FTR #1094 The Destabilization of China, Part 5: Pan-Turkism, Islamism and The Earth Island Boogie

This pro­gram con­tin­ues with exam­i­na­tion of cen­trifu­gal polit­i­cal and geo-polit­i­cal forces at work in the appar­ent­ly ongo­ing desta­bi­liza­tion of Chi­na.

This is a com­plex top­ic, involv­ing sub­jects dealt with at great length in past pro­grams over the years. We rec­om­mend using the search func­tion on this web­site (using quo­ta­tion marks) to gain a deep­er under­stand­ing of what Mr. Emory calls “The Earth Island Boo­gie.”

By the same token, under­stand­ing that con­cept involves obtain­ing a grasp of Pan-Turk­ism and some of its man­i­fes­ta­tions in the Uighur milieu inside Chi­na.

This descrip­tion has links to key pro­grams that will flesh out the lis­ten­ers’ under­stand­ing.

We begin an analy­sis of the use of the Turko­phone, Mus­lim Uighurs as a desta­bi­liz­ing ele­ment in Chi­na’s min­er­al and petro­le­um-rich Xin­jiang semi­au­tonomous region.

Linked to Al-Qae­da, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and con­tribut­ing to the jihadist milieu in Syr­ia, the Uighurs also fig­ure into the Pan-Turk­ist milieu cov­ered in, among oth­er pro­grams: AFA #14, as well as FTR #‘s 720, 723, 819, 857, 862, 863, 878, 879, 884, 885, 886, 911.

Note that the geo­graph­i­cal focal point of the Uighur separatist/jihadist activ­i­ty not only encom­pass­es min­er­al and resource-rich Xin­jiang province, but lies in the area Chi­na has des­ig­nat­ed as an impor­tant area for their “Belt and Road Ini­tia­tive.” That ini­tia­tive is a pro­gram designed to build rail con­nec­tions across what is known as “The Earth Island,” a project which appears to entail deep alarm on the part of inter­ests in the West.

” . . . . The Uighur sep­a­ratist spec­trum is over­lapped by the Uighur jiha­di milieu, who link the issue of Xin­jiang’s seces­sion from Chi­na to that of form­ing a Salafist theoc­ra­cy. Uighur jihadis have long since expand­ed their radius of actions beyond Chi­na’s bor­ders. This first drew pub­lic atten­tion, when it was report­ed that, in ‘the war on ter­ror,’ which began in 2002, the Unit­ed States had been hold­ing more than 20 Uighurs in their tor­ture cham­bers at Guan­taná­mo. The last of the pris­on­ers were released only in late 2013. Uighur jihadis have long since expand­ed beyond their Afghanistan engage­ment to oth­er regions of the world. . . . Uighur jihadis’ activ­i­ties have also been reg­is­tered in oth­er South­east Asian coun­tries, such as Malaysia and Indone­sia — from where quite a few con­tin­ue on to Turkey, to sup­port the IS or al Qae­da. Last year, Chi­na had esti­mat­ed that up to 300 Uighurs are fight­ing in the ranks of IS, while Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment offi­cials set the fig­ures at up to 5,000 Uighurs who are oper­at­ing in var­i­ous jiha­di mili­tias in Syr­ia. Regard­less of the accu­ra­cy of these esti­mates, experts are cer­tain that a large con­tin­gent of Uighur mili­tias are fight­ing with­in the ranks of IS and al Qae­da. An analy­sis pub­lished by the Inter­na­tion­al Cen­ter for Counter-Ter­ror­ism in The Hague warns that the Uighur jiha­di threat is large­ly under­es­ti­mat­ed in the West.[9] . . . . For Chi­na, this ter­ror­ism is that much more seri­ous, because Xin­jiang is a strate­gi­cal­ly impor­tant region. That autonomous region com­pris­es cen­tral sec­tors of the ‘New Silk Road’ (‘Belt and Road Ini­tia­tive,’ BRI) project, cur­rent­ly Bei­jing’s most impor­tant for­eign pol­i­cy mega-project. Unrest in Xin­jiang threat­ens not only the Peo­ple’s Repub­lic of Chi­na’s domes­tic tran­quil­i­ty, but also its rise in world pol­i­cy. This unrest is being sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly fanned from abroad. Turkey, under Pres­i­dent Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has assumed a promi­nent role. While still may­or of Istan­bul and long before becom­ing Turkey’s pres­i­dent, Erdoğan had declared that ‘East Turkestan is not only the home­land of the Tur­kic peo­ples, but also the cra­dle of Tur­kic his­to­ry, civ­i­liza­tion, and cul­ture. The mar­tyrs of East Turkestan are our martyrs.’[10] Uighur jihadis have reg­u­lar­ly used Turkey as a safe haven. In his talk with german-foreign-policy.com, the Ger­man expert on intel­li­gence ser­vices, Erich Schmidt-Een­boom con­firmed that Ankara’s intel­li­gence ser­vice has repeat­ed­ly ‘sought to sup­port seces­sion­ist attempts’ in Xinjiang.[11] . . . .”

The Uighur/Al Qaeda/Muslim Brotherhood/jihadist milieu is also dis­cussed in, among oth­er pro­grams, FTR #‘s 348, 549, 550, 615.

Next, we detail the long his­to­ry of NATO and relat­ed ele­ments using the Uighurs to desta­bi­lize Chi­na, with Ger­many as an epi­cen­ter of Uighur activ­i­ty.

We review the ter­ror­ism against mem­bers of the Han Chi­nese major­i­ty in Xin­jiang by Uighurs.

” . . . . Already since the 1990s, Xin­jiang has been faced with ter­ror­ist attacks by mem­bers of the Tur­kic-speak­ing Uighur minor­i­ty, fight­ing to secede this autonomous region from Chi­na, to found “East Turkestan.” Some seek an even­tu­al fusion with the Tur­kic-speak­ing coun­tries of Cen­tral Asia. The attacks that became known in the West includ­ed a Uighur ter­ror­ist attack at a coal mine in Xin­jiang in Sep­tem­ber 2015. The assailants delib­er­ate­ly tar­get­ed non-Tur­kic-speak­ing work­ers — espe­cial­ly those of Chi­na’s major­i­ty Han pop­u­la­tion — slaugh­ter­ing them with long knives. Accord­ing to west­ern media reports, at least 50 peo­ple died in the attack.[7] March 1, 2014 eight Uighur ter­ror­ists armed also with knives attacked civil­ian trav­el­ers in a train sta­tion of Kun­ming, the cap­i­tal of Yun­nan Province, killing 31 and wound­ing around 150, some seri­ous­ly. There have also been recur­ring pogroms tar­get­ing Han Chi­nese. For exam­ple, in July 2009, sev­er­al thou­sand Uighur in Xin­jiang’s cap­i­tal, Urumqi, attacked Han Chi­nese. Accord­ing to offi­cial fig­ures, 197 peo­ple were killed; how­ev­er, observers cal­cu­late the actu­al body count to be much high­er. . . . ”

As high­light­ed in, among oth­er pro­grams, FTR #‘s 547, 548, 549, 550, the Uighurs are part of a cen­tripetal desta­bi­liza­tion effort against Chi­na, uti­liz­ing the Dalai Lama’s SS-linked milieu, ele­ments of CIA, and the Haps­burg-con­trolled UNPO to effect the par­tial dis­mem­ber­ment of that coun­try.

We con­clude with dis­cus­sion about the Hong Kong Shang­hai Bank­ing Cor­po­ra­tion. A major British bank, the growth of its largesse was inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the opi­um trade Britain forced on Chi­na through the Opi­um Wars.

The bank per­pet­u­at­ed it’s involve­ment with major nar­cotics traf­fick­ing, laun­der­ing funds for con­tem­po­rary drug car­tels.

Ulti­mate­ly, the bank became a vehi­cle for the financ­ing of ele­ments of Al-Qae­da and jihadism. We won­der if per­haps jihadist ele­ments of the Uighurs may be receiv­ing fund­ing through the insti­tu­tion?

FTR #1093 The Destabilization of China, Part 4

We begin with an excerpt of a New York Times arti­cle what epit­o­mizes the pro­pa­gan­dized and unin­ten­tion­al­ly iron­ic tone of our media with regard to Chi­na.

The arti­cle mocks the Chi­nese asser­tion that the U.S. is involved with unrest with Hong Kong, remark­ing that Chi­na ” . . . . has a long his­to­ry of blam­ing ‘for­eign forces’ for chal­lenges it has faced inter­nal­ly. . . .” This comes from the pub­li­ca­tion that has unwa­ver­ing­ly flogged the “Rus­sia-Gate” non­sense.

The arti­cle also pooh-poohs Chi­nese asser­tion that the Nation­al Endow­ment for Democ­ra­cy was work­ing with the CIA to spon­sor unrest in Hong Kong.

In FTR #s 1091 and 1092, we not­ed the involve­ment of the Nation­al Endow­ment for Democ­ra­cy with key play­ers in the Hong Kong dra­ma, as well as their net­work­ing with major U.S. politi­cians, includ­ing Mike Pence and Mike Pom­peo.

In past pro­grams, we have dis­cussed the Nation­al Endow­ment For Democ­ra­cy, a “kinder, gen­tler” U.S. intel­li­gence man­i­fes­ta­tion.

NED has sup­ple­ment­ed the decades-old tra­di­tion of CIA desta­bi­liza­tion and over­throw of gov­ern­ments that the U.S. views with a jaun­diced eye.

The Chi­nese analy­sis of the role of the NED is accu­rate. “. . . . One of the NED co-founders, Allen Wein­stein, explained its pur­pose to the Wash­ing­ton Post: ‘A lot of what we do today was done covert­ly 25 years ago by the CIA.’ . . . . ”

Next, we exam­ine an infor­ma­tive post from Ger­man For­eign Pol­i­cy, which notes that pend­ing leg­is­la­tion in the U.S. Con­gress would eco­nom­i­cal­ly dam­age U.S. and Ger­man com­mer­cial inter­ests, as well as hurt­ing Hong Kong’s econ­o­my.

We con­clude with a top­ic we have cov­ered before and will explore at greater length in our next broad­cast. We begin an analy­sis of the use of the Turko­phone, Mus­lim Uighurs as a desta­bi­liz­ing ele­ment in Chi­na’s min­er­al and petro­le­um-rich Xin­jiang semi­au­tonomous region.

Linked to Al-Qae­da, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and con­tribut­ing to the jihadist milieu in Syr­ia, the Uighurs also fig­ure into the Pan-Turk­ist milieu cov­ered in, among oth­er pro­grams: AFA #14, as well as FTR #‘s 720, 723, 819, 857, 862, 863, 878, 879, 884, 885, 886, 911.

The Uighur/Al Qaeda/Muslim Brotherhood/jihadist milieu is dis­cussed in, among oth­er pro­grams, FTR #‘s 348, 549, 550, 615.

FTR #1089 Fascism: 2019 World Tour, Part 4 (Goose Hopping in Hong Kong with Pepe the Frog)

Con­tin­u­ing our look at glob­al fas­cism, we vis­it Hong Kong and (by exten­sion) Chi­na, where an intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty desta­bi­liza­tion effort is under­way. That effort is uti­liz­ing Islam­ic fas­cists in the Uighur com­mu­ni­ty in Xin­jiang Province and the Falun Gong, a fas­cist mind con­trol cult that has devel­oped close oper­a­tional links with the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, Steve Ban­non and the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors (a CIA “deriv­a­tive.”)

Begin­ning our sojourn in Hong Kong, we review the preva­lence of the Pepe the Frog icon in the Hong Kong protests. “The New York Times’ ” dis­claimer that the pro­test­ers are not “alt-right” should be seen in per­spec­tive.

With Steve Ban­non at the epi­cen­ter of the anti-Chi­na move­ment, Pepe’s pres­ence in Hong Kong is not sur­pris­ing.

Note Ban­non and com­pa­ny’s net­work­ing with the Falun Gong cult.

In our long series pred­i­cat­ed on Yasha Levine’s “Sur­veil­lance Val­ley,” we not­ed the Inter­net Free­dom move­ment and its fun­da­men­tal posi­tion as part of the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty’s “soft pow­er” pro­pa­gan­da and regime change arse­nal.

Yasha Levine sums up the fun­da­men­tal con­tra­dic­tions inher­ent  in this dynam­ic: ” . . . . If you stepped back to sur­vey the scene, the entire land­scape of this new Inter­net Free­dom pri­va­cy move­ment looked absurd. Cold War-era orga­ni­za­tions spun off from the CIA now fund­ing the glob­al move­ment against gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance? Google and Face­book, com­pa­nies that ran pri­vate sur­veil­lance net­works and worked hand in hand with the NSA, deploy­ing gov­ern­ment-fund­ed pri­va­cy tech to pro­tect their users from gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance? Pri­va­cy activists work­ing with Sil­i­con Val­ley and the US gov­ern­ment to fight gov­ern­ment surveillance—and with the sup­port of Edward Snow­den him­self? . . . .”

