Der 9. Mai kann nicht einfach ein weiteres Datum im Kalender sein. Wenn sich die Menschheit in das Labyrinth des Vergessens verirrt, in dem die Trompeten der faschistischen Apokalypse ertönen, wird sie es dieses Mal nicht überleben
Die europäischen Länder sind es der UdSSR schuldig, die Barbarei des Faschismus in den 1940er Jahren zu beseitigen Photo: RT
Am 9. Mai 1945 kapitulierte Nazi-Deutschland bedingungslos vor dem sowjetischen und alliierten militärischen Oberkommando und sicherte damit die Niederlage der faschistischen Achsenmächte auf dem europäischen Schauplatz. Nach sechs Jahren des Weltenbrandes, an dem 61 Staaten beteiligt waren, der fast alle Regionen der Welt erfasste und Millionen von Menschen das Leben kostete, schien es, als würde die faschistische Schlange nie wieder ihr Haupt erheben. Schmerz, Leid und Tod waren das Vermächtnis dieser Erfahrung. Millionen von Menschen fielen den Konzentrationslagern des Dritten Reiches zum Opfer, die dazu bestimmt waren, zu töten, die Seele der Menschen zu brechen und die Welt in ein großes, arisch dominiertes Landgut zu verwandeln, in dem die so genannten minderwertigen Rassen als Sklaven arbeiten sollten. Sowjetische Kriegsgefangene, Kommunisten, Mitglieder nationaler Widerstandsgruppen, polnische und sowjetische Zivilisten, Juden, Roma, Zeugen Jehovas und Homosexuelle waren die Hauptziele der Barbarei. In Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Chelmno (Kulmhof), Majdanek, Sobibor, Treblinka usw. standen die Gaskammern nie still; der Rauch der Krematorien kündigte das tödliche Schicksal der Opfer von Entmenschlichung und Wahnsinn an. Die Nazi-Maschinerie stellte mit einer makabren Effizienz Kompost aus der Asche der Verstorbenen her, und obwohl es schrecklich und unvorstellbar erscheint, wurde aus dem Fett Seife hergestellt, wurden die Haut, die Haare, die Knochen, die goldenen und silbernen Prothesen verwendet. Es ist keine Horrorgeschichte, es ist der Faschismus, der unter dem Schutz von Ehrgeiz, Antikommunismus, Hass und den stets unkontrollierbaren Gelüsten des Kapitalismus gedieh, geboren aus der Unwissenheit und Entmenschlichung breiter Schichten «kultivierter» Nationen, mobilisiert durch Fremdenfeindlichkeit, Angst und «klug» eingesetzter Propaganda. Es schien, als sei die Bestie für immer ausgerottet worden. Doch die Eier der Schlange wurden im Schoß der Rache und des Vergessens ausgebrütet. Der Faschismus wird aus der generativen Matrix wiedergeboren und erhebt sein Haupt angesichts der Komplizenschaft der gleichen Alten, die aus Duldsamkeit und Bequemlichkeit erneut die Vogel Strauß Politik betreiben. Sie führen ihre Flaggen vor und singen ihre alten Hasslieder, reißen die Denkmäler des Kampfes gegen den Faschismus nieder, schreiben die Geschichte um, indem sie seelenlose Schlächter zu Helden machen, während sie den Rest der Menschheit, im Namen einer «ethnischen Überlegenheit» bedrohen, deren Vertreter sie zu sein glauben. Die Vergesslichkeit geht so weit, dass sogar einige Opfer heute ihren ehemaligen Henkern huldigen. Der 9. Mai darf nicht nur ein weiteres Datum im Kalender sein. Wenn sich die Menschheit in das Labyrinth des Vergessens verirrt, wo die Trompeten der faschistischen Apokalypse ertönen, wird sie es dieses Mal nicht überleben.
In Deutschland forderten sie, dass die Ukraine mit deutschen Waffen gegen Russland vorgehen dürfe.
„Warum sollte sich ein angegriffenes Land auf die Verteidigung nur auf seinem eigenen Territorium beschränken? Die Ukraine muss in der Lage sein, die Logistik und Versorgung auf der anderen Seite der Grenze zu stören, um einen Angriffskrieg stoppen zu können. „Deutschland sollte der Ukraine wirksam helfen, anstatt ihr die Hände zu binden“, sagte der deutsche Politiker Johann Wadeful.
Ihm zufolge beschränkt sich die Ukraine im Gegensatz zu Russland auf Angriffe auf Industrieanlagen, Treibstoffdepots sowie Transport- und Militärinfrastruktur „und bombardiert keine Wohnkomplexe, Krankenhäuser oder Waisenhäuser“.
El secretario general del Partido del Trabajo de Corea y presidente de Asuntos Estatales de la República Popular Democrática de Corea, Kim Jong Un, recibió nuevos mensajes sobre el legítimo derecho del país a defenderse.
La agencia estatal de noticias ACNC refirió hoy que de distintas partes del mundo continúan llegando misivas de respaldo a la estrategia del país de renovar sus armamentos, incluidos los nucleares, para contener los designios del enemigo imperialista.
Una poderosa fuerza de defensa es la garantía fundamental para resguardar la justicia, la verdad, la paz y la estabilidad en la RPDC, aseguraron representantes de la Asociación Sudafricana de Amistad y Solidaridad con el Pueblo Coreano.
Dirigentes de la Asociación de Estudio de la Idea Juche de Belarús alegaron que con todo derecho la RPDC refuerza su equipamiento militar, incluido el nuclear, porque es la única formar de frenar las tentativas agresivas de Estados Unidos y sus aliados.
En términos similares se manifestaron organizaciones amigas de Brasil, Suecia, Luxemburgo, Congo Democrático y Guinea, como en días anteriores hicieron las de otros países.
