Spains anti-austerity 15-M protestors, also known as the Indignados, famously inspired Occupy demonstrations from New York to London. But according to documents recently released by WikiLeaks the far Right also tried to exploit the moment and public anger in order to build their own movements.

One of the documents, from 2012, says Spain faced the most delicate, dangerous, distressing moment for at least three generations, and recommended that ultra-conservatives launch a long-term and strongly political campaign that actively incorporates the national crisis into our agenda, against abortion and LGBT rights.

Other documents appear to show how these campaignerssought to build an alliance with progressive leaders who were in the public eye during the mass protests and also sought to copy tactics of progressive groups including Oxfam and Greenpeace.

These files among 17,000 internal documents from Spain-based, ultra-conservative groups that were released this month by WikiLeaks under the title The Intolerance Network offer an unprecedented window into these groups operations and strategies. They also shine a light on what was happening immediately prior to a far-Right boom in Spain.

After a six-month openDemocracy investigation, major aid donors and NGOs have said they will investigate anti-LGBT conversion therapy at health facilities run by groups they fund.

But unlike the other aid donors, US aid agency PEPFAR has not responded at all.

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In 2013, two years after anti-austerity protestors had occupied squares across Spain and inspired the world, the ultra-conservatives that sought to seize this moment founded a new online petition platform, CitizenGo, modelled on progressive versions Avaaz and Change.org. Spains far-Right Vox party was also founded in the same year.

Ahead of the 2019 European Parliament elections, an openDemocracy undercover investigation revealed how CitizenGo was effectively working as an unregulated US-style Super PAC to push voters to Vox and other far-Right parties across Europe.

In the Spanish elections, also held in 2019, Vox entered parliament for the first time, as the third biggest party.

In the wake of protests that erupted across Spain on 15 May 2011, campaigners from the Madrid-based, ultra-conservative group HazteOirstrategised about how to take advantage of the national crisis, according to the WikiLeaks files.

One internal HazteOir file describes how the group was struggling to grow, and says it should seize the moment and find ways to incorporate the values crisis it had focused on opposing abortion and same-sex marriage, for example with the national economic and political crises that had brought many people on to the streets.

The groups campaigns should become more political, it said, even at the risk of thinking we are planting the seed of a new party. As proof that this strategy can work, it cited US ultra-conservative culture warrior Morton Blackwell, who raised millions for campaigns that are more like a partys electoral proposal than the protest of a civic association.

This file links to another document, dated 22 May 2011, which appears to be notes from talks between progressive leaders and HazteOir, on key points that unite those of us that, from the Left and the Right, want to regenerate Spanish democracy. It doesnt mention family values issues, focusing instead on topics such as political representation and electoral reform.

That document names Ignacio Escolar (founder of the left-wing news outlet Pblico, and now director of eldiario.es) and Francisco Polo (member of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party and then head of the Spanish branch of Change.org), as among those who agreed with this proposal for unity. But both men told openDemocracy this is false.

Escolar and Polo both denied any involvement with HazteOir or its leader, Ignacio Arsuaga who went on to found CitizenGo and became a close ally of the far-Right Vox party. They both recalled a chance meeting with Arsuaga in a bar in Madrid unaware that this encounter would be captured in notes that ended up, a decade later, in the WikiLeaks release.

They each recounted, separately, how Arsuaga approached them, introduced himself, and suggested that prominent left-wing and right-wing digital activists align on minimal proposals that could serve as a consensus in support of 15-Ms demands.

I listened to him, as I used to listen to so many people those days. By no means did I make a proposal myself [] and defining that conversation as an agreed proposal is exaggerated [] nothing of the chat crystallised into any joint effort, Polo said.

Escolar agreed: The unexpected and improvised encounter came to nothing. I never saw Arsuaga again and had no further contact with him.

Peoples attention is not on abortion, HazteOir noted in the files released by WikiLeaks, but on the worsening of the economic situation; and hammering too much on the same subject [] creates boredom and discouragement. New strategies were needed and the files show how they studied leading progressive groups to copy their tactics.

The documents show, for example, that HazteOir tracked how its membership numbers and donations compared with those of groups such as Greenpeace and Amnesty International. It also analysed the language, style and even details such as the colour schemes the groups used in their online communications, newsletters and other materials.

One file a draft script for a video to welcome new HazteOir members almost exactly mirrors a Greenpeace video (which is explicitly linked to in the draft). Other files suggest: Street actions to attract media attention [...] (Greenpeace model).

Another HazteOir draft (inviting new members and donations) is based on one fromthe anti-poverty NGO Oxfam Intermn (the original live links are still included).

