Category Archives: Social Control

Let’s Give the CIA the Credit It Deserves

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By Norman Solomon

Source: OpEdNews.com

For months now, our country has endured the tacit denigration of American ingenuity. Countless statements — from elected officials, activist groups, journalists and many others — have ignored our nation’s superb blend of dazzling high-tech capacities and statecraft mendacities.

Fortunately, this week the news about release of illuminating CIA documents by WikiLeaks has begun to give adequate credit where due. And not a moment too soon. For way too long, Russia has been credited with prodigious hacking and undermining of democracy in the United States.

Many Americans have overlooked the U.S. government’s fantastic hacking achievements. This is most unfair and disrespectful to the dedicated men and women of intelligence services like the CIA and NSA. Far from the limelight, they’ve been working diligently to undermine democracy not just overseas but also here at home.

Today, the massive new trove of CIA documents can help to put things in perspective. Maybe now people will grasp that our nation’s undermining of democracy is home-grown and self-actualized. It’s an insult to the ingenious capacities of the United States of America to think that we can’t do it ourselves.

Contrary to all the public relations work that U.S. intelligence agencies have generously done for them, the Russians don’t even rank as peripheral to the obstacles and prospects for American democracy. Rest assured, throughout the long history of the United States, we haven’t needed foreigners to get the job done.

In our current era, can Vladimir Putin take any credit for purging huge numbers of African Americans, Latinos and other minority citizens from the voter rolls? Of course not.

Did Putin create and maintain the barriers that prevented many low-income people from voting on November 8? Only in his dreams.

Can the Kremlin hold a candle to the corporate-owned cable TV channels that gave Donald Trump umpteen free hours of uninterrupted air time for speeches at his campaign rallies? Absolutely not.

Could any Russian operation claim more than a tiny sliver of impact compared to the handiwork of FBI Director James Comey as he boosted Donald Trump’s prospects with a pair of gratuitous announcements about a gratuitously re-opened probe of Hillary Clinton’s emails during the last days of the 2016 campaign? No way.

Is Putin anything but a miniscule lightweight in any efforts to manipulate the U.S. electorate compared to “dark money” American billionaires like the Koch brothers? Give us a break.

And how about the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution? The Kremlin can only marvel at the way that the CIA, the NSA and the bipartisan leadership in Washington have shredded the Fourth Amendment while claiming to uphold it.

To sum up: The CIA’s efforts to tout Russia add up to jaw-dropping false modesty! The humility of “deep state” leaders in Langley is truly awesome.

Let’s get a grip. Overwhelmingly, the achievements of thwarting democracy in America have been do-it-yourself operations. It’s about time that we give adequate credit to the forces perpetuating this country’s self-inflicted wounds to American democracy.

To loosely paraphrase the beloved comic-strip character Pogo, when the subject is grievous damage to democracy at home, “We have met the ingenuity and it is U.S.” But we’re having a terrible time recognizing ourselves.

Vault 7: CIA Hacking Tools Revealed

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Source: WikiLeaks

Press Release

Today, Tuesday 7 March 2017, WikiLeaks begins its new series of leaks on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Code-named “Vault 7” by WikiLeaks, it is the largest ever publication of confidential documents on the agency.

The first full part of the series, “Year Zero”, comprises 8,761 documents and files from an isolated, high-security network situated inside the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley, Virgina. It follows an introductory disclosure last month of CIA targeting French political parties and candidates in the lead up to the 2012 presidential election.

Recently, the CIA lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal including malware, viruses, trojans, weaponized “zero day” exploits, malware remote control systems and associated documentation. This extraordinary collection, which amounts to more than several hundred million lines of code, gives its possessor the entire hacking capacity of the CIA. The archive appears to have been circulated among former U.S. government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner, one of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive.

“Year Zero” introduces the scope and direction of the CIA’s global covert hacking program, its malware arsenal and dozens of “zero day” weaponized exploits against a wide range of U.S. and European company products, include Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows and even Samsung TVs, which are turned into covert microphones.

Since 2001 the CIA has gained political and budgetary preeminence over the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). The CIA found itself building not just its now infamous drone fleet, but a very different type of covert, globe-spanning force — its own substantial fleet of hackers. The agency’s hacking division freed it from having to disclose its often controversial operations to the NSA (its primary bureaucratic rival) in order to draw on the NSA’s hacking capacities.

By the end of 2016, the CIA’s hacking division, which formally falls under the agency’s Center for Cyber Intelligence (CCI), had over 5000 registered users and had produced more than a thousand hacking systems, trojans, viruses, and other “weaponized” malware. Such is the scale of the CIA’s undertaking that by 2016, its hackers had utilized more code than that used to run Facebook. The CIA had created, in effect, its “own NSA” with even less accountability and without publicly answering the question as to whether such a massive budgetary spend on duplicating the capacities of a rival agency could be justified.

In a statement to WikiLeaks the source details policy questions that they say urgently need to be debated in public, including whether the CIA’s hacking capabilities exceed its mandated powers and the problem of public oversight of the agency. The source wishes to initiate a public debate about the security, creation, use, proliferation and democratic control of cyberweapons.

Once a single cyber ‘weapon’ is ‘loose’ it can spread around the world in seconds, to be used by rival states, cyber mafia and teenage hackers alike.

Julian Assange, WikiLeaks editor stated that “There is an extreme proliferation risk in the development of cyber ‘weapons’. Comparisons can be drawn between the uncontrolled proliferation of such ‘weapons’, which results from the inability to contain them combined with their high market value, and the global arms trade. But the significance of “Year Zero” goes well beyond the choice between cyberwar and cyberpeace. The disclosure is also exceptional from a political, legal and forensic perspective.”

Wikileaks has carefully reviewed the “Year Zero” disclosure and published substantive CIA documentation while avoiding the distribution of ‘armed’ cyberweapons until a consensus emerges on the technical and political nature of the CIA’s program and how such ‘weapons’ should analyzed, disarmed and published.

Wikileaks has also decided to redact and anonymise some identifying information in “Year Zero” for in depth analysis. These redactions include ten of thousands of CIA targets and attack machines throughout Latin America, Europe and the United States. While we are aware of the imperfect results of any approach chosen, we remain committed to our publishing model and note that the quantity of published pages in “Vault 7” part one (“Year Zero”) already eclipses the total number of pages published over the first three years of the Edward Snowden NSA leaks.

 

Analysis

CIA malware targets iPhone, Android, smart TVs

CIA malware and hacking tools are built by EDG (Engineering Development Group), a software development group within CCI (Center for Cyber Intelligence), a department belonging to the CIA’s DDI (Directorate for Digital Innovation). The DDI is one of the five major directorates of the CIA (see this organizational chart of the CIA for more details).

The EDG is responsible for the development, testing and operational support of all backdoors, exploits, malicious payloads, trojans, viruses and any other kind of malware used by the CIA in its covert operations world-wide.

The increasing sophistication of surveillance techniques has drawn comparisons with George Orwell’s 1984, but “Weeping Angel”, developed by the CIA’s Embedded Devices Branch (EDB), which infests smart TVs, transforming them into covert microphones, is surely its most emblematic realization.

The attack against Samsung smart TVs was developed in cooperation with the United Kingdom’s MI5/BTSS. After infestation, Weeping Angel places the target TV in a ‘Fake-Off’ mode, so that the owner falsely believes the TV is off when it is on. In ‘Fake-Off’ mode the TV operates as a bug, recording conversations in the room and sending them over the Internet to a covert CIA server.

As of October 2014 the CIA was also looking at infecting the vehicle control systems used by modern cars and trucks. The purpose of such control is not specified, but it would permit the CIA to engage in nearly undetectable assassinations.

The CIA’s Mobile Devices Branch (MDB) developed numerous attacks to remotely hack and control popular smart phones. Infected phones can be instructed to send the CIA the user’s geolocation, audio and text communications as well as covertly activate the phone’s camera and microphone.

Despite iPhone’s minority share (14.5%) of the global smart phone market in 2016, a specialized unit in the CIA’s Mobile Development Branch produces malware to infest, control and exfiltrate data from iPhones and other Apple products running iOS, such as iPads. CIA’s arsenal includes numerous local and remote “zero days” developed by CIA or obtained from GCHQ, NSA, FBI or purchased from cyber arms contractors such as Baitshop. The disproportionate focus on iOS may be explained by the popularity of the iPhone among social, political, diplomatic and business elites.

A similar unit targets Google’s Android which is used to run the majority of the world’s smart phones (~85%) including Samsung, HTC and Sony. 1.15 billion Android powered phones were sold last year. “Year Zero” shows that as of 2016 the CIA had 24 “weaponized” Android “zero days” which it has developed itself and obtained from GCHQ, NSA and cyber arms contractors.

These techniques permit the CIA to bypass the encryption of WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Wiebo, Confide and Cloackman by hacking the “smart” phones that they run on and collecting audio and message traffic before encryption is applied.

 

CIA malware targets Windows, OSx, Linux, routers

The CIA also runs a very substantial effort to infect and control Microsoft Windows users with its malware. This includes multiple local and remote weaponized “zero days”, air gap jumping viruses such as “Hammer Drill” which infects software distributed on CD/DVDs, infectors for removable media such as USBs, systems to hide data in images or in covert disk areas ( “Brutal Kangaroo”) and to keep its malware infestations going.

Many of these infection efforts are pulled together by the CIA’s Automated Implant Branch (AIB), which has developed several attack systems for automated infestation and control of CIA malware, such as “Assassin” and “Medusa”.

Attacks against Internet infrastructure and webservers are developed by the CIA’s Network Devices Branch (NDB).

The CIA has developed automated multi-platform malware attack and control systems covering Windows, Mac OS X, Solaris, Linux and more, such as EDB’s “HIVE” and the related “Cutthroat” and “Swindle” tools, which are described in the examples section below.

 

CIA ‘hoarded’ vulnerabilities (“zero days”)

In the wake of Edward Snowden’s leaks about the NSA, the U.S. technology industry secured a commitment from the Obama administration that the executive would disclose on an ongoing basis — rather than hoard — serious vulnerabilities, exploits, bugs or “zero days” to Apple, Google, Microsoft, and other US-based manufacturers.

Serious vulnerabilities not disclosed to the manufacturers places huge swathes of the population and critical infrastructure at risk to foreign intelligence or cyber criminals who independently discover or hear rumors of the vulnerability. If the CIA can discover such vulnerabilities so can others.

The U.S. government’s commitment to the Vulnerabilities Equities Process came after significant lobbying by US technology companies, who risk losing their share of the global market over real and perceived hidden vulnerabilities. The government stated that it would disclose all pervasive vulnerabilities discovered after 2010 on an ongoing basis.

