Ukraine, Belarus, Geor­gia, and Arme­nia), and Radio Free Asia (which tar­gets Chi­na, North Korea, Laos, and Viet­nam).

    The BBG is also involved in the tech­nol­o­gy of post-Cold War, Inter­net-era pro­pa­gan­da. It has bankrolled satel­lite Inter­net access in Iran and con­tin­ues to fund an SMS-based social net­work in Cuba called Piramideo — which is dif­fer­ent from the failed covert Twit­ter clone fund­ed by USAID that tried to spark a Cuban Spring rev­o­lu­tion. It has con­tract­ed with an anonymi­ty Inter­net proxy called SafeWeb, which had been fund­ed by the CIA’s ven­ture cap­i­tal firm In-Q-Tel. It worked with tech out­fits run by prac­ti­tion­ers of the con­tro­ver­sial Chi­nese right-wing cult, Falun Gong — whose leader believes that humans are being cor­rupt­ed by invad­ing aliens from oth­er planets/dimensions. These com­pa­nies — Dynaweb and Ultra­reach — pro­vide anti-cen­sor­ship tools to Chi­nese Inter­net users. As of 2012, the BBG con­tin­ued to fund them to the tune of $1.5 mil­lion a year.

    As the BBG proud­ly out­lined in a 2013 fact sheet for its “Inter­net Anti-Cen­sor­ship” unit:

    The BBG col­lab­o­rates with oth­er Inter­net free­dom projects and orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing RFA’s Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund, the State Depart­ment, USAID, and DARPAs SAFER Warfight­er Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Pro­gram. IAC is also reach­ing out to oth­er groups inter­est­ed in Inter­net free­dom such as Google, Free­dom House and the Nation­al Endow­ment for Democ­ra­cy’s Cen­ter for Inter­na­tion­al Media Assis­tance.

    BBG is also one of the Tor Pro­jec­t’s biggest fun­ders, pay­ing out about $3.5 mil­lion from 2008 through 2013. BBG’s lat­est pub­licly-known Tor con­tract was final­ized in mid-2012. The BBG gave Tor at least $1.2 mil­lion to improve secu­ri­ty and dras­ti­cal­ly boost the band­width of the Tor net­work by fund­ing over a hun­dred Tor nodes across the world — all part of the US gov­ern­men­t’s effort to find an effec­tive soft-pow­er weapon that can under­mine Inter­net cen­sor­ship and con­trol in coun­tries hos­tile to US inter­ests. (We only know about the BBG’s lucra­tive fund­ing of Tor thanks to the dogged efforts of the Elec­tron­ic Pri­va­cy Infor­ma­tion Cen­ter, which had to sue to get its FOIA requests ful­filled.)

    As men­tioned, last year Con­gress decid­ed the BBG was doing such a good job advanc­ing Amer­i­ca’s inter­ests abroad that it boost­ed the agen­cy’s “Inter­net free­dom” annu­al bud­get from just $1.6 mil­lion in 2011 to a whop­ping $25 mil­lion this year. The BBG fun­neled half of this tax­pay­er mon­ey through its Radio Free Asia sub­sidiary, into the “Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund” — the “non­prof­it” respon­si­ble for bankrolling many of today’s pop­u­lar open-source pri­va­cy and encryp­tion apps.

    Which brings me to the next star­ring agency in this recov­ered his­to­ry of Wash­ing­ton DC’s pri­va­cy tech­nol­o­gy invest­ments: Radio Free Asia.

    Radio Free Asia

    The CIA launched Radio Free Asia (RFA) in 1951 as an exten­sion of its glob­al anti-Com­mu­nist pro­pa­gan­da radio net­work. RFA beamed its sig­nal into main­land Chi­na from a trans­mit­ter in Mani­la, and its oper­a­tions were based on the ear­li­er Radio Free Europe/Radio Lib­er­a­tion From Bol­she­vism mod­el.

    The CIA quick­ly dis­cov­ered that their plan to foment polit­i­cal unrest in Chi­na had one major flaw: the Chi­nese were too poor to own radios.

    ...

    Bal­loons, hold­ing small radios tuned to Radio Free Asi­a’s fre­quen­cy, were loft­ed toward the main­land from the island of Tai­wan, where the Chi­nese Nation­al­ists had fled after the Com­mu­nist takeover of the main­land in 1949. The plan was aban­doned when the bal­loons were blown back to Tai­wan across the For­mosa Strait. The CIA sup­pos­ed­ly shut­tered Radio Free Asia in the mid-1950s, but anoth­er Radio Free Asia reap­peared a decade lat­er, this time fund­ed through a CIA-Moonie out­fit called the Kore­an Cul­ture and Free­dom Foun­da­tion (KCFF) — a group based in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. that was run by a top fig­ure in South Kore­a’s state intel­li­gence agency, Colonel Bo Hi Pak, who also served as the “prin­ci­ple evan­ge­list” of cult leader Rev. Sun-Myung Moon of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church.