Amnesty, Avaaz, Change.org, Greenpeace and Oxfam told openDemocracy that they were all unaware of and surprised by the level of interest in their activities and strategies from these ultra-conservative campaigners.

Javier Raboso, coordinator of Greenpeace Spains campaign on peace, democracy and human rights, said his organisation is concerned about such organisations using its engagement tools to foster intolerance and hate speech.

The philosophy of civil disobedience, and the strategies based on non-violent direct action that are the very essence of Greenpeace, belong to the history of social movements pursuing the advancement of rights and freedoms, Raboso said.

Using them instead to promote intolerance, polarisation and hatred towards minorities implies a deplorable perversion of the spirit they were born of, he argued.

HazteOir and CitizenGo did not reply to our request for comments.

See the original post here:
How the far Right tried to exploit Spain's anti-austerity 15-M protests - Open Democracy

Wikileaks, founded by Julian Assange, who is still in prison, recently reminded me of the CIA report he disclosed in 2010.

According to the report, if the Netherlands withdraws its troops from Afghanistan, other NATO countries are likely to follow. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) appears to suggest using feminism to legitimize its invasion of Afghanistan, which was in its 10th year at that time, in the eyes of the European public.

To cite an example from the report: "The prospect of the Taliban reversing hard-won progress on girls' education could provoke French anger and become a point of support for France's largely secular public opinion. This gives voters a reason to support the good and necessary cause despite the casualties."

The relationship between the CIA and feminism is not new. For example, it was revealed that Gloria Steinem, who is still considered a pioneer and respected feminist even today, was funded by the CIA from the early 1950s to the 1960s. This funding relationship is thought to have continued even longer, although Steinem has denied it.

When asked about the topic, she praised her funders, saying that the CIA boasts a liberal and non-violent environment. The name of the foundation she founded with CIA funding was ironic: Independent Research Service. Through this foundation, she worked to disseminate feminist theses in the world, especially in the U.S.

The CIA calls such people "change agents." The figures, who make the public adopt arguments that the U.S. established order deems appropriate, are supported in various ways and are highlighted in the public sphere.

I think what I have described is background information that should be kept in mind when looking at discourses and subjects that feature the topic of women's rights as the U.S. forces, who are responsible for the killing of hundreds of thousands of women in Afghanistan, withdraw.

While the rape of women by American soldiers in every country it occupied, from Vietnam to Colombia, Iraq to Afghanistan, is well-known, I believe that remembering the issue of how women are treated, since America's withdrawal, highlights the deep-rooted hypocrisy in itself.

It is hard to believe that they are concerned about the education of Afghan women when every year another European state denies women wearing headscarves the right to education.

In any case, we are faced with the reality of an administration that defeated the U.S. and took over Afghanistan. Reminding us of the saying "heavy is the head that wears the crown," some Taliban spokespeople went on TV programs hosted by female journalists without headscarves, promising that they will not interfere with the education of girls from the very first day.

On the other hand, according to their understanding and the interpretation of Islam, they are not promising a rose garden.

Demanding an increase in public pressure and maintaining a cautious outlook versus having the naivety to say "Oh, if only American drones would return to the skies of Afghanistan and protect the women" are two different things for sure. Because the primary policy and concern of the United States has never been the women of Afghanistan.

Excerpt from:
Two-faced relationship between CIA and feminism | Daily Sabah - Daily Sabah

Five years ago, from her prison cell, trans whistleblower Chelsea Manning sketched out a new way to protect online privacy. Now, she is helping an MIT-affiliated cryptographer bring the next generation of privacy software online.

Chelsea Mannings long blonde hair catches in a cool summer breeze as she turns the corner into Brooklyns Starr Bar, a dimly lit counter-cultural haunt in the heart of the hipster enclave of Bushwick. The 33-year-old best known for leaking hundreds of thousands of top-secret government documents to Julian Assange in 2010, then coming out as a transgender woman, walks past a poster depicting sea turtles, humans and geese merging to form the outline of a dove. Beside the image are the words, Your Nations Cannot Contain Us.

Dressed in a black suit and wearing a silver Omega watch, she makes her way to a small wooden table illuminated by a shaft of sunlight. She orders a coke. Contrary to what one might expect, this whistleblower turned trans-icon looks uncomfortable in the hip surroundings. A fan reverently approaches her and welcomes her back. This is my life, she says after he leaves, expressing both gratitude for the well wishes, and lamenting the loss of her privacy. Im not just famous, Im in the history books.

