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
Am 1. September 1939 wurde fortgesetzt, was nicht erst mit der Einrichtung des Konzentrationslagers Buchenwald 1937 begonnen hatte: Der Krieg nach außen folgte dem nach innen. – Von Arnold Schölzel (junge Welt)
META’S POLICY ON ZIONISM EXPOSED: CYBERWELL SCRAMBLES AFTER JEWISH OCCUPATION TIES REVEALED
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.
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.
‘Hateful Rhetoric’
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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DUROV ARREST FIRST SALVO OF FINAL BATTLE IN THE 30-YEAR WAR ON PRIVACY
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.
PGP and Phil Zimmermann
Phil Zimmermann in Dublin, Ireland
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.
WATCH RUSSIAN MISSILES WIPE OUT UKRAINIAN ARMOR COLUMN – REPORTS
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.”
https://www.rt.com/russia/603348-russian-strike-sumy-reinforcements/video/66d396f685f5406c1a7a845c
Russland konzentriert sich.
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 …
THE U.S. REGIME’S PLANS TO CONTROL THE WORLD
Eric Zuesse (blogs at https://theduran.com/author/eric-zuesse/)
The U.S. Government’s plans to control the world are displayed not merely by its lie-based invasions, such as against Iraq in 2003, and against Libya in 2011, and against Syria in 2012; but also by its coups, such as against Honduras in 2009, and against Venezuela in 2012 and again in 2019, and against Ukraine in 2014; and by its sanctions, such as against Iran, Venezuela, Russia, Iraq, and Syria; all of which kill and destroy millions of people, and produce tens of millions of refugees, etc.
An excellent example of the planning that the U.S. Government devotes to expanding still further its empire — the lands that it controls, America’s colonies or ‘allies’ — was provided in a 28 February 2023 hearing by the House Appropriations Committee, Subcommittee on ‘Defense’ (Aggression):
Betty McCollum, the leading Democrat on the Subcommittee, addressed the U.S. Secretary of ‘Defense’ (Aggression), Lloyd Austin:
As General Milley [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] said, we don’t go to war alone. So if we include Australia, Canada, NATO, you know, all the great powers that we work with, we would have a multiplying effect that neither China or Russia has.
Would that be a fair statement, Secretary Austin or General Milley?
Secretary Austin: That is, in fact, correct, Ranking Member McCollum. We will always fight with our allies and partners. And, again, the capability that they bring to the table magnifies our overall capability. So you could expect that in any instance we would be able to draw upon some of their capability as well. So we work on a routine basis to make sure that we are interoperable and make sure that—-
Ms. McCollum: Thank you. Thank you.
I would like you to, a little, go into more importance on the recent–on February 2, the agreement that you signed with the Philippines, whichever one of you gentlemen want to answer that.
President Marcos seems to have made some deliberate decisions to align more closely with the United States’ interests and away from China. Could you kind of tell the committee more about this agreement with the Philippines and how you see it enhancing our efforts in the region, because I think this goes back to the whole question of the multiplying effect of having resources that China and Russia do not have, and if there are any other nations in Indo-Pac that you see wanting to align more closely with the United States. …
Secretary Austin: Well, I was, as a matter of fact, out in the Philippines and engaged the President on this particular issue. And I was really pleased that the President made the decision to move forward and increase the number of sites where we could work along with the Philippine forces to increase interoperability and develop their skills as well. And it is actually a benefit to them, as you know. So this really is a significant movement forward. …
General Milley: Just two points. One is you are correct on the allies and partners, Australia, Japan, but there are many other countries there as well, to include European countries. We have done exercises with the Brits and the French also in the Asia-Pacific region. So they are force multipliers.
Secondly is our sub force, which is rarely talked about, and I am not going to talk about it in detail right now, but our sub force is incredibly–submarine force–incredibly capable and very deadly and extremely lethal. So those two pieces I think would make a huge difference and help deter any kind of aggression by China.
The last thing is the Philippines, but the Philippines and other countries in that region, they sit astride the key sea lines of communication that China relies on for their international access to the Middle East oil, et cetera, et cetera.