In Chi­na, Falun Gong is among the recip­i­ents of Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors mon­ey. Recall that the BBG is a CIA “deriv­a­tive.”: ” . . . .It also fund­ed sev­er­al small out­fits run by prac­ti­tion­ers of Falun gong, a con­tro­ver­sial Chi­nese anti­com­mu­nist cult banned in Chi­na whose leader believes that humans are being cor­rupt­ed by aliens from oth­er dimen­sions and that peo­ple of mixed blood are sub­hu­mans and unfit for sal­va­tion. . . . ”

After excerpt­ing a puff piece that lion­izes Falun Gong in their strug­gles with the Chi­nese, we high­light the beliefs of the orga­ni­za­tion.

The Falun Gong teach­es that: post menopausal women can regain men­stru­a­tion, con­sid­ered manda­to­ry for spir­i­tu­al evo­lu­tion; gays are demo­nized; mixed race peo­ple are demo­nized; cult mem­bers are dis­cour­aged from seek­ing mod­ern med­ical treat­ment; space aliens are inhab­it­ing human bod­ies and are respon­si­ble for mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy such as air­planes and com­put­ers; tiny beings are said to be invad­ing human bod­ies and caus­ing “bad kar­ma;” mas­ter Li Hongzhi knows the secrets of the uni­verse; mas­ter Li Hongzhi can lev­i­tate and walk through walls; mas­ter Li Hongzhi can install a phys­i­cal “Falun”–swastika–in the abdomen of fol­low­ers which revolves in var­i­ous direc­tions; Falun Gong teach­ing demo­nizes fem­i­nists and pop­u­lar music; there will be a “Judge­ment Day” on which com­mu­nists and oth­ers deemed unwor­thy by mas­ter Li Hongzhi will be neu­tral­ized.

We con­clude with part of an arti­cle which will be pre­sent­ed and ana­lyzed at greater length in our next pro­gram.

Falun Gong–largely through its Epoch Times newspaper–has estab­lished a major social media pres­ence and is a key ally of Pres­i­dent Trump’s re-elec­tion effort: “. . . . In April, at the height of its ad spend­ing, videos from the Epoch Media Group, which includes The Epoch Times and dig­i­tal video out­let New Tang Dynasty, or NTD, com­bined for around 3 bil­lion views on Face­book, YouTube and Twit­ter, rank­ing 11th among all video cre­ators across plat­forms and out­rank­ing every oth­er tra­di­tion­al news pub­lish­er, accord­ing to data from the social media ana­lyt­ics com­pa­ny Tubu­lar. That engage­ment has made The Epoch Times a favorite of the Trump fam­i­ly and a key com­po­nent of the president’s re-elec­tion cam­paign

FTR #1080 Surveillance Valley, Part 6: Double Agents, Part 2 (Foxes Guarding the Online Privacy Henhouse, Part 3)

In this pro­gram, we resume dis­cus­sion and analy­sis of the con­sum­mate­ly impor­tant recent book Sur­veil­lance Val­ley: The Secret Mil­i­tary His­to­ry of the Inter­net by Yasha Levine. In the pre­vi­ous pro­gram, we not­ed, among oth­er points of analy­sis, the deci­sive role of Eddie “The Friend­ly Spook” Snow­den in pro­mot­ing the intel­li­gence-agency craft­ed Tor net­work.

In addi­tion to Tor, the Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund (read “CIA”) helped finance the Sig­nal app for mobile phones. It, too, is fun­da­men­tal­ly com­pro­mised. ” . . . . . . . . The Tor project remained the best-known pri­va­cy app fund­ed by the Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund, but it was quick­ly joined by anoth­er: Sig­nal, an encrypt­ed mobile phone mes­sag­ing app for the iPhone and Android. . . .”

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the CIA’s Eddie “The Friend­ly Spook” Snow­den was a big pro­mot­er of Sig­nal, as well as Tor: ” . . . . Peo­ple at the ACLU claimed that Sig­nal made fed­er­al agents weep. The Elec­tron­ic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion added Sig­nal along­side Tor to its Sur­veil­lance Self-Defense guide. Fight for the Future, a Sil­i­con Val­ley-fund­ed pri­va­cy activist orga­ni­za­tion, described Sig­nal and Tor as ‘NSA-proof’ and urged peo­ple to use them. Edward Snow­den was the com­bo’s biggest and most famous boost­er and repeat­ed­ly took to Twit­ter to tell his three mil­lion fol­low­ers that he used Sig­nal and Tor every day, and that they should do the same to pro­tect them­selves from gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance. ‘Use Tor, Use Sig­nal,’ he tweet­ed out.

“With endorse­ments like these, Sig­nal quick­ly became the go-to app for polit­i­cal activists around the world. Egypt, Rus­sia, Syr­ia, and even the Unit­ed States—millions down­loaded Sig­nal, and it became the com­mu­ni­ca­tion app of choice for those who hoped to avoid police sur­veil­lance. Fem­i­nist col­lec­tives, anti-Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump pro­test­ers, com­mu­nists, anar­chists, rad­i­cal ani­mal rights orga­ni­za­tions, Black Lives Mat­ter activists—all flocked to Sig­nal. Many were heed­ing Snow­den’s advice: ‘Orga­nize. Com­part­men­tal­ize to lim­it com­pro­mise. Encrypt every­thing, from calls to texts (use Sig­nal as a first step.)’ . . . .”

Yasha Levine sums up the fun­da­men­tal con­tra­dic­tions inher­ent  in this dynam­ic: ” . . . . If you stepped back to sur­vey the scene, the entire land­scape of this new Inter­net Free­dom pri­va­cy move­ment looked absurd. Cold War-era orga­ni­za­tions spun off from the CIA now fund­ing the glob­al move­ment against gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance? Google and Face­book, com­pa­nies that ran pri­vate sur­veil­lance net­works and worked hand in hand with the NSA, deploy­ing gov­ern­ment-fund­ed pri­va­cy tech to pro­tect their users from gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance? Pri­va­cy activists work­ing with Sil­i­con Val­ley and the US gov­ern­ment to fight gov­ern­ment surveillance—and with the sup­port of Edward Snow­den him­self? . . . .”

Fol­low­ing Snow­den’s pro­mo­tion of OTF’s Tor and Sig­nal tech­nolo­gies, OTF was at a zenith: ” . . . . After Edward Snow­den, OTF was tri­umphant. It did­n’t men­tion the leak­er by name in its pro­mo­tion­al mate­ri­als, but it prof­it­ed from the cryp­to cul­ture he pro­mot­ed and ben­e­fit­ed from his direct endorse­ment of the cryp­to tools it financed. It boast­ed that its part­ner­ship with both Sil­i­con Val­ley and respect­ed pri­va­cy activists meant that hun­dreds of mil­lions of peo­ple could use the pri­va­cy tools the US gov­ern­ment had brought to mar­ket. And OTF promised that this was just a start: ‘By lever­ag­ing social net­work effects, we expect to expand to a bil­lion reg­u­lar users tak­ing advan­tage of OTF-sup­port­ed tools and Inter­net Free­dom tech­nolo­gies by 2015. . . .’

As even­tu­al­ly became clear, the Tor net­work was eas­i­ly breached. It is a safe bet that the fas­cists grouped around the Pirate Bay site (on which Wik­iLeaks held forth), had breached Tor’s “secre­cy,” in addi­tion to the obvi­ous fact that intel­li­gence ser­vices could pen­e­trate it at will.

With this in mind, John Young’s rumi­na­tion about Wik­iLeaks sound more and more sub­stan­tive.

In all prob­a­bil­i­ty, Wik­iLeaks was a huge data min­ing oper­a­tion both by the very intel­li­gence agen­cies who were osten­si­bly tar­get­ed by Wik­iLeaks, and the Fas­cist Inter­na­tion­al net­work around Carl Lund­strom, Daniel Friberg, David Duke et al.

In FTR #‘s 756 and 831 we not­ed Snow­den’s fas­cist views and con­nec­tions. Levine mere­ly char­ac­ter­izes him as a “right-wing lib­er­tar­i­an,” but there is MUCH MORE TO IT THAN  THAT!

Snow­den down­played the fun­da­men­tal role of the Big Tech firms in aid­ing and abet­ting gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance, in addi­tion to their own mas­sive sur­veil­lance and resul­tant data min­ing. ” . . . . There, while liv­ing under state pro­tec­tion at an undis­closed loca­tion in Moscow, he swept Sil­i­con Val­ley’s role in Inter­net sur­veil­lance under the rug. Asked about it by Wash­ing­ton Post reporter Bar­ton Gell­man, who had first report­ed on the NSA’s PRISM pro­gram, Snow­den shrugged off the dan­ger posed by com­pa­nies like Google and Face­book. The rea­son? Because pri­vate com­pa­nies do not have the pow­er to arrest, jail, or kill peo­ple. ‘Twit­ter does­n’t put war­heads on fore­heads,’ he joked. . . .”

Embody­ing his “cor­po­ratist” and Tech­no­crat­ic Fas­cist point of view, Snow­den cham­pi­oned the Big Tech firms as bul­warks against gov­ern­ment Inter­net sur­veil­lance, despite the only-too-obvi­ous fact (rein­forced by the doc­u­ments he leaked) that Big Tech is–and always has been–in bed with, and active­ly col­lab­o­rat­ing with, the very gov­ern­ment intel­li­gence agen­cies con­duct­ing that sur­veil­lance: ” . . . . The only islands of safe­ty were the pri­vate data cen­ters con­trolled by pri­vate companies—Google, Apple, Face­book. These were the cyber-fortress­es and walled cities that offered sanc­tu­ary to the mass­es. In this chaot­ic land­scape, com­put­er engi­neers and cryp­tog­ra­phers played the role of self­less gal­lop­ing knights and wiz­ard-war­riors whose job was to pro­tect the weak folk of the Inter­net: the young, the old and infirm, fam­i­lies. It was their duty to ride out, weapons aloft, and con­vey peo­ple and their pre­cious data safe­ly from fortress to fortress, not let­ting any of the infor­ma­tion fall into the hands of gov­ern­ment spies. He called on them to start a peo­ple’s pri­va­cy war, ral­ly­ing them to go forth and lib­er­ate the Inter­net, to reclaim it from the gov­ern­ments of the world. . . .”

The nau­se­at­ing head of Facebook–Mark Zuckerberg–has decried the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty’s use of the Inter­net for data min­ing. In FTR #1077, we high­light­ed the Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca affair, and Face­book’s full coop­er­a­tion with that project at every turn.

Oth­er Big Tech firms had sim­i­lar reac­tions. “. . . . . ‘We had­n’t even heard of PRISM before yes­ter­day,’ Mark Zucker­berg wrote in a Face­book post. He blamed the gov­ern­ment and posi­tioned Face­book as a vic­tim. “I’ve called Pres­i­dent Oba­ma to express my frus­tra­tion over the dam­age the gov­ern­ment is cre­at­ing for all of our future. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it seems like it will take a very long time for true full reform.’ Apple,  Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo! All react­ed in much the same way, deny­ing the alle­ga­tions and paint­ing them­selves as the vic­tims of gov­ern­ment over­reach. ‘It’s tremen­dous­ly dis­ap­point­ing that the gov­ern­ment sort of secret­ly did all this stuff and did­n’t tell us. We can’t have a democ­ra­cy if we’re hav­ing to pro­tect you and our users from the gov­ern­ment,’ Lar­ry Page told Char­lie Rose in an inter­view on CBS. . . . .”

We present the con­clu­sion of the main part of the book, with Levine’s sum­ma­tion of the inex­tri­ca­ble nature and sym­bio­sis between the Inter­net, the tech firms and the so-called “pri­va­cy com­mu­ni­ty.”

The key points of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis of Levine’s book (as a whole) include:

1.–The Inter­net is a weapon, devel­oped for counter-insur­gency pur­pos­es.
2.–Big Tech firms net­work with the very intel­li­gence ser­vices they pub­licly decry.
3.–Big Tech firms that data mine their cus­tomers on a near­ly unimag­in­able scale do so as a direct, oper­a­tional exten­sion of the very sur­veil­lance func­tion upon which  the Inter­net is pred­i­cat­ed.
4.–The tech­nolo­gies tout­ed by the so-called “Pri­va­cy Activists” such as Edward Snow­den and Jacob Apple­baum were devel­oped by the very intel­li­gence ser­vices they are sup­posed to deflect.
5.–The tech­nolo­gies tout­ed by the so-called “Pri­va­cy Activists” such as Edward Snow­den and Jacob Applebaum–such as the Tor Inter­net func­tion and the Sig­nal mobile phone app– are read­i­ly acces­si­ble to the very intel­li­gence ser­vices they are sup­posed to deflect.
6.–The orga­ni­za­tions that pro­mote the alleged virtues of Snow­den, Apple­baum, Tor, Sig­nal et al are linked to the very intel­li­gence ser­vices they would have us believe they oppose.
7.–Big Tech firms embrace “Inter­net Free­dom” as a dis­trac­tion from their own will­ful and all-embrac­ing data min­ing and their ongo­ing con­scious col­lab­o­ra­tion with the very intel­li­gence ser­vices they pub­licly decry.