While serving the longest sentence ever doled out to a whistleblower after she used the privacy protecting Tor Network to anonymously leak 700,000 government documents, she used her time in incarceration to devise a better way to hide the tracks of other online users. Knowing that the non-profit Tor Project she used to send files to Wikileaks had become increasingly vulnerable to the prying eyes of intelligence agencies and law enforcement, she sketched out a new way to hide internet traffic using blockchain, the technology behind bitcoin, to build a similar network, without troublesome government funding. The entire plan was hatched in a military prison, on paper.

The privacy network industry, including the virtual-private networks (VPNs) familiar to many corporate users, generated $29 billion in revenue in 2019, and is expected to triple to $75 billion by 2027. Fixing the known weaknesses of these networks is about more than just protecting future whistleblowers and criminals. Private networks are also vital for big businesses who want to protect trade secrets. Manning thinks that not-for-profit efforts like Tor, which relies on U.S. government funding and a worldwide network of volunteers to run its anonymous servers, arent robust enough. Nonprofits are unsustainable, says Manning casually, sipping from her Coke. They require constant upholding by large capital funds, by large governments.

By January 2017, she was seven-years into a 35-year sentence at Fort Leavenworth, home to the likes of former Army Major Nidal Hasan, who killed 14 fellow soldiers in 2009. As President Barack Obama prepared to leave office, he granted Manning an unconditional commutation of her sentence. Newly tasting freedom, she was contacted by Harry Halpin, the 41-year-old mathematician who worked for World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee at MIT from 2013 to 2016 helping standardize the use of cryptography across web browsers.

Halpin asked Manning to look for security weaknesses in his new privacy project, which eventually became Nym, a Neuchtel, Switzerland-based crypto startup. Halprin founded Nym in 2018 to send data anonymously around the Internet using the same blockchain technology underlying Bitcoin. To date, Nym has raised some $8.5 million from a group of crypto investors including Binance, Polychain Capital and NGC Ventures. The firm now employs 10 people and is using its latest round of capital to double its team size.

Halpin was impressed by Mannings technical knowledge. More than just a famous leaker who happened to have access to secret documents, Manning struck Halpin as someone with a deep technological understanding of how governments and big business seek to spy on private messages.

Weve very rarely had access to people who really were inside the machine, who can explain what they believe the actual capabilities of these kinds of adversaries are, what kinds of attacks are more likely, says Halpin. Shell help us fix holes in our design.

Born in Oklahoma on December 17, 1987, Manning had her first exposure to network traffic analysis in high school. She and her Welsh mother Susan had moved to Haverfordwest, Wales in 2001, when Manning was 13. In a computer class there, in 2003, she first learned to circumvent blocks put in place by the school to prevent students downloading certain filesand got caught pirating music by Linkin Park, Jay-Z and others. The headmaster had been watching remotely.It was the first moment where it dawned on me, Oh, this is a thing. You can do this.

By 2008 Mannings interest in whats called network traffic analysis first brought her to The Onion Router (Tor), a volunteer network of computers that sits on top of the internet and helps hide a users identity. The non-profit organization leveraged something called onion routing which hides messages beneath layers of encryption. Each message is only decipherable by a different member of the network, which routes the message to the next router, ensuring only the sender and receiver can decipher it all. Ironically, the network colloquially known as the Dark Web, and used by Manning to send classified documents to WikiLeaks, was developed by the U.S. government to protect spies and other government agents operating online.

At around the same time Manning discovered Tor, she joined the U.S. Army. As a young intelligence analyst her job was to sort through classified databases in search of tactical patterns. After becoming disillusioned with what she learned about the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, she plugged into her computer, put in her headphones, and loaded a CD with music from another of her favorite musicians: Lady Gaga. Instead of listening to the album though, she erased it and downloaded what would eventually be known as the largest single leak in U.S. history, ranging from sensitive diplomatic cables to video showing U.S. soldiers killing civilians, including two Reuters journalists.

In prison she studied carpentry, but she never stopped exploring her earlier vocation. Im a certified carpenter, she says. But when I wasnt doing that, I would read a lot of cryptography papers. In 2016, she was visited in prison by Yan Zhu, a physicist from MIT who would later go on to become chief security officer of Brave, a privacy-protecting internet browser that pays users in cryptocurrency in exchange for agreeing to see ads.

She and Zhu were concerned with vulnerabilities they saw in Tor, including its dependence on the good will of governments and academic institutions. In 2020 53% of its $5 millionfundingcame from the US government and 27% came from other Western governments, tax-subsidized non-profits, foundations and companies. Worse, in their opinion, the technology to break privacy was being funded at a higher rate than the technology to protect it.