So those allies and partners of ours are fundamental. …
The strategic end state [in Ukraine] is [that] the [U.S.-required] global rules-based [not U.N. laws-based] international order, that was put in place [by Truman] in 1945, is upheld. How do you do that? How do you know you have achieved that end state? You achieve that end state when Ukraine remains a free, sovereign, independent country with their territory intact. And then you know the rules base was upheld.
If that rules-based order, which is in its 80th year, if that goes out the window, then be very careful. We will be doubling our defense budgets at that point, because that will introduce not an era of great power competition. That will begin an era of great power conflict, and that will be extraordinarily dangerous for the whole world.
General Milley also said:
Our joint force is the most lethal and capable military in the world. Our troops are the best-led, best-equipped, and best-trained force anywhere because of your support. So thank you for what you have done. And yet again, I ask that you support this year’s request with an on-time budget approval.
Our mission, the mission of the uniformed military and our purpose is very simple. It is to defend the United States of America.
In other words (according to this “global rules-based international order”): Invading Iraq and Syria and Libya, and arming Ukraine against Russia, and arming Israel against the Palestinians, and arming Taiwan against China (of which even the official U.S. policy is “The United States acknowledges that … there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China”) etc., is being done “to defend the United States of America.” Adolf Hitler likewise said that what he was doing was necessary in order “to Defend Germany.”
Excellent insights into this are provided by Fritz Pointer, brother to Anita Pointer of the Pointer Sisters, in his article that I received by email on August 29th, which opens:
August 29, 2024
American Propaganda Brings Memories of Nazi Germany
By Fritz Pointer,submitted to DWF NEWS
Today the basic method of American propagandistic activity, as in Nazi Germany, is in the omission of important facts, and false presentation of facts: (e.g. Mexican immigrants are rapists, drug dealers and criminals, Palestinians beheaded babies), the dissemination of provocative lies (e.g. America is a white man’s country, Israel is a democracy,) and the systematic deception of public opinion (Americans want endless wars for national security, Russia is our eternal enemy, and maybe China too).
Such false “media reports” are as necessary to the US for the realization of its plans for military and economic global domination, as are the production of military equipment and the drafting of military plans. “They are coming to get you”: “The Enemy is at the Gate”: “They hate your way of life”: “Better to fight Them over there, than here”: and this latest one, I offer, for media: “Palestine has a Right to Defend Itself”.
Without deliberately spreading lies and rumors, attacking freedom of the press and of speech and arresting journalists, it would not be possible for American endless wars to pursue their stated goal of “full-spectrum global domination” and to put in practice the war crimes and crimes against humanity of which it is guilty. In this U.S. propaganda system, it is the daily press and television that are the most important weapons and are all as guilty of war crimes as Hans Fritzsche and the propaganda work he did for the Nazis. [Denazification proceedings after the IMT, brought forth evidence against the intensely anti-Semitic Fritsche that had been hidden — perhaps by Americans — from the prosecutors there, and so he then became sentenced in a German court in 1947 to 8 years in prison; then he got a pardon in 1950 in West Germany, and remained a deeply committed Nazi till his death in West Germany in 1953.]
Today, [without] the role of the American press in habituating the American people to the suffering of other peoples and, even, urging war crimes, like extrajudicial murder and assassinations of a country’s leader; it is possible that many Americans would never have participated in or tolerated the atrocities being committed throughout the Middle East, had they not been conditioned, inured, goaded, and manipulated by constant media propaganda and lies. The media’s very success in manipulating public opinion is one of the strongest proofs of its culpability in the commission of war crimes.
In Craig Mokhiber‘s 8/24/24 article in Mondoweiss: “Western Media can be Legally Accountable of Gaza Genocide”, Mokhiber punctuates and embellishes my concern here with a focus on Israel/Palestine. He first notes that “the Israeli genocide machine in Palestine, and the direct complicity of the U.S., UK, and other Western governments, are two key pillars in the horrors being perpetrated against the Palestinian people.”
He continues: “But there is a third pillar: the role of complicit Western media corporations knowingly disseminating Israeli disinformation and propaganda, justifying war crimes and crimes against humanity, dehumanizing Palestinians, and blocking out information on the genocide in the West.” Lying deliberately and by omission. Providing just enough information for people to think they’re right; but not the knowledge to know they’re wrong.
