Under the Lying Ice: An Arctic Pandora's Box of Toxins

Melting Arctic To Release Nuclear Waste, Arsenic, & Millions of Gallons of Mercury

by Eleanor Goldfield  - via Lee Camp

7/16/2018

Edward Snowden said that his greatest fear with regards to revealing the largest government spying program in history was that “nothing will change.” When I interviewed John Kiriakou, he agreed.

When it comes to climate change, it often feels like I’m screaming “fire” at a bunch of people sitting around roasting marshmallows.

For so many, the issue of climate change has become normalized, even oddly comfortable.

In the film “This Changes Everything,” Naomi Klein laments the apathy she feels in seeing yet another polar bear caught on a melting piece of ice.

It’s an image we’ve seen so often, it just becomes another image – a passable piece of our reality – unfortunate but too big, too abstract, too difficult to change. In the film, likewise the book, Klein makes the point that while climate change is indeed a crisis, capitalism is what’s driving that crisis. At every turn, capitalism pushes the pedal, spewing more poison for pennies. It tells us, “profit is paramount – people and planet are disposable.”

Folks in environmental movements have previously found a shallow comfort in the hope that as climate change pushes back against this road-raging destruction, industries and governments would be forced to rethink their polluting ways, thereby shifting towards sustainable legislation and clean energy. After all, the price of oil is dropping. Natural gas is marked for export more often than not due to low prices and demand here in the US. Renewables make more economic sense – so how could the markets possibly reject a more sustainable future?

Well, because they’re capitalist. And shifting from fossil fuels – or mitigating hugely destructive mining operations – just isn’t in the capitalist paradigm. It’s about extraction, perpetual and personal growth and as little market (and paradigm) shift as possible. So, while renewables do have a place in the global market, so do the rapidly thawing cash crops of the Arctic.

A recent Reuters report covers an ongoing standoff between the Sami people and mining companies looking to cash in on new opportunities made possible by “climate change and technology.”

In northern Norway, some 72 million tons of copper lie nestled under the thawing ground. Arctic Minerals company Nussir already has permits. Now they’re just waiting for Norway’s green light.

In Jokkmokk, Sweden, Beowulf Mining is waiting for a decision from the Swedish government regarding their iron ore mine. In Finland, the Sami have fared a little better – keeping iron ore, copper and gold surveying at bay for the time being. Indigenous to areas now part of northern Norway, Sweden and Finland, many Sami people still live in traditional ways that include reindeer herding and fishing.

Needless to say, for people who literally live off the land and sea, a proposed mine dumping its tailings into the fjord would not only destroy land-based livelihoods but those that rely on the soon-to-be-toxic waters.

Still, as disgusting as these opportunistic battles are, they’re neither a new problem nor a distinctly Sami problem. In 2011, the ironically named Business for Social Responsibility organization released a report titled “Adapting to Climate Change: A Guide for the Mining Industry.”

Less of a guide and more of a long-winded and boring congratulatory letter, the report notes that warming temperatures will not only open up new mineral-rich areas for exploration (read: exploitation), but will save companies cash on heating costs while also keeping northern sea channels free of ice so as to allow for longer and easier shipping windows. I struggled to find the social responsibility portion of BSR’s name reflected in the report, but considering their client list includes Pepsi, Chevron, Wal-Mart, Gap, and Newmont Mining Corp, their name might as well be Bullshit Responsibility.

Similarly echoing this stomach turning excitement, a 2014 Arctic mining market trajectory suggested that “over the next 10 years, investment in the Arctic—led primarily by the oil and gas and mining industries—could exceed US$100 billion.”

Analyst Li Qing Tan highlights the economic power behind “unleashing the mining potential of the Arctic” for those companies willing to deal with some regulatory and infrastructure challenges.

Since the Arctic is largely undeveloped, roads and other access infrastructure will have to be built in order to connect the new mines to the global market. As we’ve seen elsewhere, you can’t just mine paradise, you gotta pave it too.

Unfortunately for the Arctic, someone’s always willing to.

That someone includes the second largest economy in the world. Between 2005-2017, China invested an estimated $1.4 trillion in the economies of the Arctic – with a focus on natural gas. Discoveries from as recently as April of this year project a boom in natural gas production, with one area in Russia expected to produce 360 billion cubic meters of gas.