As the dark web, or Tor, and VPN, and all these other services became more prolific, the tools to do traffic analysis had dramatically improved, says Manning. And theres sort of been a cold war thats been going on between the Tor project developers, and a number of state actors and large internet service providers. In 2014 the FBI learned how to decipher Tor data. By 2020 a single user reportedly controlled enough Tor nodes to steal bitcoin transactions initiated over the network.

Using two lined pieces of composition paper from the prison commissary, Manning drew a schematic for Zhu of what she called, Tor Plus. Instead of just encrypting the data she proposed to inject the information equivalent of noise into network communications. In the margins of the document she even postulated that blockchain, the technology popularized by bitcoin, could play a role. In the notes below she wrote the words: New Hope.

Then, this February Halpin woke her up late one night with an encrypted text message asking her to take a look at a paper describing Nym. Developed completely separately from Mannings jailhouse sketch, the paper detailed an almost identical system disguising real messages with white noise. A hybrid of the decentralized Tor that relies on donor support, and a corporate owned VPN that requires trusting a company, this network promised the best of both worlds. Organized as a for-profit enterprise, Nym would pay people and organizations running the network in cryptocurrency. The next day I cleared my schedule, she says. By July shed signed a contract with Nym to run a security audit that could eventually include a closer look at the code, the math, and the defensive scenarios against government attacks.

Unlike Tor, which uses the onion router to obscure data sent on a shared network, Nym uses whats called a mix network, or mixnet, that not only shuffles the data, but alternates the methods by which the data is shuffled making it nearly impossible to reassemble.

Imagine you have a deck of cards, says Manning. Whats really unique here is that whats being done is that you are taking essentially a deck of cards, and you are taking a bunch of other decks of cards, and you are shuffling those decks of cards as well.

And, as it, turns out, not every government is comfortable using a privacy network largely funded by the U.S. government. Despite Halpins commitment to build a network that doesnt require government funding to operate, in July Nym accepteda 200,000 euro grant from the European Commission, to help get it off the ground.

Knowing that Wikileaks had become increasingly vulnerable to prying eyes from intelligence agencies and law enforcement, she sketched out a new way to hide internet traffic using blockchain, the technology behind bitcoin.

The problem is that there was never a financial model that made any sense to build this technology, says Halpin. There was no interest from users, venture capital, and big companies. And now youre seeing what we consider a once in a lifetime alignment of the stars, where theres interest in privacy from venture capital. Theres an interest in privacy for users. Theres interest in privacy from companies. And most of the interest from the venture capital side and the company side, and the user side has been driven by cryptocurrency. And this was not the case even five years ago.

Even Tor itself is exploring how to use blockchain to create the next generation of its software. After receiving 26% of its total donations in cryptocurrency last year, the Tor Project received a $670,000 grant from advocates of the zcash cryptocurrency and sold a non-fungible token (NFT) representing the first .onion address for $2 million in May, 2021. Now, Tors cofounder, Nick Mathewsonsays the Seattle-based non-profit is exploring some of the same techniques developed by cryptocurrency companies to create Tor credentials that let users develop a reputation without revealing their identity. What he calls an anonymous blacklistable credential.

If youve got a website, and somebody does something you dont like, you can ban them, says Mathewson. You can ban the person who did that activity without ever finding out what other activities they did or figuring out who you banned.

Though Mathewson is interested in the possibility of using blockchain to upgrade Tor itself, he warns that making privacy infrastructure for-profit could lead to more money being spent on marketing than product development. Our mission is to encourage the use of privacy technology, says Mathewson. I dont really care whether that privacy tool is the one I made or not.

Ironically, the same cryptocurrency culture Halpin says brought so much attention from investors, deterred Manning from getting involved earlier. Though she counts herself among the earliest bitcoin adopters, claiming to have mined cryptocurrency shortly after Satoshi Nakomoto activated it in 2009, she sold her bitcoin last year for decidedly non-monetary reasons.

I am not a fan of the culture around blockchain and cryptocurrency, she says. Theres a lot of large personalities that are very out there like your Elon Musks and whatnot, she says. And its very, like, Oh, were going to get rich off of blockchain. Its verynouveau riche. Like a new-yuppies-bro-culture thats surrounded it. It has gotten a little bit better in some corners. But I think that culture is what Im talking about. Its like Gordon Gekko, but blockchain.

By Michael del Castillo, Forbes Staff

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Excerpt from:
Chelsea Manning Is Back, And Hacking Again, Only This Time For A Bitcoin-Based Privacy Startup - Forbes Africa

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The only thing bigger than the news out of Russia this morning that leaked documents reveal Vladimir Putin personally authorised an operation to assist Donald Trump into the White House in 2016 is the caveat that comes with the story.