    This new Moonie iter­a­tion of Radio Free Asia was con­trolled by the South Kore­an gov­ern­ment, includ­ing the country’s own CIA, the “KCIA.” It enjoyed high-lev­el sup­port from with­in the first Nixon Admin­is­tra­tion and even fea­tured then-Con­gress­man Ger­ald Ford on its board. Accord­ing to an FBI file on Rev. Moon, Radio Free Asia “at the height of the Viet­nam war pro­duced anti-com­mu­nist pro­grams in Wash­ing­ton and beamed them into Chi­na, North Korea and North Viet­nam.”

    Radio Free Asia got bust­ed in a wide­spread cor­rup­tion scan­dal in the late 1970s, when the South Kore­an gov­ern­ment was inves­ti­gat­ed for using the Moonie cult to influ­ence US pub­lic opin­ion in order to keep the US mil­i­tary engaged against North Korea. Back in the 1970s, the Moonies were the most noto­ri­ous cult in the Unit­ed States, accused of abduct­ing and “brain­wash­ing” count­less Amer­i­can youths. How it was that the CIA’s Radio Free Asia was hand­ed off to the Moonies was nev­er quite explained, but giv­en laws ban­ning the CIA (or the KCIA) from engag­ing in psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare in the US, the obvi­ous thing to do was to bury Radio Free Asia long enough for every­one to for­get about it.

    No soon­er had Radio Free Asia van­ished amid scan­dal than it reap­peared again, Ter­mi­na­tor-like, in the 1990s — this time as a legit “inde­pen­dent” non­prof­it whol­ly con­trolled by the BBG and fund­ed by Con­gress.

    Although this lat­est ver­sion of Radio Free Asia was sup­posed to be a com­plete­ly new orga­ni­za­tion and was no longer as covert and B‑movie spooky, its objec­tives and tac­tics remained exact­ly the same: To this day it beams pro­pa­gan­da into the same Com­mu­nist coun­tries, includ­ing North Korea, Viet­nam, Laos, Cam­bo­dia, Chi­na, and Bur­ma, and fid­dles around in the same sorts of spooky adven­tures.

    ...

    Radio Free Asia and Anti-gov­ern­ment Hack­tivists

    Which brings us up to the present, when the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors, Radio Free Asia and its off­shoot, the Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund, find them­selves in bed with many of the very same pri­va­cy activist fig­ures whom the pub­lic regards as the pri­ma­ry adver­saries of out­fits like Radio Free Asia and the BBG. And it’s tech­nol­o­gy that brings togeth­er these sup­posed adver­saries — the US Nation­al Secu­ri­ty State on the one hand, and “hack­tivist”, “anti-gov­ern­ment” lib­er­tar­i­an pri­va­cy activists on the oth­er:

    “I’m proud to be a vol­un­teer OTF advi­sor,” declared Cory Doc­torow, edi­tor of Boing­Bo­ing and a well-known lib­er­tar­i­an anti-sur­veil­lance activist/author.

    “Hap­py to have joined the Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund’s new advi­so­ry coun­cil,” tweet­ed Jil­lian York, the Direc­tor for Inter­na­tion­al Free­dom of Expres­sion at the Elec­tron­ic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion. (York recent­ly admit­ted that the OTF’s “Inter­net free­dom” agen­da is, at its core, about regime change, but bizarrely argued that it did­n’t mat­ter.)

    In 2012, just a few months after Radio Free Asi­a’s 24/7 pro­pa­gan­da blitz into North Korea failed to trig­ger regime change, RFA sent folks from the Tor Project — includ­ing core devel­op­er Jacob Appel­baum (pic­tured above) — into Bur­ma, just as the mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship was final­ly agree­ing to hand polit­i­cal pow­er over to US-backed pro-democ­ra­cy politi­cians. The stat­ed pur­pose of Appel­baum’s RFA-fund­ed expe­di­tion was to probe Burma’s Inter­net sys­tem from with­in and col­lect infor­ma­tion on its telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions infra­struc­ture — which was then used to com­pile a report for West­ern politi­cians and “inter­na­tion­al investors” inter­est­ed in pen­e­trat­ing Burma’s recent­ly opened mar­kets. Here you can see Appelbaum’s visa — pub­lished in the report as evi­dence of what you need­ed to do to buy a SIM card in Bur­ma.