NB: Mr. Levine does not go into the fascis­tic char­ac­ter of Snow­den, Assange, Green­wald et al. Some of those shows: Greenwald–FTR #888, Snowden–FTR #‘s 756, 831, Assange and WikiLeaks–FTR #‘s 732, 745, 755, 917.

“. . . . Then there was the fact that Sig­nal ran on Ama­zon’s servers, which meant that all its data were avail­able to a part­ner in the NSA’s PRISM sur­veil­lance pro­gram. Equal­ly prob­lem­at­ic, Sig­nal need­ed Apple and Google to install and run the app on peo­ple’s mobile phones. Both com­pa­nies were, and as far as we know still are, part­ners in PRISM as well. ‘Google usu­al­ly has root access to the phone, there’s the issue of integri­ty,’ writes Sander Ven­e­ma, a respect­ed devel­op­er and secure—technology train­er, in a blog post explain­ing why he no longer rec­om­mends peo­ple use Sig­nal for encrypt­ed chat. ‘Google is still coop­er­at­ing with the NSA and oth­er intel­li­gence agen­cies. PRISM is also still a thing. I’m pret­ty sure that Google could serve a spe­cial­ly mod­i­fied update or ver­sion of Sig­nal to spe­cif­ic tar­get for sur­veil­lance, and they would be none the wis­er that they installed mal­ware on their phones.’ . . .

. . . . So, although the app encrypt­ed the con­tent of peo­ple’s mes­sages, it also marked them with a flash­ing red sign: ‘Fol­low Me, I Have Some­thing to Hide.’ (Indeed, activists protest­ing at the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion in Philadel­phia in 2016 told me that they were bewil­dered by the fact that police seemed to know and antic­i­pate their every move despite their hav­ing used Sig­nal to orga­nize. . . .”

” . . . . For many Inter­net com­pa­nies, includ­ing Google and Face­book, sur­veil­lance is the busi­ness mod­el. It is the base on which their cor­po­rate and eco­nom­ic pow­er rests. Dis­en­tan­gle sur­veil­lance and prof­it, and these com­pa­nies would col­lapse. Lim­it data col­lec­tion, an the com­pa­nies would see investors flee and their stock prices plum­met. [Ital­ics are mine–D.E.]

“Sil­i­con Val­ley fears a polit­i­cal solu­tion to pri­va­cy. Inter­net Free­dom and cryp­to offer an accept­able alter­na­tive. Tools like Sig­nal and Tor pro­vide a false solu­tion to the pri­va­cy prob­lem, focus­ing people’s atten­tion on gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance and dis­tract­ing them from the pri­vate spy­ing car­ried out by the Inter­net com­pa­nies they use every day. All the while, cryp­to tools give peo­ple a [false] sense that they’re doing some­thing to pro­tect them­selves, a feel­ing of per­son­al empow­er­ment and con­trol. And all those cryp­to rad­i­cals? Well, they just enhance the illu­sion, height­en­ing the impres­sion of risk and dan­ger. With Sig­nal or Tor installed, using an iPhone or Android sud­den­ly becomes edgy and rad­i­cal. So instead of push­ing for polit­i­cal and demo­c­ra­t­ic solu­tions to sur­veil­lance, we out­source our pri­va­cy pol­i­tics to cryp­to apps–software made by the very same pow­er­ful enti­ties that these apps are sup­posed to pro­tect us from. . . .”

FTR #1079 Surveillance Valley, Part 5: Double Agents (Foxes Guarding the Online Privacy Henhouse, Part 2)

Con­tin­u­ing with our exam­i­na­tion of Yasha Levine’s sem­i­nal vol­ume Sur­veil­lance Val­ley, we con­tin­ue our analy­sis of the indi­vid­u­als, insti­tu­tions and tech­nolo­gies cen­tral to the so-called “online pri­va­cy” effort. The Tor Project, the Elec­tron­ic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion, the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors and its Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund and Jacob Appel­baum are all the oppo­site of what they have been rep­re­sent­ed as being.

We begin with infor­ma­tion over­lapped from our last pro­gram, high­light­ing how Jacob Appel­baum and the Tor net­work hooked up with Wik­iLeaks.

Tor, Appel­baum, Assange and Wik­iLeaks:

1.–Became increas­ing­ly inter­twined, enjoy­ing acco­lades from many, appar­ent­ly unsus­pect­ing, groups: ” . . . .  His [Appel­baum’s] asso­ci­a­tion with Wik­iLeaks and Assange boost­ed the Tor Pro­jec­t’s pub­lic pro­file and rad­i­cal cre­den­tials. Sup­port and acco­lades poured in from jour­nal­ists, pri­va­cy orga­ni­za­tions, and gov­ern­ment watch­dogs. The Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union part­nered with Appel­baum on an Inter­net pri­va­cy project, and New York’s Whit­ney Museum—one of the lead­ing mod­ern art muse­ums in the world—invited him for a ‘Sur­veil­lance Teach-In.’ The Elec­tron­ic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion gave Tor its Pio­neer Award, and Roger Din­gle­dine made in on For­eign Pol­i­cy mag­a­zine’s Top 100 Glob­al Thinkers for pro­tect­ing ‘any­one and every­one from the dan­gers of Big Broth­er.’ . . . .”
2.– Dif­fered fun­da­men­tal­ly from the accept­ed text: ” . . . . With Julian Assange endors­ing Tor, reporters assumed that the US gov­ern­ment saw the anonymi­ty non­prof­it as a threat. But inter­nal doc­u­ments obtained through FOIA from the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors, as well as analy­sis of Tor’s gov­ern­ment con­tracts paint a dif­fer­ent pic­ture. They reveal that Appel­baum and Din­gle­dine worked with Assange on secur­ing Wik­iLeaks with Tor since late 2008 and that they kept their han­dlers at the BBG informed about their rela­tion­ship and even pro­vid­ed infor­ma­tion about the inner work­ings of Wik­iLeak­s’s secure sub­mis­sion sys­tem. . . .”
3.–Did not adverse­ly affect the gov­ern­ment fund­ing of Tor at all, as might be expect­ed by the super­fi­cial appar­ent real­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion: ” . . . . Per­haps most telling was that sup­port from the BBG [read “CIA”–D.E.] con­tin­ued even after Wik­iLeaks began pub­lish­ing clas­si­fied gov­ern­ment infor­ma­tion and Appel­baum became the tar­get of a larg­er Depart­ment of Jus­tice inves­ti­ga­tion into Wik­iLeaks. For exam­ple, on July 31, 2010, CNET report­ed that Appel­baum had been detained at the Las Vegas air­port and ques­tioned about his rela­tion­ship with Wik­iLeaks. News of the deten­tion made head­lines around the world, once again high­light­ing Appel­baum’s close ties to Julian Assange. And a week lat­er, Tor’s exec­u­tive direc­tor Andrew Lew­man, clear­ly wor­ried that this might affect Tor’s fund­ing, emailed Ken Berman at the BBG in the hopes of smooth­ing things over and answer­ing ‘any ques­tions you may have about the recent press regard­ing Jake and Wik­iLeaks.’ But Lew­man was in for a pleas­ant sur­prise: Roger Din­gle­dine had been keep­ing folks at the BBG in the loop, and every­thing seemed to be okay. ‘Great stuff, thx. Roger answered a num­ber of ques­tions when he met us this week in DC,’ Berman replied. . . .”
4.–” . . . . In 2011 con­tracts came in with­out a hitch–$150,000 from the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors and $227,118 from the State Depart­ment. Tor was even able to snag a big chunk of mon­ey from the Pen­ta­gon: a new $503,706 annu­al con­tract from the Space and Naval War­fare Sys­tems Com­mand, an elite infor­ma­tion and intel­li­gence unit that hous­es a top-secret cyber-war­fare division.The Navy was passed through SRI, the old Stan­ford mil­i­tary con­trac­tor that had done coun­terin­sur­gency, net­work­ing, and chem­i­cal weapons work for ARPA back in the 1960s and 1970s. The funds were part of a larg­er Navy ‘Com­mand, Con­trol, Com­munca­tions, Com­put­ers, Intel­li­gence, Sur­veil­lance, and Recon­nais­sance’ pro­gram to improve mil­i­tary oper­a­tions. A year lat­er, Tor would see its gov­ern­ment con­tracts more than dou­ble to $2.2 mil­lion: $353,000 from the State Depart­ment, $876,099 from the US Navy, and $937,800 from the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors. . . .”

In this con­text, we recall some ear­li­er obser­va­tions about Wik­iLeaks. John Young, one of Wik­iLeaks’ founders turned crit­ic of the orga­ni­za­tion har­bors deep sus­pi­cions con­cern­ing the group. ” . . . 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. . . .” The Tor/Appelbaum/BBG (read “CIA”)/WikiLeaks nexus may very well be proof of Young’s sus­pi­cions.

Appel­baum, Wik­iLeaks and Tor became fun­da­men­tal to the oper­a­tions of Eddie “The Friend­ly Spook” Snow­den. In past dis­cus­sion, we have not­ed that in the sum­mer of 2009, when Snow­den made his deci­sion to dis­close the NSA doc­u­ments, he was work­ing for the very same CIA from which the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors and its Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund were derived. Jacob Appel­baum was fund­ed by BBG, as was Tor. ” . . . . From the start, the Tor Project stood at the cen­ter of Snow­den’s sto­ry. The leak­er’s endorse­ment and pro­mo­tion intro­duced the project to a glob­al audi­ence, boost­ing Tor’s world­wide user base from one mil­lion to six mil­lion almost overnight and inject­ing it into the heart of a bur­geon­ing pri­va­cy move­ment. In Rus­sia, where the BBG and Din­gle­dine had tried but failed to recruit activists for their Tor deploy­ment plan, use of the soft­ware increased from twen­ty thou­sand dai­ly con­nec­tions to some­where around two hun­dred thou­sand.

“Dur­ing a pro­mo­tion­al cam­paign for the Tor Project, Snow­den said: ‘With­out Tor, the streets of the Inter­net become like the streets of a very heav­i­ly sur­veilled city. There are sur­veil­lance cam­eras every­where, and if the adver­sary sim­ply takes enough time, they can fol­low the tapes back and see every­thing you’ve done. With Tor, we have pri­vate spaces and pri­vate lives, where we can choose who we want to asso­ciate with and how, with­out the fear of what that is going to look like if it is abused. The design of the Tor sys­tem is struc­tured in such a way that even if the US Gov­ern­ment want­ed to sub­vert it, it could­n’t.’ Snow­den did­n’t talk about Tor’s con­tin­ued gov­ern­ment fund­ing, nor did he address an appar­ent con­tra­dic­tion: why the US gov­ern­ment would fund a pro­gram that sup­pos­ed­ly lim­it­ed its own pow­er. What­ev­er Snow­den’s pri­vate thought on the mat­ter, his endorse­ment gave Tor the high­est pos­si­ble seal of approval. It was like a Hack­er’s Medal of Val­or. With Snow­den’s back­ing, no one even thought to ques­tion Tor’s rad­i­cal antigov­ern­ment bona fides. . . .”

Next, we review infor­ma­tion about the so-called “Arab Spring.” In FTR #‘s 733 through 739, we pre­sent­ed our view that the so-called Arab Spring was a U.S. intel­li­gence oper­a­tion, aimed at plac­ing the Broth­er­hood in pow­er in Mus­lim coun­tries dom­i­nat­ed either by a sec­u­lar dic­ta­tor or absolute monar­chy.

Yasha Levine has high­light­ed the role of U.S. tech per­son­nel in train­ing and prep­ping the Arab Spring online activists. As we have not­ed in the past, the so-called Arab Spring might have been bet­ter thought of as “The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Spring,” as the neo-lib­er­al, pri­va­ti­za­tion ide­ol­o­gy of Broth­er­hood eco­nom­ic icon Ibn Khal­dun was fun­da­men­tal to the oper­a­tion.

The eco­nom­ic goals of the Arab Spring “op” were reviewed in, among oth­er pro­grams, FTR #‘s 1025 and 1026.