“Year Zero” documents show that the CIA breached the Obama administration’s commitments. Many of the vulnerabilities used in the CIA’s cyber arsenal are pervasive and some may already have been found by rival intelligence agencies or cyber criminals.

As an example, specific CIA malware revealed in “Year Zero” is able to penetrate, infest and control both the Android phone and iPhone software that runs or has run presidential Twitter accounts. The CIA attacks this software by using undisclosed security vulnerabilities (“zero days”) possessed by the CIA but if the CIA can hack these phones then so can everyone else who has obtained or discovered the vulnerability. As long as the CIA keeps these vulnerabilities concealed from Apple and Google (who make the phones) they will not be fixed, and the phones will remain hackable.

The same vulnerabilities exist for the population at large, including the U.S. Cabinet, Congress, top CEOs, system administrators, security officers and engineers. By hiding these security flaws from manufacturers like Apple and Google the CIA ensures that it can hack everyone &mdsh; at the expense of leaving everyone hackable.

 

‘Cyberwar’ programs are a serious proliferation risk

Cyber ‘weapons’ are not possible to keep under effective control.

While nuclear proliferation has been restrained by the enormous costs and visible infrastructure involved in assembling enough fissile material to produce a critical nuclear mass, cyber ‘weapons’, once developed, are very hard to retain.

Cyber ‘weapons’ are in fact just computer programs which can be pirated like any other. Since they are entirely comprised of information they can be copied quickly with no marginal cost.

Securing such ‘weapons’ is particularly difficult since the same people who develop and use them have the skills to exfiltrate copies without leaving traces — sometimes by using the very same ‘weapons’ against the organizations that contain them. There are substantial price incentives for government hackers and consultants to obtain copies since there is a global “vulnerability market” that will pay hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars for copies of such ‘weapons’. Similarly, contractors and companies who obtain such ‘weapons’ sometimes use them for their own purposes, obtaining advantage over their competitors in selling ‘hacking’ services.

Over the last three years the United States intelligence sector, which consists of government agencies such as the CIA and NSA and their contractors, such as Booz Allan Hamilton, has been subject to unprecedented series of data exfiltrations by its own workers.

A number of intelligence community members not yet publicly named have been arrested or subject to federal criminal investigations in separate incidents.

Most visibly, on February 8, 2017 a U.S. federal grand jury indicted Harold T. Martin III with 20 counts of mishandling classified information. The Department of Justice alleged that it seized some 50,000 gigabytes of information from Harold T. Martin III that he had obtained from classified programs at NSA and CIA, including the source code for numerous hacking tools.

Once a single cyber ‘weapon’ is ‘loose’ it can spread around the world in seconds, to be used by peer states, cyber mafia and teenage hackers alike.

 

U.S. Consulate in Frankfurt is a covert CIA hacker base

In addition to its operations in Langley, Virginia the CIA also uses the U.S. consulate in Frankfurt as a covert base for its hackers covering Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

CIA hackers operating out of the Frankfurt consulate ( “Center for Cyber Intelligence Europe” or CCIE) are given diplomatic (“black”) passports and State Department cover. The instructions for incoming CIA hackers make Germany’s counter-intelligence efforts appear inconsequential: “Breeze through German Customs because you have your cover-for-action story down pat, and all they did was stamp your passport”

Your Cover Story (for this trip)
Q: Why are you here?
A: Supporting technical consultations at the Consulate.

Two earlier WikiLeaks publications give further detail on CIA approaches to customs and secondary screening procedures.

Once in Frankfurt CIA hackers can travel without further border checks to the 25 European countries that are part of the Shengen open border area — including France, Italy and Switzerland.

A number of the CIA’s electronic attack methods are designed for physical proximity. These attack methods are able to penetrate high security networks that are disconnected from the internet, such as police record database. In these cases, a CIA officer, agent or allied intelligence officer acting under instructions, physically infiltrates the targeted workplace. The attacker is provided with a USB containing malware developed for the CIA for this purpose, which is inserted into the targeted computer. The attacker then infects and exfiltrates data to removable media. For example, the CIA attack system Fine Dining, provides 24 decoy applications for CIA spies to use. To witnesses, the spy appears to be running a program showing videos (e.g VLC), presenting slides (Prezi), playing a computer game (Breakout2, 2048) or even running a fake virus scanner (Kaspersky, McAfee, Sophos). But while the decoy application is on the screen, the underlaying system is automatically infected and ransacked.

 

How the CIA dramatically increased proliferation risks

In what is surely one of the most astounding intelligence own goals in living memory, the CIA structured its classification regime such that for the most market valuable part of “Vault 7” — the CIA’s weaponized malware (implants + zero days), Listening Posts (LP), and Command and Control (C2) systems — the agency has little legal recourse.

The CIA made these systems unclassified.

Why the CIA chose to make its cyberarsenal unclassified reveals how concepts developed for military use do not easily crossover to the ‘battlefield’ of cyber ‘war’.

To attack its targets, the CIA usually requires that its implants communicate with their control programs over the internet. If CIA implants, Command & Control and Listening Post software were classified, then CIA officers could be prosecuted or dismissed for violating rules that prohibit placing classified information onto the Internet. Consequently the CIA has secretly made most of its cyber spying/war code unclassified. The U.S. government is not able to assert copyright either, due to restrictions in the U.S. Constitution. This means that cyber ‘arms’ manufactures and computer hackers can freely “pirate” these ‘weapons’ if they are obtained. The CIA has primarily had to rely on obfuscation to protect its malware secrets.

Conventional weapons such as missiles may be fired at the enemy (i.e into an unsecured area). Proximity to or impact with the target detonates the ordnance including its classified parts. Hence military personnel do not violate classification rules by firing ordnance with classified parts. Ordnance will likely explode. If it does not, that is not the operator’s intent.

Over the last decade U.S. hacking operations have been increasingly dressed up in military jargon to tap into Department of Defense funding streams. For instance, attempted “malware injections” (commercial jargon) or “implant drops” (NSA jargon) are being called “fires” as if a weapon was being fired. However the analogy is questionable.

Unlike bullets, bombs or missiles, most CIA malware is designed to live for days or even years after it has reached its ‘target’. CIA malware does not “explode on impact” but rather permanently infests its target. In order to infect target’s device, copies of the malware must be placed on the target’s devices, giving physical possession of the malware to the target. To exfiltrate data back to the CIA or to await further instructions the malware must communicate with CIA Command & Control (C2) systems placed on internet connected servers. But such servers are typically not approved to hold classified information, so CIA command and control systems are also made unclassified.

A successful ‘attack’ on a target’s computer system is more like a series of complex stock maneuvers in a hostile take-over bid or the careful planting of rumors in order to gain control over an organization’s leadership rather than the firing of a weapons system. If there is a military analogy to be made, the infestation of a target is perhaps akin to the execution of a whole series of military maneuvers against the target’s territory including observation, infiltration, occupation and exploitation.

 

Evading forensics and anti-virus

A series of standards lay out CIA malware infestation patterns which are likely to assist forensic crime scene investigators as well as Apple, Microsoft, Google, Samsung, Nokia, Blackberry, Siemens and anti-virus companies attribute and defend against attacks.

“Tradecraft DO’s and DON’Ts” contains CIA rules on how its malware should be written to avoid fingerprints implicating the “CIA, US government, or its witting partner companies” in “forensic review”. Similar secret standards cover the use of encryption to hide CIA hacker and malware communication (pdf), describing targets & exfiltrated data (pdf) as well as executing payloads (pdf) and persisting (pdf) in the target’s machines over time.

CIA hackers developed successful attacks against most well known anti-virus programs. These are documented in AV defeats, Personal Security Products, Detecting and defeating PSPs and PSP/Debugger/RE Avoidance. For example, Comodo was defeated by CIA malware placing itself in the Window’s “Recycle Bin”. While Comodo 6.x has a “Gaping Hole of DOOM”.

CIA hackers discussed what the NSA’s “Equation Group” hackers did wrong and how the CIA’s malware makers could avoid similar exposure.

Examples

The CIA’s Engineering Development Group (EDG) management system contains around 500 different projects (only some of which are documented by “Year Zero”) each with their own sub-projects, malware and hacker tools.

The majority of these projects relate to tools that are used for penetration, infestation (“implanting”), control, and exfiltration.

Another branch of development focuses on the development and operation of Listening Posts (LP) and Command and Control (C2) systems used to communicate with and control CIA implants; special projects are used to target specific hardware from routers to smart TVs.

Some example projects are described below, but see the table of contents for the full list of projects described by WikiLeaks’ “Year Zero”.

 

UMBRAGE

The CIA’s hand crafted hacking techniques pose a problem for the agency. Each technique it has created forms a “fingerprint” that can be used by forensic investigators to attribute multiple different attacks to the same entity.

This is analogous to finding the same distinctive knife wound on multiple separate murder victims. The unique wounding style creates suspicion that a single murderer is responsible. As soon one murder in the set is solved then the other murders also find likely attribution.

The CIA’s Remote Devices Branch‘s UMBRAGE group collects and maintains a substantial library of attack techniques ‘stolen’ from malware produced in other states including the Russian Federation.

With UMBRAGE and related projects the CIA cannot only increase its total number of attack types but also misdirect attribution by leaving behind the “fingerprints” of the groups that the attack techniques were stolen from.

UMBRAGE components cover keyloggers, password collection, webcam capture, data destruction, persistence, privilege escalation, stealth, anti-virus (PSP) avoidance and survey techniques.

 

Fine Dining

Fine Dining comes with a standardized questionnaire i.e menu that CIA case officers fill out. The questionnaire is used by the agency’s OSB (Operational Support Branch) to transform the requests of case officers into technical requirements for hacking attacks (typically “exfiltrating” information from computer systems) for specific operations. The questionnaire allows the OSB to identify how to adapt existing tools for the operation, and communicate this to CIA malware configuration staff. The OSB functions as the interface between CIA operational staff and the relevant technical support staff.

Among the list of possible targets of the collection are ‘Asset’, ‘Liason Asset’, ‘System Administrator’, ‘Foreign Information Operations’, ‘Foreign Intelligence Agencies’ and ‘Foreign Government Entities’. Notably absent is any reference to extremists or transnational criminals. The ‘Case Officer’ is also asked to specify the environment of the target like the type of computer, operating system used, Internet connectivity and installed anti-virus utilities (PSPs) as well as a list of file types to be exfiltrated like Office documents, audio, video, images or custom file types. The ‘menu’ also asks for information if recurring access to the target is possible and how long unobserved access to the computer can be maintained. This information is used by the CIA’s ‘JQJIMPROVISE’ software (see below) to configure a set of CIA malware suited to the specific needs of an operation.