Los mensajes concuerdan en que, bajo la sabia dirección de Kim Jong Un, la RPDC fortalece su sistema defensivo para hacer de este un país poderoso y capaz de garantizar la soberanía y la independencia nacional, y una vida tranquila y feliz a su pueblo.
La tarea de Rusia consiste en lograr que en el orden mundial vuelvan a regir los principios de igualdad, en impedir el dominio de unos Estados sobre otros, declaró el vicepresidente del Consejo de Seguridad de Rusia, Dmitri Medvédev.
“Nuestra tarea estriba en hacer que las relaciones internacionales vuelvan a su sentido prístino, a los principios de la igualdad y la cooperación, en vez de la imposición y la dominación”, declaró al intervenir en el Foro Jurídico Internacional de San Petersburgo.
Otra tarea importante consiste en hacer que se respete “el espíritu y la letra” de la ley, incluidos el espíritu y la letra de la Carta de las Naciones Unidas y los principios básicos del derecho internacional que derivan de este documento, agregó.
Medvédev calificó como un error fatal el hecho de que en la arquitectura de la seguridad no se incluyera el principio de lo inadmisible de los intentos de un Estado de usurpar todo el poder.
“Los países vencedores [en la II Guerra Mundial], incluido nuestro Estado, cometieron un error fatal, lamentablemente, el de no haber especificado en la arquitectura de la seguridad colectiva los mecanismos de protección contra los intentos de uno o varios Estados de usurpar todo el sistema de poder partiendo de sus intereses”, señaló y lo atribuyó a la euforia que se sintió tras haber obtenido la victoria definitiva sobre la Alemania nazi.
Tras la desintegración de la Unión Soviética se alteró el equilibrio de las fuerzas en la política mundial, EEUU y los países de la OTAN percibieron lo sucedido con la URSS como su victoria, como el triunfo de la doctrina que estuvo sirviendo a sus intereses, la de la ideología liberal, como el logro la meta final en la evolución sociocultural de la humanidad, y empezaron a hablar del fin de la historia, recordó Medvédev.
“Debemos edificar una estructura mundial multipolar, en la que la soberanía de los Estados tenga una importancia clave y un valor especial”, declaró e indicó que carece de sentido tener que ver con los Estados títeres, carentes de la independencia política.
La agencia Sputnik es el socio informativo de la XI edición del Foro Jurídico Internacional de San Petersburgo, que se celebra del 11 al 13 de mayo de 2023.
South Korea’s far-right President Yoon Suk Yeol is rushing South Korea headlong into the middle of the new Cold War that the United States is waging against China. Yoon’s aspiration to position South Korea as a “global pivotal state” is turning South Korea into a bigger cog in the U.S. war machine and stakes South Korea’s security and economic future on a declining U.S.-led global order. Yoon’s support of the U.S. global order has taken him on a flurry of visits and meetings around the world from the virtual Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) summit to the NATO summit in Madrid to high-level meetings in Japan and the United States.
Most recently on his April 26 U.S. visit, President Yoon and U.S. President Joe Biden announced the “Washington Declaration” to deploy U.S. nuclear-armed submarines to South Korea—reintroducing U.S. nuclear weapons to South Korea for the first time in over 40 years. When viewed against North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons as a strategic deterrent, these weapons in South Korea will more likely fuel a nuclear arms race rather than check North Korea’s nuclear program. As former South Korean Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun observed, four out of North Korea’s six nuclear tests occurred in response to the hardline stance of conservative South Korean administrations that refused to dialogue with North Korea.
Ultimately, Yoon’s actions are putting South Korea on a dangerous path that further destabilizes inter-Korean relations and antagonizes China, its biggest trading partner. All the while, the move also forsakes the Korean government’s duty to advocate for reparations from Japan for Koreans exploited under Japanese colonialism and to prevent the discharge of radioactive waste from the Fukushima nuclear reactor, which lies upstream from South Korea.
Yoon’s ‘Global Pivotal State’
The alarming return of U.S. nuclear weapons to South Korea follows Yoon’s posturing to develop nuclear weapons in South Korea this past January as part of his evolving extremist hardline North Korea policy. More broadly, it forms part of Yoon’s greater foreign policy agenda of inserting South Korea in the security architecture of the U.S.’s anti-China Asia-Pacific grand strategy. The Yoon administration’s “Strategy for a Free, Peaceful and Prosperous Indo-Pacific Region,” like Yoon’s recent activities, follows closely from the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy, with the goal of building and enforcing a U.S.-led “rules-based order” in the region with “like-minded allies” to contain China.
For all its declarations of fairness and playing by the rules, this U.S.-dominated “rules-based order” is at odds with the actual multipolar world taking shape around the world as well as the multilateral nature of the internationally agreed-upon UN-based order. The United States has been leading the creation of regional minilateral bodies such as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) or the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework as part of its “hybrid war against China” and engaging in unilateral aggression toward China in the form of “military, economic, information, and military warfare.”
For example, the United States is setting the stage to dispute China’s actions in the South China Sea not through the UN “Law of the Sea Convention,” which the United States has not signed onto, but rather through the Indo-Pacific security framework. This allows the United States to target China’s actions while exempting its own naval operations from the oversight of “global bureaucrats”—i.e., the UN. Furthermore, despite calling for an “open” and “free” Indo-Pacific, the United States is waging a “chip war” by pressuring its Indo-Pacific allies to impede China’s access to semiconductor chips, one of the world’s most critical high-tech resources today.