Recall while read­ing the fol­low­ing excerpts of this remark­able and impor­tant book, that:

1.–The Tor net­work was devel­oped by, and used and com­pro­mised by, ele­ments of U.S. intel­li­gence.
2.–One of the pri­ma­ry advo­cates and spon­sors of the Tor net­work is the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors. As we saw in FTR #‘s 891, 895, is an exten­sion of the CIA.
3.–Jacob Appel­baum has been financed by the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors, advo­cates use of the Tor net­work, has helped Wik­iLeaks with its exten­sive use of the Tor net­work, and is an ide­o­log­i­cal acolyte of Ayn Rand.

The Arab Spring pro­vid­ed moti­va­tion for enhanced U.S. fund­ing for Inter­net Free­dom. The Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund, like the BBG a CIA “deriv­a­tive,” was at the cen­ter of this: ” . . . . The moti­va­tion for this expan­sion came out of the Arab Spring. The idea was to make sure the US gov­ern­ment would main­tain its tech­no­log­i­cal advan­tage in the cen­sor­ship arms race that began in the ear­ly 2000s, but the funds were also going into devel­op­ing a new gen­er­a­tion of tools aimed at lever­ag­ing the pow­er of the Inter­net to help for­eign oppo­si­tion activists orga­nize into cohe­sive polit­i­cal move­ments. The BBG’s $25.5 mil­lion cut of the cash more than dou­bled the agen­cy’s anti­cen­sor­ship tech­nol­o­gy bud­get from the pre­vi­ous year, and the BBG fun­neled the mon­ey into the Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund, a new orga­ni­za­tion it had cre­at­ed with­in Radio Free Asia to fund Inter­net Free­dom tech­nolo­gies in the wake of the Arab Spring. . . .”

The fun­da­men­tal posi­tion of BBG and OTF (read “CIA”) to the so-called online pri­va­cy com­mu­ni­ty was con­cise­ly expressed by Yasha Levine: ” . . . . From behind this hip and con­nect­ed exte­ri­or, BBG and Radio Free Asia built a ver­ti­cal­ly inte­grat­ed incu­ba­tor for Inter­net Free­dom tech­nolo­gies, pour­ing mil­lions into projects big and small, includ­ing every­thing from evad­ing cen­sor­ship to help­ing polit­i­cal orga­niz­ing, protests, and move­ment build­ing. With its deep pock­ets and its recruit­ment of big-name pri­va­cy activists, the Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund did­n’t just thrust itself into the pri­va­cy move­ment. In many ways, it WAS the pri­va­cy move­ment. . . .”

FTR #1078 Surveillance Valley, Part 4: Tor Up (Foxes Guarding the Online Privacy Henhouse, Part 1.)

Yasha Levine’s sum­ma­tion of the inex­tri­ca­ble nature and sym­bio­sis between the Inter­net, the tech firms and the so-called “pri­va­cy com­mu­ni­ty” include:

1.–The Inter­net is a weapon, devel­oped for counter-insur­gency pur­pos­es.
2.–Big Tech firms net­work with the very intel­li­gence ser­vices they pub­licly decry.
3.–Big Tech firms that data mine their cus­tomers on a near­ly unimag­in­able scale do so as a direct, oper­a­tional exten­sion of the very sur­veil­lance func­tion upon which  the Inter­net is pred­i­cat­ed.
4.–The tech­nolo­gies tout­ed by the so-called “Pri­va­cy Activists” such as Edward Snow­den and Jacob Apple­baum were devel­oped by the very intel­li­gence ser­vices they are sup­posed to deflect.
5.–The tech­nolo­gies tout­ed by the so-called “Pri­va­cy Activists” such as Edward Snow­den and Jacob Applebaum–such as the Tor Inter­net func­tion and the Sig­nal mobile phone app– are read­i­ly acces­si­ble to the very intel­li­gence ser­vices they are sup­posed to deflect.
6.–The orga­ni­za­tions that pro­mote the alleged virtues of Snow­den, Apple­baum, Tor, Sig­nal et al are linked to the very intel­li­gence ser­vices they would have us believe they oppose.
7.–Big Tech firms embrace “Inter­net Free­dom” as a dis­trac­tion from their own will­ful and all-embrac­ing data min­ing and their ongo­ing con­scious col­lab­o­ra­tion with the very intel­li­gence ser­vices they pub­licly decry.

After detail­ing the his­to­ry of the devel­op­ment of the Inter­net by the nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment, Levine presents the sto­ry of the devel­op­ment of the Tor net­work.

Key points of analy­sis and dis­cus­sion:

1.–Tor’s Sil­i­con Val­ley back­ing: ” . . . . Pri­va­cy groups fund­ed by com­pa­nies like Google and Face­book, includ­ing the Elec­tron­ic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion and Fight for the Future, were some of Tor’s biggest and most ded­i­cat­ed back­ers. Google had direct­ly bankrolled its devel­op­ment, pay­ing out gen­er­ous grants to col­lege stu­dents who worked at Tor dur­ing their sum­mer vaca­tions. Why would an Inter­net com­pa­ny whose entire busi­ness rest­ed on track­ing peo­ple online pro­mote and help devel­op a pow­er­ful pri­va­cy tool? Some­thing did­n’t add up. . . .”
2.–Not sur­pris­ing­ly, Tor does not shield users from orgias­tic data min­ing by Sil­i­con Val­ley tech giants: ” . . . . Tor works only if peo­ple are ded­i­cat­ed to main­tain­ing a strict anony­mous Inter­net rou­tine: using only dum­my email address­es and bogus accounts, car­ry­ing out all finan­cial trans­ac­tions in Bit­coin and oth­er cryp­tocur­ren­cies, and nev­er men­tion­ing their real name in emails or mes­sages. For the vast major­i­ty of peo­ple on the Internet—those who use Gmail, inter­act with Face­book friends, and shop on Amazon—you reveal your iden­ti­ty. These com­pa­nies know who you are. They know your name, your ship­ping address, your cred­it card infor­ma­tion. They con­tin­ue to scan your emails, map your social net­works, and com­pile dossiers. Tor or not, once you enter your account name and pass­word, Tor’s anonymi­ty tech­nol­o­gy becomes use­less. . . .”
3.–Silicon Val­ley’s sup­port for Tor is some­thing of a “false bro­mide”: ” . . . . After all, Snow­den’s leaked doc­u­ments revealed that any­thing Inter­net com­pa­nies had, the NSA had as well. I was puz­zled, but at least I under­stood why Tor had back­ing from Sil­i­con Val­ley: it offered a false sense of pri­va­cy, while not pos­ing a threat to the indus­try’s under­ly­ing sur­veil­lance mod­el. . . .”
4.–Tor is, in fact, financed by ele­ments of the very same intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty and nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment that sup­pos­ed­ly frustrated/“locked out” by Tor! ” . . . . But as I ana­lyzed the orga­ni­za­tion’s finan­cial doc­u­ments, I found that the oppo­site was true. Tor had come out of a joint US Navy—DARPA mil­i­tary project in the ear­ly 2000s and con­tin­ued to rely on a series of fed­er­al con­tracts after it was spun off into a pri­vate non­prof­it. This fund­ing came from the Pen­ta­gon, the State Depart­ment, and at least one orga­ni­za­tion that derived from the CIA. These con­tracts added up to sev­er­al mil­lion dol­lars a year and, most years,  account­ed for more than 90 per­cent of Tor’s oper­at­ing bud­get. Tor was a fed­er­al mil­i­tary con­trac­tor. It even had its own fed­er­al con­tract­ing num­ber. . . This includ­ed Tor’s founder, Roger Din­gle­dine, who spent a sum­mer work­ing at the NSA and who had brought Tor to life under a series of DARPA and Navy con­tracts. . . .”

Wide­ly regard­ed as a cham­pi­on of Inter­net free­dom and pri­va­cy, the Elec­tron­ic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion helped finance Tor and cham­pi­oned its use.

Key ele­ments of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis of the EFF/Tor alliance include:

1.–EFF’s ear­ly financ­ing of Tor: ” . . . . . . . . In 2004, [Roger] Din­gle­dine struck out on his own, spin­ning the mil­i­tary onion rout­ing project into a non-prof­it cor­po­ra­tion called the Tor Project and, while still fund­ed by DARPA and the Navy, began scratch­ing around for pri­vate fund­ing. He got help from an unex­pect­ed ally: the Elec­tron­ic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion (EFF), which gave Tor almost a quar­ter mil­lion dol­lars to keep it going while Din­gle­dine looked for oth­er pri­vate spon­sors. The EFF even host­ed Tor’s web­site. . . .”
2.–The EFF’s effu­sive praise for the fun­da­men­tal­ly com­pro­mised Tor Project: ” . . . . ‘The Tor Project is a per­fect fit for EFF, because one of our pri­ma­ry goals is to pro­tect the pri­va­cy and anonymi­ty of Inter­net users. Tor can help peo­ple exer­cise their First Amend­ment right to free, anony­mous speech online.’ EFF’s tech­nol­o­gy man­ag­er Chris Palmer explained in a 2004 press release, which curi­ous­ly failed to men­tion that Tor was devel­oped pri­mar­i­ly for mil­i­tary intel­li­gence use and was still active­ly fund­ed by the Pen­ta­gon. . . .”
3.–The EFF’s his­to­ry of work­ing with ele­ments of the nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment: ” . . . . In 1994, EFF worked with the FBI to pass the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Assis­tance for Law Enforce­ment Act, which required all telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­nies to build their equip­ment so that it could be wire­tapped by the FBI. In 1999, EFF worked to sup­port NATO’s bomb­ing cam­paign in Koso­vo with some­thing called the ‘Koso­vo Pri­va­cy Sup­port,’ which aimed to keep the region’s Inter­net access open dur­ing mil­i­tary action. Sell­ing a Pen­ta­gon intel­li­gence project as a grass­roots pri­va­cy tool—it did­n’t seem all that wild. . . .”
4.–In FTR #854, we not­ed that EFF co-founder John Per­ry Bar­low was far more than a Grate­ful Dead lyricist/hippie icon: ” . . . . Indeed, in 2002, a few years before it fund­ed Tor, EFF cofounder [John] Per­ry Bar­low casu­al­ly admit­ted that he had been con­sult­ing for intel­li­gence agen­cies for a decade. It seemed that the worlds of sol­diers, spies, and pri­va­cy weren’t as far apart as they appeared. . . .”
5.–EFF’s grav­i­tas in the online pri­va­cy com­mu­ni­ty lent Tor great cred­i­bil­i­ty: ” . . . . EFF’s sup­port for Tor was a big deal. The orga­ni­za­tion com­mand­ed respect in Sil­i­con Val­ley and was wide­ly seen as the ACLU of the Inter­net Age. The fact that it backed Tor meant that no hard ques­tions would be asked about the anonymi­ty tool’s mil­i­tary ori­gins as it tran­si­tioned to the civil­ian world. And that’s exact­ly what hap­pened. . . .”

In FTR #‘s 891 and 895, we not­ed the pri­ma­ry posi­tion of the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors in the devel­op­ment of the so-called “pri­va­cy” net­works. The BBG is a CIA off­shoot: “. . . .  The BBG might have had a bland sound­ing name and pro­fessed a noble mis­sion to inform the world and spread democ­ra­cy. In truth, the orga­ni­za­tion was an out­growth of the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency. . . . The bulk of the BBG is no longer fund­ed from the CIA’s black bud­get, but the agen­cy’s orig­i­nal cold War goal and purpose—subversion and psy­cho­log­i­cal oper­a­tions direct­ed against coun­tries deemed hos­tile to US interests—remain the same. The only thing that did change about the BBG is that today, more of its broad­casts are tak­ing place online . . . .”

After doc­u­ment­ing Radio Free Europe’s growth from the Nazi/Vichy run Radio France dur­ing World War II and RCA’s David Sarnof­f’s involve­ment with the Tran­sra­dio Con­sor­tium (which com­mu­ni­cat­ed vital intel­li­gence to the Axis dur­ing the war), the pro­gram high­lights the involve­ment of Gehlen oper­a­tives in the oper­a­tions of Radio Free Europe, the sem­i­nal CIA broad­cast­ing out­lets.

The BBG (read “CIA”) became a major backer of the Tor Project: ” . . . . . . . . It was Wednes­day morn­ing, Feb­ru­ary 8, 2006, when Roger Din­gle­dine got the email he had been bad­ly wait­ing for. The Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors had final­ly agreed to back the Tor Project. . . . With­in a year, the agency increased Tor’s con­tract to a quar­ter mil­lion dol­lars, and then bumped it up again to almost a mil­lion just a few years lat­er. The rela­tion­ship also led to major con­tracts with oth­er fed­er­al agen­cies, boost­ing Tor’s mea­ger oper­at­ing bud­get to sev­er­al mil­lion dol­lars a year. . . .”

