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The Year Of Masks Ends – The Year Of Vaccines Arises
This year was weird and somewhat depressing. But there are signs that the next year will be better. The virus will be defeated (vid).
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The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic created some interesting phenomenons. Historically it moved the world's power center towards the east. China and other eastern countries proved to be much better in controlling the outbreak and were rewarded with economic success. The U.S. has lost its leading role in the world but has yet to accept the new multi-polarity. That increases the chance of new conflicts.
Below are links to some of the stories, written throughout the last year, that document and reflect on those trends.
Writing about the virus was a challenge. Not from a scientific point but due to the reaction of some commentators who were unable to accept the facts. I never before had to delete and block so much nonsense. That, astonishingly, did not diminish the blog's readership. With some 11 million page views the blog even attracted a bit more public interest in 2020 than in 2019. A great comments on this blog have a lot to do with this success.
Thanks to all of you who come read and/or comment here.
A happy New Year to all of you.
Bernhard
Cont. reading: The Year Of Masks Ends – The Year Of Vaccines Arises
A Tale Of A New Year’s Resolution
The Wall Street Journal reports of another misguided decision by the Trump administration.
New U.S. Dietary Guidelines Reject Recommendation to Cut Sugar, Alcohol Intake Limit
The federal government on Tuesday issued new dietary guidelines that keep current allowances for sugar and alcohol consumption unchanged, rejecting recommendations by its scientific advisory committee to make significant cuts.
The scientific committee, which was composed of 20 academics and doctors, had recommended cutting the limit for added sugars in the diet to 6% of daily calories from 10% in the current guidelines, citing rising rates of obesity and the link between obesity and health problems like Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
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The dietary guidelines, which are updated every five years, have a wide impact: They shape school lunch programs, mold state and local health-promotion efforts, and influence what food companies produce.
The U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services reviewed the committee’s recommendations, which were released in July, and decided not to include the lower limits because “the new evidence is not substantial enough to support changes to quantitative recommendations for either added sugars or alcohol,” said Brandon Lipps, deputy undersecretary for food, nutrition and consumer services at the USDA. Mr. Lipps said that the new limits recommended by the scientific committee didn’t meet a “preponderance of the evidence” standard required by law.
One would think that the obvious evidence of preponderance within the U.S. population would be sufficient to meet the "preponderance of the evidence" required by law.
Anyway, I'll use the above as a hook to tell a personal story. One which is a bit off from the other content you usually find here.
Two years ago I made a private New Year's resolution to lose weight. Over the decades I had slowly, slowly gained one pound after the other. Having an office job and often being too lazy to do sports both had contributed to that. I was no longer comfortable with the look and feel of my body. So I set myself a target weight but not a time limit to reach it. Fearing failure I did not tell anyone about it.
This month I finally got there.
Cont. reading: A Tale Of A New Year’s Resolution
Open Thread 2020-103
The ‘Mighty Wurlitzer’ – How U.S. Financed ‘Human Rights’ Organizations Create Anti-Chinese Headlines
During my daily skimming of the main stream media I at times detect news items that seem of little public interest but are widely published. These pieces are often suspiciously similar to each other and seem to come from the 'Mighty Wurlitzer':
In 1967 the magazine "Ramparts" ran an expose revealing that the Central Intelligence Agency had been secretly funding and managing a wide range of citizen front groups intended to counter communist influence around the world.
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CIA official Frank Wisner called the operation his "mighty Wurlitzer," on which he could play any propaganda tune.
Today's 'Mighty Wurlitzer' song is played simultaneously by all major outlets:
From the BBC's version:
Cont. reading: The ‘Mighty Wurlitzer’ – How U.S. Financed ‘Human Rights’ Organizations Create Anti-Chinese Headlines
The MoA Week In Review – OT 2020-102
Last week's posts at Moon of Alabama:
> What certainly has not come over is that Brussels has secreted into the system a complex and interesting treaty, one full of subtleties which is a long way from the basic "skinny treaty" that many of us originally expected.