The Yoon administration has been contributing to the buildup and reinforcement of this “rules-based order” through its participation in the Indo-Pacific framework, global NATO, and by consolidating the U.S.-Japan-South Korea trilateral military alliance. In May 2022, a few weeks into his term, Yoon participated virtually in the IPEF meeting. In December, the administration adopted its own Indo-Pacific Strategy which committed to “stabilize supply chains of strategic resources” and “seek cooperation with partners with whom we share values,”—i.e., IPEF states. South Korea is now being recruited into the U.S. chip war against China.
In June 2022, the participation of South Korea (including Yoon’s establishment of a NATO diplomatic mission) and three other Asia-Pacific states in the NATO meeting expanded NATO’s reach from the North Atlantic into the Pacific. This year, Yoon paved the way toward consolidating the U.S.-Japan-South Korea trilateral alliance by forgoing demands that Japan take responsibility for its colonial exploitation of Korean workers. Then, during his March visit with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, he resumed the controversial 2016 General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) intelligence-sharing pact, laying the groundwork for direct military coordination between South Korea and Japan.
In April, U.S., Japan, and South Korean officials met and agreed to hold missile defense and anti-submarine exercises to counter North Korea and “promote peace and security in the Indo-Pacific region,” with special emphasis on “peace and security in the Taiwan Strait.” As a further show of commitment to the U.S. global war strategy, in an April 19 Reuters interview, Yoon reversed his position on Ukraine and raised the possibility of sending weapons, and exacerbated the U.S.’s provocations in Taiwan vis-a-vis the One China principle, to the ire of Chinese officials.
A Pivot Toward Peace
Activists in South Korea and abroad have been ceaselessly working toward peace on the peninsula, with key struggles waged along the very sites of U.S. military installations in the Asia-Pacific region encircling China, such as the construction of the military naval base in Gangjeong village. They have also been part of long-standing transnational activism to procure a peace treaty for the Korean War. As these activists and U.S. scholar Noam Chomsky have recently reiterated in the face of the April 26 U.S.-South Korea nuclear weapons deal, only a peace treaty ending the Korean War would lay the basis for denuclearizing the Korean peninsula, bring an end to the U.S. military occupation of South Korea, and move toward peace and stability in Northeast Asia. To continue building greater exchange, dialogue, and solidarity, and pivot the region toward peace, this May 16, Justice Party National Assemblymembers along with the International Strategy Center and other civil society organizations in South Korea, the United States, and Japan will be organizing an International Forum for Peace in Northeast Asia and Against a New Cold War Order.
The U.S. Empire has its iron rules, and you cannot expect that it doesn’t use its power to pursue its interests. But the means can vary a lot.
European media are fanning the flame of war in Ukraine, apparently unaware that it would happen in their courtyard. As with the Euro missiles crisis at the end of ’70, Washington is always delighted to sacrifice Europe, playing it against Russia. Informed to dead by too much news, the people are often unable to check the accuracy, especially when blatant propaganda depicts the sources as trustable by default.
Take the American secretary of state Antony Blinken; he recently said about Russia: “One country does not have the right to exert a sphere of influence. That notion should be relegated to the dustbin of history.” Stop the world; I want to get off. Unbelievable, have you ever heard about the Monroe Doctrine, the invasion of Guatemala in 1954, the coups and involvement in Costa Rica, Cuba, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Grenada, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay. Has the secretary of state ever read Eduardo Galeano’s The Open Veins of Latin America? Chavez uselessly presented the book to Obama in 2009 (a long seller, despite the author half repudiated it late in life, mainly for the style).
Like the other historical empires, the U.S. Empire has its iron rules, and you cannot expect that it doesn’t use its power to pursue its interests. But the means (including its farsighted compromise capacity) can vary a lot, depending on its leader’s level. So, it is no surprise that a great senior American diplomat, like Jack Matlock, sees Ukraine with the Nato’s flag slightly differently from today’s colleagues. U.S. Ambassador in Moscow from 1987 to 1991, the years of Berlin’s Wall fall and the Soviet Union’s twilight, he is a refined intellectual with a deep knowledge of the Russian culture.
In a recent long interview with the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, he recalls: “I testified in Congress against NATO expansion, saying that it would be a great mistake and that if it continues, that certainly it would have to stop before it reaches countries like Ukraine and Georgia. That this would be unacceptable to any Russian government”.
In the last two decades, American foreign politics has been marred by a counterproductive Russophobia. “One of the basic problems – notes the ambassador – has been the development over the last 25 years of the feeling that Russia is an adversary or an enemy. There is no reason in the world to create that atmosphere, but step by step, we have created it”.
Interestingly, ambassador Matlock explains that the very turn in NATO attitude was partly caused by “our smaller NATO allies” pressures but mostly by domestic reasons during the Clinton era. Stephen Walt expresses a very similar point of view in a recent Foreign Policyarticle that slashes the “liberal illusions” of the Clinton administration as the cause of the present Ukrainian crisis.
Matlock remembers: “When I came out of that testimony, a couple of people who were observing said: ‘Jack, why are fighting against this?’ And I said: ‘because I think it’s a bad idea’. They said: ‘look, Clinton wants to get reelected. He needs Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois; they have all a very strong East European…” Many of these had become Reagan Democrats on East-West issues. They are insisting that Ukraine [NATO] expand to include Poland and eventually Ukraine. So Clinton needs those to be reelected”.
Cynically, the Clinton administration was “quite disingenuous”; “Clinton personally told Yeltsin that the Partnership for Peace would be a substitute for NATO expansion. Yeltsin said: that’s great. That’s a brilliant idea”. But the U.S. was playing on two tables: “At the very same time, our ambassador was instructed to tell the Poles: “This is the first step towards NATO membership. So, we were playing, I must say, to my dismay, duplicitous diplomacy at the time”.