Yasha Levine sums up the essence of the Tor Project: ” . . . . The Tor Project was not a rad­i­cal indie orga­ni­za­tion fight­ing The Man. For all intents and pur­pos­es, it was The Man. Or, at least, The Man’s right hand. . . . inter­nal cor­re­spon­dence reveals Tor’s close col­lab­o­ra­tion with the BBG and mul­ti­ple oth­er wings of the US gov­ern­ment, in par­tic­u­lar those that dealt with for­eign pol­i­cy and soft-pow­er pro­jec­tion. Mes­sages describe meet­ings, train­ings, and con­fer­ences with the NSA, CIA, FBI and State Depart­ment. . . . The fund­ing record tells the sto­ry even more pre­cise­ly. . . . Tor was sub­sist­ing almost exclu­sive­ly on gov­ern­ment con­tracts. By 2008, that includ­ed  con­tracts with DARPA, the Navy, the BBG, and the State Depart­ment as well as Stan­ford Research Insti­tute’s Cyber-Threat Ana­lyt­ics pro­gram. . . .” 

Next, we begin chron­i­cling the career of Jacob Appel­baum. A devo­tee of Ayn Rand, he became one of Tor’s most impor­tant employ­ees and pro­mot­ers. “. . . . With­in months of get­ting the job, he assumed the role of offi­cial Tor Project spokesman and began pro­mot­ing Tor as a pow­er­ful weapon against gov­ern­ment oppres­sion. . . . Over the next sev­er­al years, Din­gledine’s reports back to the BBG [read “CIA”–D.E.] were filled with descrip­tions of Appel­baum’s suc­cess­ful out­reach. . . .”

Intro­duc­ing a top­ic to be more ful­ly explored in our next pro­gram, we note Appel­baum’s piv­otal role in the Wik­iLeaks oper­a­tion and his role in the adop­tion of Tor by Wik­iLeaks: ” . . . . Appel­baum decid­ed to attach him­self to the Wik­iLeaks cause. He spent a few weeks with Assange and the orig­i­nal Wik­iLeaks crew in Ice­land as they pre­pared their first major release and helped secure the site’s anony­mous sub­mis­sions sys­tem using Tor’s hid­den ser­vice fea­ture, which hid the phys­i­cal loca­tion of Wik­iLeaks servers and in the­o­ry made them much less sus­cep­ti­ble to sur­veil­lance and attack. From then on, the Wik­iLeaks site proud­ly adver­tised Tor: ‘secure, anony­mous, dis­trib­uted net­work for max­i­mum secu­ri­ty.’ . . . . Appel­baum did his best to be Assange’s right-hand man. He served as the orga­ni­za­tion’s offi­cial Amer­i­can rep­re­sen­ta­tive and bailed the founder of Wik­iLeaks out of tough spots when the heat from US author­i­ties got too hot. Appel­baum became so inter­twined with Wik­iLeaks that appar­ent­ly some staffers talked about him lead­ing the orga­ni­za­tion if some­thing were to hap­pen to Assange. . . . Assange gave Appel­baum and Tor wide cred­it for help­ing Wik­iLeaks. ‘Jake has been a tire­less pro­mot­er behind the scenes of our cause,’ he told a reporter. ‘Tor’s impor­tance to Wik­iLeaks can­not be under­es­ti­mat­ed.’ With those words, Appel­baum and the Tor Project became cen­tral heroes in the Wik­iLeaks saga, right behind Assange. . . .”

FTR #1028 Miscellaneous Articles and Updates

Updat­ing pre­vi­ous paths of inquiry, as well as intro­duc­ing new ones, the pro­gram begins with a bit of both–discussion of the mur­der of Sau­di jour­nal­ist and pos­si­ble Sau­di and U.S. intel­li­gence offi­cer Jamal Khashog­gi. A devel­op­ment which res­onates strong­ly with pre­vi­ous dis­cus­sion of the so-called “Arab Spring” (read “Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Spring”), the cor­po­ratist eco­nom­ics of Ibn Khal­dun and the Broth­er­hood, and Grover Norquist and Karl Rove’s Islam­ic Free Mar­ket Insti­tute (which fig­ures promi­nent­ly in the post‑9/11 Oper­a­tion Green Quest inves­ti­ga­tion into al-Qae­da and ter­ror­ist financ­ing), Khashog­gi’s death has occa­sioned howls of out­rage, much beat­ing of breasts and tear­ing of hair in nor­mal­ly Sau­di-friend­ly con­fines both inside, and out­side of the U.S.

Khashog­gi’s many con­nec­tions and per­son­al and insti­tu­tion­al rela­tion­ships are impor­tant and piv­otal in a num­ber of ways. They include:

1.–Khashoggi’s long-stand­ing advo­ca­cy of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. Note the main­stream medi­a’s mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood as “demo­c­ra­t­ic.” In FTR #‘s 787, 1025 and 1026, we not­ed how fun­da­men­tal­ly unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic the Broth­er­hood is: ” . . . . In his penul­ti­mate col­umn, Mr. Khashog­gi said democ­ra­cy in the Mid­dle East couldn’t hap­pen with­out the inclu­sion of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. ‘The erad­i­ca­tion of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood is noth­ing less than an abo­li­tion of democ­ra­cy and a guar­an­tee that Arabs will con­tin­ue liv­ing under author­i­tar­i­an and cor­rupt regimes,’ Mr. Khashog­gi wrote Aug. 28. ‘There can be no polit­i­cal reform and democ­ra­cy in any Arab coun­try with­out accept­ing that polit­i­cal­Is­lam is a part of it.’. . . .”  
2.–Allegedly actu­al mem­ber­ship in the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood: ” . . . .  Sev­er­al of his friends say that ear­ly on Mr. Khashog­gi also joined the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. . . .”
3.–A work­ing pro­fes­sion­al rela­tion­ship with Khaled Saf­fu­ri, the co-founder of Grover Norquist and Karl Rove’s Islam­ic Free Mar­ket Insti­tute. This insti­tu­tion was, in effect, an Amer­i­can nexus for the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and its lais­sez-faire/­cor­po­ratist eco­nom­ics, as well as being a cen­tral ele­ment in the Oper­a­tion Green Quest inves­ti­ga­tion. We cov­ered Oper­a­tion Green Quest at length in numer­ous pro­grams, includ­ing FTR #‘s 356, 357, 462, 464, 513, 1006 : ” . . . . Jamal Khashog­gi, a pro­lif­ic writer and com­men­ta­tor, was work­ing qui­et­ly with intel­lec­tu­als, reformists and Islamists to launch a group called Democ­ra­cy for the Arab World Now. . . . Khashog­gi had incor­po­rat­ed his democ­ra­cy advo­ca­cy group, DAWN, in Jan­u­ary in Delaware, said Khaled Saf­fu­ri, anoth­er friend. The group was still in the plan­ning stages, and Khashog­gi was work­ing on it qui­et­ly, like­ly con­cerned it could cause trou­ble for asso­ciates, includ­ing activists in the Gulf, Saf­fu­ri said. . . .”
4.–Turkey’s Tayyip Erdo­gan, who might be described as a fas­cist wish­bone, with one foot in the Islam­ic fas­cist Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and the oth­er in the sec­u­lar Pan-Turk­ist fas­cism of the Nation­al Action Par­ty and the Grey Wolves. ” . . . . Mr. Khashog­gi was close to the gov­ern­ment of Turk­ish Pres­i­dent Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan, whose ties with Sau­di Ara­bia had become increas­ing­ly strained in recent years. Turkey backed Qatar in its diplo­mat­ic spat with Sau­di Ara­bia last year, and like Qatar, Turkey also dif­fers with Sau­di Ara­bia over its view of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. Mr. Khashog­gi knew Pres­i­dent Erdo­gan per­son­al­ly and was a friend to some of his clos­est advis­ers, say peo­ple who knew him. . . .”
5.–Prince Tur­ki al-Faisal, the head of Sau­di intel­li­gence, who, as dis­cussed in numer­ous shows, includ­ing FTR #‘s 347 and 358, basi­cal­ly ran Osama bin Laden. Khashog­gi was also close to Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, at one time the sec­ond largest stock­hold­er in News­corp (behind the Mur­dochs) and some­one “20th hijack­er” Zacarias Mous­saoui named as one of the promi­nent Saud­is who financed al-Qae­da. Imme­di­ate­ly after being named by Mous­saoui, al-Waleed announced that he was donat­ing all of his bil­lions to char­i­ty. ” . . . . Through it all, he main­tained close ties to some of Sau­di Arabia’s most pow­er­ful princes. In the ear­ly 2000s, he served as an advis­er to Prince Tur­ki al-Faisal, a for­mer head of Sau­di intel­li­gence, dur­ing the prince’s time as ambas­sador to the U.K. and the U.S. He was a friend of the bil­lion­aire Prince al-Waleed bin Talal. . . .”
5.–Osama bin Laden and sup­port for the Afghan Muja­hadeen, who mor­phed into al-Qae­da. ” . . . . He trav­eled to Afghanistan as a jour­nal­ist, where he became the first Arab jour­nal­ist to inter­view Osama bin Laden in the late 1980s. ‘A lot of them went to fight. He went to report,’ said Peter Bergen, an Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist and aca­d­e­m­ic who knew Mr. Khashog­gi. . . .”
7.–Khashoggi was the nephew of Sau­di weapons deal­er Adnan Khashog­gi, who was piv­otal­ly involved with the Iran-Con­tra scan­dal, the sup­port effort for the Afghan Muja­hadeen, Al-Qae­da and the so-called “Truther” move­ment. ” . . . . His uncle was Adnan Khashog­gi, a famous arms deal­er. . . .”
8.– His rela­tion­ship with Sau­di intel­li­gence chief Prince Tur­ki (who “ran” Osama bin Laden for a time), his role in the Afghan war cov­er­ing bin Laden and the Muja­hadeen and his work for the CIA-con­nect­ed Wash­ing­ton Post sug­gest the dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty that the late Jamal Khashog­gi was a spook-jour­nal­ist, work­ing for both the Saud­is and ele­ments of CIA.

In FTR #1015, we not­ed the issu­ing of school text­books glo­ri­fy­ing Nazism while Naren­dra Modi head­ed the Indi­an state of Gujarat.

In FTR #998, among oth­er pro­grams, we not­ed John Cony­ers’ active oppo­si­tion to the OUN/B suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tions in pow­er in Ukraine, and his ouster by the #MeToo move­ment, which dis­plays symp­to­matic fea­tures of an “op.” Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est is the appar­ent role of Far right blog­ger Mike “Misog­y­ny Gets You Laid” Cer­novich. An inter­est­ing per­son to sig­nal the destruc­tion of one of the few active­ly anti-fas­cist law­mak­ers by on osten­si­bly “pro­gres­sive” polit­i­cal move­ment.

It is inter­est­ing and sig­nif­i­cant that Cony­ers also co-spon­sored a House Res­o­lu­tion con­demn­ing Mod­i’s sup­port for Nazi racism and ide­ol­o­gy.

” . . . . The spon­sor, Rep. John Cony­ers (D‑MI) said the State Depart­ment ‘has dis­cussed the role of Modi and his gov­ern­ment in pro­mot­ing atti­tudes of racial suprema­cy, racial hatred, and the lega­cy of Nazism through his government’s sup­port of school text­books in which Nazism is glo­ri­fied.’ The res­o­lu­tion said Modi revised school text­books, which men­tioned the ‘charis­mat­ic per­son­al­i­ty of Hitler the Supre­mo’ and failed to acknowl­edge the hor­rors of the Holo­caust. . . .”

Worth not­ing in this con­text is the fact that Pierre Omid­yar active­ly assist­ed the rise of both the OUN/B fas­cists in Ukraine and Mod­i’s BJP/RSS fas­cists in India, as dis­cussed in FTR #889.

The rest of the pro­gram con­sists of dis­cus­sion of the inter­sec­tion of eugen­ics, white suprema­cy and anti-immi­gra­tion fer­vor, This will be exam­ined at greater length in our next pro­gram.
Key points of analy­sis include:
1.–Similarity between the title of a DHS post­ing and the 14 words slo­gan mint­ed by Nazi David Lane.
2.–The res­ig­na­tion of a DHS Trump appointee due to links to white suprema­cists.
3.–Other Trump appointees with links to the Fed­er­a­tion of Immi­gra­tion Reform.
4.–A pos­si­ble mind con­trol link to the mur­der of Iowa col­lege stu­dent Mol­lie Tib­betts.
5.-Review of the Sirhan Sirhan link to the “girl in the pol­ka dot dress.”