 

Improvise (JQJIMPROVISE)

‘Improvise’ is a toolset for configuration, post-processing, payload setup and execution vector selection for survey/exfiltration tools supporting all major operating systems like Windows (Bartender), MacOS (JukeBox) and Linux (DanceFloor). Its configuration utilities like Margarita allows the NOC (Network Operation Center) to customize tools based on requirements from ‘Fine Dining’ questionairies.

HIVE

HIVE is a multi-platform CIA malware suite and its associated control software. The project provides customizable implants for Windows, Solaris, MikroTik (used in internet routers) and Linux platforms and a Listening Post (LP)/Command and Control (C2) infrastructure to communicate with these implants.

The implants are configured to communicate via HTTPS with the webserver of a cover domain; each operation utilizing these implants has a separate cover domain and the infrastructure can handle any number of cover domains.

Each cover domain resolves to an IP address that is located at a commercial VPS (Virtual Private Server) provider. The public-facing server forwards all incoming traffic via a VPN to a ‘Blot’ server that handles actual connection requests from clients. It is setup for optional SSL client authentication: if a client sends a valid client certificate (only implants can do that), the connection is forwarded to the ‘Honeycomb’ toolserver that communicates with the implant; if a valid certificate is missing (which is the case if someone tries to open the cover domain website by accident), the traffic is forwarded to a cover server that delivers an unsuspicious looking website.

The Honeycomb toolserver receives exfiltrated information from the implant; an operator can also task the implant to execute jobs on the target computer, so the toolserver acts as a C2 (command and control) server for the implant.

Similar functionality (though limited to Windows) is provided by the RickBobby project.

See the classified user and developer guides for HIVE.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why now?

WikiLeaks published as soon as its verification and analysis were ready.

In Febuary the Trump administration has issued an Executive Order calling for a “Cyberwar” review to be prepared within 30 days.

While the review increases the timeliness and relevance of the publication it did not play a role in setting the publication date.

Redactions

Names, email addresses and external IP addresses have been redacted in the released pages (70,875 redactions in total) until further analysis is complete.

  1. Over-redaction: Some items may have been redacted that are not employees, contractors, targets or otherwise related to the agency, but are, for example, authors of documentation for otherwise public projects that are used by the agency.
  2. Identity vs. person: the redacted names are replaced by user IDs (numbers) to allow readers to assign multiple pages to a single author. Given the redaction process used a single person may be represented by more than one assigned identifier but no identifier refers to more than one real person.
  3. Archive attachments (zip, tar.gz, …) are replaced with a PDF listing all the file names in the archive. As the archive content is assessed it may be made available; until then the archive is redacted.
  4. Attachments with other binary content are replaced by a hex dump of the content to prevent accidental invocation of binaries that may have been infected with weaponized CIA malware. As the content is assessed it may be made available; until then the content is redacted.
  5. The tens of thousands of routable IP addresses references (including more than 22 thousand within the United States) that correspond to possible targets, CIA covert listening post servers, intermediary and test systems, are redacted for further exclusive investigation.
  6. Binary files of non-public origin are only available as dumps to prevent accidental invocation of CIA malware infected binaries.

Organizational Chart

The organizational chart corresponds to the material published by WikiLeaks so far.

Since the organizational structure of the CIA below the level of Directorates is not public, the placement of the EDG and its branches within the org chart of the agency is reconstructed from information contained in the documents released so far. It is intended to be used as a rough outline of the internal organization; please be aware that the reconstructed org chart is incomplete and that internal reorganizations occur frequently.

Wiki pages

“Year Zero” contains 7818 web pages with 943 attachments from the internal development groupware. The software used for this purpose is called Confluence, a proprietary software from Atlassian. Webpages in this system (like in Wikipedia) have a version history that can provide interesting insights on how a document evolved over time; the 7818 documents include these page histories for 1136 latest versions.

The order of named pages within each level is determined by date (oldest first). Page content is not present if it was originally dynamically created by the Confluence software (as indicated on the re-constructed page).

What time period is covered?

The years 2013 to 2016. The sort order of the pages within each level is determined by date (oldest first).

WikiLeaks has obtained the CIA’s creation/last modification date for each page but these do not yet appear for technical reasons. Usually the date can be discerned or approximated from the content and the page order. If it is critical to know the exact time/date contact WikiLeaks.

What is “Vault 7”

“Vault 7” is a substantial collection of material about CIA activities obtained by WikiLeaks.

When was each part of “Vault 7” obtained?

Part one was obtained recently and covers through 2016. Details on the other parts will be available at the time of publication.

Is each part of “Vault 7” from a different source?

Details on the other parts will be available at the time of publication.

What is the total size of “Vault 7”?

The series is the largest intelligence publication in history.

How did WikiLeaks obtain each part of “Vault 7”?

Sources trust WikiLeaks to not reveal information that might help identify them.

Isn’t WikiLeaks worried that the CIA will act against its staff to stop the series?

No. That would be certainly counter-productive.

Has WikiLeaks already ‘mined’ all the best stories?

No. WikiLeaks has intentionally not written up hundreds of impactful stories to encourage others to find them and so create expertise in the area for subsequent parts in the series. They’re there. Look. Those who demonstrate journalistic excellence may be considered for early access to future parts.

Won’t other journalists find all the best stories before me?

Unlikely. There are very considerably more stories than there are journalists or academics who are in a position to write them.

The Duran’s Alex Christoforou: Treating Russia As The ‘Bogeyman’ Has Failed

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russia_wants_war_look_how_closely_they_put_country_to_our_military_bases

By Michael Nevradakis

Source: MintPress News

ATHENS — So-called “fake news” has been in the news in recent months, and this debate over what is and what isn’t legitimate news reflects the political divisiveness that is increasingly prevalent in the United States and in Europe.

Like MintPress News, another website which was accused of purveying “fake news” is The Duran, a recently-launched website which offers perspectives and analysis on geopolitical issues which are frequently not found in mainstream U.S. and European media.

As the news cycle moved at lightning speed in recent months, MintPress had the opportunity to conduct a series of interviews with Alex Christoforou, one of the co-founders and writers for The Duran. In this wide-ranging interview, Christoforou discusses Trump’s election, foreign policy rhetoric and maneuvers thus far, the Russian reaction to the NATO buildup along its border, the anti-Russian sentiment in the U.S. political arena and mass media, developments in Syria and the Ukraine, the recent Cyprus reunification talks which were held in Geneva, the role of Turkey in the region and Turkish relations with the U.S. and Russia, the Trump administration’s support for “Brexit” and the possibility of a “Grexit,” the accusations of “fake news,” and more. These interviews first aired on Dialogos Radio in January and February.

MintPress News (MPN): President Trump has spoken out in favor of improved U.S. relations with Russia and with Vladimir Putin. Do you believe that Trump will make good on this pledge, in light of the challenges he is facing?

Alex Christoforou (AC): That’s an interesting question, and I think that’s something that everyone’s debating right now, how sincere he is in creating an atmosphere of detente between the U.S. and Russia. The first thing is that Obama was absolutely terrible for U.S.-Russia relations. He pretty much threw the whole relationship back into the Cold War era. Trump has got a lot of ground to cover, and there’s a lot of forces at work right now which are adamant about not having Trump create an atmosphere of detente with Russia. So Trump is really in a tough position here, especially given the initiatives that the Obama administration took up, which was really an effort by the outgoing administration to box Trump in.

They’ve created a hysteria of Russian hacking which has no evidence whatsoever, no evidence has been presented to the public at all. You have various media outlets really publishing a lot of fake news about Trump’s relationship with Putin and Russia. The fact is that Trump has never even met Vladimir Putin. So you have this interesting dynamic; if Trump does approach Russia with a much friendlier foreign policy and a much more workable foreign policy, right away Trump is going to be labeled by the mainstream media, the establishment media as a Putin stooge, as a Kremlin stooge, as a Russian “useful idiot,” and they’re going to point fingers and say, “Look, we told you so, Trump is the Manchurian candidate of the Kremlin.” It’s all absolutely ridiculous, to be honest.

My opinion is, sure the Kremlin was relieved to have Trump win the presidency, but not for the reasons that people think. Putin has made no secret of the fact that he wants a good partner in the United States and that the last eight years, especially the second term of Obama, have been very tense between Russia and the U.S. So Putin is probably looking forward to having a world leader that he can speak with on equal terms. Obama definitely was not that world leader. Without a doubt, Obama and Putin did not get along.

I think from that standpoint, Russia understands that in Trump they may have a leader that they can speak with. On the other hand, there’s this misconception that Russia was happy to see Hillary Clinton lose. This is false. Yes, Hillary Clinton was a dangerous prospect for a U.S. president. She was very bullish, very much a war hawk on Russia, especially with regard to Syria and the Ukraine, which are two geopolitical regions that are extremely important to Russia. But saying that, Putin definitely got the best of Obama on just about every single foreign policy initiative that the two countries faced in the last eight years. So the Kremlin pretty much knew that it if was going to be four years of Hillary Clinton, it would be a very easy go as to dealing with the U.S. on various challenges that the two countries faced.

On the one hand, I think they’re looking forward to Trump, and speaking with a world leader that they could work with. On the other hand, I think there’s a big part of Russia and a big part of the Kremlin that says, “We really ran over Obama pretty easily,” as far as geopolitics is concerned, and Hillary Clinton likely would have been a lot easier of an opponent to deal with. Will Trump stand by his word? I think he will. He’s a negotiator and I think he’s going to want to do deals.

 

MPN: The Trump administration’s foreign policy could be characterized as contradictory thus far, with this opening toward warmer relations with Russia on the one hand and an increased rhetoric against Iran on the other hand. Where do you believe these foreign policy contradictions can lead?

AC: I don’t think anybody knows yet where it could lead. Certainly we are seeing a change. On the one hand, we see that Trump would like better relations with Russia, which is what he was saying during his campaign as well. However, the mass media and most politicians from both sides of the aisle are quite hostile toward Russia. Trump has continued to maintain, however, that he desires good relations with Putin’s government. On the other hand, we see that Iran has taken over the “bogeyman” role which Russia held during the Obama administration, and it is evident that the Trump administration wants to do something about Iran. What this something will be, we don’t know just yet. The Trump administration is acting in a hostile manner toward Iran, including President Trump himself and [Secretary of Defense James] Mattis. Until now, we haven’t seen any concrete actions, other than a reinstatement of certain sanctions. But I do fear what action the Trump administration might decide to take against Iran. We will just have to see.

