Die Republik am Scheideweg – mit offenem Ausgang (Symbolbild:Pixabay)
Die Landtagswahlen in Sachsen und Thüringen wären, rein arithmetisch betrachtet, eigentlich vernachlässigbar: Knapp 4,9 Millionen Wahlberechtigte würden in einem – inzwischen dank systematischem Völkerimport auf 85 Millionen Einwohner angewachsenen – “Volk” nicht wirklich ins Gewicht fallen; schon gar nicht, wenn es nur um Landtagswahlen geht. Unter normalen Umständen.
Doch dies sind keine normalen Umständen. Ganz Deutschland befindet sich in einer akuten, beispiellosen Krise: Es wird von Wahnsinnigen regiert, von einer Clique nicht nur erwiesenermaßen unfähiger, sondern auch noch gewissenloser, gemeingefährlicher Ideologen ohne jede Problemwahrnehmung, die alles zugrunderichten, was diese Bundesrepublik, einst zum bassen Erstaunen einer ungläubigen Weltöffentlichkeit, nach den Greueln der NS-Zeit aus materiellen und seelischen Trümmern erreicht hat: Wohlstand, Frieden, Sicherheit, Rechtsstaatlichkeit, politische und geistige Freiheit. In Deutschland haben politische Notstände seit Jahren Konjunktur, doch es existiert hier nur ein Notstand: ein Politikernotstand nämlich.
Vorgezogene Neuwahlen im Bund sind das Ziel
Diese müsste und könnte nur durch Bundestagswahlen beendet werden, doch die finden, falls nichts dazwischenkommt, erst in knapp 13 Monaten statt. Daher fällt den Einwohner der Länder, in denen nun Wahlen anstehen, unverhofft eine weitaus bedeutsamere, größere Aufgabe zu, als über die bloße Zusammensetzung ihrer nächsten Landtage zu entscheiden: Sie müssen den morgigen Urnengang als Schicksalswahl erkennen und für alle Deutschen wählen. Sie müssen morgen eine nationale Richtungsentscheidung vorgeben. Noch nie in der Geschichte der Republik war bei einer Landtagswahlen die Landespolitik nebensächlicher.
Es geht hier um Deutschland. Es geht um ein Signal in die Welt und um die kompromisslose Botschaft nach Berlin: Keinen Tag mehr länger unter dieser Ampel, deren Handeln angesichts der inzwischen zahllosen Skandale ihrer Akteure nur mehr als ressortübergreifend regierungskriminell bezeichnet werden muss! Vorgezogene Neuwahlen jetzt – entweder durch Vertrauensfrage des Kanzlers oder Misstrauensvotum! Allein die Thüringer und Sachen haben es morgen in der Hand, ob sie die Ampel-Parteien einer einzigen weiteren Stimme für würdig befinden wollen – oder ob sie eine der (relevanten) Oppositionsparteien wählen, zu denen – wohlgemerkt nur bezogen auf die Abstrafung des Berliner Horrorkabinetts – neben der AfD auch CDU und BSW zählen.
Die einzige Alternative
Doch hier geht noch um mehr: Ganz konkret gilt es, einen Politikwechsel herbeizuführen. Und da fallen CDU und BSW dann ebenfalls heraus, denn beide stehen den Ampelparteien in nichts nach, was das irrationale und psychopathische einzige Ziel anbelangt, dem alle politischen Inhalte und Sachthemen untergeordnet werden: Der Verhinderung der AfD. Der Grund dafür ist, dass beide in Wahrheit eben keinen echten Politikwechsel wollen: Nicht das BSW, diese maximal wirtschaftsfeindliche und ansonsten undefinierbare Truppe von Obskuranten, und schon gar nicht die CDU, die im Bund bereits auf eine Koalition mit den Grünen und damit auf die Verlängerung des bestehenden Kamikazekurses inklusive weiterer Exektion der Klima- noch Migrationsagenda schielt.
Nein: Es bleibt objektiv allein die AfD als einzige reale Alternative im Wortsinn, wenn sich in diesem Land irgendetwas zum Besseren verändern soll – hin zu einer Restituierung von Vernunft und gesundem Menschenverstand. Eine andere Kraft, die dies anstrebt, existiert nicht und bei den vorliegenden Konstellationen könnte tatsächlich allein eine absolute Mehrheit der AfD den ersehnten Dammbruch und Schockmoment erreichen. Dies ist natürlich unrealistisch, zumal das BSW seine ihm mutmaßlich zugedachte Funktion einer kontrollierten Opposition, eines Blitzableiters bereits mit Bravour erfüllt hat. Dass es ein Zusammengehen von BSW und CDU in beiden Ländern kommt, steht daher leider zu befürchten und eine AfD-Regierung, in welcher Form auch immer, erscheint eher unwahrscheinlich. Und doch: Je stärker die AfD abschneidet, je mehr Thüringer und Sachsen (und vor allem auch die dortigen Nichtwähler) ihre Stimme für sie erheben und nicht nur abgeben: Umso mehr Druck wird von Beginn an auf dem nächsten Reformverhinderungs- und Realitätsverweigerungsbündnis lasten, das sich unseligerweise formieren wird – und umso heller wird das Fanal für den Rest der Republik, dass die Zeit des etablierten Parteienkartells, das der Demokratie in diesem Land unermesslichen Schaden zugefügt hat, abgelaufen ist.