So, for example, the Democratic National Convention (DNC), this August 2024, welcomed on stage, a Jewish family of one of the 109 hostages being held by Hamas as the cameras spanned the sniffling, and sobbing general audience. There was not one Palestinian allowed to say a word about the more than 100,000 killed by the (IDF) Israeli Defense Forces (as per recent Lancet numbers).
Helping to exterminate Palestinians, a Final Solution
Any ordinary, reasonable and prudent person knows that the U.S. cannot be a neutral or objective negotiator for peace when it is supplying literally billions of dollars in military hardware, intelligence, manpower, etc. to the Israeli side of the conflict. In effect, saying to Americans and the world, “We share the Zionists’ view of you, Palestinians, as ‘human animals.’ That is why we are helping them as much as we can to exterminate you – a Final Solution. We support Israel unconditionally.”
Then, out of the other side of their mouths, offering platitudes to the Palestinians about Israel’s right to defend itself; and you, Palestinians, don’t have that right; you must accept your apartheid condition, your ‘inferior’ human status, without complaining and certainly not fighting; perhaps you could sing an updated version of “We Shall Overcome”? …
All of the members of the House’s Subcommittee on Aggression agreed with all of this aggression everywhere. Though there are two Parties in the U.S. Congress, there is unanimity in support of more and more and more U.S. aggression. Like in Hitler’s Germany, all of official Washington, and all of the ‘acceptable’ media, support it.
The only thing that is not yet known about the U.S. regime’s plans to control the world is whether or not it’s willing to destroy even the entire world (in a nuclear war against Russia and/or China) in order to achieve this. (An article of mine on 29 August 2024 argued that the answer is probably yes, that the U.S. Government is willing, and is preparing, to do that.) However, one thing that’s virtually assured in advance, is: neither Russia nor China would ever willingly accept to become another country’s colony. Nobody can say whether there will be a WW3; but, if it will happen, then it will be because the U.S. regime will have forced it to happen — either by doing it itself (blitz-nuking the other’s central command), or else by giving the other side no other option than to initiate it (blitz-nuke) against the United States. The obviousness of the fraudulence of the U.S. Department of Aggression being called instead the “Department of Defense” is simply blatant — it’s proven by all of post-1945 U.S. history, especially after 9/11. The U.S. Government, at least in recent times, is a fraudulent ‘democracy’.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
Das Nein zu neuen US-Raketen muss auf die Straße – Am Antikriegstag und am 3. Oktober (UZ, Unsere Zeit)
Die Mehrheit der Menschen in diesem Land will keine neuen US-Raketen auf deutschem Boden. Im Vorfeld der Landtagswahlen in Brandenburg, Sachsen und Thüringen hatte zuletzt … Friedenskräfte sammeln sichweiterlesen
HUNGARY MAY DEFECT – PART NINETEEN OF THE ANGLO-AMERICAN WAR ON RUSSIA
Most Europeans know the United States provoked the conflict in Ukraine, profits from banning Russian oil and gas, and remain uneasy about the mysterious destruction of the Nordstream pipelines. The American government promoted a mindless NATO expansion strategy that caused a disastrous war and weakened NATO nations, who were pressured to donate billions of dollars and much of their military equipment to Ukraine, even though it isn’t a member of the NATO alliance. Eastern European states were excited to join NATO and the European Union economic block, called the EU, but were soon pressured to boost military spending to buy American weaponry, accept foreign migrants, host foreign troops, and donate money and arms to a lost cause in Ukraine. Profitable trade and tourism with Russia sharply declined while energy costs soared, causing economic decline.
The people of some European nations have already decided that joining NATO and the EU was a bad idea. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban openly states his dislike of EU mandates to allow mass immigration and continued trade sanctions on Russia. EU leaders denounce Orban and threaten sanctions because they can abuse Hungary since it is landlocked and surrounded by Ukraine and EU members. But if Russian troops reach Ukraine’s western border, Hungary may defect. Conquered Ukraine would become a close Russian ally and allow access to energy pipelines to import cheap Russian oil and gas, and permit rail and road access to Russia and all of Asia. There are several neighboring nations who may also defect from the American empire. This explains why NATO is considering sending forces to secure western Ukraine to keep its vassal states captive.