I do think that Trump, so far, is testing the waters, and it is clear that he does want better relations with Russia, while with Iran he is not following the same path as Obama. What these changes will be though and what policies will be adopted is not yet certain. It is still early, though, and much can change.

I think you definitely have a Cabinet that’s got mixed feelings about Russia, a Cabinet that’s very deep in its military experience. That could be seen as a good thing or a bad thing. One thing that military people seem to understand is the price of war and the risks of war, and that’s a good thing. They’re just not flippant about going into war because they understand what’s at stake and the human tragedy of war. On the other hand, military Cabinet picks tend to be a lot more hawkish and a lot more eager to project America’s military superiority.

I don’t agree with all of Trump’s Cabinet selections, but I think the most significant selection of all is that of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. The Obama administration and Hillary Clinton and John Kerry left behind so much chaos, so many problems that Tillerson really has his work cut out for him. It’s not just Russia, but Syria, the Ukraine, Libya, ISIS, China, and Iran. For the first time, though, a successful businessperson will be in charge of the State Department, and it will be interesting to see which policies he will enforce.

I think at the end of the day, Trump will await people’s opinions, but I think the buck will stop with him. At least that’s the impression that I get as to what type of leader he will be. I think all the decisions will begin and end with his final word. It’s going to be a wait-and-see, but all signs show that he’s going to take a very CEO type of approach to running the country.

 

MPN: Do you believe that the fierce backlash that the Trump administration has faced is precisely a result of this desire for developing better relations with Russia?

AC: Yes, of course. That’s part of it. This panic over Russia began with Obama, continued with Hillary Clinton, and it seems that all of Washington, all of the advisers and certainly all of the media, are trying to undermine any efforts toward achieving detente between the two countries. My opinion is that this is an effort to smear Trump and to claim that he is unfit for the presidency.

For the time being, I don’t think we will see a significant shift in U.S.-Russia relations. I think we’ll be in a better position to judge things after six months or a year of the new administration. For now, the Russia hysteria has been thrust to the forefront to cast a negative cloud over Trump. However, the average American does not care about what’s happening with Russia. They are concerned with jobs, jobs, jobs. That is how they will evaluate the Trump administration and the new president. I think that this tactic of blaming Russia for everything and casting Putin as the bogeyman has failed, as proven by the election result itself, and I think it will continue to fail. The American people don’t care about what’s happening with Russia. They care about what’s happening at home.

 

MPN: Where do you believe all of the anti-Russian fearmongering can ultimately lead?

AC: It can lead to a hot war. It definitely has led to a cold war. The last thing we want is a hot war. You have two nuclear powers who are inching closer to each other in conflict, and I think that needs to be scaled back, and scaled back right away. I think we’ve already seen various proxy wars between the U.S. and Russia take place. We saw it in the Ukraine, we saw it in Syria. We already see the two sides engaging with each other, though they’re not engaging directly with each other. NATO troops moving up to Russia’s border is very provocative. We should never forget that the last time forces amassed on Russia’s border was during World War II, and during that war we cannot forget that Russia lost 28 million people. They paid a very, very heavy price for defeating Nazi Germany on the Eastern Front. So if there’s one thing that there’s any red lines that Russia is very firm about, it’s about having troops amassed on their border, and the other red line was about having any countries that are bordering them, for example the Ukraine, be integrated into NATO. These are red lines that Russia has been very firm in saying may not be crossed.

Saying that, Trump has really got to scale back the aggressive posturing of Obama. The media has helped to portray Russia as the aggressor, but when you take a step back and see who has provoked all the conflict in the various hot spots of the world, Russia has been very reactionary. The Ukraine was a coup d’etat. The U.S. and the European Union overthrew a democratically-elected government. That’s a fact. It’s indisputable, and that coup d’etat was initiated by [Assistant Secretary of State] Victoria Nuland and Ambassador [Geoffrey] Pyatt in Athens. This coup d’etat was instigated by a neoconservative faction in Washington. They put in place a far-right government, and some factions of that far-right party are openly fascist and neo-Nazi, and Russia reacted. Syria is the same thing. In Syria, you see a situation where the United States, with the help of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, went to overthrow a secular sovereign leader, once again, internationally recognized by the United Nations. They went to overthrow that leader, and they created chaos. Russia, once again, reacted to that, to the facts on the ground, and you have what’s been a complete disaster in Syria.

You have a very deep state and neocon faction in the U.S. that’s combined forces with this Hillary Clinton-neoliberal faction to create a lot of tension between U.S.-Russia relations. You have the mainstream media, which was in the tank with the neoliberal Hillary cabal from the get-go, fueling the fires of Russian hysteria, but the situation is anything but Russia being the aggressor. Russia has actually reacted to the facts being created by these neoconservatives and neoliberals that have really just run roughshod over the world disastrously, in Syria, in Libya, in Somalia, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in the Ukraine. It’s been one disaster after another, and Putin has been very correct in really castigating the United States and saying, during his U.N. speech, “Do you realize what you’ve done?” That’s a profound statement, in telling the world this cannot continue, this regime change policy, this constant war-like attitude toward the Middle East has to stop, otherwise we’re going to turn a cold war and various proxy wars into hot war. The mainstream media is not helping, that’s for sure.

 

MPN: Recently, NATO forces have been mobilized in Germany and in Eastern Europe, the Russian ambassador to Turkey was murdered and the Russian ambassador to Greece lost his life under unclear circumstances. We had the Russian diplomats that were expelled from Washington in the final days of the Obama administration, and of course the accusations of Russian hacking and meddling in the U.S. elections. How has Vladimir Putin responded to all of this, in your view?

AC: Brilliantly, I think. Vladimir Putin’s response to all of this has really been wait-and-see. He was well within his diplomatic range and his diplomatic standing to retaliate against Obama’s kicking out of the 35 diplomats and the closing down of the two Russian locations in the U.S., but he didn’t. He took a very smart attitude of “Obama is gone in two or three weeks, let’s wait and see what Trump says and what Trump does when he comes into office.”

It was, in my opinion, such childish behavior from Obama toward Trump and toward the transition. Obama should not have been doing these things. It was very childish of him, and I think he lost a lot of respect from a lot of people on the world stage, as just being a very spiteful and childish world leader. He should not have taken these actions against Russia with only two, three weeks left in office. He should not have tried to sabotage Trump’s transition, and he should have really worked with the Trump administration to create a smooth transition.

The diplomat that died in Greece was actually a very underreported news story. Very, very few mainstream media outlets even picked up on that story, and it was, from what I’m seeing in the Greek media that’s reporting on it, under very unclear, very suspicious circumstances. No one really knows much about it. So that was an interesting story that was not picked up.

 

MPN: On the part of Russia, we have not seen much of a response to new Ukrainian attacks against the Donbass. What is the Ukraine trying to achieve, and why has Russia seemingly not responded?

AC: It’s very simple. The Ukraine is one of the problems that was created by Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Victoria Nuland, and the EU. Let’s not forget that they overthrew the Ukrainian government. This was an illegal and provocative action, and in any event, the Ukraine was scheduled to hold elections the following year. There was no need for the U.S. and the EU to undertake this action against the Ukraine, the Ukrainian people, and against Russia, but they did so.

Now, I believe that the Ukraine is trying to start a new conflict and to once again draw attention to itself, because Kiev fears that Trump does not care much about the Ukrainian issue. I think Trump has shown this thus far. Trump recently spoke with Ukrainian President [Petro] Poroshenko, and it was the first time that the U.S. president did not use the phrase “Russian aggression toward the Ukraine,” which Obama would repeatedly state. Trump said that a solution has to be found for the Ukraine, that the two sides need to sit at the same table. This rhetoric was much different from that which was employed by Obama all these years, and I think the Ukrainian authorities are in shock. I detect some panic on their part, but instead of trying to find a solution to this problem, they are going in the opposite direction and trying to provoke a new conflict, hoping that the U.S. will intervene and side with them and that this will undermine the positive relations that Trump is seeking to develop with Putin. This is an incorrect strategy and it will not succeed. Europe cannot handle a war in the Ukraine. I think German Chancellor Angela Merkel understands this and Putin clearly stated this to her, that the Ukrainian government must halt these actions and sit at the negotiating table again and enforce the Minsk Protocol.

For the time being, I think Russia is holding steady with regard to the Ukraine and won’t make a move, because Russia knows, as does the EU, Merkel, and Trump, that the Ukraine is in a difficult situation. It’s a failed state. The efforts of the Obama administration and the EU in the Ukraine have failed, the Ukraine can’t handle any more. It is a corrupt state, its people are suffering, their current government is facing tremendous difficulties, and I think it’s a matter of time before we see major changes in the Ukraine.

 

MPN: What is the situation on the ground in Syria presently, how is Russia currently involved, and what might we expect to see from the Trump administration with regard to its policy toward Syria?

AC: In Syria you had a situation where Russia came in and they pounded the hell out of ISIS and al-Qaida. Al-Qaida, a.k.a. al-Nusra [Jabhat al-Nusra, the former name of the group now known as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham], a.k.a. the “moderate rebels” that the mainstream media seems to love, were lumped in along with ISIS as terrorist groups, which they are. Russia did not separate the two, and they took over military operations within that country along with Iran and the Syrian army. They defeated these terrorist organizations in Aleppo, and they liberated and gained control of the city. The people in Aleppo were extremely happy, they were celebrating. These are things that were not reported in the establishment media. All the reports were saying that [Syrian President Bashar] Assad was going to Aleppo and burning people. These reports have been proven to be 100 percent false. Aleppo is now under the sovereign, internationally-recognized control of the Syrian government, and now that they have control of the major cities in Syria, you’re going to see a campaign to push ISIS, al-Qaida, and al-Nusra out of the country.

Russia has now worked with Turkey to hammer out a ceasefire plan and a plan toward peace. Interestingly enough, the United States was left out of this deal. This was a huge blotch on Obama’s foreign policy record. Here, you have for the first time other powers in the region — Russia, Turkey, Iran — actually hammering out a peace deal without the United States. For Obama and John Kerry, this was probably the lowest point in their foreign policy record over the past eight years. Not only did they destroy a secular, internationally-recognized country, a secular nation that gave women rights, that gave freedom of religion to the all the people, that had health care, that had university education for all, they destroyed that country by trying to move it into the hands of al-Qaida/al-Nusra. But they also were pushed out of the peace plan for that country.