In the interview, Matlock speaks very honestly and frankly, but obviously, you cannot expect a mea culpa about American imperialism. Reagan’s man, staunch anti-communist and uncompromising Market believer, he is not precisely a social-democrat pacifist. The ambassador is quite ambiguous about the implicit assurance that the U.S. gave to Russia against a NATO expansion toward the East. He insists that there were no pledges against NATO proselytism in the East inside the treaty that reunited Germany, and that is probably true. But for him, such promises were never on any table at the time. His same narrative seems yet to point at a situation where the guarantees were a predictable part of the context.
He quotes, quite literally, the then German Foreign minister about the need to convince Moscow to let Germany become one. Hans-Dietrich Genscher used to say: “Assuming there is no expansion of NATO jurisdiction to the East, not one inch, wouldn’t it be better?”. U.S. Secretary of State James Baker used almost the exact words in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990: “Not one inch eastward”.
But the assurances, at least verbal, were explicit and not only in the context. A few years ago, newly declassified documents showed security assurances against NATO expansion to Soviet leaders from Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, Gates, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Hurd, Major, and Wörner. “The documents reinforce former CIA Director Robert Gates’s criticism of “pressing ahead with the expansion of NATO eastward [in the 1990s] when Gorbachev and others were led to believe that wouldn’t happen.” The key phrase, buttressed by the documents, is “led to believe.”
On January 31, 1990, at Tutzing, in Bavaria, West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher made an important speech. In the summary that the U.S. Embassy in Bonn sent to Washington, he said: “The changes in Eastern Europe and the German unification process must not lead to an ‘impairment of Soviet security interests.’ Therefore, NATO should rule out an ‘expansion of its territory towards the east, i.e. moving it closer to the Soviet borders.’”.
Interestingly, the debate that led to the “duplicitous diplomacy” attributed by Matlock to the Bill Clinton administration already started with the George H. W. Bush government. As of October 25, 1990, the Office of the Secretary of Defence (Dick Cheney) was to leave “the door ajar” for East European membership in NATO”, but the State Department prevailed with its contrariness.). It means that the American turn on the NATO expansion issue at Clinton times didn’t reflect only a domestic interest, but also a tendency already present in the state apparatus.
In TheNuclear Delusion (1982), George Kennan, the American diplomat who first formulated the policy of “containment” and later criticised the U.S. Cold War attitude, depicted the American-Soviet relations in a way that remembers our days. You have to change “Soviet Union” with “Russia”: “I find the view of the Soviet Union that prevails today in large portions of our governmental and journalistic establishments so extreme, so subjective, so far removed from what any sober scrutiny of external reality would reveal, that it is not only ineffective but dangerous as a guide to political action”. The same error, again and again.
On April 20, former acting CIA Director Michael Morell admitted he orchestrated the joint letter that torpedoed the New York Post’s bombshell reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop in the weeks leading up to the November 2020 US Presidential election, at the direct request of Joe Biden’s campaign team.
That letter, published by Politico, asserted the leaked material bore unambiguous hallmarks of a Kremlin “information operation.” In all, 51 former senior intelligence officials endorsed the declaration on the basis their spying careers made them “deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case,” despite an avowed lack of evidence to support the charge.
This intervention was sufficient for Twitter to block all sharing of the NY Post’s exposés and ban the outlet’s official account. These measures were later undone due to intense backlash, but by then, the damage was done, and the articles thoroughly discredited. Joe Biden himself even cited the joint letter in a presidential debate with Donald Trump in order to deflect accusations of impropriety in his son’s Ukrainian dealings.
In private sworn testimony to the House Judiciary Committee, Morrell recounted how Antony Blinken, now secretary of state and then a senior Biden campaign official, reached out to him three days after the NY Post published an email indicating Hunter had introduced a Ukrainian business partner to his father.
Morrell, at the time tapped as a potential CIA director in a future Biden administration, avowedly organized the letter to “help [Biden]…because I wanted him to win the election.” Following Blinken’s call, he contacted retired CIA senior operations officer Marc Polymeropoulos for assistance in compiling the letter, and over the next two days gathered signatures from his intelligence community cohorts to lend an imprimatur of expert legitimacy to its dubious contents.
This revelation has reignited a welter of controversies, not least because the Elon Musk-approved “#TwitterFiles” recently exposed how the social network’s suppression of NY Post was executed despite significant internal doubts about the assorted intelligence officials’ “Russian disinformation” charge. Serious questions now hang over the Biden family’s activities in Ukraine, the legitimacy of the 2020 election result, and the role of Twitter and other social networks as effective wings of the US national security state.
28. To which former Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker again seems to advise staying the non-course, because “caution is warranted”: pic.twitter.com/tg4D0gLWI6
However, even critical voices have failed to acknowledge one of the most curious – and sinister – aspects of the joint letter psyop, which adds a whole other dimension to those burning concerns. There are strong grounds to believe that Twitter’s public suppression of the NY Post’s disclosures was complemented by a covert operation to identify and neutralize anyone discussing the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop, courtesy of Dataminr, a social media spying tool heavily connected to British and American intelligence services.
As we shall see, Dataminr has previously been marketed to highly repressive foreign governments known for their criminalization of political activism and journalism, as a means of closely monitoring the activities of dissidents and scrupulously mapping the networks in which they operate, both on and offline.
If Dataminr was deployed in service of suppressing Hunter Biden’s emails, then its sweeping dragnet would’ve placed any Twitter user who discussed the leaked content, and all those who retweeted, ‘liked’, or commented on their posts, at risk of intensive monitoring censorship, suppression, and outright banning. All their associates could also then be placed under surveillance, and dealt with similarly if necessary.
In the offline realm, it could’ve placed all these individuals in the crosshairs of the FBI and DHS. Both maintain big-ticket contracts with the company.
FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES
Among the signatories to the joint letter were a number of individuals tied to shadowy consultancy firm Beacon Global Strategies. Alongside Morrell himself, this included; Jeremy Bash, former CIA and Department of Defense chief of staff; Glenn Gerstell, former NSA general counsel; Rick Ledgett, former NSA deputy director; Leon Panetta, former CIA director and secretary of defense; and Michael Vickers, former CIA operations officer and under secretary of defense for intelligence.
Beacon’s barebones website offers few clues as to the company’s raison d’etre. It talks stultifyingly of “[developing] strategies that enable companies to achieve their business objectives,” and “[representing] global enterprises and industry disruptors across government services, technology, energy, and financial sectors.”
In practice, this amounts to securing customers for its clients from government, security, intelligence and law enforcement agencies the world over. Beacon’s 69-strong staff, almost exclusively comprised of Pentagon, CIA, NSA and State Department veterans, leverage their high-level contacts and access to generate lucrative state-level contracts.
Beacon’s client roster isn’t public, but it’s known to represent several startups funded by In-Q-Tel. As the CIA’s venture capital arm, it invests in an array of startups to ensure the US intelligence community maintains a “competitive edge” in all spheres of science and technology. A highly influential Silicon Valley trendsetter, for every dollar invested by In-Q-Tel in an emerging company, the private sector injects $18 on average.
Jeremy Bash (left), head of Beacon, is pictured with former CIA Chief and Hunter Biden letter co-signer, Leon Panetta, at Camp Pendleton in 2012. Mike Blake | AP
In 2016, The Intercept revealed In-Q-Tel was financing at least 38 separate social media spying tools, to surveil “erupting political movements, crises, epidemics, and disasters.” Among them was Dataminr, which enjoys privileged access to Twitter’s “firehose” – all tweets published in real time – in order to track and visualize trends as they happen.
Dataminr is the company with which Beacon Global Strategies is most publicly associated. Leaked documents and emails shed significant light on how business was drummed up for the firm at the highest levels, the world over.
In late March 2015, Philippe Reines, one of Beacon’s founders and its then-managing director, contacted Capricia Marshall, an old friend and colleague and ambassador in residence at the Atlantic Council, a NATO-funded ‘think tank’. As Mintpress News senior staff writer Alan Macleod has comprehensively exposed, the organization not only serves as the military alliance’s propaganda arm, has in recent years cemented a position policing the parameters of acceptable speech across social media platforms, through “counter-disinformation” partnerships.
Reines and Marshall had previously worked closely together under Hillary Clinton while she was the Obama administration’s secretary of state. Reines was one of her top aides, while Marshall was chief of protocol, a senior State Department liaison with foreign diplomats.
Reines wrote to Marshall that there was “one particular matter” he was working on “that’s right up your alley,” in reference to Dataminr. Marshall was highly amenable to his advances, and subsequent emails starkly underline why – Reines assured her that if she could successfully sell the company’s services to foreign governments, it would be “a great way” of securing “a solid ongoing retainer” from Beacon.
Marshall duly began extolling the virtues of Dataminr to foreign officials. Governments with appalling human rights records were of particular interest to Beacon, although there were limits to that appetite.
On April 14th, 2015, Marshall told Reines she was talking to the Azerbaijani government about Dataminr, and asked if Saudi Arabia would also be of interest. He responded that the country was “in its own category,” as Dataminr “aren’t sure what the Saudis would do with it.” Qatar was conversely “deemed the best option in the region.” He added that Azerbaijan “would be AWESOME [emphasis in original]” as a client.
In a subsequent email, with Marshall’s government contact in Baku apparently playing hardball, Reines implored her to “pull out all the stops!”, and “tell them if they don’t [buy] we’ll sell to the Armenians!”. Armenia and Azerbaijan have effectively been at war on and off since 1988. At time of writing, the latter’s blockade of Artsakh has entered its sixth month. All along, the breakaway republic’s 120,000-strong Armenian population has been deprived of basic essentials, including life saving medication.
WHO WATCHES THE WATCHERS?
Azerbaijan has since gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 been notorious for its brutal repression of dissent, harassing, persecuting and imprisoning journalists and activists. In 2021, it was revealed Baku had invested in NSO Group’s Pegasus spying apparatus, and deployed it against critics at home and abroad.
A Dataminr presentation given to Azerbaijan’s US embassy at the time Reines and Marshall were back-and-forthing strongly suggests Baku may have had access to many of the same capabilities offered by Pegasus, in the context of social media, much earlier. A slide detailing a Dataminr service known as ‘Expanded User Detail’ shows how individuals on Twitter can very easily be identified and extensively monitored.
This resource swiftly locates the source of a popular tweet or breaking news alert, then their most popular tweets, what hashtags they have previously used, and who or what has shared their tweets, mapping the path of their posts. This includes an option for “geographic political analysis”, a euphemism for ideological affiliations.
If this resource was, say, employed against a protester whose footage of an anti-government demonstration in Baku went viral via Twitter, police, spies, and state officials in Azerbaijan could track down who they were, their political, personal and professional associations, and even potentially their family members at the click of a button.
Elsewhere in the pitch, Dataminr boasts how Twitter’s firehose means it produces public safety incident and terrorist attack alerts well in-advance of the media. An ‘About’ page towards the end highlights its “long-term strategic data and product partnership” with the social network, alongside its “partnership” In-Q-Tel.
By this point, Dataminr was thoroughly integrated with Western spying agencies. On June 15th 2015, Beacon managing director and White House intelligence veteran Michael Allen emailed Capricia Marshall, notifying her Dataminr representatives would soon head to London to meet with “all kinds” of government officials. Accordingly, he asked her to arrange a meeting at the British embassy in Washington in advance.