It is one, also, which keeps the UK closer to the EU globally-based trading system than anyone could possibly have imagined at the outset of negotiations. It is one of considerable depth which creates a framework for a relationship which, if explored by people of far more diligence than Johnson and his cronies, could eventually be turned into a useful working agreement, albeit at savage cost to the UK in the interim.
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To enable that trade, and much else, requires a working framework, which is set out in the first chapter of the treaty. One of the greatest misnomers of this modern world is the term "free trade". We have managed trade. The greater the degree of state involvement, the more freely goods (and services) flow.
In creating a framework, the first thing of this treaty that must be understood is that it is not the end of a process, but the start – where detailed sectoral negotiations will be conducted over term, to knock the basic agreement into some sort of shape which will enable the UK to re-establish a functioning relationship with the EU.
- December 21 – Happy Christmas
Related:
Christmas in the grip of the Spanish Flu – Daily Mail
As shops removed blackout curtains for the first time in four years in 1918, war-weary Britons faced the difficult decision over whether to see family during global pandemic that killed 50 million
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Other issues:
Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – OT 2020-102
The Brexit Deal Is Done But Services Are Likely To See Losses
So I was wrong predicting that there would be no Brexit deal.
Good.
A deal was found on Christmas eve and while both sides, Britain and the European Union, may have lost, the British loss seems bigger.
The 1256 pages of the deal are mostly about trade in goods, not about trade in services. While there will be no tariffs and quotas on goods there will be new bureaucratic measures imposed on goods exports:
In announcing the trade deal this week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain acknowledged it offered “not as much” access for financial firms “as we would have liked.” But he was not as straightforward about the difficulties facing even British retailers under the deal, analysts said.
In promising that there were “no non-tariff barriers” to selling goods after Brexit, he ignored the tens of millions of customs declarations, health assessments and other checks that businesses will now be responsible for.
The declaration issues will take a few months to sort out. Border queues can be expected in the first few weeks. Sensational reporting about them will follow. But the queues will soon make place for more routine patterns. Trade in goods will then revive to previous levels.
But services like banking, insurance, and legal advice will have more difficulties. Adherence to British rules will no longer be sufficient to be recognized as legit within the EU. Service companies will have to adhere to local rules of other EU countries to do business with them. It is here where Britain is most likely to lose business:
On services, by quitting the single market, it was made clear during the negotiations that the U.K. lost some market access for trade in financial services. This is still the case since there is no provision for the sector in the agreement. More than 40 percent of the U.K.’s exports to the EU are services, and the sector accounts for around 80 percent of the U.K.’s economic activity.
A look at recent British trade balance data shows why that will matter:
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Britain has an overall trade deficit in goods and a trade surplus in services. While the deficit in goods is expected to stay in the current range the surplus in services will probably shrink. The above numbers are for all British imports and exports. The numbers for Britain's trade with the EU are even more unbalanced:
[The deal] leaves financial firms without the biggest benefit of European Union membership: the ability to easily offer services to clients across the region from a single base. This has long allowed a bank in London to provide loans to a business in Venice, or trade bonds for a company in Madrid.
That loss is especially painful for Britain, which ran a surplus of £18 billion, or $24 billion, on trade in financial and other services with the European Union in 2019, but a deficit of £97 billion, or $129 billion, on trade in goods.
“The result of the deal is that the European Union retains all of its current advantages in trading, particularly with goods, and the U.K. loses all of its current advantages in the trade for services,” said Tom Kibasi, the former director of the Institute for Public Policy Research, a research institute. “The outcome of this trade negotiation is precisely what happens with most trade deals: The larger party gets what it wants and the smaller party rolls over.”
The British trade balance with the EU as well as its global trade balance are now likely to worsen. That will put pressure on the British pound. As Britain has a sovereign currency it can devalue it. But that is likely to increase the import prices for goods, especially food, and hit its people in their pockets.