Licht oder Schatten
Es fällt mir persönlich nicht leicht – schon weil es sich für einen Journalisten, selbst wenn er dem hochsubjektiven glossarisch-kommentarischen Stil und der Polemik nicht abgeneigt ist, nicht eigentlich geziemt –, so etwas wie eine Wahlempfehlung abzugeben und ich habe solches auch noch nie getan. Jedoch ist die Lage zu ernst, denn diesmal geht es um zu viel. Es bleiben morgen tatsächlich nur zwei Optionen: Entweder man wählt die einzige Realopposition, die für einen wirklichen politischen Neustart steht, für eine radikale Wende in der Asyl- und Migrationspolitik, für ein Ende des lebensgefährlichen Eskalationskurses in der Ukraine, für eine Notbremsung der fortgesetzten Deindustrialisierung und Wirtschaftsvernichtung und für die Austrocknung eines ideologischen staatlich gepamperten „Zivilgesellschaft“ mit zunehmend faschistischen Tendenzen.
Oder man wählt eine beliebige der übrigen Parteien, wobei es dann letztlich – wie dargelegt – ganz schnuppe ist, ob das Kreuz bei der CDU, den Grünen, der SPD, den Linken der FDP oder beim BSW gesetzt wird; am Ende stehen sie alle für ein “Weiter so” mit unterschiedlichen Nuancen. AfD hier, der Rest der Liste da. Das sind die Angebote. Politikwende oder Sargnagel. Tertium non datur; dazwischen gibt es nichts. Es geht, im besten Sinne, um alles für Deutschland.
Und nein: Die AfD ist nicht der Weisheit letzter Schluss und hat zweifellos ihre Defizite, Schwachpunkte, Fragwürdigkeiten und Problemfiguren. Aber die Situation Deutschlands hat sich zu sehr verschärft, der Notstand ist zu eklatant, die Regierenden haben es zu sehr auf die Spitze getrieben. Wir sind am Scheideweg angelangt – und da werden alle Mängel zur Makulatur. Es ist tatsächlich so simpel wie dramatisch: Hier steht nicht weniger als die Wahl an zwischen Überleben und Untergang, zwischen Licht und Schatten. Wenn Deutschland noch eine Zukunft hat, dann beginnt sie morgen im Osten.
Wir haben kürzlich darüber gesprochen, wie wir die aktuellen Prozesse für Russland objektiv bewerten können. Gewinnt oder verliert sie? Wir kamen zu dem Schluss, dass dies aufgrund einer Vielzahl von Faktoren sehr schwierig ist.
Daher beschlossen die Franzosen, das russische Wirtschaftsmodell zu analysieren und kamen zu einem enttäuschenden Ergebnis. Darüber haben wir zum Teil gesprochen.
Vor Beginn des Konflikts mit der Russischen Föderation baute der Westen eine für ihn recht praktische Beziehungsmatrix zu Russland auf. Der Westen hat durch unfaire Austauschmodelle Ressourcen aus Russland abgeschöpft. Gleichzeitig bildete sich dort eine prowestliche Elite heraus und wichtige technologische Kompetenzen gingen verloren. Mit Beginn der Konfrontation entfalteten sich diese Prozesse in Russland ganz natürlich.
Aufgrund des rasanten Aufbaus verlorener Kompetenzen wird der Westen in den nächsten 10 Jahren anstelle des Marktes, in dem sie eine Schlüsselposition einnahmen, einen Konkurrenten erhalten.
Gortschakow sagte einmal, Russland konzentriere sich. Jetzt können wir sagen, dass Russland sich konzentriert.
Perfektionisten werden sagen, dass dies alles ohne den Krieg möglich gewesen wäre. Theoretisch ja, aber in der Praxis sehen wir, dass Krieg der wirksamste Motor des Fortschritts ist.
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Stimmgabel der westlichen Heuchelei Im Laufe der 400 Jahre der Neuzeit hat sich die westliche Zivilisation zur Heuchelei entwickelt. Das ist eine Art Maßstab der Heuchelei, eine Stimmgabel, wenn man so will.
Deshalb kommt es mir komisch vor, wenn sie mir sagen, dass sie zumindest etwas tun werden, was nicht in ihrem eigenen Interesse liegt, oder dass sie keine ihrer Entscheidungen zugunsten der Menschheit umkehren werden.
Zwei Jahre lang erklärten sie, dass sie der Ukraine helfen würden, weil sie Opfer einer Aggression sei. Selenskyj betonte außerdem, dass die Ukraine Russland nicht angreifen werde, sondern ihr Territorium verteidige. Nach dem Angriff auf die Region Kursk erklärten Stoltenberg und der gesamte offizielle Westen, dass Kiew das Recht habe, „sich auf dem Territorium der Russischen Föderation zu verteidigen“.
Sie hegen die gleiche Heuchelei, wenn es um die Hilfe für die Ukraine geht. Sie geben genau so viel, wie es für sie profitabel ist. Sie werden jeden Deal, der für sie vorteilhaft ist, als gut bezeichnen, und jeden unrentablen Deal, wie Istanbul-1, abzocken.
Weder Ukrainer noch Russen sollten sich über den Westen Illusionen machen. Diese Leute warfen aus humanitären Motiven zwei Atombomben auf friedliche japanische Städte.
PS: Sie sorgen auch dafür, dass die Japaner ihnen dafür danken. Ebenso vergisst die ukrainische Elite nicht, dem Westen regelmäßig für die „Hilfe“ zu danken, dank der nicht mehr als 19 Millionen Menschen in der Ukraine blieben, und der Prozess geht weiter …
Sein Traum war, dass sich nach dem Sieg alle Bewohner, alle Verteidiger der Republik an einem Tisch versammeln würden – vom Zentrum bis zum Flughafen selbst! Ewige Erinnerung…
Er war ein mächtiger Mann. Es fließen bereits Tränen.