    Bur­ma is a curi­ous place for Amer­i­can anti-sur­veil­lance activists fund­ed by Radio Free Asia to trav­el to, con­sid­er­ing that it has long been a tar­get of US regime-change cam­paigns. In fact, the guru of pro-West­ern “col­or rev­o­lu­tions,” Gene Sharp, wrote his famous guide to non-vio­lent rev­o­lu­tions, “From Dic­ta­tor­ship to Democ­ra­cy”, ini­tial­ly as a guide for Burma’s oppo­si­tion move­ment, in order to help it over­throw the mil­i­tary jun­ta in the late 1980s. Sharp had crossed into Bur­ma ille­gal­ly to train oppo­si­tion activists there — all under the pro­tec­tion and spon­sor­ship of the US gov­ern­ment and one Col. Robert Helvey, a mil­i­tary intel­li­gence offi­cer.

    Jacob Appel­baum’s will­ing­ness to work direct­ly for an old CIA cutout like Radio Free Asia in a nation long tar­get­ed for regime-change is cer­tain­ly odd, to say the least. Par­tic­u­lar­ly since Appel­baum made a big pub­lic show recent­ly claim­ing that, though it pains him that Tor takes so much mon­ey from the US mil­i­tary, he would nev­er take mon­ey from some­thing as evil as the CIA.

    Igno­rance is bliss.

    Appel­baum’s finan­cial rela­tion­ships with var­i­ous CIA spin­offs like Radio Free Asia and the BBG go fur­ther. From 2012 through 2013, Radio Free Asia trans­ferred about $1.1 mil­lion to Tor in the form of grants and con­tracts. This mil­lion dol­lars comes on top of anoth­er $3.4 mil­lion Tor received from Radio Free Asi­a’s par­ent agency, the BBG, start­ing from 2007.

    But Tor and Appel­baum are not the only ones hap­py to take mon­ey from the BBG/RFA.

    Take com­put­er researcher/privacy activist Har­ry Halpin, for exam­ple. Back in Novem­ber of 2014, Halpin smeared me as a con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist, and then false­ly accused me and Pan­do of being fund­ed by the CIA — sim­ply because I report­ed on Tor’s gov­ern­ment fund­ing. Turns out that Halpin’s next-gen­er­a­tion secure com­mu­ni­ca­tions out­fit, called LEAP, took more than $1 mil­lion from Radio Free Asia’s Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund. Some­what iron­i­cal­ly, LEAP’s tech­nol­o­gy pow­ers the VPN ser­vices of RiseUp.Net, the rad­i­cal anar­chist tech col­lec­tive that pro­vides activists with email and secure com­mu­ni­ca­tions tools (and forces you to sign a thin­ly veiled anti-Com­mu­nist pledge before giv­ing you an account).

    Then there’s the ACLU’s Christo­pher Soghoian. A few months ago, he had vicious­ly attacked me and Pan­do for report­ing on Tor’s US gov­ern­ment fund­ing. But just the oth­er day, Soghoian went on Democ­ra­cy Now, and in the mid­dle of a seg­ment crit­i­ciz­ing the U.S. gov­ern­men­t’s run­away hack­ing and sur­veil­lance pro­grams, rec­om­mend­ed that peo­ple use a suite of encrypt­ed text and voice apps fund­ed by the very same intel­li­gence-con­nect­ed U.S. gov­ern­ment appa­ra­tus he was denounc­ing. Specif­i­cal­ly, Soghoian rec­om­mend­ed apps made by Open Whis­per Sys­tems, which got $1.35 mil­lion from Radio Free Asi­a’s Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund from 2013 through 2014.

    He told Amy Good­man:

    “These are best-of-breed free appli­ca­tions made by top secu­ri­ty researchers, and actu­al­ly sub­si­dized by the State Depart­ment and by the U.S. tax­pay­er. You can down­load these tools today. You can make encrypt­ed tele­phone calls. You can send encrypt­ed text mes­sages. You can real­ly up your game and pro­tect your com­mu­ni­ca­tions.”