After Aleppo was liberated, I don’t see many people talking about Syria any longer. This was followed by Russia, Iran, and Syria working together to draft a new constitution, without American input, and to try to achieve a solution for Syria, again without U.S. involvement. This is significant. Now, with Trump, we just have to wait and see what his stance toward Syria will be. One thing is certain, though: Trump does not view Assad as the problem. He views ISIS as the problem, and I believe he will be able to collaborate with Russia to fight ISIS wherever it exists. For the time being, I wouldn’t say that the situation in Syria has calmed, it is still an ugly situation there, but there are efforts being made to find a solution. I think this solution will come from the defeat of ISIS and from Assad staying in power. This is clear. Assad is going nowhere.

I just want to make one more note, as far as the way that the press and the media has been covering this war. It was not a civil war. What happened in Syria was an invasion. It was an invasion of foreign jihadist, Wahhabi, ISIS, al-Qaida, al-Nusra forces, and they destabilized the nation and destroyed what was one of the few secular, stable nations in the region. This is a huge point. It’s very, very good that Syria did not go the way of Libya. Hopefully, the Syrian people can get rid of ISIS, can get rid of al-Qaida’s foreign invaders, and can get back to being the secular and peaceful nation that they were. It’s been a disastrous six years for the Syrian people.

 

MPN: In the closing days of the Obama administration, outgoing Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland was dispatched to broker a solution regarding the divided island of Cyprus. Who is Victoria Nuland and what was her role in the Ukraine?

AC: She overthrew the government, plain and simple. I mean, we have it on tape. Do we not have her calling the ambassador to the Ukraine at that time, Geoffrey Pyatt, pretty much telling him who’s going to be in government? They were going over all the government appointees, they said the famous words about the EU, and the people that they talked about being placed into government were the people, in fact, that were placed into government. Victoria Nuland overthrew a democratically-elected government.

The previous government, as corrupt as it may have been or as unpopular as it may have been by 50 percent of the population that saw it in unfavorable terms, was still a democratically-elected government. Ukraine was going to have elections in a years’ time anyway, so what happened in the Ukraine was extremely regretful. It was the most blatant and obvious coup d’etat that has happened in probably the last 100 years.

[Author’s Note: The husband of Victoria Nuland, Robert Kagan, is a senior fellow with the Project on International Order and Strategy in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution, and the self-described “liberal interventionist” is widely regarded as a leading neoconservative.]

 

MPN: Victoria Nuland was one of the major players in these talks, which were held in Geneva in January, regarding the potential reunification in Cyprus. What was the outcome of these talks?

AC: If there’s one person that has taken the Cyprus reunification talks very seriously from the U.S. side, it has been Joe Biden. He’s shown a very big interest in solving the Cyprus problem. Joe Biden, as a politician, has always historically been very warm with the Greek-American population, and he seems to take Greek foreign policy issues very much to heart. Victoria Nuland has shown an interest in solving the Cyprus problem, though I would caution that Victoria Nuland does not seek a solution because she wants to create peace within the island of Cyprus. She sees things more from a geopolitical standpoint, of making sure that Cyprus is aligned with Western Europe, with NATO, and used as very much a geopolitical tool against Russian influence within the region.

The players involved in solving the Cyprus issue are, of course, the Greek Cypriots and the Turkish Cypriots, and along with them are the three guarantor states, which are the United Kingdom, Greece, and Turkey. For this solution to crystallize, it’s my belief that the framework of having a “guarantor nation,” in other words, to guarantee the peace on the island between the two communities, those guarantor nations have to be removed. That means that the 40,000 Turkish soldiers stationed on the island obviously have to leave, the Greek soldiers that are stationed on the island have to leave, and Cyprus has to find its path toward being a unified nation.

The negotiations right now are taking place between the two communities, the U.N. is very actively involved, and we’re very close to hammering out a deal between the two communities. The guarantor nations — Turkey, Greece, and the United Kingdom — will most likely be called in to oversee and to weigh in on whatever deal is finalized between the two sides. I believe that the concept of having “guarantor states” of a sovereign nation is going to be a thing of the past, and I think Cyprus will be a sovereign nation, not a divided island anymore. Victoria Nuland is out, so whatever influence she had in the negotiation process is all but over. Rex Tillerson, as the new Secretary of State, will take over from here on out, and we’ll see how engaged [the U.S. is] or how disengaged it is. We’re very close, and we’ll see how things play out. There’s a few issues at hand that they have to hammer out, very sticky issues, very tough issues, but we’re very, very close to seeing a unified Cyprus.

Saying that, what you’re looking at is a bi-zonal, bi-communal federal state, so you’ll have one country, but you’ll have a two-state solution. Each state will have its laws and certain powers to govern their side of the island, but you will also have one executive branch, which will also govern the island as a whole; a whole member of the international community, of the EU, of the U.N. You’re really looking at a “United States of Cyprus,” and that’s the solution that will most likely be brought to the table.

Regarding the talks, I think that Turkey got what it was looking for — namely, for nothing significant to happen with the Cyprus issue until the Turkish constitutional reforms have been passed. Until then, I believe talks will proceed slowly, step by step, but we won’t see any significant developments until Turkey is ready. Until then, we will only see minor developments. I foresee we will see more developments toward the summer, beginning in May and June and thereafter. Everything, however, will depend on Turkey, and I think that Turkey is not yet ready to express a clear position on the Cyprus issue.

 

MPN: Where do things stand at the present time with regard to Russian-Turkish relations? Is Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan once again turning away from the U.S./NATO/EU sphere and moving toward Russia?

AC: That’s a good question. Erdogan, he’s something else. I think Erdogan is a survivor, he’s extremely controversial, he’s a very tough person to deal with both for the Russians and for the Americans. There’s no doubt that Erdogan has been hot and cold with Russia. They’ve had huge moments of disparity and very tense moments in recent months, but they’ve also found ways to bridge those gaps and to move past those tense moments. The same holds true with the United States. Erdogan has been playing the U.S. hot and cold as well for the past six months to a year.

I would say, two or three years ago, Erdogan had a vision of a “grand Ottoman resurgence,” a grand Ottoman empire in which Turkey would have influence over Syria, over Iraq, etc. I think now Erdogan has been forced to scale that vision down, and I would say that now Erdogan’s number one concern is the Kurds in the north of Syria. His number one foreign policy initiative is that he cannot allow a Kurdish state to form in the north of Syria and the north of Iraq. That would be disastrous for Turkey and would probably lead to the breakup of Turkey, given that Turkey has, I believe, an estimated 15 million Kurds who reside in the borders of the Turkish state. Having any type of autonomous Kurdish region in the north of Syria and the north of Iraq would be a red line that Erdogan would caution both the United States and Russia cannot be crossed.

Erdogan has scaled back his grand Ottoman vision and is now looking more to consolidating his power in Turkey and making sure that the Turkish state remains intact, without any Kurdish interference. Russia, with regard to Turkey, it’s been hot and cold in recent months, but they keep the channels of communication open. The relations are not the same as they were five to ten years ago, but they are steady, and Russia and Turkey are collaborating on Syria and have found some common ground on this issue. The same holds true for the United States. Erdogan is not an easy world leader to deal with. That’s just a fact.

I believe that Turkey is waiting for the constitutional reforms to pass, so that Erdogan attains absolute power. Until then I don’t believe we’ll see significant developments coming out of Turkey, and I think everyone is waiting to see what policy Trump and Rex Tillerson will adopt toward Turkey. I think we’ll see Turkey take an active role again in about six months. It will not make any moves until Erdogan attains absolute power. We will likely see some adverse developments, perhaps even some positive ones, but we will just have to wait and see.

 

MPN: Recently, we have seen an increase in Turkish belligerence toward Greece. Do you believe that Erdogan is angling toward fueling a conflict with Greece?

AC: No. There is no chance of such a development. I don’t believe we’ll see anything happen with Turkey. Erdogan, of course, will remain Erdogan. He’ll do what he does, he’ll be provocative toward Greece, Syria, NATO, and Cyprus. But I do not think we’ll see anything major happen until Erdogan attains full control. Turkey is slated to hold a referendum on constitutional reform in April, and in the new system the president will hold absolute power. In other words, we’ll be talking about “Sultan Erdogan” in a couple months’ time. Until this happens, nothing of significance will come out of Turkey. Erdogan will continue to be provocative, that’s his style, but we won’t see anything more until the constitution is changed and power is concentrated in his hands.

 

MPN: The Trump administration seems to have adopted a positive stance toward Brexit, while Trump’s nominee for the U.S. ambassadorship to the EU, Ted Malloch, has made a series of interesting statements recently, stating that the eurozone is headed toward collapse and predicting that Greece will unilaterally depart from the eurozone. What position do you believe we will see from the Trump administration going forward with regard to the EU, the euro, and issues like Brexit and Grexit?

AC: I think that Malloch and the Trump administration view Brexit positively. I believe that following Brexit, Trump will draw Britain closer to the U.S. sphere and put them against EU interests. Let’s not forget that Trump is a businessman and he is looking for certain things from Europe and from NATO members. He’s been clear about this, and I think he will use the United Kingdom, post-Brexit, to get what he wants from Europe, and in a manner which favors the interests of the United States. That’s how Trump operates; he’s a businessman above all.

Regarding Europe, the EU is doing a fine job destroying itself without the assistance of the United States, Trump, or Brexit. The EU, on its own, has managed to be a dysfunctional institution and European officials are performing a “miracle” in managing to destroy the EU from within. It’s nonsense for Brussels to blame Trump and Brexit for the EU’s problems, when Brussels is managing quite nicely on its own to destroy the EU. The EU has no one to blame but itself.

 

MPN: It’s been two years since the Syriza government took over power in Greece. How do you evaluate the current situation in the country and the first two years of Syriza’s reign in office?

AC: I think that it’s been terrible. Greece has been in an eight or nine year period of slow suffering. We’ve seen the country hollowed out economically and socially. It’s been just an economic crisis that seems to be never-ending, and you see it on the ground when you’re in Athens. The shops are closing, the people really have very, very few options as far as employment and earning an income. The Syriza government, in my opinion, has done everything in its power to make sure that the public sector is okay but the private sector is just marginalized and, I would say, almost demolished. The taxes have just become so sky high that it’s just destroyed any form of entrepreneurship, any form of desire within the people to start businesses, to run a business, because you just can’t pay the high taxes to keep that business open.

It’s not looking good for Greece, and they definitely need to figure out a way to either remove themselves from the euro and find a way to get back to some sort of economic sustainability, or they need to find a way to get that €350 billion debt wiped off the books, and that’s not going to happen. Germany has been very firm on their stance over the debt. But as long as that debt is hanging over the Greeks’ heads, that situation will never improve. It just cannot, it’s fiscally impossible.

 

MPN: Let’s talk about the site you write for, The Duran. This is a new online news initiative and you are one of its co-founders. Share with us a few words about it.