But that will be a slow process and by then few will make the connection.
I have always seen the whole Brexit idea as something born out of British nostalgy for its lost empire. Ironically the result seems to have put it even further away from that once mighty status.
Happy Christmas
Winter solstice has passed and the days are again getting longer. The dark is receding.
Time for a festivity that is about hope, about the birth of a revolutionary and savior who will make the walls come down. If only symbolically.
Picture courtesy of the Bethlehem Association
In other years I used to visit family for Christmas. This year I decided against doing that. Staying apart makes it more safe for everyone. It also relieves me of three days of cooking. Not that I mind doing that. Not at all.
I will miss the kids' surprise and smiles when they open their presents, their curiosity in trying out all the new stuff. They promised to phone me up and to tell me what they got. I will, as usual, make fun about each piece. They will then fiercely defend their new toys as the best things ever. That exchange is an important part of our ritual.
I wish you all a contemplative, hope- and peaceful Christmas.
Bernhard
Open Thread 2020-101
Deficit Hawk Joe Biden Sabotaged Pandemic Relief Efforts
The recent negotiations about a pandemic relief bill are a preview of Joe Biden's presidency.
U.S. President Donald Trump asked for a $2,000 check for every U.S. citizen. 'Moderates' rejected to send checks. Some people on the left and right kept pushing for them.
Washington Post, December 9
Trump has privately indicated a willingness to send another round of stimulus checks of as much as $2,000, according to one person in direct communication with the president. Congress in March approved a round of $1,200 stimulus checks that the Treasury Department disbursed to more than 100 million American families in a matter of weeks.
A second round of stimulus checks was left out of the $908 billion bipartisan framework unveiled last week by a group of moderate lawmakers hoping to break the months-long impasse over stimulus negotiations. Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have been pushing for the checks to be included in the final package, with Sanders going as far as saying he will vote against the relief legislation unless they are approved.
“While the amount is yet to be determined, direct payments to American workers continue to be a high priority of the president’s,” a White House spokesman said in a statement.
Congress compromised on a paltry, means tested $600 check.
USA Today, December 20
The measure contains a $600 direct payment to Americans who earned up to $75,000 in 2019. That is less than the $1,200 checks approved in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act in March.
It provides $600 per child, up from $500 in the spring. The bill also includes $1,200 for couples making up to $150,000 a year.
Some lawmakers on the left and on the right are furious over the meager result.
Newsweek, December 22
Democratic Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard criticized the COVID-19 economic stimulus bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on Monday, calling the amount of direct assistance payments a "slap in the face."
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"This bill dished out hundreds of billions of dollars going toward special interests, going toward the military-industrial complex, going towards foreign countries meanwhile saying, 'Here's what's left for you. You get 600 bucks,'" Gabbard said in a video
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In a Sunday floor speech, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley said the $600 checks were "hardly adequate and we should not pretend otherwise." Hawley forced a vote on Sunday to raise the amount of the direct assistance to payments to $1,200, the amount of direct payments allocated after the CARES Act passed in March, but that attempt failed.
Turns out that President-elect Joe Biden had sided with the 'moderates' who favored not to send any check. He thereby successfully sabotaged those Democrats who were pressing for a bigger one.
Cont. reading: Deficit Hawk Joe Biden Sabotaged Pandemic Relief Efforts
A No Deal Brexit Is Now All But Certain To Happen
"Fog in channel. Continent cut off." is a famous headline that was once used in a British newspaper (or maybe not). It encapsulates the snobbish British attitude towards Europe. Some fog indeed arose in the channel today but a much denser cloud will arise from the waters on January 1.
The new variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus now per-dominant in south England has give a sudden foretaste of the chaos that can be expected at Britain's borders 10 days from now when Britain will leave the custom union and common market with the EU.