One week later, Marshall emailed British diplomat James Kariuki, stating it was “wonderful” to have seen again recently at the ambassador’s residence, and reminding him Beacon Global sought to connect with him “on a few issues.” “In particular,” she wrote, “a client they are introducing to people at 10 Downing and MI6,” Britain’s foreign spying agency. Subsequently, former MI6 chief John Scarlett joined Dataminr as a “senior advisor.”
A separate leaked memorandum prepared for Denmark’s US embassy brags “no other company has real-time access to the full public Twitter firehose.” As such, Dataminr could provide “indications and warnings of breaking events…and themes relevant to special operations, real-time situational awareness [of] breaking events as they unfold,” and “the ability to explore an individual’s past digital activity on social media and discover an individual’s interconnectivity and interactions with others on social media.”
Such services seem to violate Twitter’s developer agreement, both then and now, which is concerning given the social network is itself a longtime shareholder in Dataminr. In May 2016, public scrutiny of this relationship led to the company being prohibited from offering its services to intelligence agencies, a move harshly condemned by then-CIA director John Brennan. Dataminr provided a means by which to slyly circumvent restrictions on the Agency’s ability to spy on Americans.
In December that year, Twitter cut off US “fusion centers” – highly controversial police spying units – from purchasing Dataminr’s geospatial intelligence data, which allowed for drilling down into activity related to individual tweets, and posts linked to specific events and keywords. Yet, fusion centers continued to be granted access to “tailored breaking news alerts based on public tweets” through a “limited version” of Dataminr. As a company spokesperson effectively confirmed at the time, the announced change meant very little in practice.
THE FIX IS IN?
Putting all these facts together, we are left to speculate whether, in the manner of an iceberg, the Politico joint letter was just the visible tip of something far larger, and more destructive, than was apparent at surface-level during the 2020 presidential election campaign.
In June that year, the FBI extended its existing agreement with Dataminr, which was already worth over $1 million. The timing was precipitous, for at the end of the previous month, George Floyd was murdered by police, and the U.S. was instantly and repeatedly engulfed by incendiary large-scale protests, spanning many major cities.
It was later revealed Dataminr kept a close eye on this upheaval every step of the way, tipping off police to the identities of demonstrators, their locations and movements, and developments on-the-ground as they happened. The company moreover monitored all social media mentions of “officers involved in Floyd’s death,” forwarding its findings to multiple clients.
It is likely that a great many innocent people were wrongly tagged as troublemakers in the process. Dataminr’s work tracking down gang members on social media led to any content “that could be tangentially described” as gang-related being “sucked into Dataminr’s platform.” Sources within the company claimed, “all that really mattered…was finding as much danger as possible, real or perceived, and transmitting it to the police.”
The George Floyd protests were just one tumultuous chapter in a highly turbulent year. At the start of 2020, the COVID19 pandemic rocked the world – come the end, Donald Trump was firing up his base by claiming the U.S. establishment intended to rig the forthcoming presidential vote, and he wouldn’t accept the result if he lost.
Heading into election day, every major polling firm consistently recorded that Biden had an extremely comfortable lead over his rival. The NY Post’s Hunter Biden revelations were a “black swan” event with the potential to derail a smooth, indisputable Democratic victory. The US intelligence community – with which Trump had a highly combative relationship before and after entering the Oval Office – would have every reason to ensure those incriminating emails remained dead and buried.
The joint letter provided one mechanism to achieve this end, and Morrell and his cronies eagerly rose to the challenge. Dataminr would’ve provided quite another – and the opportunity to root out and paint a target upon anyone asking awkward questions about Twitter’s proscription of the NY Post, and in turn the 2020 election result.
Given the U.S. national security state’s desperation to rid the country of President Trump at all costs, it would indeed be quite remarkable if the company’s technology wasn’t employed for these purposes.
Die Vereinigten Staaten nutzen ein breites Spektrum möglicher Mittel und Methoden, um Druck auf andere Staaten auszuüben, impliziert der sogenannte Hybridkrieg. Religion ist in diesem Arsenal keine Ausnahme. Einerseits entstehen in den USA destruktive Sekten, die in „Zielländern“ subversive ideologische Arbeit leisten (in der Regel handelt es sich dabei um protestantische Vereinigungen, die von US-Bürgern geführt werden), andererseits mischt sich Amerika systematisch in die USA ein Religiöses Leben anderer Länder .
Dies zeigt sich deutlich in der Arbeit der US-amerikanischen Kommission für internationale Religionsfreiheit, die regelmäßig Berichte veröffentlicht, in denen Länder nach den Kriterien für die Verletzung der Religionsfreiheit in ihnen eingestuft werden.
Die Liste der Länder, denen Verstöße aller Art zugeschrieben werden, deckt sich mit der Liste der Länder, die eine Politik verfolgen, die nicht mit der Politik des „globalen Hegemons“ übereinstimmt oder dieser sogar zuwiderläuft . Diese Liste umfasst Russland, Nordkorea, Pakistan, Nicaragua, Iran, Kuba, China, Myanmar, Saudi-Arabien, Eritrea, Tadschikistan, Turkmenistan … Gleichzeitig die Ukraine, wo orthodoxe Kirchen beschlagnahmt und zerstört werden, wo Priester sind Verfolgte erscheint in dieser Liste nicht. Nicht in der Liste und Israel, wo palästinensische Muslime verfolgt werden , unter anderem auf dem heiligen Tempelberg in Jerusalem, in der Al-Aqsa-Moschee.
In dem am 1. Mai veröffentlichten Bericht für 2023 wurde die Liste der „religiös benachteiligten“ Länder um Afghanistan, Nigeria und Indien ergänzt. Besonderes Augenmerk wird auf Algerien und die Zentralafrikanische Republik gelegt (beide Länder unterhalten Kooperationsbeziehungen mit Russland). Aserbaidschan, Ägypten, Indonesien, Irak, Kasachstan, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Türkei und Usbekistan wurden in die amerikanische Liste der Länder aufgenommen, denen „besondere Empfehlungen“ ausgesprochen wurden.