AC: The Duran is a publication that we started about eight or nine months ago. Myself, Peter Lavelle, Alexander Mercouris and Vladimir Rodzianko are the co-founders of The Duran, and we take an approach to geopolitics and news from a realpolitik standpoint. In other words, we try to see things from a very logical standpoint. The site is not about feel-good values and what should be right and what should be wrong. It takes a look at news from a perspective of how the world is and from the perspective that nation-states have interests, nation-states approach each other with those interests in mind, some states are big and powerful, some states are not big and powerful. The way the world works is not so much through what I would say has been, the last eight years, a value-based kind of outlook, that our values are morally superior to your values. We take an approach that each nation-state has certain interests and they’re going to deal with each other with those interests in mind and create a realpolitik type of an approach to world order.

The Duran is definitely not looking at things from the left, but we’re also not looking at things from the right. We try to take a much more balanced approach and just look at things from a very logical standpoint in terms of how we cover the news. We’re 100 percent independent. We’ve been accused of being Kremlin or Russia stooges. That’s not the case. We’re very transparent and open with our readers, we have live events with our readers where they can ask us questions via Facebook Live. We don’t try to hide our positions as to how we see geopolitics and the news that’s coming out of the U.S., Europe, etc., and we challenge people and leaders to give us their leaders and to engage in debate. That’s the only way we’re going to understand what has become a very complicated world, and it’s not going to get easier. There’s a lot of moving parts, and we’re moving away from U.S. hegemony to a more multipolar type of world order, where China has become a world power, where Russia has become a world power, where the EU is in a bit of disarray, where the United States with Trump and the election [are going through] a very divisive period, so it’s a very challenging time to cover news, but it’s also a very interesting time to cover news.

Mainstream Media’s ‘Victimhood’

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By Robert Parry

Source: Consortium News

It’s heartwarming that The New York Times and The Washington Post are troubled that President Trump is loosely throwing around accusations of “fake news.” It’s nice and that they now realize that truth does not reliably come from the mouth of every senior government official or from every official report.

The Times is even taking out full-page ads in its own pages to offer truisms about truth: “The truth is hard. The truth is hidden. The truth must be pursued. The truth is hard to hear. The truth is rarely simple. The truth isn’t so obvious. …”  On Sunday, those truth truisms ran opposite an alarmist column by Jim Rutenberg entitled, “Will the Real Democracy Lovers Please Stand Up?” Meanwhile, The Washington Post launched its own melodramatic slogan, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”

Yet, it was only weeks ago when the Post and Times were eagerly promoting plans for silencing or blacklisting independent news sites that didn’t toe the line on what the U.S. government and its allies were claiming was true.

On Nov. 20, the Times published a lead editorial calling on Facebook and other technology giants to devise algorithms that could eliminate stories that the Times deemed to be “fake.” The Times and other mainstream news outlets – along with a few favored Internet sites – joined a special Google-sponsored task force, called the First Draft Coalition, to decide what is true and what is not. If the Times’ editorial recommendations were followed, the disfavored stories and the sites publishing them would no longer be accessible through popular search engines and platforms, essentially blocking the public’s access to them. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “What to Do About ‘Fake News.’”]

On Thanksgiving Day, the Post ran a front-page story citing an anonymous group, called PropOrNot, blacklisting 200 Web sites, including Consortiumnews.com and other important sources of independent journalism, because we supposedly promoted “Russian propaganda.”

Although PropOrNot and the Post didn’t bother to cite any actual examples or to ask the accused for comment, the point was clear: If you didn’t march in lockstep behind the Official Narrative on, say, the Ukraine crisis or the war in Syria, you were to be isolated, demonized and effectively silenced. In the article, the Post blurred the lines between “fake news” – stories that are simply made up – and what was deemed “propaganda,” in effect, information that didn’t jibe with what the U.S. State Department was saying.

Back then, in November, the big newspapers believed that the truth was easy, simple, obvious, requiring only access to some well-placed government official or a quick reading of the executive summary from some official report. Over the last quarter century or so, the Times, in particular, has made a fetish out of embracing pretty much whatever Officialdom declared to be true. After all, such well-dressed folks with those important-sounding titles couldn’t possibly be lying.

That gullibility went from the serious, such as rejecting overwhelming evidence that Ronald Reagan’s Nicaraguan Contra rebels were deeply involved in drug trafficking, to the silly, trusting the NFL’s absurd Deflategate allegations against Tom Brady. In those “old” days, which apparently ended a few weeks ago, the Times could have run full-page ads, saying “Truth is whatever those in authority say it is.”

In 2002, when the George W. Bush administration was vouching for a motley crew of Iraqi “defectors” describing Saddam Hussein’s hidden WMDs, Iraq’s purchase of some “aluminum tubes” must have been for building nuclear bombs. In 2003, when Secretary of State Colin Powell showed some artist drawings of “mobile chemical weapons labs,” they must really exist – and anyone who doubted Powell’s “slam-dunk” testimony deserved only contempt and ridicule.

When the Obama administration issued a “government assessment” blaming the Syrian military for the sarin gas attack outside Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013, there was no need to scrutinize its dubious assertions or ask for actual proof. To do so made you an “Assad apologist.”

When a bunch of U.S. allies under the effective control of Ukraine’s unsavory SBU intelligence service presented some videos with computer-generated graphics showing Russians supplying the Buk missile that shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, there was no need to examine the holes in the evidence or note that the realistic-looking graphics were fictional and based on dubious assumptions. To do so made you a “Moscow stooge.”

In other words, when the U.S. government was gluing black hats on an “enemy” and white hats on a U.S. “ally,” the Times never seemed to object. Nor did pretty much anyone else in the mainstream media. No one seemed to note that both sides usually deserved gray hats. With very few exceptions – when the State Department or other U.S. agencies were making the charges – the Times and its cohorts simply stopped applying responsible journalistic skepticism.

Of course, there is a problem with “fake news,” i.e., stories that are consciously made up for the purpose of making money from lots of clicks. There are also fact-free conspiracy theories that operate without evidence or in defiance of it. No one hates such bogus stories more than I do — and they have long been a bane of serious journalism, dating back centuries, not just to the last election.

But what the Times, the Post and the rest of the mainstream media have typically ignored is that there are many situations in which the facts are not clear or when there are alternative explanations that could reasonably explain a set of facts. There are even times when the evidence goes firmly against what the U.S. government is claiming. At those moments, skepticism and courage are necessary to challenge false or dubious Official Narratives. You might even say, “The truth is rarely simple. The truth isn’t so obvious…”

A Tough Transition

During the transition from the Obama administration to the Trump team, the Times, the Post and other mainstream media outlets got caught in their own transition from trusting whatever the outgoing officials said to distrusting whatever the incoming officials said. In those final days, big media accepted what President Obama’s intelligence agencies asserted about Russia supposedly interfering in the U.S. election despite the lack of publicly available evidence that could be scrutinized and tested.

Even something as squirrelly as the attack on Trump’s National Security Adviser Michael Flynn – with Obama holdovers citing the never-prosecuted Logan Act from 1799 as the pretext for ginning up some kind of criminal-sounding case that scared Trump into firing Flynn – was treated as legitimate, without serious questions asked. Since Obama officials were doing the feeding, the no-skepticism rule applied to the eating. But whatever statements came from Trump, even his few lucid moments explaining why war with nuclear-armed Russia wasn’t such a great idea, were treated as dangerous nonsense.

When Trump scolded the mainstream press for engaging in “fake news” and then applied the phrase “enemy of the people,” the Times, the Post and the rest went into full victimization-mode. When a few news companies were excluded from a White House news briefing, they all rushed to the barricades to defend freedom of the press. Then, Trump went even further – he rejected his invitation to the White House Correspondents Dinner, the black-tie/evening-gown event where mainstream media stars compete to attract the hottest celebrity guests and hobnob with important government officials, a walking-talking conflict-of-interest-filled evening, an orgy of self-importance.

So, the Times, the Post and their mainstream-media friends now feel under attack. Whereas just weeks ago they were demanding that Google, Facebook and other powerful information platforms throttle those of us who showed professional skepticism toward dubious claims from the U.S. government, now the Times, the Post and the others are insisting that we all rally around them, to defend their journalistic freedom. In another full-page ad on Sunday, the Times wrote: “Truth. It’s more important now than ever.”

I would argue that truth is always important, but especially so when government officials are leading countries toward war, when lives are at stake, whether in Iraq or Syria or Ukraine or the many other global hotspots. At those moments in the recent past, the Times did not treat truth – in all its subtlety and nuance – as important at all.

I would argue, too, that the stakes are raised even higher when propagandists and ideologues are risking the prospect of nuclear war that could kill billions and effectively end human civilization. However, in that case, the American people have seen little truly professional journalism nor a real commitment to the truth. Instead, it’s been much more fun to demonize Russian President Vladimir Putin and paint black-and-white pictures of the evil Russians.

At such moments, those New York Times’ truisms about truth are forgotten: “The truth is rarely simple. The truth isn’t so obvious. …”

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

Something Is Happening

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By William Hawes

Source: Gods & Radicals

SOMETHING IS HAPPENING HERE, but you don’t know what it is: Do you? No one knows, really, as this something is still evolving. As we look back to 2016, though, it is abundantly clear that history has awoken from its slumber. We’ve had a couple events in the West last year: Brexit and Trump.

Politically-charged, dynamic events (as Alain Badiou might define them) have been rare in the West since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the USSR. Capitalism made it seem as if neoliberalism was winning in the 1990s, even as the US wantonly murdered in Iraq and took perverse pleasure in helping to dismember Yugoslavia, among other things.

In fact, one could argue there have only been four notable Western political events in the post-Cold War era: the 9/11 attacks, the 2003 protests against the Iraq War, the 2008 banking crisis and following protest movements of 2011 (Occupy and 15-M Movement), and the populist, anger-driven aforementioned events of 2016.

You see, authentic, spontaneous political events (in the form of uprisings or popular revolts against the elite) are a no-no in the West. History is supposed to have ended, remember? Max Weber called this the Iron Cage, and for good reason.

Now, though, the meaninglessness and rootlessness of our lives trapped inside the cage have become too obvious to ignore, for most of us. As each day passes, our political discourse glosses over how lazy, ignorant, mean-spirited, and numb our society has become. We import luxuries from all over the globe, but can’t be bothered to cook or grow our own food, assemble our own electronics, expand renewable energy projects, provide clean water to inner cities, organize high-speed transport, or educate our youth without drowning them in debt, etc.