And by caveat, I mean it may or may not be true.

In case you missed, early this morning the Guardian reported,Documents suggest Russia launched secret multi-agency effort to interfere inUS democracy. The headline on the story is Kremlin papers appear to showPutins plot to put Trump in White House.

The opening pars read:

Vladimir Putinpersonally authorised a secret spy agency operation to support a mentallyunstable Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election during a closedsession of Russias national security council, according to what are assessedto be leaked Kremlin documents.The key meeting took place on 22 January 2016, the papers suggest, with theRussian president, his spy chiefs and senior ministers all present.They agreed a Trump White House would help secure Moscows strategicobjectives, among them social turmoil in the US and a weakening of theAmerican presidents negotiating position.Russias three spy agencies were ordered to find practical ways to supportTrump, in a decree appearing to bear Putins signature.

By any measure, its a very big story. If you believe it. Butunfortunately the hurdle you have to get over to get there is huge, and Im notreferring to the last line of the opening paragraph, which reads according to what are assessed to be leakedKremlin documents.

As qualifications go, thats a ripper, as is the word suggestin the headline. But this is a story from the heady world of Russianintelligence, so itd be folly to accept anything at face value. But its alsonot the problem with this story.

The problem is who published it, and who helped write it The Guardian newspaper, and one of the bylined authors, Luke Harding, a former Moscow correspondent.

You might remember Harding from such amazing,fantastical tales as Manafort held secret talks with Assange in Ecuadorianembassy, sources say. Heres the opening par from that 2018 train wreck: DonaldTrumps former campaign manager Paul Manafort held secret talks with JulianAssange inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and visited around the time hejoined Trumps campaign, the Guardian has been told.

Its entirely possible, indeed probable, The Guardian was told that in which case, theyshould out the multiple unnamed sources that Harding (and colleague DanCollyns) relied on for the story, on the basis that they clearly lied and manufacturedevidence.

Harding and The Guardian with the sort of hubris you only see from such luminaries as, say, Donald Trump (or maybe Vladimir Putin) maintain the story is true. It remains online, uncorrected, without apology.

Virtually everyone else knows its false, which is how its widely regarded in media circles. The reason why is relatively simple: if Manafort had visited Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy, not only would Ecuador have footage of it (and released it by now), but so would British intelligence because they staked out the front door for seven years. And yet, The Guardian story claims Manafort visited Assange not once, but at least three times in 2013, 2015 and again in 2016.

The story relies entirely on anonymous sources (the ABC provides a great example of what can go wrong here when you do that) and ridiculous claims like this: Manaforts 2016 visit to Assange lasted about 40 minutes, one source said, adding that the American was casually dressed when he exited the embassy, wearing sandy-coloured chinos, a cardigan and a light-coloured shirt.

Followed by this:

Visitors normallyregister with embassy security guards and show their passports. Sources inEcuador, however, say Manafort was not logged. Embassy staff were aware onlylater of the potential significance of Manaforts visit and his political rolewith Trump, it is understood.

So an anonymous source remembered in great detail what a faceless, unremarkable guest to the embassy was wearing two and a half years earlier? Nothing dodgy about that.

And then there was this: A separate internal document written by Ecuadors Senain intelligence agency and seen by the Guardian lists Paul Manaford [sic] as one of several well-known guests. It also mentions Russians.

That document is only seen by the Guardian, and not reproduced in the story. In other words, they dont have it. (By contrast, todays scoop on Putin does include images of the alleged documents, but still Russian intelligence American intelligence and more to the point, Luke Harding and The Guardian.)

Unfortunately, this wasnt just some shitty deception gone wrong, a regular occurrence in political reporting these days. The story actually caused harm, and was part of The Guardians broader campaign to assassinate Assanges character around baseless claims he worked with Russian intelligence to advantage Trump over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential elections. Or in the Guardians words: The [fake Manafort]revelation could shed new light on the sequence of events in the run-up to summer 2016, when WikiLeaks published tens of thousands of emails hacked by the GRU, Russias military intelligence agency. Hillary Clinton has said the hack contributed to her defeat.

Yeah, It cant. It didnt. Because it was made up. But in pondering whether on not the latest Guardian scoop is credible, its also worth remembering how quickly Hardings Manafort story fell apart.

The Guardian published on November 28, 2018. On December 3,2018 The New York Times broke a storyunder the headline Manafort Discussed Deal With Ecuador to Hand Assange Overto US: In mid-May 2017, Paul Manafort, facing intensifying pressure to settledebts and pay mounting legal bills, flew to Ecuador to offer his services to apotentially lucrative new client the countrys incoming president, LennMoreno.