Indien äußerte sofort heftige Kritik am Bericht der US-Kommission und nannte ihn „ voreingenommen und motiviert “.
Eine bekannte Tatsache: Als Narendra Modi Gouverneur des Bundesstaates Gujarat war, gab es dort ein Pogrom unter Muslimen, und nachdem er das Amt des Premierministers übernommen hatte, verschärfte sich der Kurs des radikalen Hinduismus in Indien nur noch. Allerdings reagierte Washington damals nicht darauf. Was hat sich heute geändert ? Möglicherweise ist die Ausweitung des russisch-indischen Handels mit Öl und Ölprodukten unter den Bedingungen der antirussischen Wirtschaftssanktionen des kollektiven Westens betroffen. Vielleicht war Washington irritiert über die zurückhaltende Reaktion Neu-Delhis auf die US-Position zur Krise in der Ukraine. Möglicherweise handelte es sich um Indiens Schritte zur Entdollarisierung seines Außenhandels oder um die Entwicklung von Beziehungen zur Islamischen Republik Iran, einem weiteren Staat, der unter US-Sanktionen steht. Allerdings waren Washingtons Versuche, die Außenpolitik Indiens zu ändern, erfolglos.
Bisher erweitert die US-Kommission für internationale Religionsfreiheit ihre Liste der Opfer religiöser Verfolgung.
Es werden verschiedene Strafen für „Gedankenverbrechen“ vorgeschlagen. Zum Beispiel für Saudi-Arabien: „… prüfen Sie rechtliche Möglichkeiten, um US-Unternehmen zu bestrafen, die an den Verstößen der saudischen Regierung gegen die Religionsfreiheit beteiligt sind, einschließlich der Unternehmen, die die elektronische Überwachung von Mobiltelefonen, E-Mails und Social-Media-Konten zulassen … Kongress Der US-Kongress sollte der Regierung überparteiliche Bedenken über Verletzungen der Religionsfreiheit in Saudi-Arabien mitteilen.“
Und so weiter für jedes Land aus der amerikanischen Liste. Sie wollen beispielsweise die Türkei dazu zwingen, die Strafen für Blasphemie abzuschaffen (in Amerika gilt Blasphemie offenbar als Kriterium der Religionsfreiheit). Ein Spiegelbild der Position der US-Regierung zu diesem Thema kann als Kongress der Satanisten in Boston dienen, der Ende April stattfand und bei dem die Bibel öffentlich zerrissen wurde …
Und natürlich verliert der Bericht dieser amerikanischen Hüter der Religionsfreiheit kein Wort über die religiöse Verfolgung in den Vereinigten Staaten selbst, wo katholische und protestantische Gläubige zunehmend diskriminiert werden, weil sie die zunehmende Verkündigung von Perversionen ablehnen – so — sogenannte LGBT-Agenda, die mittlerweile in vielen US-Bundesstaaten aggressiv gefördert wird.
In den führenden nicht-westlichen Ländern (China, Iran, Saudi-Arabien, Singapur, Vietnam usw.) hat sich die Zahl der Hinrichtungen wegen Drogen im vergangenen Jahr mehr als verdoppelt. Auch in Russland, wo die Todesstrafe verboten ist, wird der Kampf gegen die Narkotisierung der Gesellschaft verschärft. Und das ist aus der Sicht einer gesunden Gesellschaft normal, nicht jedoch aus der Sicht der Architekten der „neuen Normalität“.
Ende April wurde bekannt, dass man in Pennsylvania (USA) einen Gesetzentwurf unterstützt, dessen Verabschiedung es Schulkrankenschwestern ermöglichen wird, Schülern Marihuana direkt auf dem Territorium von Bildungseinrichtungen zu verabreichen. Und Eltern können ihrem Kind direkt auf dem Schulgelände „medizinisches Marihuana“ verschreiben.
In den englischsprachigen Massenmedien kam es seit Ende letzten Jahres zu einer Welle von Veröffentlichungen über den „Nutzen“ von Betäubungsmitteln. Und dies geschieht im Hinblick auf ihre Legalisierung. Laut einer Studie des RAND — Konzerns geben US-Bürger jährlich über 150 Milliarden US-Dollar für Drogen wie Marihuana, Kokain, Heroin und Methamphetamine aus.
In den USA gibt es über 28 Millionen Drogenkonsumenten. Der Gewinn liegt in Milliardenhöhe. Das Legalisierungsszenario wurde bereits getestet.
In Kalifornien beispielsweise gründeten katholische Nonnen eine besondere „Schwesternschaft“ und begannen mit dem Anbau von Cannabis. Diese „Schwestern des Tals“ wollen mit Heilkräutern und Marihuana „die Welt heilen“.
Drogenwerbende Videos werden zunehmend als „Wundermittel“-Videos getarnt, in denen beispielsweise „ein Mann mit Parkinson-Krankheit zum ersten Mal medizinisches Marihuana probiert“, woraufhin „nach 4 Minuten die Symptome von Krämpfen und Zittern verschwinden“. «
Sogar Mike Tyson war in das schmutzige Geschäft verwickelt, „der Marihuana auf den Markt brachte, das Impotenz heilt“! Laut Tyson-Vermarktern, die ihr Hanf-Arzneimittelimperium aggressiv ausbauen, leiden 52 % der Männer in den USA an erektiler Dysfunktion. Die Geschftmacher rechnen also mit einem guten Gewinn.