It remains unclear how much the mutant virus will change the course of the pandemic:
Scientists, meanwhile, are hard at work trying to figure out whether B.1.1.7 is really more adept at human-to-human transmission—not everyone is convinced yet—and if so, why. They’re also wondering how it evolved so fast. B.1.1.7 has acquired 17 mutations all at once, a feat never seen before.
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One reason to be concerned, [Andrew Rambaut, a molecular evolutionary biologist at the University of Edinburgh,] says, is that among the 17 mutations are eight in the gene that encodes the spike protein on the viral surface, two of which are particularly worrisome. One, called N501Y, has previously been shown to increase how tightly the protein binds to the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 receptor, its entry point into human cells. The other, named 69-70del, leads to the loss of two amino acids in the spike protein and has been found in viruses that eluded the immune response in some immunocompromised patients.
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In a press conference on Saturday, Chief Science Adviser Patrick Vallance said B.1.1.7, which first appeared in a virus isolated on 20 September, accounted for about 26% of cases in mid-November. “By the week commencing the ninth of December, these figures were much higher,” he said. “So, in London, over 60% of all the cases were the new variant.” Johnson added that the slew of mutations may have increased the virus’ transmissibility by 70%.
Christian Drosten, a virologist at Charité University Hospital in Berlin, says that was premature. “There are too many unknowns to say something like that,” he says. For one thing, the rapid spread of B.1.1.7 might be down to chance. Scientists previously worried that a variant that spread rapidly from Spain to the rest of Europe—confusingly called B.1.177—might be more transmissible, but today they think it is not; it just happened to be carried all over Europe by travelers who spent their holidays in Spain. Something similar might be happening with B.1.1.7, says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Georgetown University. Drosten notes that the new mutant also carries a deletion in another viral gene, ORF8, that previous studies suggest might reduce the virus’ ability to spread.
Some 40 countries reacted to yesterday's news of the new virus variant by stopping air traffic with Britain. France closed all transport links with the island. Britain depends on food from abroad and there were immediately fears about supply shortages:
Cont. reading: A No Deal Brexit Is Now All But Certain To Happen
The MoA Week In Review – OT 2020-100
Last week's posts at Moon of Alabama:
> While Kushner was not a driving force behind AMMC, the source who spoke on a condition of anonymity explained, the joint effort was led by campaign lawyers to reassure a paranoid Trump that no one was taking secret cuts. Parscale, it was thought, should not hold dual roles as head of a company serving as a campaign clearinghouse and campaign manager. Parscale and Kushner both signed off the arrangement, the source confirmed. <
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Other issues:
Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – OT 2020-100
To Blame Russia For Cyber-Intrusions Is Delusional – A Treaty Is The Only Way To Prevent More Damage
The New York Times continues to provide anti-Russian propaganda and to incite against it:
Pompeo Says Russia Was Behind Cyberattack on U.S.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is the first member of the Trump administration to publicly link the Kremlin to the hacking of dozens of government and private systems.
The first paragraph:
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Friday it was clear that Russia was behind the widespread hacking of government systems that officials this week called “a grave risk” to the United States.
That is a quite definite statement.
But it is very wrong. Pompous did not say "that it was clear that Russia was behind" the IT intrusions.
The third paragraph in the NYT story, which casual readers will miss, quotes Pompous and there he does not say what the Times opener claims:
“I think it’s the case that now we can say pretty clearly that it was the Russians that engaged in this activity,” Mr. Pompeo said in an interview on “The Mark Levin Show.”
Merriam Webster's definition of 'pretty' as an adverb is "in some degree : moderately". The example it gives is "pretty cold weather". The temperature of pretty cold weather on a July day in Cairo obviously differs from the temperature of pretty cold weather during a December night in Siberia. "Pretty xxx" It is a relative expression, not an assertion of absolute facts.
The first paragraph of the Times statement tries to sell a vague statement as an factual claim.