A few months later, Moreno gave British police the green lightto enter the embassy and snatch Assange. The Wikileaks founder has been inprison ever since, awaiting extradition to the US.

Remarkably, that revelation that Moreno met with Manafort was actually contained in The Guardians original story, but dismissed.

In May 2017, Manafort flew to Ecuador to hold talks with the countrys president-elect Lenn Moreno. The discussions, days before Moreno was sworn in, and before Manafort was indicted were ostensibly about a large-scale Chinese investment.However, one source in Quito suggests that Manafort also discreetly raised Assanges plight. Another senior foreign ministry source said he was sceptical Assange was mentioned. At the time Moreno was expected to continue support for him.

Unfortunately, the problems for this story go beyond evenjust the Guardian. Harding was also the co-author of Wikileaks: Inside Julian Assanges War on Secrecy, a hatchet job parading as a book whichaccused Assange of rushing to publish the Wikileaks trove of leaked USdocuments without properly verifying some of the information. Oh, the irony.

The book also accused Assange of putting US informants in dangerby blindly publishing random material. Assange and Wikileaks, along with Australianjournalist Mark Davis, have started the opposite is true, in addition torevelations from the US that it has no record of any informants ever beingharmed.

As a wild side note, the very book in which Harding (andLeigh) make this allegation includes the encrypted password given to them byAssange, which protected the unredacted trove of documents. You cant make thisstuff up.

Harding, who was The Guardians Moscow correspondent from2007-2011 until his visa was cancelled, also wrote the book Mafia State which lays the blame forhis expulsion squarely at the feet of Putin. Plus he wrote Shadow State, which accuses Putin and Russia of all sorts of high crimesand misdemeanors: No terrorist group has deployed a nerve agent in a civilianarea or used a radioactive mini-bomb in London. The Kremlin has done both.

Its not hard to understand why anyone would write bookscritical of Putin the only difference between Putin and Trump, apart fromintellect, is the level of instability. So its entirely possible that Harding hasgot a lot more right on this issue than hes got wrong.

But when you get something like the Manafort story so spectacularly wrong, and then you refuse to acknowledge or correct it well, you surrender the right to be believed in future stories. Put simply, youre hopelessly compromised at a depth that is matched only by The Guardians vicious betrayal and ongoing character assassination of Julian Assange.

By way of declaration, Im a paid subscriber to Guardian Australia. I think by far theyre the best (and most ethical) mainstream media organisation in the country. As for their British arm we all make errors, New Matilda included. But its impossible to trust a media source that pretends otherwise.

As for Putin, if he did authorise an operation to sow chaos in the US, I do wonder how hard Russian intelligence had to work to achieve it, and how much credit they might take in achieving it.

Sure, 70 million people voted for Donald Trump, but 73 million of them voted for Hillary Clinton. Either way, US voters were always going to get the government they deserved.

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Continued here:
Guardian's Putin Scoop Is Trumped By A History Of Bluff And Vicious Blunder - New Matilda

In this episode we report that the FBIs star witness in the case against Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, has admitted lying in his evidence.The story, published in Icelandic news magazine Stundin, was written by Bjartmar Alexandersson a journalist who will be familiar to The Grapevines audience as co-host of our show, The Icelandic Perspective. (link to the article: https://stundin.is/grein/13627/key-witness-in-assange-case-admits-to-lies-in-indictment )

In other news an American tourist got lost at the volcano site, but luckily was found safe and well the following day.

And finally the biggest news of the year! Iceland has now lifted all domestic restrictions in connection with COVID-19.

Newscast supported by Einstk BeerWant to buy an Icelandic wool sweater?

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From Iceland RVK Newscast #113: Siggi The Hacker, Wikileaks And The Lost American - Reykjavk Grapevine

LONDON: One of the main witnesses in Julian Assanges extradition case has admitted he made false claims against Assange in exchange for immunity from prosecution, a bombshell revelation that could have a major impact on the WikiLeaks founders fate.

Assange faces up to 175 years in prison if brought to the U.S., where he was indicted for violations of the Espionage Act related to the publication of classified documents exposing U.S. war crimes.

According to a new article in the Icelandic newspaper Stundin, the convicted hacker Sigurdur Siggi Thordarson falsely claimed he was a prominent WikiLeaks representative instructed by Assange to carry out hacking attacks, but he was in fact only tangentially involved with the organization.