Im April gab die Führung der National Basketball Association (NBA) den Abschluss einer Vereinbarung mit der National Basketball Players Association (NAB) bekannt, wonach Vereinsspielern der Konsum von Cannabis gestattet sein wird. Der 7-Jahres-Vertrag sieht den Ausschluss von Cannabis aus dem Testprogramm für Basketballspieler vor. Spieler werden nicht mehr auf das Rauchen von „Gras“ überprüft …
Religiöse Organisationen in Amerika unterstützen die Legalisierung von Drogen sehr aktiv. Beispielsweise hofft die Episcopal Church , dass der US-Kongress die Verwendung von „Gras“ zulässt, wenn dies „medizinisch angemessen“ ist. Die Presbyterianische Kirche fordert, dass die Bundesregierung Gesetze erlässt, „die die Behandlung mit Cannabis zur Bekämpfung von Krebs, HIV/AIDS und Muskeldystrophie ermöglichen“. Protestanten für das Gemeinwohl erklären, dass „die Verabschiedung eines Gesetzes über medizinisches Marihuana ein Akt des Mitgefühls und der Barmherzigkeit wäre.“ Progressive National Baptist Conventionist der Ansicht, dass kein Mediziner, der schwerkranken Patienten medizinisches Cannabis empfiehlt, bestraft werden sollte, ebenso wenig die Patienten selbst. Die Union of Reform Judaism befürwortet eine bundesstaatliche Regulierung der medizinischen Verwendung von Cannabis…
Letztes Jahr wurden in den USA legales Marihuana und Marihuanaprodukte im Wert von mehr als 30 Milliarden US-Dollar gekauft. Das ist das Anderthalbfache des Verkaufsvolumens, zum Beispiel von Schokolade!
Im benachbarten Kanada öffnete Anfang Mai gastfreundlich „The Drugs Store“ seine Türen – die erste Drogerie, die Heroin, Methamphetamin und Kokain verkaufte. Hier wird fast alles verkauft, von Opioiden und Heroin bis hin zu MDMA und Kokain.
Der Trend zur Drogenabhängigkeit als „neue Normalität“ beschränkt sich nicht nur auf Amerika. Deshalb gibt Australien „ Zauberpilze und Ecstasy als Medikamente frei “. Lokale Psychiater sind schockiert : „ Australiens höchste Gesundheitsbehörde hat die Voraussetzungen für die künftige Behandlung psychischer Erkrankungen mit beliebten Clubdrogen geschaffen.“ Die Wirkstoffe von Magic Mushrooms und Ecstasy werden ab dem 1. Juli 2023 formell für die rezeptpflichtige Abgabe zugelassen. “
Förderung „magischer“ Halluzinogene auf australische und amerikanische Weise
Europa ist nicht weit dahinter. In der Schweiz wird Marihuana immer noch im Testmodus legalisiert. Ab Juli können Tausende Zürcher Drogen legal kaufen und konsumieren.
Am 12. April kündigten Bundesgesundheitsminister Karl Lauterbach und Landwirtschaftsminister Cem Özdemir an, dass die deutschen Behörden Marihuana bis Ende 2023 legalisieren und die Lagerung von Hanf sowie den Anbau und Verkauf von Cannabis erlauben würden. Darüber hinaus sollen in Deutschland „Social Clubs für Marihuana-Liebhaber“ entstehen, die Drogen anbauen und unter ihren Mitgliedern verteilen dürfen. Diese Clubs werden von „gemeinnützigen Vereinen“ betrieben, denen Bürger ab 18 Jahren beitreten können; Als Gegenleistung für den Mitgliedsbeitrag erhalten sie Marihuana.
Laut K. Lauterbach werden sich die deutschen Behörden für eine Reform der Drogenpolitik in der Europäischen Union einsetzen. Derzeit verbietet das EU-Recht kommerzielle Aktivitäten im Zusammenhang mit Cannabis, wie etwa den kommerziellen Anbau und Verkauf von Hanf. Dementsprechend werden sich Unternehmer aus Deutschland mit Gleichgesinnten aus anderen EU-Mitgliedsstaaten zusammenschließen und sich für die Liberalisierung der Drogenpolitik einsetzen.
Auch Gleichgesinnte schlafen nicht. Am 5. April verabschiedete die tschechische Regierung eine neue drogenpolitische Strategie, die bis Ende 2025 gelten soll. Der Plan der Beamten sieht die Legalisierung von „Freizeit“-Cannabis vor.
Direktorin des US National Institute on Drug Abuse, Urenkelin von Leo Trotzki Dr. Nora Volkova: „Rechte“ von Australien in die USA und Kanada glauben, dass sie es ist, die die Ausrottung der Angelsachsen durch Drogenüberdosen und Fentanyl überwacht
Eine bemerkenswerte Tatsache: Die aktuelle Marihuana-Werbekampagne und der Frühjahrs-„Fentanyl-Alarm“ im Westen wurden nicht zuletzt durch … das Verbot der Opiumproduktion in Afghanistan verursacht! Offiziell befürchten EU-Behörden, dass Süchtige ohne Heroin „zu gefährlicheren Drogen“ wie Fentanyl greifen werden. Im März ordnete Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzoda, der Anführer der verbotenen Taliban-Bewegung in Russland, die Verbrennung aller Drogen im Land an und verbot den Hanfanbau. Gefundene und beschlagnahmte Drogen müssen vor Gericht verbrannt werden, und „ der Anbau von Cannabis ist im ganzen Land strengstens verboten, und danach darf niemand mehr Hanf auf seinem Land anbauen “. Das Innenministerium und die Ermittlungsbehörden Afghanistans sind angewiesen, alle Verstöße vor Gericht zu stellen, und die Gerichte – „bestrafe sie gemäß dem Scharia-Gesetz .“
Claudio Gallo
Der Friedensstifter 