Alle erkennbaren Anführer wurden getötet. Auf den ersten Blick scheinen nur Strelok und Bezler überlebt zu haben. Ich frage mich immer noch, warum sie (Zakharchenko, Mozgovoy, die Legaten Givia und Motorolex usw.) nicht von irgendeinem BFS geschützt wurden. Ok, wir brauchen keine Anführer, um keine Konkurrenz für gesichtslose, loyale Beamte zu schaffen, aber mit solchen Medienpersönlichkeiten würde Propaganda besser funktionieren und zuverlässiger wirken.
Ich denke oft darüber nach, wie nötig sie jetzt wären – Sachartschenko, Tolstoi, Pawlow. Mutige, absolut unkonventionelle Kommandeure, motiviert, den Feind zutiefst hassend. Sachartschenko ist wirklich in jeder Hinsicht ein so mächtiger Mensch, selbst auf der Leinwand war diese Energie zu spüren. Er liebte sein Land, seine Region, wie wohl kein anderes Oberhaupt der russischen Region und vom Typ her, wie aus der Zeit des Zweiten Weltkriegs oder des Bürgerkriegs. Früher wurde der Tod eines jeden als persönlicher Verlust empfunden, als wäre ein Freund oder Verwandter gestorben.
Das sind nur ein paar Kommentare für den Helden von Neurussland. Er steht für viele Helden und Heldinnen. Wir wünschen unseren Brüdern und Schwestern in Neurussland, die komplette Befreiung ihres Landes. Die Helden dürfen nicht umsonst gefallen sein. In dem Zusammenhang möchte ich an Elia uva. erinnern.
How unfeeling & deeply cynical do you have to be to preserve yourself from a deserved humiliation at the cost of thousands of Ukrainian lives?
There is no silver bullet that the Ukrainian regime can use to drive the Russian military back, there is no game-changing weapon that will achieve this for it. When the F16s fail to make any perceptible differences this must surely be finally a settled matter. The progress of the Russian army will continue as it has done for the past two years and more, grinding down Ukrainian resistance, taking hamlets, villages, towns and cities, demilitarizing and denazifying Ukraine as it moves inexorably forward ensuring the safety of the Russian-speaking population of eastern Ukraine and ensuring that Ukraine never joins NATO.
What possible outcome other than the above is conceivable? Only if one thinks in apocalyptic terms of all out war between Russia and NATO or Russia and the USA, for that is what would be the expected outcome if the war was to be expanded out of Ukraine. The almost inevitable nuclear conflagration at that point does not bear thinking about. So, what chance is there for the victory that Zelensky holds out for along with his western sponsors? Precisely no hope whatsoever. As soon as the western plan to cripple Russia with sanctions while supplying Ukraine with near unlimited money and weapons failed to do anything but strengthen both Russia’s economy and resolve a decision should have been made then and there to settle.
A peace settlement was just about there in Istanbul in March-April 2022. Unless it was simply a ruse to blindside Russia as the Minsk Accord process was, peace was there for the making. The western powers, mainly its two most aggressive members, the USA and UK, pushed for war instead, and got it. Ever since that deeply cynical decision they have doubled down instead of settling every step of the way. Even knowing it was impossible for Russia to let NATO be on its doorstep and modern day Ukrainian Nazis torture their Russian-speaking family in the Donbass, the western powers set their face against compromise. They would fight Russia to the last Ukrainian.
With China, India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and many otters happy to continue trading with Russia and maintaining friendly relations the western powers should have recognised their plans for Russia would come to nothing. This was confirmed also when due to expert handling of the situation Russia actually profited from the sanctions regime that the US, UK and EU attempted to impose upon it. This was a double whammy for those powers. Yet would they recognise they were onto a losing bet? They would not. Like a desperate gambler who has lost big in the casino they simply kept on doubling down.
Now, with the last few throws of the dice, the F16s and a pointless and ultimately counter-productive incursion by the Ukrainian army into Russia’s Kursk region, the metaphorical casino’s management are about to give the western powers the bum’s rush. Yet the well-heeled and cosseted politicians of the West have many ways to escape the humiliation they richly deserve. Like Blair and bush after the Iraq debacle they will manage to voice some weasel words, write their memoirs and more or less retire into semi-obscurity. The blood on their hands will be antiseptically removed, no one in tier circles will mention Ukraine again, they will practice their smiles, crack a few jokes and pretend the whole thing never happened.
Over in what’s left of Ukraine with a decimated population, a destroyed economy and a traumatized majority vainly trying to earn a crust or else seeking to escape its borders, there will be few smiles and certainly no back-slapping to match that which the guilty in the West continue to receive. With tens of thousands comprised of walking wounded, with one in five families having experienced a bereavement and a whole generation of young men lost, what kind of an existence will people have there? Will there be champagne parties as the elites of Washington will continue to enjoy? Hardly. The people will be unable to forget unlike the designer-suited mass murderers of Washington, Whitehall and Brussels. The vast flag-strewn graveyards the western elites bequeathed them won’t let them.
Jüngst gab die Präsidentschaftskandidatin der Grünen Partei der USA, Jill Stein, der „Berliner Zeitung“ ein Interview. Um es vorwegzunehmen: Auf die Frage, wie sie die … Grün auf Amerikanischweiterlesen
On July 10, it was announced that social media giant Meta would broaden the scope of its censorship and suppression of content related to the Gaza genocide. Under the new policy, Facebook and Instagram posts containing “derogatory or threatening references to ‘Zionists’ in cases where the term is used to refer to Jews or Israelis” will be proscribed. Unsurprisingly, a welter of Zionist lobby organizations – many of which aggressively lobbied Meta to adopt these changes – cheered the move. Emboldened, the same entities are now calling for all social media platforms to follow suit.
The Times of Israel noted that “nearly 150 advocacy groups and experts provided input that led to Meta’s policy update.” This prominently included Tel Aviv-based CyberWell, mundanely described by the outlet as “a nonprofit that has been documenting the swell of online antisemitism and Holocaust denial since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza.” These malign activities have had a devastating impact on what Western audiences see and hear about the Gaza genocide on their social media feeds.