The article suggests the U.S. Justice Department collaborated with Thordarson to generate the indictment for Assange that was submitted to the British courts. This is just the latest revelation to demonstrate why the U.S. case should be dropped, says Jennifer Robinson, a human rights attorney who has been advising Assange and WikiLeaks since 2010. The factual basis for this case has completely fallen apart.

Read the original here:

Extradition case against WikiLeaks founder falls apart - The News International

WikiLeaks came under fire after tweeting in solidarity with Foxs Tucker Carlson, who recently aired a segment claiming that the NSA had illegally spied on him, as supporters demanded an investigation into the claim.

The anti-secrecy group took to Twitter on Monday to share a section of Carlsons show from earlier in the evening, adding the caption: Spying on and coercing journalists is not a new [phenomenon] #Assange #TuckerCarlson.

In the segment, the Fox pundit alleged that a government whistleblower had contacted his team to relay a warning that the NSA is monitoring our electronic communications, and is planning to leak them in an attempt to take this show off the air.

Carlson said that the whistleblower, whose name or position were not given, also passed along information about a story he is currently working on, which he argued could only have come directly from his own texts and emails.

The NSA captured that information without our knowledge and did it for political reasons. The Biden administration is spying on us. We have confirmed that, Carlson said, adding: Spying on opposition journalists is incompatible with democracy.

WikiLeaks designation of Carlson as a journalist, however, did not go over well with his mostly liberal critics, who shot back that the Fox host is more of an entertainer than a factual reporter of news.

Some detractors went even further, labeling Carlson a purveyor of not mere entertainment, but white supremacy propaganda, though they left that term undefined. Another netizen asked whether he could be considered comparable to WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange, who was mentioned alongside Carlson in the groups tweet.

Conservatives leaped to defense of the Fox talent, arguing that the NSAs alleged spying on the popular host proves Carlsons journalistic bona fides.

Theyre going after Tucker Carlson because hes one of the last people on TV actually exposing the powerful, the Columbia Bugle, an anonymously run conservative commentary account, tweeted.

Republican Representative Lauren Boebert (Colorado) called on the HouseOversight and Reform Committee to thoroughly and immediately investigate the claim.

If this is indeed true, criminal charges should be brought on those who have violated this private citizens rights, she tweeted.

Another high-profile conservative and former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik called on the GOP leadership to raise the issue at the highest level.

While Carlson noted that Fox had contacted the NSA and submitted a Freedom of Information request about the purported spying as a formality, he said they dont expect to hear much back, and that true accountability could only be achieved by lawmakers.

Earlier on Monday, meanwhile, Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) introduced legislation seeking to protect reporters from government surveillance, though not related to the Carlson debacle. He cited abuses under the Donald Trump administration, in which the Department of Justice targeted journalists from CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times with probes while looking into official leaks.

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WikiLeaks draws liberal ire after it compares Tucker Carlson to Assange as Fox host accuses NSA of SPYING on him - RT

1 Jul, 2021 15:01

ByTara Reade, author, poet, actor and former Senate aide, author ofLeft Out: When the Truth Doesn't Fit In.Follow her on Twitter@readealexandra

As Julian Assange turns 50 in a UK prison cell, its a stark reminder how America treats those who legitimately question its activities. The aim is to silence people even those reporting the crimes of established politicians.

There are a handful of political prisoners who have really captured the attention of our generation, and Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, is among the most prominent. His intentions have always been noble. By bringing out into the public domain how human institutions actually behave, we can understand frankly, to a degree, for the first time the civilization that we actually have, he has said.

Alongside others like Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning, Assange an Australian citizen has been persecuted for making known to the public things America wants to keep quiet, such as details of war crimes and the countrys surveillance state.

He will spend his 50th birthday, on July 3, in prison in London where he has been since 2019 when the asylum status hed been granted by Ecuador was revoked facing the threat of being prosecuted by the US under the Espionage Act. The alleged violations of the Espionage Act could mean imprisonment for life.

Assanges treatment has led to a serious conversation of what will be left of freedom for the media to expose state corruption. What is democracy if it is not functioning from a place of self-critical analysis to address corruption? If democratic states only act in self-interest to maintain authority and the status quo, is it even democracy at all?

Have we as citizens all already lost the war to keep our freedoms while we continue to delude ourselves and fight smaller battles?

As Glenn Greenwald points out, the very Western journalists who would be impacted by the Assange case maintain silence as if trepidatious of drawing the attention and attracting the ire of the American government. Fear is used as a vehicle to create an atmosphere of measured silence.

Edward Snowden once said, I would rather be without a state than without a voice. The American empire uses different tactics to silence the dissent. It is now somehow accepted that dissent be criminalized and the individuals called traitors.