Moreover – Pompous finds it amusing that the CIA lies, steals and cheats (vid). As a former CIA director he has not refrained from those habits. Whenever Pompous says something about a perceived U.S. 'enemy' it safe to assume that it he does not state the truth.
On top of that even his boss does not agree with his claim:
Contradicting his secretary of state and other top officials, President Donald Trump on Saturday suggested without evidence that China — not Russia — may be behind the cyberattack against the United States and tried to minimized its impact.
Trump AND Pompous both made their contradicting assertions "without evidence".
It is inappropriate for the media to accuse Russia – or China – of the recently discovered cyber-intrusion when there is zero evidence to support such a claim.
The Times did that at least twice without having any evidence to support the claim:
Cont. reading: To Blame Russia For Cyber-Intrusions Is Delusional – A Treaty Is The Only Way To Prevent More Damage
Another ‘Russiagate’ Like Trump Scandal Which Isn’t One
Some of the 'Russiagate' fanatics dream of indicting U.S. President Donald Trump as soon as he leaves his office. But they never explain what crime he should be indicted for. What did he actually do wrong?
Yes, he killed foreigners. But no U.S. president will ever be indicted for that. It is seen as a part of the job. Trump may have old tax issues. But those are usually solved by negotiating about the amount of money in question. As soon as the negotiated amount is paid such cases get closed.
But now the Russiagaters have new hope. There is a new Trump scandal!
Russiagaters on Twitter are in an uproar about a story the Business Insider broke today:
EXCLUSIVE: Jared Kushner helped create a Trump campaign shell company that secretly paid the president's family members and spent $617 million in reelection cash, a source tells Insider
The story seems well researched but is carefully arranged to put Trump and his family into a bad light.
The first graphs:
President Donald Trump's most powerful advisor, Jared Kushner, approved the creation of a campaign shell company that secretly paid the president's family members and spent almost half of the campaign's $1.26 billion war chest, a person familiar with the operation told Insider.
The operation acted almost like a campaign within a campaign. It paid some of Trump's top advisors and family members while shielding financial and operational details from public scrutiny.
When Kushner and others created the company in April 2018, they picked Trump's daughter-in-law Lara Trump, to become its president, Vice President Mike Pence's nephew John Pence as its vice president, and Trump campaign CFO Sean Dollman as its treasurer and secretary, the person who spoke on the condition of anonymity said.
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The shell company — incorporated as American Made Media Consultants Corporation and American Made Media Consultants LLC — allowed Trump's campaign to skirt federally mandated disclosures. The tactic could attract scrutiny from federal election regulators.
While that sounds like Trump pushed campaign money into the private pockets of his family there is no evidence in the story that he or his family did so.
There are in fact several exculpatory details in the different parts of the long story. When one puts those into chronological order the real story comes to light:
Cont. reading: Another ‘Russiagate’ Like Trump Scandal Which Isn’t One
After Recruiting For ISIS Anand Gopal Justifies The War Crimes The U.S. Committed While Removing It
Apologists for war crimes are a dime for a dozen. With a new piece in The New Yorker Anand Gopal has joined that trade.
Headlined America’s War on Syrian Civilians the piece starts out with some hand wringing about the total destruction of Raqqa in 2017 by an extremely violent U.S. attack on the ISIS held city.
For four months in 2017, an American-led coalition in Syria dropped some ten thousand bombs on Raqqa, the densely populated capital of the Islamic State. Nearly eighty per cent of the city, which has a population of three hundred thousand, was destroyed. I visited shortly after ISIS relinquished control, and found the scale of the devastation difficult to comprehend: the skeletal silhouettes of collapsed apartment buildings, the charred schools, the gaping craters.
It follows some mumbling about the historic and current view of 'human war'.