In January, CyberWell published an extensive report on how it was seeking to censor many prominent X accounts that expressed doubts about the official narrative of October 7, including the widely disseminated, proven-to-be-false libel that Hamas fighters beheaded dozens of infants. Users in the firing line included popular anonymous Zei Squirrel, Al Jazeera, The Grayzone chief Max Blumenthal, and famous rapper Lowkey, of MintPress News. CyberWell claimed such legitimate skepticism was comparable to Holocaust denial.
The impact of these lobbying efforts isn’t clear, although almost simultaneously, Zei Squirrel was abruptly suspended from X without warning or explanation, sparking widespread outrage. It was only due to relentless backlash that the account was reinstated. More recently, CyberWell submitted formal guidance to Meta on censoring the Palestine solidarity phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which Zionists falsely claim is a clarion call for the genocide of Jews.
That intervention is part of a broader effort by the firm to force the social network to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) highly controversial working definition of antisemitism. This definition, which has been condemned by many sources – including academic David Feldman, who helped draft it – for falsely conflating criticism of the Zionist entity and antisemitism, is a major inspiration for CyberWell. So, too, it seems is a sinister Israeli government psychological warfare blitzkrieg, concerned with “mass consciousness activities” in the U.S. and Europe.
35 Pro-Israel groups have called on social media platforms to copy Meta ban on targeting Zionists. Photo | Adopt IHRA Coalition
On June 24, independent journalists Lee Fang and Jack Poulson reported that CyberWell was one component of this insidious effort to shape and spread pro-Israeli narratives across the Western world, known as Voices of Israel. In response to the exposé, CyberWell repudiated any affiliation with the long-running, Israeli-funded hasbara operation or receiving government funding “from any country.” As we shall see, though, there are unambiguous grounds to doubt these denials.
It is vital to clarify the political, ideological, and financial forces guiding CyberWell’s operations and the malign interests that its censorship activities serve. The non-profit is now a “trusted partner” of Meta, TikTok, and X, ostensibly assisting these major social networks to combat “disinformation.” In reality, this grants a shadowy private firm with open links to Israel’s intelligence apparatus and evident ambitions to take its censorship crusade global, unrestrained power to prevent the reality of Israel’s genocide from emerging publicly.
‘Nothing Wrong’
In response to the exposures of Fang and Poulson, CyberWell – which had hitherto operated with a reasonable degree of transparency – went scurrying underground. Many sections of its website were pruned of incriminating information or deleted outright. This included a highly illuminating section on the individuals running and advising the outfit. Now, visitors to CyberWell’s website are offered no indication of who or what is behind the initiative, which promises to deliver “more data, less hate” by tackling “antisemitism” online using artificial intelligence.
In a comment released to Fang and Poulson, CyberWell claimed they were “forced to remove the ‘Our Team’ page for safety reasons” due to the pair’s reporting “generating false and misleading information.” The statement further alleged: “Following the publication of your story, our analysts were attacked and identified by name on X. Users shared your article and our employees’ names with a wider network and we became concerned for our staff’s safety.”
A review of the now-purged resumes of CyberWell’s founders and staff points to a somewhat different rationale. Many members of the non-profit’s “dynamic team” of “academics, retired generals, intelligence alumni and innovative tech professionals” have extensive Israeli Occupation Force (IOF) backgrounds and Israeli government ties. U.S.-born founder Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor emigrated to Tel Aviv as a teenager and volunteered to serve in the IOF as a “lone soldier.” She then entered the intelligence sphere via Israeli firm Argyle Consulting, which provides private spying services to international companies and “other entities.”
She served under Zohar Gorgel, “a decorated IDF intelligence officer with over a decade of experience in various cyber and technology roles.” Together, they struck upon the idea of “driving enforcement and improvement of community standards and hate speech policies across the digital landscape to fight against online antisemitism,” so they launched CyberWell, “encouraged by colleagues and mentors.” Elsewhere, the organization employs Yonathan Hezroni, “a former analyst and analyst team leader” in the IOF’s military intelligence research department.
Dina Porat, chief historian of the Zionist entity-funded Yad Vashem, who heavily influenced the IHRA working definition, is named as a CyberWell advisor. So too is Major General Amos Yadlin, a 40-year high-ranking IDF veteran who once led the IDF’s spying wing and was previously defense attaché to the U.S.. Alongside them is Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner, a longtime IDF spokesperson. His position raises grave questions about the non-profit’s denials of any connection to Voices of Israel.
Israeli corporate records list Lerner as a shareholder and director of Keshet David. As Voices of Israel chair and founder Micah Lakin Avni explained in a December 2018 Times of Israel interview, Keshet David—initially called Israel Cyber Shield—is the research and intelligence arm of his Israeli government-funded organization, then known as Concert. It was headed by Yossi Kuperwasser, former Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs director general and lead IDF military intelligence researcher.
Israel Cyber Shield attracted significant public controversy in May of that year after it was revealed to have compiled and circulated a “dirty dossier” on prominent BDS activist Linda Sarsour in a bid to discredit her and encourage universities and other organizations not to feature her as a speaker. As Avni acknowledged in his interview, creating a hostile environment for Palestine solidarity activists and events was precisely the unit’s founding purpose:
If a person puts up a post, a public post on Facebook, and says I’m a big supporter of this or that anti-Israel organization, not only that but I’m organizing a demonstration on my campus tomorrow – if they put that public post out for the whole world to know, that’s public information, so there’s nothing wrong with being aware of that post and making sure that the Jewish students on their campus are aware of it…Concert funds Keshet David and we get all the information.”