FTR #1026 The So-Called “Arab Spring” Revisited, Part 2

In FTR #‘s 733 through 739, we pre­sent­ed our view that the so-called Arab Spring was a U.S. intel­li­gence oper­a­tion, aimed at plac­ing the Broth­er­hood in pow­er in Mus­lim coun­tries dom­i­nat­ed either by a sec­u­lar dic­ta­tor or absolute monar­chy.

Con­tin­u­ing analy­sis from our pre­vi­ous pro­gram, this broad­cast delves fur­ther into the net­work­ing between the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and Al-Qae­da. Against the back­ground of the occu­pa­tion of Idlib Province in Syr­ia by Al-Qae­da, we high­light the appar­ent role of Mor­si’s gov­ern­ment and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in the events sur­round­ing the 2012 attack on the U.S. Embassy in Beng­hazi, Libya.

The over­throw of Khadafy in Libya was an out­growth of the so-called Arab Spring, as was the pre­cip­i­ta­tion of the civ­il war in Syr­ia. Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance is the fact that the GOP-led inves­ti­ga­tions of the Beng­hazi attack led direct­ly to both the inves­ti­ga­tion of Hillary Clin­ton’s e‑mails and the deci­sive­ly sig­nif­i­cant FBI tam­per­ing with the 2016 elec­tion, as well as the alleged “hack” of Hillary’s e‑mails!

An Egypt­ian news­pa­per pub­lished what were said to be inter­cept­ed record­ings of Mor­si com­mu­ni­cat­ing con­spir­a­to­ri­al­ly with Muham­mad al-Zawahiri, the the broth­er of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the head of Al-Qae­da. Much of this checks out with infor­ma­tion that is already on the pub­lic record.

Note the net­work­ing of GOP Sen­a­tors John McCain and Lind­say Gra­ham with Khairat El-Shater of the Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood while he was in prison, as well as the alleged links between the Egypt­ian Broth­er­hood and the cells involved in attack­ing the U.S. Embassy in Libya.

What we may well be look­ing at is a gam­bit along the lines of what has become known as the Octo­ber Surprise–collusion between the Iran­ian Islamists and George H.W. Bush/CIA/GOP to (among oth­er things) desta­bi­lize the Carter admin­is­tra­tion and 1980 re-elec­tion cam­paign.

In addi­tion, we won­der about a deal hav­ing been struck to have Al-Qae­da fight against Bashar Assad in Syr­ia, while avoid­ing attacks inside the U.S.?

Of pri­ma­ry focus in the mate­r­i­al below is Khairat El-Shater (translit­er­at­ed spellings of his name dif­fer.) El-Shater:

1.–Was the num­ber two man in the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, though not for­mer­ly a mem­ber of Mor­si’s gov­ern­ment.
2.–Networked with U.S. Ambas­sador Anne Pat­ter­son and GOP Sen­a­tors John McCain and Lind­say Gra­ham and Khairat El-Shater (alter­na­tive­ly translit­er­at­ed with two “t’s” and/or an “al”), short­ly after Mor­si was deposed. ” . . . . It is inter­est­ing to note here that, pri­or to these rev­e­la­tions, U.S. ambas­sador Anne Pat­ter­son was seen vis­it­ing with Khairat El-Shater—even though he held no posi­tion in the Mor­si government—and after the oust­ing and impris­on­ment of Mor­si and lead­ing Broth­er­hood mem­bers, Sens. John McCain and Lind­say Gra­ham made it a point to vis­it the civil­ian Shater in his prison cell and urged the Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment to release him. . . .”
3.–Was deeply involved in mobi­liz­ing Al-Qae­da on behalf of Mor­si and the Broth­er­hood: ” . . . . Also on that same first day of the rev­o­lu­tion, Khairat al-Shater, Deputy Leader of the Broth­er­hood, had a meet­ing with a del­e­gate of jiha­di fight­ers and reit­er­at­ed Morsi’s request that all jihadis come to the aid of the pres­i­den­cy and the Broth­er­hood. . . . ”
4.–Was the appar­ent source of a $50 mil­lion con­tri­bu­tion by the Broth­er­hood to Al Qae­da: ” . . . . That the Mus­lim Brotherhood’s inter­na­tion­al wing, includ­ing through the agency of Khairat al-Shater, had pro­vid­ed $50 mil­lion to al-Qae­da in part to sup­port the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Egypt. . . .”
5.–Had the pass­port of the alleged leader of the Beng­hazi attack in his home when he was arrest­ed: ” . . . . Most recent­ly, on July 29, 2013, Ahmed Musa, a promi­nent Egypt­ian polit­i­cal insid­er and ana­lyst made sev­er­al asser­tions on Tahrir TV that fur­ther con­nect­ed the dots. . . . Musa insist­ed that he had absolute knowl­edge that the mur­der­er of Chris Stevens was Mohsin al-‘Azzazi, whose pass­port was found in Broth­er­hood leader Khairat El-Shater’s home, when the lat­ter was arrest­ed. . . .”
6.–Epitomized the GOP-beloved, cor­po­ratist eco­nom­ic ide­ol­o­gy and lifestyle: ” . . . . Arguably the most pow­er­ful man in the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood is Khairat El-Shater, a mul­ti­mil­lion­aire tycoon whose finan­cial inter­ests extend into elec­tron­ics, man­u­fac­tur­ing and retail. A strong advo­cate of pri­va­ti­za­tion, Al-Shater is one of a cadre of Mus­lim Broth­er­hood busi­ness­men who helped finance the Brotherhood’s Free­dom and Jus­tice Party’s impres­sive elec­toral vic­to­ry this win­ter and is now craft­ing the FJP’s eco­nom­ic agen­da. . . . . . . . the Brotherhood’s ide­ol­o­gy actu­al­ly has more in com­mon with America’s Repub­li­can Par­ty than with al-Qai­da. Few Amer­i­cans know it but the Broth­er­hood is a free-mar­ket par­ty led by wealthy busi­ness­men whose eco­nom­ic agen­da embraces pri­va­ti­za­tion and for­eign invest­ment while spurn­ing labor unions and the redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth. Like the Repub­li­cans in the U.S., the finan­cial inter­ests of the party’s lead­er­ship of busi­ness­men and pro­fes­sion­als diverge sharply from those of its poor, social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive fol­low­ers. . . .”

This broad­cast begins with con­clu­sion of read­ing of a key arti­cle that was fea­tured in our last pro­gram.

Key points of analy­sis in dis­cus­sion of the Morsi/Zawahiri/Brotherhood con­nec­tion include:

1.–Muhamed Zawahir­i’s promise to bol­ster Mor­si’s gov­ern­ment with mil­i­tary sup­port, in exchange for Mor­si steer­ing Egypt in the direc­tion of Sharia law. ” . . . . The call end­ed in agree­ment that al-Qae­da would sup­port the Broth­er­hood, includ­ing its inter­na­tion­al branch­es, under the under­stand­ing that Mor­si would soon imple­ment full Sharia in Egypt.  After this, Muham­mad Zawahiri and Khairat al-Shater, the num­ber-two man of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood orga­ni­za­tion, report­ed­ly met reg­u­lar­ly. . . .”
2.–Morsi’s agree­ment with Zawahir­i’s pro­pos­al. ” . . . . Zawahiri fur­ther request­ed that Mor­si allow them to devel­op train­ing camps in Sinai in order to sup­port the Broth­er­hood through trained mil­i­tants. Along with say­ing that the Broth­er­hood intend­ed to form a ‘rev­o­lu­tion­ary guard’ to pro­tect him against any coup, Mor­si added that, in return for al-Qaeda’s and its affil­i­ates’ sup­port, not only would he allow them to have such train­ing camps, but he would facil­i­tate their devel­op­ment in Sinai and give them four facil­i­ties to use along the Egypt­ian-Libyan bor­der. . . .”
3.–The net­work­ing between U.S. Ambas­sador Anne Pat­ter­son and GOP Sen­a­tors John McCain and Lind­say Gra­ham and Khairat El-Shater (alter­na­tive­ly translit­er­at­ed with two “t’s”), short­ly after Mor­si was deposed. ” . . . . It is inter­est­ing to note here that, pri­or to these rev­e­la­tions, U.S. ambas­sador Anne Pat­ter­son was seen vis­it­ing with Khairat al-Shater—even though he held no posi­tion in the Mor­si government—and after the oust­ing and impris­on­ment of Mor­si and lead­ing Broth­er­hood mem­bers, Sens. John McCain and Lind­say Gra­ham made it a point to vis­it the civil­ian Shater in his prison cell and urged the Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment to release him. . . .”
4.–Note that Mor­si sanc­tioned and Broth­er­hood-aid­ed Al-Qae­da mil­i­tants were appar­ent­ly involved in the Behg­hazi attacks that led to the Beng­hazi inves­ti­ga­tion, the Hillary e‑mails non-scan­dal and all that fol­lowed: ” . . . . Accord­ing to a Libyan Ara­bic report I trans­lat­ed back in June 2013, those who attacked the U.S. con­sulate in Beng­hazi, killing Amer­i­cans, includ­ing Ambas­sador Chris Stevens, were from jiha­di cells that had been formed in Libya through Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood sup­port.  Those inter­ro­gat­ed named Mor­si and oth­er top Broth­er­hood lead­er­ship as accom­plices. . . . ”
5.–Khairat El-Shater was deeply involved in mobi­liz­ing Al-Qae­da on behalf of Mor­si and the Broth­er­hood: ” . . . . Also on that same first day of the rev­o­lu­tion, Khairat al-Shater, Deputy Leader of the Broth­er­hood, had a meet­ing with a del­e­gate of jiha­di fight­ers and reit­er­at­ed Morsi’s request that all jihadis come to the aid of the pres­i­den­cy and the Broth­er­hood. . . . ”
6.–Khairat El-Shater was the appar­ent source of a $50 mil­lion con­tri­bu­tion by the Broth­er­hood to Al Qae­da: ” . . . . That the Mus­lim Brotherhood’s inter­na­tion­al wing, includ­ing through the agency of Khairat al-Shater, had pro­vid­ed $50 mil­lion to al-Qae­da in part to sup­port the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Egypt. . . .”
7.–Next, we high­light anoth­er impor­tant arti­cle from Ray­mond Ibrahim about the Mor­si/Al-Qae­da con­nec­tion to the Beng­hazi attack. Sup­ple­ment­ing the infor­ma­tion about net­work­ing between U.S. Ambas­sador to Egypt Anne Pat­ter­son, John McCain, Lind­say Gra­ham and Khairat al-Shater, we note that:

1.–The Beng­hazi attack­ers were appar­ent­ly linked to Mor­si and the Broth­er­hood: ” . . . . days after the Beng­hazi attack back in Sep­tem­ber 2012, Mus­lim Broth­er­hood con­nec­tions appeared.  A video made dur­ing the con­sulate attack records peo­ple approach­ing the belea­guered U.S. com­pound; one of them yells to the besiegers in an Egypt­ian dialect, ‘Don’t shoot—Dr. Mor­si sent us!’ appar­ent­ly a ref­er­ence to the for­mer Islamist pres­i­dent. . . .”
2.–The pass­port of the alleged leader of the Beng­hazi attack was found in the home of McCain/Graham con­tact Kharat al-Shater’s home when he was arrest­ed: ” . . . . Most recent­ly, on July 29, 2013, Ahmed Musa, a promi­nent Egypt­ian polit­i­cal insid­er and ana­lyst made sev­er­al asser­tions on Tahrir TV that fur­ther con­nect­ed the dots. . . . Musa insist­ed that he had absolute knowl­edge that the mur­der­er of Chris Stevens was Mohsin al-‘Azzazi, whose pass­port was found in Broth­er­hood leader Khairat El-Shater’s home, when the lat­ter was arrest­ed. . . .”
3.–The attack on the U.S. Embassy may well have been intend­ed to take Chris Stevens hostage, in order to use him as poten­tial barter for the Blind Sheikh: ” . . . . The day before the embassy attacks, based on lit­tle known but legit­i­mate Ara­bic reports, I wrote an arti­cle titled ‘Jihadis Threat­en to Burn U.S. Embassy in Cairo,’ explain­ing how Islamists—including al-Qaeda—were threat­en­ing to attack the U.S. embassy in Cairo unless the noto­ri­ous Blind Sheikh—an Islamist hero held in prison in the U.S. in con­nec­tion to the first World Trade Cen­ter bombing—was released.  The date Sep­tem­ber 11 was also delib­er­ate­ly cho­sen to attack the embassy to com­mem­o­rate the ‘hero­ic’ Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001 al-Qae­da strikes on Amer­i­ca. . . .”
4.–The Unit­ed States: ” . . . . first with Anne Pat­ter­son, and now with Sen­a­tors John McCain and Lind­say Gra­ham, keep pres­sur­ing Egypt to release Broth­er­hood lead­ers; McCain per­son­al­ly even vis­it­ed the civil­ian El-Shater, whose raid­ed home revealed the pass­port of Azzazi, whom Musa claims is the mur­der­er of Stevens. . . .”