Then comes this monster of a paragraph:
The U.S.-led coalition waged its assault on Raqqa with exacting legal precision. It vetted every target carefully, with a fleet of lawyers scrutinizing strikes the way an in-house counsel pores over a corporation’s latest contract. During the battle, the coalition commander, Lieutenant General Stephen J. Townsend, declared, “I challenge anyone to find a more precise air campaign in the history of warfare.” Although human-rights activists insist that the coalition could have done more to protect civilians, Townsend is right: unlike Russia, America does not bomb indiscriminately. The U.S. razed an entire city, killing thousands in the process, without committing a single obvious war crime.
Aaron Maté quoted that paragraph and remarked:
Aaron Maté @aaronjmate – 14:24 UTC · Dec 17, 2020
A masterclass in US war crimes apologia from @Anand_Gopal_ in the New Yorker: “unlike Russia, America does not bomb indiscriminately. The U.S. razed an entire city [Raqqa], killing thousands in the process, without committing a single obvious war crime.”
Gopal is, as usual, loose with the facts and disingenuous in his judgment.
First the U.S. not only "dropped some ten thousand bombs on Raqqa". It dropped much more:
Cont. reading: After Recruiting For ISIS Anand Gopal Justifies The War Crimes The U.S. Committed While Removing It
Open Thread 2020-99
Media Blame Russia For Cyber Intrusions Without Providing Evidence
As soon as someone hacked something the media start to blame Russia. This even when there is no evidence that Russia hacked anything.
On Tuesday, December 8, the network security company FireEye reported of a recent attack on its network:
Based on my 25 years in cyber security and responding to incidents, I’ve concluded we are witnessing an attack by a nation with top-tier offensive capabilities. This attack is different from the tens of thousands of incidents we have responded to throughout the years. The attackers tailored their world-class capabilities specifically to target and attack FireEye. They are highly trained in operational security and executed with discipline and focus. They operated clandestinely, using methods that counter security tools and forensic examination. They used a novel combination of techniques not witnessed by us or our partners in the past.
We are actively investigating in coordination with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other key partners, including Microsoft. Their initial analysis supports our conclusion that this was the work of a highly sophisticated state-sponsored attacker utilizing novel techniques.
Intruding a cybersecurity company is a mistake as the chance of getting caught is significantly higher that during an intrusion into other environments. The intruders allegedly made off with some tools which likely can also be found in the wild.
On Sunday FireEye updated its analysis and provided technical details. This really was a sophisticated operation that must have cost significant resources:
Cont. reading: Media Blame Russia For Cyber Intrusions Without Providing Evidence
Biden Elected, Barr Out, Dems Cave On Covid Aid
The relevant authority has finally called the U.S. presidential election:
President of Russia @KremlinRussia_E – 8:43 UTC · Dec 15, 2020
Joseph R. Biden @JoeBiden has been declared the winner of the US presidential election. Congratulations from Vladimir Putin:
Vladimir Putin sent a message to Joseph R. Biden congratulating him on his victory in the presidential election in the United States of America.
This comes after a majority of electors had voted for Joe Biden:
All 538 electors voted Monday in the Electoral College, formalizing President-elect Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential election. Their votes will next be sent to Washington to be counted by Congress on January 6.
Hawaii's four electors voted shortly after 7 p.m. to make the final tally 306 Electoral College votes for Mr. Biden to 232 for President Trump. At 5:30 p.m. ET, California's electors cast their state's 55 Electoral College votes for Mr. Biden, putting him over the 270 needed to win.
Despite that Trump will certainly continue to put the election results in doubt. That and nearly everything else he will do during the next 35 days is already part of his 2024 reelection campaign.
That Trump has plans to muck up things a bit more is possibly a reason why Attorney General William Barr resigned today:
Cont. reading: Biden Elected, Barr Out, Dems Cave On Covid Aid
A Presidential Pardon For Julian Assange?
UPDATED below
The tweet below has not been confirmed but I hope it is true.
Pastor Mark Burns @pastormarkburns – 16:19 UTC · 14 Dec 2020
BREAKING: President Trump will pardon Julian Assange.
Mark Burns is 'Trump's pastor'.