And this extends to even the reporting of individual crimes of established American politicians, as in my case. Joe Bidens machine counted on my fear to come forward. After I was attacked in the media, they banked on my silence. However, the ugly arrogance of Biden and his machine overestimated his ability to silence me.

In larger cases of dissent, the silencing tactics remain quite similar and more severe. The Western media have vilified Assange and then ignored him, as well as the human rights violations he suffers for everyone to see. The American empire wanted to set an example of what happens if you speak out.

Amazingly, US politicians, including Biden, pound their chests at Russia and China, shouting about human rights violations and the lack of press freedom, while stepping on the necks of their own citizens to quash any voices that even dare to question whats going on.

Hypocrisy is a political art form in America.

The most recent round of public silencing has been the shutting down of foreign media websites. Last week, 33 sites critical of US policies in the Middle East and supportive of Palestine were seized. Richard Medhurst rightly called out the actions of the Justice Department and the hypocrisy of the American government around censorship.

It is no easy task to expose the crimes of the US empire and colluding Western states, and there are usually consequences. As Snowden remains in Russia unable to come back to America, Assange is imprisoned at Belmarsh in London under dire conditions. He is in a cell for 23 hours a day, and for one hour is taken to another for exercise.

According to Misty Winston, an American activist and podcast host, the conditions are deplorable.

It is ghoulish to comprehend that we are watching in real time the American empire overreach its boundaries again by abusing its power to slowly torture a publisher to death. Citizens of the world are trying to push back against the corporate elites and their war machines. Their protests are met with silence or force.

As July 3 is Assanges 50th birthday, the best present we could give him and to ourselves is to support him publicly and call for his release from illegal imprisonment. How ironic it falls a day before July 4, the celebration of Americas freedom, as we collectively watch the US government allow our freedom of speech and press to die a public, political death on the world stage.

We need to honor the few heroes of our generation, like Assange, who are trying to keep us all truly informed and free.

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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

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Tara Reade: Assanges shameful treatment shows just how the US exploits fear to silence dissent as I found out, too - RT

During the first quarter of 2020, cybercrimes were up 273% compared to the same time the year before. While cyberattacks have generally been increasing over the last couple of decades, the chaos of the pandemic only expedited the rate at which companies and governments experienced breaches. Some crimes have been directly linked to the pandemic, like those that attempted to gain access to individuals bank accounts the days PPP loans or stimulus checks were scheduled to hit, while others have just capitalized on the general sense of confusion to gain as much as possible, like the recent Colonial Pipeline hack.

Although it may feel like it, cyberattacks are nothing new. In fact, some of them pre-date the internet itself. Today, were taking a look at the history of cybercrimes. Using news, government, and industry reports, Stacker compiled a list of notable cyberattacks in the United States. From WikiLeaks to the SolarWinds hack, these events have changed the way America approaches cybersecurity, with one even leading to the creation of the U.S. Cyber Command.

So read on to learn how our countrys growing reliance on computers is also creating security issues we never could have imagined a century ago.

You may also like: 25 terms you should know to understand the gun control debate

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From WikiLeaks to Colonial Pipeline, a history of cyberattacks in the US - Bloomington Pantagraph

Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters gave a firmly negative response to Facebooks request to use Another Brick In The Wall Pt. 2 in an upcoming ad for Instagram.

Speaking at a forum in support of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, as reported by Rolling Stone, Waters read out an email he claimed to have received from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg requesting the right to use the song.

Its a request for the rights to use my song, Another Brick In The Wall Pt. 2 in the making of a film to promote Instagram, Waters said.

The letter allegedly said that the team at Facebook feel that the core sentiment of this song is still so prevalent and so necessary today, which speaks to how timeless the work is.

So its a missive from Mark Zuckerberg to me, Waters continued, [which] arrived this morning, with an offer of a huge, huge amount of money, and the answer is, Fuck you! No fucking way!

And I only mention that because its [their] insidious movement to take over absolutely everything.

So those of us who do have any power, he continued, and I do have a little bit in terms of control of the publishing of my songs I do anyway. So I will not be a party to this bullshit, Zuckerberg.

Waters has recently found himself in dispute with ex-bandmate David Gilmour regarding Pink Floyds 1977 album Animals.

Waters claimed that Gilmour wanted the liner notes of the remastered album to be kept a secret so that Gilmour could allegedly claim more credit [] than is his due.

Unsurprisingly, Gilmour has also recently poured cold water on rumours of a reunion of the band, saying in March, It has run its course, we are done.

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Roger Waters rejects Facebooks request to use Another Brick In The Wall in new ad: I will not be a party to this - UNCUT