So, many have lashed out against the system, and our more vulnerable members of society, in anger, defiance, out of sheer ignorance. Could it be because, deep down, we know how helpless, sheltered, and out-of-touch our society is, compared to the rest of the world? What are the root causes of this disintegration of public discourse?

One cause is our utter dependency on the capitalist system to clothe, feed, and shelter us. What we used to inherit from our mothers and fathers, important agricultural knowledge, artisanal and cultural wisdom, a sense of place and belonging, have all been traded in for money, the privilege to be exploited by capitalism, toiling in jobs that alienate us from ourselves, families, the Earth. Paper bills and electronic bank accounts are a pitiful substitute for self-reliance. This loss, this grief, isn’t allowed to be expressed in public. Logical positivism tells us that progress will prevail, the future will be better than the past, and anyone who thinks otherwise must be some sort of Luddite.

Since real income has fallen and social services have been slashed in the last 40-plus years, many have seen their loved ones’ lives cut short (lack of access to health care and quality food and produce, air and water pollution), their dreams defiled (steady jobs gone, factories shuttered), their entertainment homogenized and dangerous (sports mania has become normalized, “Go Team!”, alcohol, painkiller, and opiate addiction is rampant), their hopes for the future shattered (community and public space swallowed by corporations).

There are those, as well, still too plugged into the system (both Trump and Clinton voters), too attached to their gadgets, to the hum of their slave-labor appliances, to the glow emanating from their screens. They will cry incessantly about the turning away of Muslims from flights, but there is only silence for the millions killed abroad by the US war machine. Mainstream liberals are just as likely as the meanest, most selfish conservatives to fall prey to emotional pleas, demagoguery, and pathetic attempts to see themselves as victims in this Age of Anger.

The urge to resort to the myth of a righteous, homogenous, “pure” social group, to denigrate the other, is strong in such dire, despondent situations. In America, though, material poverty cannot be said to be the only, or even the main causal factor, behind this return of nativism and tribalism. Rather, it is undoubtedly a spiritual malaise that has swept over the West. Ever since the rise of the Industrial Revolution, it has been technology which has provided the underlying weltanschauung for our culture. Sprouting from this, an inhuman and Earth-destroying morality has formed. Jacques Ellul explains:

“A principal characteristic of technique … is its refusal to tolerate moral judgments. It is absolutely independent of them and eliminates them from its domain. Technique never observes the distinction between moral and immoral use. It tends on the contrary, to create a completely independent technical morality.” (1)

Thus, Western society, through the use of mass-produced electronics and disseminated in what some call our “Information Age”, has now seemingly accelerated the pace of change and ecological destruction beyond the scope of any group or nation which could possibly control it. We are then confronted with the thought that only an economic collapse or series of natural disasters could possibly provide the impetus for revolutionary change to occur. This only leaves us feeling helpless, depressed, and passive in the face of government oppression and capitalist exploitation.

Not only that, but capitalism has quite literally dulled our senses and disconnected us from our source of being, planet Earth. Don’t believe me? Read this amazing paper on how Polynesian wayfinders discovered islands thousands of miles apart without any modern technology. This is part of what Morris Berman means by Coming to our Senses. To re-establish our unity with nature, the Western notion of an ego-driven, domineering and reductionist search for truth, meaning, and creativity must be thrown out. Here, Berman invokes Simone Weil:

“‘decreate’ yourself in order to create the work, as God (Weil says) diminished Himself in order to create the world. It would be more accurate to say that you don’t create the work, but rather you step out of the way and let it happen.” (2)

This isn’t really discussed among wide swaths of leftists, the social-justice crowd, or with mainstream liberals. It’s anathema to a materialistic, dead world where freedom has been traded for comforting lies, money has been substituted for the ability to provide for ourselves and our communities, and the abundance and resiliency (truly a miracle!) of the Earth is taken for granted as we chase our next fix for consumer goods, our next chance for drugs or gadgets to dim our perception.

What you’re not supposed to say in public, of course, is that our world is falling apart, and we are doing nothing to stop it. The reactions are too raw, the reality too grim, even as we know, for example, that 10% or more of the total species on Earth will be gone by 2050.

Yet we can do something: there is an opening now in political discourse which has been previously denied to us. The Republican and Democratic parties have thoroughly delegitimized themselves by offering up Trump and Clinton as their figureheads: these were widely considered the most widely disliked candidates in recent memory, if not the history of our republic. There is room for Libertarians, Greens, and Socialists to gain power: yet only if they avoid their own regrettable sectarianism, organize, and promote an inclusive, broad-based platform.

To do so, citizens will have to gain some perspective on their lives. A slow pace of life needs to be seen as a virtue, not a sin: many on the right and left are quick to denounce the hedonism of the jet-setting, parasitic globalists, the Davos men; yet refuse to see their own lifestyles and actions as smaller examples of such outlandish consumption.

If we are open to life and our environment as part of a greater whole, an unfathomable mystery, we can refuse our culture’s siren songs of death, misery, and destruction. While modern technology can be useful if reined in by an Earth-conscious, responsible morality, some things are better left unknown, undiscovered, if it risks destroying the Earth in order to find the answer. Rather than running a cost/benefit analysis to determine the land’s worth, some aspects of the planet and the universe are better Left Sacred.

Also, acknowledging our mortality, and accepting the basic fact that death could come for you at any moment, can liberate our souls and propel them to unimaginable heights. Joe Crookston explains this quite well:

“And then when I turn dry and brown
I’ll lay me down to rest
I’ll turn myself around again
As part of an eagle’s nest
And when that eagle learns to fly
I’ll flutter from that tree
I’ll turn myself around again
As part of the mystery”

 

Notes:
1.) Ellul, Jacques. The Technological Society. Vintage Books, 1964. p. 97.
2.) Berman, Morris. Coming to Our Senses: Body and Spirit in the Hidden History of the West. Simon & Schuster, 1989. p. 337

William Hawes is a writer specializing in politics and environmental issues. His articles have appeared online at Global Research, Countercurrents, Dissident Voice, The World Financial Review, Gods & Radicals, and Counterpunch. He is author of the ebook Planetary Vision: Essays on Freedom and Empire. You can reach him at wilhawes@gmail.com

Russ Baker on the Media’s Deep State Conversion Moment

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By Russ Baker

Source: Who.What.Why.

The term “Deep State” has recently become as popular with the media as the term “#resistance.” It certainly wasn’t always that way.

For years, a lonely few have set out to enlighten people on the notion that, when it comes to affairs of state, there is usually more to the story than we are told.

I started WhoWhatWhy because I realized that the publications I worked for had no interest, no understanding of, could not fathom, or were just plain scared to explore the possibility that We, the People, were not in control of our destiny.

You can read most media all day long and you’d never get a sense, except fleetingly, that eight people have as much wealth as half of the world’s population. A handful of people can put their selected candidate in the White House, and the masses remain blissfully unaware as the process unfolds.

A company with vast resources can make sure the so-called free market works a whole lot better for itself than it does for its smaller rivals — even if the other companies offer a better product or service — and corporate media remains silent.

The media typically does not make us wonder why there seem to be wars going on all the time, why Americans are able to live so well compared to most of the world, nor that even today, resource extraction is a very deadly one-way street. They rarely seem to stop and ponder why it is that no matter which of the two political parties is in office, public policy seems to always cater to the 1% and not … the public.

The media does cover politics plenty. But it does not very often cover deep politics — that is, the forces beneath the  surface, the powers behind the daily events, what’s been called the Deep State.

To those unfamiliar with it, this expression sounds creepy, even paranoid, with a hint of conspiracy theory — itself a catchall term designed to discredit any critical analysis that comes perilously close to something that may lead back to the Deep State. How could there be something other than politics or the state — deep politics and a deep state?

Well, ask yourself: Is that giant bank where you have your money actually run by the smiling masses you see in their ads? The ones who say “We’re here for you” but when you call, they all read from the same script and admit they’re powerless? One thing your bank doesn’t do, usually, is advertise the top people, the biggest shareholders, and how much power they wield, and how much money they make.

It takes something like a financial scandal for the CEO to suddenly appear in the limelight, like a mole rubbing its eyes, and you say, “Oh, so that’s the main guy.” You never knew.

The media overall hates these “deep” concepts because they are anathema to people trying to keep their jobs and move up in a hierarchical system owned and influenced by the most powerful, while still wearing the thrilling mantle of “troublemaker.”

Let’s be clear: the Deep State is not six people in hoods muttering incantations. It’s a shifting landscape of those at the top of the heap — not a monolith but a bloody battlefield, with factions breaking both bread and heads.

It includes financiers, industrialists, media titans, generals, spymasters, strategists, and experts in the black arts of mass influence. It even includes a super-verboten topic: how the “overworld” (the legit) do business, albeit usually at arm’s length, with the underworld.

Look at Trump’s track record on this; look at CIA’s well-documented cooperation with the mob and with global drug cartels. Also off-limits to the media: the role of highly profitable illegal activity in making great fortunes (prohibition, drug trade, money laundering) and the cooperation of elements of the state.

***

The deeper meaning and scope of the Deep State is now being misrepresented by those who still hope for handouts from the system — either they’re deliberately obscuring the real nature of the Deep State, or they’re really trying, without much success, to throw some light on a topic to which they’ve come late and have little incentive to dig into too deeply.

One example is the Los Angeles Times, which, despite some great journalism and bravery over the years, has retained a mysteriously close relationship with the CIA and similar entities, serving as their hatchet men against reporters who cut too near the bone of the truth. Look up Gary Webb — or read this “review” of a book on the Deep State by yours truly.  

Recently, one of its longtime Washington hands presumed to explain to the rest of us about the Deep State whose very existence he and his paper denied for so long.

The scariest new catchphrase of the Trump era — and we’re only one month in — is the “deep state,” a term borrowed from countries like Turkey and Egypt, where networks of military officers and intelligence operatives control much of the government.

Um, no. It isn’t just entrenched mid-level bureaucrats, soldiers and spies who make up the Deep State — it is also the extremely wealthy who ultimately manipulate and influence these pawns on the board of power.

The New York Times apparently got the same memo as its West Coast namesake:

A wave of leaks from government officials has hobbled the Trump administration, leading some to draw comparisons to countries like Egypt, Turkey and Pakistan, where shadowy networks within government bureaucracies, often referred to as “deep states,” undermine and coerce elected governments.

The point of all this is that if you limit a description of some poisonous Deep State to those actually employed in “bureaucracies,” you are actually playing into the hands of the most powerful Deep State players: the super-rich who benefit when government itself is discredited to the point that everything can be outsourced — to them. And that’s exactly what we have seen in case after case, with the privatization of intelligence, police work, prisons, schools, and so on. Let’s get rid of those nefarious Deep State education officials and save the day with billionaire Betsy DeVos!