A pardon for Julian Assange will be a huge middle finger shown towards the 'deep state' which tormented Donald Trump with four years of 'Russiagate' nonsense.
It is also the right thing to do. Assange has not committed any crime. He has helped his sources to publish data through Wikileaks that incriminated states and powerful persons and companies.
That was and is plain old journalism and deserves support.
UPDATE – 18:32 UTC:
Oh, well:
Pastor Mark Burns @pastormarkburns – 17:57 UTC · Dec 14, 2020
Regarding #JulianAssange tweet, Inadvertent tweet, faulty source, please disregard!
Still – the 'inadvertent tweet' was so far retweeted 20.000 times and has received 90.000 likes. It thereby shows how popular such a move would be.
That may will give Trump additional impetus to really do it.
The MoA Week In Review – OT 2020-98
Last week’s posts at Moon of Alabama:
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Other issues:
Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – OT 2020-98
New Documents Show How The British Government Secretly Created ‘Regime Change’ Protests In Lebanon
Three month ago we reported on documents obtained from of 'Her Majesties Government' in Britain which revealed the intense involvement of the UK government in organizing, financing and propagandizing 'Syrian rebels' since the start of the war on Syria. These programs were coordinated with the CIA's and the Gulf Arab's arming of the various Jihadis:
Most of the documents are detailed company responses to several solicitations from the Foreign Office for global and local campaigns in support of the 'moderate rebels' who are fighting against the Syrian government and people.
The documents lay out large scale campaigns which have on-the-ground elements in Syria, training and arming efforts in neighboring countries, command and control elements in Jordan, Turkey and Iraq, as well as global propaganda efforts. These operations were wide spread.
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Most of the documents are from 2016 to 2019. They detail the organization of such operations and also portray persons involved in these projects. They often refer back to previous campaigns that have been run from 2011/2012 onward. This is where the documents are probably the most interesting. They reveal what an immense effort was and is waged to fill the information space with pro-rebel/pro-Islamist propaganda.
For any informed person who had watched the development of the war on Syria it was no surprise that such programs existed. But the immense extend of these was really astonishing. Consider what ARK, one of the involved companies run by 'former' British spies, organized as part of a British government 'Strategic Communication' program:
ARK,as a company that has specialised in Syria programming for more than three years, has access to a wide-range of networks in Syria. ARK has trained over 1,400 beneficiaries representing over 210 beneficiary organisations in more than 130 workshops, and disbursed more than 53,000 individual pieces of equipment. This network reaches into all of Syria’s 14 governorates (see map below), including liberated, regime-and extremist-controlled areas, and ranges from the most senior Syrian opposition politicians, to armed groups, civil society organisations and ordinary Syrians. This includes but is not limited to:
- 61 stringers; 17 teams of distributors;
- 14 FM radio stations; 11 community magazines; two local TV stations;
- 17 Civil Defence teams in Aleppo; 16 in Idlib;
- 58 police stations in Aleppo; 32 in Idlib; eight in Latakia;
- 10 Syrian field researchers; 60 Syrian researchers who can conduct broad-based population surveys (a survey study in May 2014 reached 1,300 individuals); a focus group database of over 800 individuals; Dozens of Local Councils; judicial courts; documentation centres; and
- A variety of other organisations.
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Keep in mind that these were not social programs for the benefit of Syrians but part of a number of clandestine support measure for a violent international Jihadi movement organized to overthrow the Syrian government.
While such a program may be rationalized as part of a war it is astonishing to find that very similar measures are also used against 'friendly' governments.
New documents obtained from the British government and published here and here (complete download here also by right-click "Save link as …" here) reveal an intense British 'Strategic Communications' program that is directed against the government of Lebanon.
Those who obtained the files, they use the 'Anonymous' label, introduce the new cache:
Cont. reading: New Documents Show How The British Government Secretly Created ‘Regime Change’ Protests In Lebanon
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