Fol­low­ing the Beng­hazi dis­cus­sion, we recap an arti­cle about the Broth­er­hood and appar­ent Al-Qaeda/Beng­hazi col­lab­o­ra­tor Khairat El-Shater, not­ing the pow­er­ful res­o­nance between his and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s val­ues and those of the GOP and the cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ty:

1.–” . . . . the Brotherhood’s ide­ol­o­gy actu­al­ly has more in com­mon with America’s Repub­li­can Par­ty than with al-Qai­da. Few Amer­i­cans know it but the Broth­er­hood is a free-mar­ket par­ty led by wealthy busi­ness­men whose eco­nom­ic agen­da embraces pri­va­ti­za­tion and for­eign invest­ment while spurn­ing labor unions and the redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth. Like the Repub­li­cans in the U.S., the finan­cial inter­ests of the party’s lead­er­ship of busi­ness­men and pro­fes­sion­als diverge sharply from those of its poor, social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive fol­low­ers. . . .”
2.–” . . . . Arguably the most pow­er­ful man in the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood is Khairat El-Shater, a mul­ti­mil­lion­aire tycoon whose finan­cial inter­ests extend into elec­tron­ics, man­u­fac­tur­ing and retail. A strong advo­cate of pri­va­ti­za­tion, Al-Shater is one of a cadre of Mus­lim Broth­er­hood busi­ness­men who helped finance the Brotherhood’s Free­dom and Jus­tice Party’s impres­sive elec­toral vic­to­ry this win­ter and is now craft­ing the FJP’s eco­nom­ic agen­da. . . .”

We con­clude with infor­ma­tion about the train­ing of activists in high-tech and social media in order to launch the Arab Spring.

In a remark­able and very impor­tant new book, Yasha Levine has high­light­ed the role of U.S. tech per­son­nel in train­ing and prep­ping the Arab Spring online activists.

Note while read­ing the fol­low­ing excerpts of this remark­able and impor­tant book, that:

1.–The Tor net­work was devel­oped by, and used and com­pro­mised by, ele­ments of U.S. intel­li­gence.
2.–One of the pri­ma­ry advo­cates and spon­sors of the Tor net­work is the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors. As we saw in FTR #‘s 891, 895, is an exten­sion of the CIA.
3.–Jacob Appel­baum has been financed by the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors, advo­cates use of the Tor net­work, has helped Wik­iLeaks with its exten­sive use of the Tor net­work, and is a the­o­ret­i­cal accolyte of Ayn Rand.

FTR #1025 The So-Called “Arab Spring” Revisited, Part 1

In this pro­gram, we review and present infor­ma­tion about the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and the phe­nom­e­non that became known as “The Arab Spring.”

The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood is an Islam­ic fas­cist orga­ni­za­tion, allied with the Axis in World War II. After the war, the orga­ni­za­tion grav­i­tat­ed to ele­ments of West­ern intel­li­gence, where it proved to be a bul­wark against Com­mu­nism in the Mus­lim world.

It is our view that the Broth­er­hood was seen as use­ful because of its mil­i­tary off­shoots (Al-Qae­da in par­tic­u­lar) were use­ful proxy war­riors in places like the Cau­ca­sus and the Balka­ns and because the Broth­er­hood’s cor­po­ratist, neo-lib­er­al eco­nom­ic doc­trine was in keep­ing with the desires and goals of the trans-nation­al cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ty.

(The Afghan Muja­hedin were a direct off­shoot of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and the suc­cess­ful war con­duct­ed by that group was a suc­cess­ful man­i­fes­ta­tion of “Broth­er­hood” as proxy war­riors. Of course, Al-Qae­da grew direct­ly from the Afghan jihadists.)

In FTR #‘s 733 through 739, we pre­sent­ed our view that the so-called Arab Spring was a U.S. intel­li­gence oper­a­tion, aimed at plac­ing the Broth­er­hood in pow­er in Mus­lim coun­tries dom­i­nat­ed either by a sec­u­lar dic­ta­tor or absolute monar­chy.

In FTR #787, we solid­i­fied our analy­sis with defin­i­tive con­fir­ma­tion of our work­ing hypoth­e­sis pre­sent­ed years ear­li­er.

About the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s eco­nom­ic doc­trine: ” . . . . . . . In Mus­lim litur­gy, the deals cut in the souk become a metaphor for the con­tract between God and the faith­ful. And the busi­ness mod­el Muham­mad pre­scribed, accord­ing to Mus­lim schol­ars and econ­o­mists, is very much in the lais­sez-faire tra­di­tion lat­er embraced by the West. Prices were to be set by God alone—anticipating by more than a mil­len­nium Adam Smith’s ref­er­ence to the ‘invis­i­ble hand’ of mar­ket-based pric­ing. . . . The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood hails 14th cen­tury philoso­pher Ibn Khal­dun as its eco­nomic guide. Antic­i­pat­ing sup­ply-side eco­nom­ics, Khal­dun argued that cut­ting tax­es rais­es pro­duc­tion and tax rev­enues, and that state con­trol should be lim­ited to pro­vid­ing water, fire and free graz­ing land, the util­i­ties of the ancient world. The World Bank has called Ibn Khal­dun the first advo­cate of pri­va­ti­za­tion. His found­ing influ­ence is a sign of mod­er­a­tion. If Islamists in pow­er ever do clash with the West, it won’t be over com­merce. . . .”

Ronald Rea­gan res­onat­ed with the Broth­er­hood’s eco­nom­ic doc­trine when pro­mot­ing his sup­ply-side eco­nom­ics: “Pres­i­dent Rea­gan, in his news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, cit­ed a 14th cen­tu­ry Islam­ic schol­ar as an ear­ly expo­nent of the ”sup­ply-side” eco­nom­ic the­o­ry on which his Admin­is­tra­tion bases many of its poli­cies. An author­i­ty on the schol­ar lat­er said that the ref­er­ence seemed accu­rate. . . . Respond­ing to a ques­tion about the effects of tax and spend­ing cuts that began tak­ing effect yes­ter­day, Mr. Rea­gan said the sup­ply-side prin­ci­ple dat­ed at least as far back as Ibn Khal­dun, who is gen­er­al­ly regard­ed as the great­est Arab his­to­ri­an to emerge from the high­ly devel­oped Ara­bic cul­ture of the Mid­dle Ages. . . .”

The U.S. view on the Broth­er­hood and Islamism in gen­er­al was epit­o­mized by CIA offi­cer Gra­ham Fuller, who ran the Afghan Muja­hadin: ” . . . . . . . Fuller comes from that fac­tion of CIA Cold War­riors who believed (and still appar­ently believe) that fun­da­men­tal­ist Islam, even in its rad­i­cal jiha­di form, does not pose a threat to the West, for the sim­ple rea­son that fun­da­men­tal­ist Islam is con­ser­v­a­tive, against social jus­tice, against social­ism and redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth, and in favor of hier­ar­chi­cal socio-eco­nom­ic struc­tures. Social­ism is the com­mon ene­my to both cap­i­tal­ist Amer­ica and to Wah­habi Islam, accord­ing to Fuller. . . .‘There is no main­stream Islam­ic organization...with rad­i­cal social views,’ he wrote. ‘Clas­si­cal Islam­ic the­ory envis­ages the role of the state as lim­ited to facil­i­tat­ing the well-being of mar­kets and mer­chants rather than con­trol­ling them. Islamists have always pow­er­fully object­ed to social­ism and communism....Islam has nev­er had prob­lems with the idea that wealth is uneven­ly dis­trib­uted.’ . . . .”

Next, we present the read­ing of an arti­cle by CFR mem­ber Bruce Hoff­man. Not­ing Al Qaeda’s resur­gence and Al Qaeda’s empha­sis on the Syr­i­an con­flict, Hoff­man cites the so-called “Arab Spring” as the key event in Al Qaeda’s resur­gence. ” . . . . The thou­sands of hard­ened al-Qae­da fight­ers freed from Egypt­ian pris­ons in 2012–2013 by Pres­i­dent Mohammed Mor­si gal­va­nized the move­ment at a crit­i­cal moment, when insta­bil­i­ty reigned and a hand­ful of men well-versed in ter­ror­ism and sub­ver­sion could plunge a coun­try or a region into chaos. Whether in Libya, Turkey, Syr­ia, or Yemen, their arrival was prov­i­den­tial in terms of advanc­ing al-Qaeda’s inter­ests or increas­ing its influ­ence. . . . It was Syr­ia where al-Qaeda’s inter­ven­tion proved most con­se­quen­tial. One of Zawahiri’s first offi­cial acts after suc­ceed­ing bin Laden as emir was to order a Syr­i­an vet­er­an of the Iraqi insur­gency named Abu Moham­mad al-Julani to return home and estab­lish the al-Qae­da fran­chise that would even­tu­al­ly become Jab­hat al-Nus­ra. . . .”

Hoff­man notes that Al-Qae­da and the Islam­ic State were, at one  time, part of a uni­fied orga­ni­za­tion: ” . . . . Al-Qaeda’s cho­sen instru­ment was Jab­hat al-Nus­ra, the prod­uct of a joint ini­tia­tive with al-Qaeda’s Iraqi branch, which had rebrand­ed itself as the Islam­ic State of Iraq (ISI). But as Nus­ra grew in both strength and impact, a dis­pute erupt­ed between ISI and al-Qae­da over con­trol of the group. In a bold pow­er grab, ISI’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Bagh­da­di, announced the forcible amal­ga­ma­tion of al-Nus­ra with ISI in a new orga­ni­za­tion to be called the Islam­ic State of Iraq and Syr­ia (ISIS). Julani refused to accede to the uni­lat­er­al merg­er and appealed to Zawahiri. The quar­rel inten­si­fied, and after Zawahiri’s attempts to medi­ate it col­lapsed, he expelled ISIS from the al-Qae­da net­work. . . .”

An Egypt­ian news­pa­per pub­lished what were said to be inter­cept­ed record­ings of Mor­si com­mu­ni­cat­ing con­spir­a­to­ri­al­ly with Muham­mad al-Zawahiri, the the broth­er of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the head of Al-Qae­da. Much of this checks out with infor­ma­tion that is already on the pub­lic record.

The Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment sen­tenced more than 500 mem­bers of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, to the resound­ing con­dem­na­tion of West­ern coun­tries, includ­ing the U.S. What we were not told was why. THIS appears to be why. Note the pro­found con­nec­tion between the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood gov­ern­ment of Mor­si and Al Qae­da, infor­ma­tion that sup­ple­ments what the Bruce Hoff­man paper dis­cuss­es: ” . . . . Mor­si informed Zawahiri that the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood sup­ports the mujahidin (jihadis) and that the mujahidin should sup­port the Broth­er­hood in order for them both, and the Islamist agen­da, to pre­vail in Egypt. This makes sense in the con­text that, soon after Mor­si came to pow­er, the gen­er­al pub­lic did become increas­ing­ly crit­i­cal of him and his poli­cies, includ­ing the fact that he was plac­ing only Broth­er­hood mem­bers in Egypt’s most impor­tant posts, try­ing quick­ly to push through a pro-Islamist con­sti­tu­tion, and, as Egyp­tians called it, try­ing in gen­er­al to ‘Broth­er­hood­ize’ Egypt. This sec­ond phone call being longer than the first, Zawahiri took it as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­grat­u­late Mor­si on his recent pres­i­den­tial victory—which, inci­den­tal­ly, from the start, was por­trayed by some as fraudulent—and expressed his joy that Morsi’s pres­i­den­cy could only mean that ‘all sec­u­lar infi­dels would be removed from Egypt.’ Then Zawahiri told Mor­si: ‘Rule accord­ing to the Sharia of Allah [or ‘Islam­ic law’], and we will stand next to you.  Know that, from the start, there is no so-called democ­ra­cy, so get rid of your oppo­si­tion.’ . . .”

Note the net­work­ing of GOP Sen­a­tors John McCain and Lind­say Gra­ham with Khairat El-Shater of the Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood while he was in prison. ” . . . . The call end­ed in agree­ment that al-Qae­da would sup­port the Broth­er­hood, includ­ing its inter­na­tion­al branch­es, under the under­stand­ing that Mor­si would soon imple­ment full Sharia in Egypt.  After this, Muham­mad Zawahiri and Khairat al-Shater, the num­ber-two man of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood orga­ni­za­tion, report­ed­ly met reg­u­lar­ly. It is inter­est­ing to note here that, pri­or to these rev­e­la­tions, U.S. ambas­sador Anne Pat­ter­son was seen vis­it­ing with Khairat al-Shater—even though he held no posi­tion in the Mor­si government—and after the oust­ing and impris­on­ment of Mor­si and lead­ing Broth­er­hood mem­bers, Sens. John McCain and Lind­say Gra­ham made it a point to vis­it the civil­ian Shater in his prison cell and urged the Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment to release him. . . .”