No — the Deep State IS populated by people like Betsy DeVos and her husband and their coterie. They’re the ones who can buy the loyalty of modestly-paid government figures who expect to travel out the revolving door to dip into the abundant coffers of the Koch brothers et al.

To be clear, we probably don’t want to think of the Deep State as synonymous with the plutocracy — it’s not all about money. It is about an ideology of self-interest and a kind of fascist value system, and an ability to build deep links into institutions like the FBI, the Pentagon, the NSA, the CIA, local law enforcement, etc. Of course, elements within the Deep State, as is true throughout the world, can also be forces for good, resisting when things in the surface world “go too far.” That, in part, is what we are seeing in the resistance to Trump from surprising quarters.

It’s also something to keep in mind when we see the Washington Post leading the charge against Trump. The Post is, like Amazon, the property of Jeff Bezos — and the CIA is one of Amazon’s biggest customers (for its cloud computing services.) The CIA is none too happy with Trump — with very good reason, for once (well, there was also that battle with Cheney and the neocons), and so, yes, that too is all the Deep State at work.

And no, don’t look to The Post to fully explain it all. Why? Again, my personal experience — here’s the Post’s contracted-out hit piece on my Deep Politics book.

***

The Deep State has cajoled or intimidated almost the entirety of journalism, mainstream to Left to Right — to ignore its existence, and to defame those who dare investigate it, by lumping them with all manner of crazy under the all-purpose dysphemism “conspiracy theory.” Try googling related terms: conspiracy theorist, conspiracy nut, etc — you will find that the “top” news organizations have routinely beaten up on those who dared break ranks by slapping this deadly moniker on them. It’s the loud cousin of the whispering campaign, the sort that makes it hard to find work and scares off would-be allies.

I’ll note that back in the 1960s, the CIA got really nervous as interest in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy heated up, with reputable, brave people asking a lot of questions about the impossible ridiculous fantasy story the media sold us in the Warren Report. In an internal CIA memo, the agency prescribed all manner of tactics to discredit those who were sticking their noses where they oughtn’t, conferring on them the deadly “Conspiracy Theorist” label.

And, in the 1970s, Carl Bernstein, of Watergate sleuth fame, wrote a piece in Rolling Stone revealing the extent to which the security apparatus had penetrated America’s media itself. Shades of Romania and East Germany.

Even Bill Moyers, whom I greatly admire, and who has been complimentary of WhoWhatWhy’s work — brought on a conservative to explain what Deep State is all about. Given the history and the continuing resistance to the concept at the time that program aired in 2014, probably a smart move.

But the times they are a-changin’. Since Wikileaks’ revelations, since Edward Snowden, since … Trump, the shameless and spineless in journalism have spun on a dime and now the things some of us were attacked for are smack dab in the middle of the “conversation,” albeit with the system stingily withholding credit to those who were there first.

In any case, now that it’s all the vogue, I say to the establishment media: No. You do not get to define this term, you do not get to tell the rest of us if there is a Deep State, the nature of its influence, or whether we should or should not be concerned about it.

 

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WAPO Hires John Podesta as a Columnist, Flushing Last Remaining Credibility Down the Toilet

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By Lily Dane

Source: The Daily Sheeple

It’s almost like The Washington Post is trying to become as in-your-face corrupt and biased as possible and is determined to lose any shred of credibility it may have left.

Last Thursday, the paper announced that John Podesta, the scandal-plagued chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 scandal-plagued presidential campaign, has joined their team:

Podesta, former chairman of the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign, will provide commentary and analysis on the intersection of politics and policy, the Trump administration and the future of the Democratic Party.

“No one knows more about how Washington works, how the White House operates, and how policy ideas are translated into reality than John Podesta,” said Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt. “His long experience in Congress, inside two Democratic White Houses and on the front lines of numerous presidential campaigns, will offer readers vital insight into Washington and politics at the start of a new era.”

As of the time of this writing, there were only a few reader comments on the announcement on the news outlet’s website, but all expressed disapproval. Here is a sampling:

“I would just like to thank the Washington Post for dropping all pretense and proving they are now just as willing as Fox News to invite questionable sources to contribute.”

“A mistake. We want agents of change, not those who cling to the past. Podesta’s a proven failure and uninteresting.”

“Not a good choice. Time for new voices, come on, WaPo, you can do much better.”

“John Podesta, friend of Dennis Hastert the child molester. Many people complain the the Russians hacked the DNC, but Podesta gave them his gmail account on a silver platter. Podesta’s password was the word password, not very creative. Read his emails and you find some strange code words, lots of talk about pizza and hotdogs which has caused a buzz on the internet dubbed pizzagate. I am sure Podesta knows his way around DC, maybe the wrong parts of DC.”

“Yeah democracy among the libs is very dark. More dark is how Compost has made a deal with devil by hiring this Satanist. You will reap what you sow.”

If WAPO wanted to choose a more controversial figure to write for their outlet, it would be difficult. Podesta was the central figure of a massive email scandal in late 2016 when WikiLeaks published 58,375 emails from his private Gmail account. Many of the emails contained material regarding Clinton’s positions and campaign strategy, her collusion with the mainstream media, her cozy relationship with bankers, pay-to-play schemes, hints of Podesta’s possible involvement in a nefarious-sounding activity called “Spirit Cooking”, and of course, the infamous #Pizzagate scandal.

Earlier Democratic National Committee (DNC) email leaks exposed a plot to sabotage Bernie Sanders and documents on Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation. Those leaks led to the resignation of at least four DNC officials, including former chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz. They also revealed that interim DNC chair Donna Brazile obtained questions to a Bernie Sanders vs. Hillary CNN/TV One town hall and fed them to Hillary’s campaign people in advance.

Like the DNC and Podesta, The Washington Post isn’t a stranger to scandal.

In the article LIST: Washington Post’s Josh Rogin Has a BIG Fake News Problem, John Nolte explains how Washington Post reporter Josh Rogin recently blew three major stories in grand fashion.

Last week, WAPO, owned by Jeff (Bilderberger, CIA Contractor, and owner of Amazon), stated it is their mission to “defend democracy,” and adopted a dramatic new slogan which it claims was not in any way inspired by President Trump: “Democracy Dies in Darkness”.

In January, the paper was forced to retract an unfounded story scaremongering that Russian hackers penetrated the US electric grid.

Late last year, WAPO cited a list of over 200 supposed Russian propaganda sites (The Daily Sheeple was included on the list) produced by the shadowy PropOrNot organization in a report titled, “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say.” Melissa Dykes reported on this back in November:

…Washington Post wrote a hit piece on all the sites included on ProporNot’s list, claiming the site is literally run by “experts” — without any due diligence or a shred of proof other than the site’s own claims.

Titled, “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say,” the WAPO story not only upholds the claims of a random, anonymous, and relatively new website, but a website that is formally calling on the FBI to investigate us and other alt news sites on the list for espionage.

In early December, after facing unprecedented blowback for its ridiculous report, WAPO added a lengthy editor’s note to the top of the original article in which the editor not only distances the paper from the “experts” quoted in the original article whose “work” served as the basis for the entire article, but also admits the Post could not “vouch for the validity of PropOrNot’s finding regarding any individual media outlet.”

Podesta, his political party, and WAPO have something significant in common. All seem to be in denial about the huge mistakes they have made which greatly contributed to their loss of credibility. They will likely repeat those mistakes. Perhaps this new relationship is appropriate after all.

Oh, and a bit of friendly advice for WAPO: Be sure to give Podesta a very, very secure email account.

Twitter users had quite a bit to say about Podesta’s new job.

https://twitter.com/correctthemedia/status/834815653857095681

https://twitter.com/zachhaller/status/834855115521552384

https://twitter.com/55true4u/status/835662006879420417

https://twitter.com/HAGOODMANAUTHOR/status/835640562904506368

https://twitter.com/HAGOODMANAUTHOR/status/834927633972371456

Against meaninglessness and precarity: the crisis of work

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By David Frayne

Source: ROAR Magazine

If work is vital for income, social inclusion and a sense of identity, then one of the most troubling contradictions of our time is that the centrality of work in our societies persists even when work is in a state of crisis. The steady erosion of stable and satisfying employment makes it less and less clear whether modern jobs can offer the sense of moral agency, recognition and pride required to secure work as a source of meaning and identity. The standardization, precarity and dubious social utility that characterize many modern jobs are a major source of modern misery.

Mass unemployment is also now an enduring structural feature of capitalist societies. The elimination of huge quantities of human labor by the development of machine technologies is a process that has spanned centuries. However, perhaps due to high-profile developments like Apple’s Siri computer assistant or Amazon’s delivery drones, the discussion around automation has once again been ignited.

An often-cited study by Carl Frey and Michael Osborne anticipates an escalation of technological unemployment over the coming years. Occupations at high risk include the likes of models, cooks and construction workers, thanks to advances such as digital avatars, burger flipping machines and the ability to manufacture prefabricated buildings in factories with robots. It is also anticipated that advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning will allow an increasing quantity of cognitive work tasks to become automated.

What all of this means is that we are steadily becoming a society of workers without work: a society of people who are materially, culturally and psychologically bound to paid employment, but for whom there are not enough stable and meaningful jobs to go around. Perversely, the most pressing problem for many people is no longer exploitation, but the absence of opportunities to be sufficiently and dependably exploited. The impact of this problem in today’s epidemic of anxiety and exhaustion should not be underestimated.

What makes the situation all the crueler is the pervasive sense that the precarious victims of the crisis are somehow personally responsible for their fate. In the UK, barely a week goes by without a smug reaffirmation of the work ethic in the media, or some story that constructs unemployment as a form of deviance. The UK television show Benefits Street comes to mind, but perhaps the most outrageous example in recent times was not from the world of trash TV, but from Dr. Adam Perkins’ thesis, The Welfare Trait. Published last year, Perkins’ book tackled what he defined as the “employment-resistant personality”. Joblessness is explained in terms of an inter-generationally transmitted psychological disorder. Perkins’ study is the most polished product of the ideology of work one can imagine. His study is so dazzled by its own claims to scientific objectivity, so impervious to its own grounding in the work ethic, that it beggars belief.

It seems we find ourselves at a rift. On the one hand, work has been positioned as a central source of income, solidarity and social recognition, whereas on the other, the promise of stable, meaningful and satisfying employment crumbles around us. The crucial question: how should societies adjust to this deepening crisis of work?

 

This is an excerpt from David Frayne’s “Towards a Post-Work Society”, which will appear in ROAR Issue #2, The Future of Work, scheduled for release in June/July.