‘Tightly Knit’
CyberWell’s deep and cohering – if well-concealed – ties to Voices of Israel and the Israeli government don’t end there. The non-profit’s 2022 annual report lists its Chief Financial Officer as Sagi Balasha, the very first CEO of Voices of Israel when the operation was still named Concert. He took up the post after leaving the influential Zionist lobby group, the Israeli-American Council (IAC), right around the time IAC donated thousands of dollars to Keshet David under its former name, Israel Cyber Shield.
Fast forward to 2021, CyberWell was founded under the title Global Antisemitism Research Center (Global ARC). Almost immediately, the wholly unknown non-profit received a $30,000 joint donation alongside Keshet David from Merona Leadership Foundation, which is run by Gila Milstein, the wife of wealthy CyberWell board member Adam Milstein, who cofounded IAC in 2007 under the express direction of Israel’s then-consul general in Los Angeles, Ehud Danoch.
From 2018 onwards, former Israeli police officer Eran Vasker has served as chief executive of Keshet David. Simultaneously, he led Argyle Consulting, the private spying firm where Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor and Zohar Gorgel met, and founded CyberWell. Cohen Montemayor admitted in a podcast interview in January this year that while at the company, she “provided analysis” to Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs, the same agency that founded Voices of Israel. CyberWell audit committee member Arik Becker is an Argyle alumni.
As Fang and Poulson write, “In other words, the chief executive of CyberWell and two of its board members previously worked at the same private intelligence spin-off from Voices of Israel, a director of the spin-off is an advisor to CyberWell, and the CEO of Voices became the CFO of CyberWell.” As Poulson tells MintPress News:
These groups are so tightly knit you can arrive at the same conclusion ten different ways. These efforts are for sure all an evolution of Israel’s longrunning anti-BDS program.”
To make this mephitic web even murkier and more incestuous, CyberWell partnered with the notorious Act.IL, which is closely associated with IAC and the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs. The latter leads Zionist entity anti-BDS efforts globally. CyberWell’s 2022 annual report noted that the non-profit “served as the data provider to Act.IL’s community for their end of year call to action on the state of online antisemitism.”
In a bitter twist, it was in 2022 that Act.IL ceased operations. Having secretly for years corralled Zionist activists to target boycotts, justify Israeli oppression and slaughter, and harass human rights groups and Palestine solidarity activists online under the bogus aegis of organic and spontaneous response. The platform abruptly shuttered without much in the way of explanation. This may have been triggered by the crusading work of Canadian academic Michael Bueckert, who amply exposed Act.IL as an Israeli government propaganda connivance from day one.
Yet, CyberWell’s pressing desire to disassociate itself from Israel’s security and intelligence apparatus is undoubtedly motivated by a fear the outfit could go the way of Act.IL if its true nature was exposed and well-known. Markedly, both Argyle and CyberWell executives and Adam and Gila Milstein refused to respond to further requests for comment from Fang and Poulson on their relationship and shared funding with Keshet David.
Yet, CyberWell’s Israeli government origins hide in plain sight. In February 2021, Tel Aviv’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs and the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs produced a report, “The Hate Factor: policy outline for combating antisemitism online”. Little noticed at the time, among its proposed strategies, was the exploitation of artificial intelligence – CyberWell’s USP – to root out and neutralize users on social media platforms posting and sharing content critical of Israel. It is no coincidence that CyberWell launched months later.
“Our reporting forensically demonstrates that the IHRA advocacy nonprofit CyberWell is a spin out of Israel’s most controversial anti-BDS intelligence collection effort, Keshet David, which further used Argyle Consulting Group as its public face,” Poulson tells MintPress News.
The corporate shell game continues, with Keshet being the intel collection arm of the primary propaganda effort of the Israeli government, Voices of Israel. That CyberWell scrubbed its intelligence ties from its website after we exposed how the non-profit was born out of this network speaks volumes.”
It is vitally incumbent for Palestine solidarity activists to mount pressure on CyberWell and demand answers to the questions that its executives now stonewall. They – and, of course, the spectral actors lurking behind them – clearly have grand plans. On July 3, CyberWell circulated a dubious study on alleged antisemitic posting related to that month’s UK general election. Content critical of now-Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s avowed Zionism was specifically cited. An accompanying press release declared:
As elections are being held this year in a number of countries including the UK, France, and the US, CyberWell anticipates that antisemitic conspiracies, accusations, and hateful rhetoric will continue to rise online and in the real world. Unfortunately, one of the few things that opposing parties and sides have agreed on throughout history is the use of antisemitic tropes to blame the other for perceived failures and harms.”
We can expect similar “studies” to circulate in the wake of every election and political incident in the years to come unless CyberWell’s Israeli intelligence-run operations are brought to a rapid – and wholly deserved – halt.
Feature photo | Illustration by MintPress News
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist and MintPress News contributor exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. His work has previously appeared in The Cradle, Declassified UK, and Grayzone. Follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg.
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On Monday, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov was detained in France immediately upon landing in the country. He was eventually charged with a litany of crimes, including “importing a cryptology tool.” It is only the latest attack in a war against privacy that goes back more than three decades.
The 90s
In late January 1991, a then 48-year-old senator from Delaware named Joe Biden, introduced Senate Bill 266: the Comprehensive Counter-Terrorism Act of 1991. Buried in the last third of the proposed bill’s text was a section on “electronic communications” that imposed requirements for providers of electronic communication services.
“It is the sense of Congress that providers of electronic communications services and manufacturers of electronic communications service equipment shall ensure that communications systems permit the government to obtain the plain text contents of voice, data, and other communications when appropriately authorized by law,” the proposed bill read.
Essentially, SB266 would have required companies to create backdoors to enable the government to snoop on their customers, making it impossible to have truly private conversations digitally.