Might there be some rela­tion­ship between the Gra­ham, McCain/Shater con­tacts and the evo­lu­tion of the Benghazi/Clinton emails/Trump elec­tion nexus?

Note, also, that Mor­si and Zawahir­i/Al-Qae­da jihadis were alleged­ly involved in the Behg­hazi attack that, ulti­mate­ly, led to the Beng­hazi hear­ings, the  Hillary Clin­ton e‑mail non-scan­dal and Don­ald Trump’s ascent: ” . . . . Along with say­ing that the Broth­er­hood intend­ed to form a ‘rev­o­lu­tion­ary guard’ to pro­tect him against any coup, Mor­si added that, in return for al-Qaeda’s and its affil­i­ates’ sup­port, not only would he allow them to have such train­ing camps, but he would facil­i­tate their devel­op­ment in Sinai and give them four facil­i­ties to use along the Egypt­ian-Libyan bor­der. That Libya is men­tioned is inter­est­ing.  Accord­ing to a Libyan Ara­bic report I trans­lat­ed back in June 2013, those who attacked the U.S. con­sulate in Beng­hazi, killing Amer­i­cans, includ­ing Ambas­sador Chris Stevens, were from jiha­di cells that had been formed in Libya through Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood sup­port.  Those inter­ro­gat­ed named Mor­si and oth­er top Broth­er­hood lead­er­ship as accom­plices. . . .”

FTR #1024 Ukrainian Fascism, Maidan Snipers and Implications for the Syrian War, Part 2

On the 17th anniver­sary of the Sep­tem­ber 11th attacks, we con­tin­ue with analy­sis of the Maid­an shootings–an appar­ent “false flag” operation–and muse about the impli­ca­tions of that for the con­flict in Syr­ia, as well as Russ­ian and Amer­i­can polit­i­cal life.

In the first part of the pro­gram, we fin­ish read­ing the poster pre­sen­ta­tion that pro­fes­sor Ivan Katchanovs­ki, PhD of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ottawa pre­sent­ed at The 2018 Con­fer­ence of Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Asso­ciates.

Katchanovs­ki has done a deep, detailed foren­sic study of the evi­dence in the Maid­an sniper attacks. He has a rig­or­ous, suc­cinct dig­i­tal mul­ti­me­dia ‘poster’ (an ‘iPoster’) for his find­ing that the Maid­an sniper attacks were a false flag oper­a­tion. That poster was pre­sent­ed dur­ing the 2018 Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Asso­ci­a­tion con­fer­ence in Boston. It gives a high lev­el overview of his research and is heav­i­ly embed­ded with sub­stan­tive, doc­u­men­tary videos. Here are the con­tents of the poster. Be sure to check out the numer­ous images and videos includ­ed in the actu­al iPoster online.

He con­cludes his pre­sen­ta­tion with: “ . . . . Maid­an mas­sacre tri­al and inves­ti­ga­tion evi­dence have revealed var­i­ous evi­dence that at least the absolute major­i­ty of 49 killed and 157 wound­ed Maid­an pro­test­ers on Feb­ru­ary 20, 2014 were mas­sa­cred by snipers in Maid­an-con­trolled build­ings. Such evi­dence includes tes­ti­monies of the major­i­ty of wound­ed pro­test­ers and many wit­ness­es, foren­sic med­ical and bal­lisitic exam­i­na­tions, and inves­ti­ga­tion own find­ing that about half of Maid­an pro­test­ers were wound­ed from oth­er loca­tions than the Berkut police. Var­i­ous indi­ca­tions of stonewalling of the Maid­an mas­sacre inves­ti­ga­tions and the tri­als by the Maid­an gov­ern­ment offi­cials and by far right orga­ni­za­tions. Var­i­ous indi­ca­tions of the cov­er-up of much of the key evi­dence of the mas­sacre. Such rev­e­la­tions from the Maid­an mas­sacre tri­als and inves­ti­ga­tions cor­rob­o­rate pre­vi­ous stud­ies find­ings that this mas­sacre was a false flag mass killing with involve­ment of ele­ments of Maid­an lead­er­ship and the far right and that it includ­ed the mas­sacre of the police. The puz­zling mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Maid­an mas­sacre, its inves­ti­ga­tion, and the tri­al by West­ern media and gov­ern­ments require fur­ther research con­cern­ing rea­sons for such mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion . . . . ”

Note: Since FTR #1023 was record­ed pro­fes­sor Katchanovs­ki has post­ed a 59-minute-long video of the Maid­an shoot­ings. The video fea­tures TV footage from that day, with many clips clear­ly show­ing snipers oper­at­ing from Maid­an-con­trolled build­ings. It also includes Eng­lish sub­ti­tles and foren­sic descrip­tions of scenes. The footage includes a num­ber of peo­ple being shot and killed–a griz­zly 59-min­utes, but absolute­ly invalu­able in terms of estab­lish­ing what actu­al­ly hap­pened.

The pre­sen­ta­tion of pro­fes­sor Katchanovski’s research in this pro­gram begins with the sec­tion titled “Cov­er-Up and Stonewalling.”

Addi­tion­al per­spec­tive on the appar­ent non-inves­ti­ga­tion of the Maid­an sniper shoot­ings is pro­vid­ed by Ana­toliy Matios, Ukraine’s Deputy Pros­e­cu­tor and Chief Mil­i­tary Pros­e­cu­tor:

Matios, Ukraine’s chief mil­i­tary pros­e­cu­tor, gave an exten­sive inter­view where he said that Jews are behind all wars and want to “drown eth­nic Slavs in blood.”

Also recall the cryp­tic state­ment Matios made back in 2016 about the iden­ti­ty of the peo­ple involved with the 2014 sniper attacks: “When pub­lic learns who is involved in this, peo­ple will be very sur­prised.” In FTR #‘s 982, 993,  1004, 1023, we exam­ined evi­dence that Ukrain­ian fas­cists may well have exe­cut­ed those sniper attacks. It is omi­nous that the chief mil­i­tary pros­e­cu­tor who is involved in that inves­ti­ga­tion is a neo-Nazi. ” . . . . In an exten­sive inter­view with the Ukrain­ian news out­let Insid­er, Ana­toliy Matios, Ukraine’s chief mil­i­tary pros­e­cu­tor, espoused anti-Semit­ic con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries in which he implied that Jews want to drown eth­nic Slavs in blood. . . .”

Return­ing to pro­fes­sor Katchanovski’s thought-pro­vok­ing con­clu­sion to his online poster: “ . . . . The puz­zling mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Maid­an mas­sacre, its inves­ti­ga­tion, and the tri­al by West­ern media and gov­ern­ments require fur­ther research con­cern­ing rea­sons for such mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion . . . . ”

With the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment appar­ent­ly com­menc­ing an offen­sive to van­quish Al-Qae­da jihadis in Idlib province (with Russ­ian mil­i­tary sup­port), the stage is set for a pos­si­ble Russian‑U.S./Western mil­i­tary con­flict.

Against the back­ground of the Maid­an snip­ing as a prob­a­ble false flag provo­ca­tion, the impend­ing Syr­i­an offen­sive to re-cap­ture the last ter­ri­to­r­i­al enclave of the Islamists in Syr­ia should be viewed with appre­hen­sion. As not­ed in the arti­cle we present, the so-called “rebels” are Al-Qae­da off­shoots. Omi­nous­ly, they have appar­ent­ly suc­cess­ful­ly exe­cut­ed false-flag chem­i­cal weapons attacks before, includ­ing in Idlib province.

Rus­sia has warned that such a provo­ca­tion is in the wings–an unre­mark­able deduc­tion in light of past his­to­ry. In turn, the West has warned of retal­ia­to­ry action if such actions are under­tak­en.

The stage appears set for an Islamist/Al-Qae­da chem­i­cal weapons false flag/provocation, upon which U.S., British and French mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion will be pred­i­cat­ed.

In this con­text, one should not lose sight of the fact that Chech­nyan Islamist vet­er­ans of the Syr­i­an war have already made their appear­ance in the com­bat in East­ern Ukraine, part­ner­ing with Pravy Sek­tor in their deploy­ments. (The Chechen/Right Sector/Islamist link is dis­cussed in FTR #‘s 857, 862, 863, 872, 878, 893, 911.)

We note pos­si­ble out­comes of U.S./Western Russ­ian com­bat:

1.–If the Western/U.S. forces are vic­to­ri­ous, this will cov­er Trump’s rump  with regard to the “Rus­sia-Gate” so-called inves­ti­ga­tion and bol­ster the GOP’s posi­tion in upcom­ing 2018 midterm elec­tions.
2.–If the Western/U.S. forces pre­vail, it will weak­en Putin polit­i­cal­ly, which is a goal of the West.
The last part of the pro­gram con­sists of a par­tial read­ing of an arti­cle by CFR mem­ber Bruce Hoff­man. Not­ing Al Qaeda’s resur­gence and Al Qaeda’s empha­sis on the Syr­i­an con­flict, Hoff­man cites the so-called “Arab Spring” as the key event in Al Qaeda’s resur­gence. ” . . . . The thou­sands of hard­ened al-Qae­da fight­ers freed from Egypt­ian pris­ons in 2012–2013 by Pres­i­dent Mohammed Mor­si gal­va­nized the move­ment at a crit­i­cal moment, when insta­bil­i­ty reigned and a hand­ful of men well-versed in ter­ror­ism and sub­ver­sion could plunge a coun­try or a region into chaos. Whether in Libya, Turkey, Syr­ia, or Yemen, their arrival was prov­i­den­tial in terms of advanc­ing al-Qaeda’s inter­ests or increas­ing its influ­ence. . . . It was Syr­ia where al-Qaeda’s inter­ven­tion proved most con­se­quen­tial. One of Zawahiri’s first offi­cial acts after suc­ceed­ing bin Laden as emir was to order a Syr­i­an vet­er­an of the Iraqi insur­gency named Abu Moham­mad al-Julani to return home and estab­lish the al-Qae­da fran­chise that would even­tu­al­ly become Jab­hat al-Nus­ra. . . .”

In FTR #‘s 733 through 739, we pre­sent­ed our view that the so-called Arab Spring was a U.S. intel­li­gence oper­a­tion, aimed at plac­ing the Broth­er­hood in pow­er in Mus­lim coun­tries dom­i­nat­ed either by a sec­u­lar dic­ta­tor or absolute monar­chy.

It is our view that the Broth­er­hood was seen as use­ful because of its mil­i­tary off­shoots (Al-Qae­da in par­tic­u­lar) were use­ful proxy war­riors in places like the Cau­ca­sus and the Balka­ns and because the Broth­er­hood’s cor­po­ratist, neo-lib­er­al eco­nom­ic doc­trine was in keep­ing with the desires and goals of the trans-nation­al cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ty.

In FTR #787, we solid­i­fied our analy­sis with defin­i­tive con­fir­ma­tion of our work­ing hypoth­e­sis pre­sent­ed years ear­li­er.

About the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s eco­nom­ic doc­trine: ” . . . . The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood hails 14th cen­tury philoso­pher Ibn Khal­dun as its eco­nomic guide. Antic­i­pat­ing sup­ply-side eco­nom­ics, Khal­dun argued that cut­ting tax­es rais­es pro­duc­tion and tax rev­enues, and that state con­trol should be lim­ited to pro­vid­ing water, fire and free graz­ing land, the util­i­ties of the ancient world. The World Bank has called Ibn Khal­dun the first advo­cate of pri­va­ti­za­tion. [Empha­sis added.] His found­ing influ­ence is a sign of mod­er­a­tion. If Islamists in pow­er ever do clash with the West, it won’t be over com­merce. . . .”

Stephen Glain’s cita­tion of Ibn Khal­dun res­onates with Ronald Rea­gan’s pre­sen­ta­tion of “sup­ply-side eco­nom­ics.” ” . . . . Respond­ing to a ques­tion about the effects of tax and spend­ing cuts that began tak­ing effect yes­ter­day, Mr. Rea­gan said the sup­ply-side prin­ci­ple dat­ed at least as far back as Ibn Khal­dun, who is gen­er­al­ly regard­ed as the great­est Arab his­to­ri­an to emerge from the high­ly devel­oped Ara­bic cul­ture of the Mid­dle Ages. . . .”