UKRAINE, THE GREATEST DISASTER FOR THE WEST IN MODERN TIMES
The empire of the West that we have lived with and within for so many years is now falling apart in disgrace. The manifestly disastrous ‘Ukraine Project’ it continues to promulgate will see its end.
It is clear that the western powers are fully aware of what faces them if and when Russia wins in Ukraine. They know they will never live down their humiliation and its many disastrous and permanent consequences. There will be no full recovery for them, ever. The stigmata will be permanent upon their national skins in perpetuity. Russia, after victory in Ukraine will be that much closer to the European mess of liberal degradation and will have even greater influence than now in attracting everyday people of western nations to the traditional ways of life they have maintained. All in all the project to use Ukraine as a device to weaken Russia has utterly failed.
Currently we are hearing how dire things have become in Europe, especially from Germany which has been in a downturn ever since it obeyed the U.S. and ended the Russian supply of cheap natural gas. Other European nations are also suffering due to this cause. Prices are rising and living standards falling across Europe. In the USA, thanks to the still powerful ability it has to manipulate markets the damage is not as severe as in Europe. But the effect of a defeat to its remaining, much reduced “prestige” as a military and political bully, in Ukraine will set the seal on its decline. The world is watching Russia beat the entirety of the western world along with its chief and most aggressive military tool, NATO. The change of attitude toward the West in general is already striking to see. And what awaits the West now will be even more so.
None of this need have occurred. Russia was more than willing to sort the Ukraine mess out through negotiations. The seven year effort by Russia in the face of western deception during the Minsk process proves this, along with its offer to the USA and NATO to work out a new security architecture for Europe and the instigation of negotiations toward a peaceful settlement in Istanbul only a month or so into the conflict. But all efforts by Russia to reach a negotiated settlement preserving peace into the future were rejected. It was clear at the time and even more so in hindsight that the western powers had no interest in establishing peace. They wanted war and believed by providing no way for Russia to escape from its ultimate decision they would win big. How wrong they were.
Russia has been strengthened in almost every way due to the West’s, #Project Ukraine’. It’s standing in the world outside the West has been massively improved. Trading partners from India to China, to Saudi Arabia, to Vietnam and far beyond are far closer than before. The Russian military, through its steady war of attrition against the Ukrainian regime and its military is producing the largest, best trained and equipped and most professional, highly experienced army in the world. And, due to necessity Russia has developed, tested and brought into service state of the art weapons systems such as its hypersonic missiles, making it the world’s most formidable adversary, bar none. By achieving its goals in Ukraine Russia will have new regions in in which it can make good use of both their populations and resources to move forward to ever more economic success.
In addition to all of the above Russia now sees a steady stream of people from the West wanting to live in Russia and become Russian citizens. Russia’s maintenance of traditional lifestyles is immensely attractive to families sick to death of the increasingly rotten state of western societies. This immigration inflow will further strengthen Russia in all manner of ways with an influx of fresh blood steadily having its effect across fields where they bring expertise to add to the ever more robust and excitingly innovative Russian scene. Russia is getting its message of modernity, tradition and security across as never before through such internet platforms as TikTok, Telegram and X. The sky is no limit for Russia as the West increasingly heads down a woke spiral of darkness toward an oblivion where the power it has used so malignly to intimidate and damage others evaporates.
The West was already headed downward and was already losing its power to China, India and others before it embarked on the disastrous Ukraine project. But with declining mental faculties, damaged by pernicious indulgences and influences, the level of stupidity at all levels of western society led its leaders to this final gross error. The debacle for the West in Ukraine is complete. Drained treasuries and armories, demotivated populations suffering a seemingly endless decline in their prospects and life chances, societies riven with discord, torn apart by division and torn into pieces by a totally dysfunctional political domain sinks now into a so-called woke degradation from which it seems certain it will never fully recover. The die is cast. The West’s so-called democracies are turning into totalitarian and highly draconian prisons for their inhabitants, lost to reality, believing in pure fantasy and now submerged forever within inescapable disgrace.
UKRAINE, THE GREATEST DISASTER FOR THE WEST IN MODERN TIMES
Der Friedensstifter 