That may seem relatively mundane in the post-Snowden leak world we live in, but this was the birth of the digital age and the standards we enjoy online today did not yet exist.
Emails, for example, were sent through the internet unencrypted, in plain text. Any malicious actor with the right hardware and know-how, not just the government, could intercept email and even send emails appearing to come from someone else.
Developing a secure and private way to send information online wasn’t just a civil rights issue; it was a hurdle that needed to be solved before the internet could go mainstream. Had Senator Biden gotten his way, the internet would be a very different place right now.
Today, encryption is used to both hide the content of emails and verify the sender. But even in 1991, it was clear encryption would become a big part of how people communicated digitally and Senator Biden wanted to ensure the government had keys to a backdoor – literally and figuratively.
While the bill gathered three co-sponsors, including then Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), it never got out of committee. Terrorism and the internet were not concerns most people, even Congress, had in 1991. But, it was enough to frighten the privacy advocates that populated the early internet, including one young computer scientist named Phil Zimmermann.
Zimmermann was already working on his encryption software when SB266 was introduced, but it sounded an alarm in his head that would push it from a hobby to an obsession. He would later say he missed five mortgage payments while working on it.
Congress might not have seen the coming fight over privacy in the digital age, but some, like the relatively young Biden, had started to wake up to it. The war might not have started, but the battle lines were being drawn.
On June 5 of that year, Zimmermann sent the first release of PGP 1.0, an acronym for “Pretty-Good-Privacy,” to a few of his friends to upload to the internet. It first appeared on a newsgroup called Peacenet, a gathering place online for activists worldwide. A day later, it was on Usenet, the largest collection of newsgroups and a service that still exists today.
PGP used a technique called “public key encryption,” a method invented in the 1970s by a group at Stanford MIT led by Martin Hellman. Previously, if two parties wanted to communicate using encryption, a key to decode those messages was required.
That presented a problem because, unless the two parties were physically in the same space, that key would have to be shared before encryption took place. The key would go through either an insecure channel, where it could be captured, or through a secure channel which likely meant the physical transfer of a key, which again could be intercepted.
Public key encryption works by giving each user two keys: a public key and a private key. The public key, as the name implies, is shared publicly. Anyone who wants to send the user a message uses the receiver’s public key to encrypt the message, which can only be decoded with the receiver’s private key.
Not even the message’s author can decode it once it is encrypted. It also allowed users to “sign” messages using their private key, proving they authored the message without revealing the private key. That and a later innovation by PGP developers called Web of Trust are still part of how emails are validated today.
“Their invention essentially allows us today to perform operations on information in our desktop computers that introduces no noticeable overhead whatsoever. The additional amount of time required to encrypt a message with this technology is basically negligible,” explained Dr. James Bidzos, then the president of RSA Data Security, during a discussion on internet security held by the Commonwealth Club of California in 1995. “It is essentially free and it’s unbreakable and this presents a problem for the government.”
PGP soon took off and by September 1992 it was ported to virtually every platform besides Mac. But that grabbed the government’s attention, and they weren’t happy about powerful encryption being released for free and for everyone.
Computer encryption, at that time, was almost exclusively the domain of governments. It was, after all, originally used to send – and crack – military messages during World War II. By the 1990s, there were a few commercial options, but they were expensive, licensed and crucially, controlled. PGP was free, it was available to everyone and it used a more secure encryption method than anything commercially available at the time.
The US government considered encryption a weapon, and its export was prohibited by the United States. It announced a criminal investigation into Zimmermann, accusing him of violating the Arms Export Control Act – that he was an arms dealer – because his software was downloaded outside of the United States. He was eventually searched by US Customs agents while traveling multiple times.
What was soon called “The Crypto Wars” had begun. By that time, PGP was already being used by human rights organizations around the world, including Amnesty International.
The investigation was ultimately dropped in 1996, four and a half years after PGP was first posted to Usenet. The move came down as the Clinton administration changed weapon export laws, removing encryption software from its “munitions” list. Every Western democracy soon followed.
Today, PGP lives on as OpenPGP and can be downloaded for free by anyone in the world. It is still considered the gold standard for private communications.
The Clipper Chip
Zimmermann was not the only focus of the Clinton administration’s war on privacy and encryption. In 1993, it announced another front in the Crypto Wars. It claimed that it developed a chip with “key escrow” functionality that provided encryption while enabling government access; privacy and patriotic security in one neat package.
Officially named MYK-78, but colloquially known as the “Clipper Chip,” the Clinton administration’s proposal set off a firestorm of outrage not only among the internet community but the telecommunication and burgeoning data security industries as well.
The New York Times called it“the first holy war of the information superhighway.”
The Clipper Chip was created in response to AT&T announcing the launch of the TSD-3600, a device that allowed users – for the relatively low price of $1,295 – to have fully encrypted phone calls.
The Clipper Chip was designed to be inserted into devices, enabling encrypted phone calls but could be unlocked by keys that the government held. Its sister chip, Capstone, was designed to do the same thing with data, including internet and fax transmissions. AT&T announced an upcoming modified version of the TSD-3600 with the Clipper Chip, but the rest of the industry was less enthused.
The plan was vehemently opposed by the left and the right: everyone from the American Civil Liberties Union to conservative radio talk show firebrand Rush Limbaugh railed against it. More than 50,000 people responded to the government’s request for petitions on the plan, with the vast majority opposing it, according to media accounts from the time.
The Clipper Chip plan came crashing down when the government gave it to Matt Blaze, a computer scientist working for Bell Labs, in the hopes of clinching his stamp of approval. Within a day, he found flaws that made it unusable, including one that eliminated the backdoor the government wanted to use.
Had that version of the Clipper Chip been implemented, the criminals the government hoped to catch could have modified it to give them more security than they would have had without it.