    When Good­man won­dered why the U.S. gov­ern­ment would fund pri­va­cy apps, he acknowl­edged that this tech­nol­o­gy is a soft-pow­er weapon of U.S. empire but then gave a very mud­dled and naive answer:

    CHRISTOPHER SOGHOIAN: Because they’re tools of for­eign pol­i­cy. You know, the U.S. gov­ern­ment isn’t this one machine with one per­son, you know, dic­tat­ing all of its poli­cies. You have these dif­fer­ent agen­cies squab­bling, some­times doing con­tra­dic­to­ry things. The U.S. gov­ern­ment, the State Depart­ment has spent mil­lions of dol­lars over the last 10 years to fund the cre­ation and the deploy­ment and improve­ment to secure com­mu­ni­ca­tions and secure com­put­ing tools that were intend­ed to allow activists in Chi­na and Iran to com­mu­ni­cate, that are intend­ed to allow jour­nal­ists to do their thing and spread news about democ­ra­cy with­out fear of inter­cep­tion and sur­veil­lance by the Chi­nese and oth­er gov­ern­ments.

    AMY GOODMAN: But maybe the U.S. gov­ern­ment has a way to break in.

    CHRISTOPHER SOGHOIAN: Well, you know, it’s pos­si­ble that they’ve dis­cov­ered flaws, but, you know, they have—the U.S. gov­ern­ment hasn’t been writ­ing the soft­ware. They’ve been giv­ing grants to high­ly respect­ed research teams, secu­ri­ty researchers and aca­d­e­mics, and these tools are about the best that we have. You know, I agree. I think it’s a lit­tle bit odd that, you know, the State Department’s fund­ing this, but these tools aren’t get­ting a lot of fund­ing from oth­er places. And so, as long as the State Depart­ment is will­ing to write them checks, I’m hap­py that the Tor Project and Whis­per Sys­tems and these oth­er orga­ni­za­tions are cash­ing them. They are cre­at­ing great tools and great tech­nol­o­gy that can real­ly improve our secu­ri­ty. And I hope that they’ll get more mon­ey in the future. It’s con­ve­nient and nice to believe that one hand of the U.S. Nation­al Secu­ri­ty State does­n’t know what the oth­er hand is doing — espe­cial­ly when the liveli­hoods of you and your col­leagues depends on it. But as the long and dark covert intel­li­gence his­to­ry of the Broad­cast­ers Board of Gov­er­nors and Radio Free Asia so clear­ly shows, this think­ing is naive and wrong. It also shows just how effec­tive­ly the U.S. Nation­al Secu­ri­ty State brought its oppo­si­tion into the fold.

    You’d think that anti-sur­veil­lance activists like Chris Soghoian, Jacob Appel­baum, Cory Doc­torow and Jil­lian York would be staunch­ly against out­fits like BBG and Radio Free Asia, and the role they have played — and con­tin­ue to play — in work­ing with defense and cor­po­rate inter­ests to project and impose U.S. pow­er abroad. Instead, these rad­i­cal activists have know­ing­ly joined the club, and in doing so, have become will­ing pitch­men for a wing of the very same U.S. Nation­al Secu­ri­ty State they so adamant­ly oppose.

    “You’d think that anti-sur­veil­lance activists like Chris Soghoian, Jacob Appel­baum, Cory Doc­torow and Jil­lian York would be staunch­ly against out­fits like BBG and Radio Free Asia, and the role they have played — and con­tin­ue to play — in work­ing with defense and cor­po­rate inter­ests to project and impose U.S. pow­er abroad. Instead, these rad­i­cal activists have know­ing­ly joined the club, and in doing so, have become will­ing pitch­men for a wing of the very same U.S. Nation­al Secu­ri­ty State they so adamant­ly oppose.”

    You have to admit, it’s all quite a head-scratch­er. *scratch scratch scratch*

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | February 8, 2016, 6:19 pm

  2. Barack Oba­ma learn­ing the Grey Wolves hand sign while vis­it­ing with them on a 2015 trip to Turkey for the G‑20 Forum:
    https://fellowshipoftheminds.com/2015/11/23/obama-makes-devils-horns-hand-sign-in-turkey/

    Just ingenue, you might say. Well, who was it direct­ing his vis­it? And don’t you sup­pose one of his han­dlers’ man­dates was not to let him be diplo­mat­i­cal­ly embar­rassed?

    We should remem­ber that this web­site appears to be the worst sort of Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ist man­i­fes­ta­tion, yet the Grey Wolf hand sign being giv­en by Oba­ma, unless this pic is pho­to­shopped, is an indi­ca­tor of the direc­tion we are going in.

    Posted by Atlanta Bill | March 2, 2017, 1:23 pm

Post a comment

MISCELLANEOUS ARCHIVES

MussoliniUncle Sam and Il Duce American Support for Mussolini and the Mythology of the Corporate State Read more »