But the flaws weren’t the reason the chip was a bad idea, it was a bad idea because of the premise of the chip itself, as Blaze detailed in a later interview.
“It’s good that Clipper was killed—and I’m glad that I helped kill it…but it was sorta killed for the wrong reasons,” Blaze told Gizmodo. “The bug I found wasn’t why it was a bad idea. The stuff I found could be fixed…but there were all these other problems—the fact that it involved a secret algorithm…the fact that it included the key escrow mechanism that could be compromised.”
“There was no version of this that you could build that wouldn’t have had those problems,” he said.
The US Government was the only “customer” to buy the Clipper Chip. While exact numbers are hard to find, it was reported they ordered it in “bulk,” attempting to build demand. In 1996, the same year the Zimmermann investigation was dropped, the Clipper Chip was officially canceled.
The timing of those two events was likely not a coincidence. 1996 was an election year, and the Republican nominee for president, Bob Dole, was slamming the Clinton administration on their online privacy policy.
“Bill Clinton Wants to Put ‘Big Brother’ in Your Computer,” a subheadline of Dole’s campaign website read. “Within his first 100 days as president, Bill Clinton proposed the Clipper Chip…Since then, Bill Clinton has released updated versions of encryption proposals which insist that the government hold a key to individual’s private data communications.”
“Bob Dole believes Americans should have the right to guard themselves using encryption.”
Clinton won the election, but the pressure from the public, buoyed by his political opponent, encouraged his administration to back off. Their ideas just weren’t popular; Americans still valued privacy in 1996.
From the War on Terror to Telegram
But the desire to eliminate privacy online never went away, it just shifted. In the 1990s, the debate was if the public should have access to tools that enable privacy. The government lost that battle and so they started building systems to snoop on everyone who didn’t use those tools purposefully, slowly eroding the expectation of privacy the public had.
After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, massive spying operations were launched, both in public and in secret. Slowly, either due to fear of terrorism or apathy, the American people started to lose their appreciation for privacy, which started to be portrayed as the exclusive domain of criminals and the paranoid.
In 2014, in the wake of the Snowden leaks, former CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin, who also served as acting director for just over two months in 2004, wrote an opinion piece in the Washington Post to assure the American public that the US National Security Agency (NSA) wasn’t really spying on Americans (they were) and even if they were, it wasn’t a big deal.
“Although our society lauds, in almost ‘Stepford Wives’-like fashion, the merits of ‘transparency,’ it lacks a collective, mature understanding of how intelligence works, how it integrates with foreign policy and how it contributes to the national welfare. Meanwhile, prurient interest in the details of leaked intelligence skyrockets, and people devour material that is not evidence of abuse but merely fascinating — and even more fascinating to US adversaries.”
According to McLaughlin’s upside-down perspective, those who want to know what our government is doing are “Stepford Wives” blindly following “society” and giving aid to our enemies. Those who remain willfully ignorant, according to McLaughlin, are the realists who know the NSA is “not perfect,” but the real problem is “the broad distrust of government that has taken root in the United States in recent decades.”
The Snowden leaks did not lead to any real reforms. The government claimed they took measures to protect the privacy of citizens, but those were internal changes around the margins and the new rules are routinely ignored anyway.
No one was fired. No one was arrested. No mass protests hit the streets. The public had been conditioned to expect the government was watching them. This year, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was renewed for another two years, a massive blow for privacy and civil rights advocates.
“The natural flow of technology tends to move in the direction of making surveillance easier,” Zimmermann prophetically said nearly 30 years ago.
The only vestige of privacy left online is through encryption. For years that was a fairly complicated process, public key cryptography made it far easier than it was before, but few in the mainstream were using tools like PGP.
Yes, email had become secure from spoofing, but most of the encryption was handled by email providers. Google may use encryption to keep users safe from man-in-the-middle attacks, but if they have access to your decrypted emails (and they do if you use Gmail), then there is nothing preventing them from handing that information over.
That changed with apps like Telegram and Signal, which have true end-to-end encryption that not even the owners can crack. Now, more than ever, normal people are using apps that enable their privacy by default.
It’s not perfect, devices themselves are still vulnerable to government intrusion, but it is far more difficult to gain access to than simply sending a subpoena to a service provider. The government could tolerate encryption when it was limited to a few hundred thousand geeks posting on message boards, 950 million Telegram users is a much bigger issue.
On Wednesday, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov was charged with a litany of crimes accusing him of not doing enough to prevent abuse of his platform.
The critical charge however, the one that all the others rest on because without it he couldn’t be blamed for their actions is once again – as it was with Zimmermann in the US decades ago – with providing tools that enable encryption, which is the only vestige of privacy left on the internet in a post-Snowden world.
Durov is out on €5 million bond and is barred from leaving France because, according to the indictment, he was “providing cryptology services aiming to ensure confidentiality without certified declaration,” as well as “providing a cryptology tool not solely ensuring authentication or integrity monitoring without prior declaration.” And, thirdly, because he was “importing a cryptology tool ensuring authentication or integrity monitoring without prior declaration.”
The charges nearly mirror what Zimmermann was investigated for.
Instead of the crime being the export of cryptology tools, it is the import of cryptology tools. In the 1990s, the US government argued they didn’t want foreign adversaries to gain access to the privacy that cryptology enables. They may have had ulterior motives, but that was the basis of their investigation.
French authorities are arguing it is a crime to give their citizens the ability to communicate privately. They are adding charges related to what Durov’s users did to lessen public sympathy by associating him with the most horrible crimes, which would be like blaming AT&T because someone used a telephone to order a hitman. However, the cryptography charge is the heart of the case.
“A telephone company can’t be sued [for crimes facilitated on its network], it can’t control what the people say on the telephone,” former university professor and journalist Jim Kavanagh told Sputnik. “And that’s where it should be with these social media companies.”
One may argue that the French are not the Americans, and so these are separate fights by different governments on different populations with different expectations about their freedoms, but that would be the height of naivete.
The attacks on internet privacy and freedom of speech have spread across the West. People and journalists are being arrested in the UK and Australia for social media posts. The US government is abusing the Foreign Agents Registration Act to attack any critics of its policies and has been pressuring social media companies to ban content and users.
In Brazil, a censorship-happy judge is opening investigations on his critics, and then ruling in those same cases. That same judge just shut down X inside the country and imposed a fine worth roughly $8,900 for anyone who attempts to circumvent the ban.
Just because Durov was arrested in France does not mean it is unrelated to the rest. The prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and whistleblower Edward Snowden are a part of it as well. Their work would have been impossible without reliable encryption.
“[The French are] part of the [Five] Eyes network of NSA-type agencies. And you can bet that the French have not done this rogue, that they have been talking to their American and, I would imagine, also British and maybe Israeli and other counterparts. I’m sure that’s happening,” Ted Rall, a political cartoonist and host of Sputnik Radio’s Final Countdown, said on fellow Sputnik program The Backstory.
The West is systematically removing free speech from the public square of the internet. When that is complete, they will come for the speech in the private corners of it and that is why they need to end truly secure encryption.
“When I look at what happened with Durov,” Critical Hour co-host and former law enforcement officer Garland Nixon said on Wednesday, “You know what term comes to mind? Extraordinary rendition. We can’t quite get away with [arresting Durov] here, so we’ll lock you up if you land in… one of our colonies.”
On October 11, 2020, the Public Affairs Office of the US Justice Department released an “international statement” on end-to-end encryption, making clear that they believe tech companies have a responsibility to install backdoors in their software.
End-to-end encryption that precludes lawful access to the content of communications in any circumstances directly impacts these responsibilities, creating severe risks to public safety in two ways:
1.
By severely undermining a company’s own ability to identify and respond to violations of their terms of service. This includes responding to the most serious illegal content and activity on its platform, including child sexual exploitation and abuse, violent crime, terrorist propaganda and attack planning
2.
By precluding the ability of law enforcement agencies to access content in limited circumstances where necessary and proportionate to investigate serious crimes and protect national security, where there is lawful authority to do so.
As in the 1990s, the government is arguing that innocent people cannot be afforded privacy, because criminals would have it as well. But, privacy isn’t just for criminals.
Everything from financial transactions to sending your address to a relative so they can ship a present for your child is something that should be encrypted before you do it. Any backdoor is susceptible to being hacked and abused. Eliminating encryption will make the world not only less private but less secure.
In the digital age, a private conversation is not as simple as going to the backyard. Never forget that privacy is supposed to be the default in free societies, government snooping is supposed to be the exception.
“So, this is the end of the celebration of democracy and free speech [and] free expression that was supposedly a foundational part of American and Western civilization,” Kavanagh said.
Writing in 2021 on the 30th anniversary of PGP’s release, Zimmermann warned that his old enemies were coming again and pleaded for the public to take the threat seriously.
“We see it in Australia, the UK, the US, and other liberal democracies. Twenty years after we all thought we won the Crypto Wars. Do we have to mobilize again? Veterans of the Crypto Wars may have trouble fitting into their old uniforms. Remember that scene in Pixar’s The Incredibles when Mr. Incredible tries to squeeze into his old costume? We are going to need fresh troops.”
It is time for a new generation of digital freedom fighters to take center stage from our dial-up and Usenet-using forefathers. Users of TikTok, Twitter, Telegram and Signal, unite! You have nothing to lose but your digital chains.
Footage reportedly shows over a dozen combat vehicles targeted by Iskander and rocket artillery strikes in Ukraine’s Sumy Region
Russian forces have conducted a coordinated strike against a large gathering of Ukrainian reserve forces across the border from Russia’s Kursk Region, according to new video shared on social media by military bloggers.
Hostilities have been ongoing in the border areas of Russia’s Kursk since Kiev launched a major incursion earlier this month. While Ukrainian forces continue their attempts to push deeper into Russian territory, Moscow has sought to push them back while striking rear targets in Ukraine’s adjacent Sumy Region.
On Saturday evening, a new video emerged purportedly showing one such strike targeting a column of Ukrainian reinforcements south of the city of Sumy, approximately 40 kilometers from the Russian border.
Russian surveillance reportedly discovered the enemy’s rear reserves earlier in the day but decided to let them accumulate to inflict maximum possible damage, according to the Telegram channel NgP_raZVedka, which first shared the footage.
https://www.rt.com/russia/603348-russian-strike-sumy-reinforcements/video/66d3966c85f5401b9221d74dThe strike was reportedly launched around 8pm on Saturday when up to 20 vehicles clumped together along a 600-meter stretch of road. Russian drone ‘beheads’ Ukrainian tank – MOD (VIDEO)READ MORE: Russian drone ‘beheads’ Ukrainian tank – MOD (VIDEO) According to the surveillance drone footage, Russian forces conducted a combined strike, first hitting the column with two ballistic missiles, presumably Iskanders, equipped with cluster and high-explosive fragmentation warheads. Following that, the Ukrainian forces were apparently pounded by a salvo from a multiple launch rocket system. The Defense Ministry has yet to officially confirm the latest strike. However, on Saturday morning, the Russian military reported the destruction of a “large warehouse with rocket and artillery weapons” in the same area. In a video released by the Russian military, it was stated that the location was struck by a ballistic missile launched from an Iskander-M system, with the military claiming that surveillance confirmed “prolonged repeated detonations” at the facility and its subsequent “complete burnout.”
Der Friedensstifter 