And there’s plenty more where that came from. The USGS estimates that,

“[N]early one-quarter of the earth’s undiscovered, recoverable petroleum resources lie in the region: 13 percent of the oil; 30 percent of the natural gas; and 20 percent of the liquefied natural gas. More than 80 percent of these are thought to be offshore.” 

Of course, not all of the goods lie nestled under Russia’s jurisdiction. In fact, one of the most wealthy places in terms of natural resources is an economically poor colony. Indeed, while countries like Russia, Finland, Norway and Sweden play their hands from sovereign decks, Greenland is hoping to buy some autonomy in the Arctic game.

Officially still part of the Kingdom of Denmark, Greenland needs a stronger economy in order to fully break away from their colonial overlords who still issue annual grants to the island.

Back in 2009, Denmark ceded mineral and hydrocarbon rights to Greenland following a self-government referendum which passed in Greenland in 2008 with 75% approval.

Fast forward to 2013 and the pro-mining Siumut party beat out the anti-mining Inuit Ataqatigiit party in bitterly contested elections.

Soon after, Greenland’s parliament voted to lift a ban on radioactive materials – laying out a welcome mat for uranium and rare earth industries.

With uranium necessary for nuclear plants and rare earth minerals used in everything from mobile phones and flatscreen TVs to modern weaponry, Greenland didn’t have to wait long till companies came a-knockin’.

 As of 2016, six mining projects had either already broken ground or were at the most advanced stages of consideration. Interested parties span the globe – from Canada to Australia, and of course, China.

Since his election in 2014, Greenland’s prime minister Kim Kielsen has advanced business discussions with Chinese investors, and earlier this year even announced plans to possibly open a representation office in Beijing.

Considering China’s interest in not only mining but in “infrastructure planning, tourism, and scientific cooperation,”

Kielsen’s pro-business paradigm has found a natural partner in China. Still, there seems to be plenty to go around.

Beyond just rare earth minerals and uranium, Greenland also has stores of iron ore, nickel, copper and gold. Greenland’s leaders have also expressed interest in opening up their coastline for more oil drilling, having already invited Cairn Energy to drill off their western shores in 2010-11.

Jorn Skolv Nielsen, head of Greenland’s Bureau of Minerals and Petroleum even cited the retreat of sea ice as a major reason for opening up Greenland’s waters to drilling. In other news, now that my house has burnt down, I have more room to light fires.

In short, in an attempt to gain independence from Denmark, Greenland is selling its future to foreign industries, thereby becoming dependent on the well-slicked toxic smack of perpetual capitalist extraction and destruction.

Really not sure that it’s worth it – particularly when Greenland’s ice sheet is what’s keeping our oceans from swallowing billions of people and hundreds of cities.

Indeed, as nature’s panache for irony would have it, Greenland stands to not only gain loads of cash thanks to Arctic thaw but also, complete obliteration. If and when Greenland’s ice sheet melts, global sea levels will rise by 20 feet.

Meanwhile, there are other issues associated with Arctic thaw, outside of cash crops, which make for an unbelievably bleak and terrifying future.

An oil spill on dry land is a nightmare. An oil spill in the ocean is a nightmare. An oil spill in the Arctic leaves them both behind.

As noted in a 2012 report in The Economist,

“[C]ontrolled oil spills in ice in and off Norway suggest that the oil would coat the pitted underside of the sea ice and more ice would form under it, making an ice-and-oil sandwich.

“As the sea ice moves, this would be spread around the Arctic and gradually dispersed as the ice melts.

“Shell, one of the most technologically advanced oil firms, admits it has no satisfactory answer but suggests it could track the frozen oil and burn it as it melts.”

Big oil’s only bright idea to save the Arctic in the event of an oil spill is to literally set it on fire. The Arctic. On fire. And while Shell pats itself on the back for frying up some ice oil sandwiches, the poisons lurking beneath the already fragile ice get that much closer to fresh-ish air.

In the Arctic, it’s not just about what’s to come, it’s also about what has already come to pass, coming back to bite us in the ass. For instance, frozen arsenic. Under Northern Canada, some 237,000 tons of arsenic lie frozen and forgotten by an underground mining project. The poisonous remnants from the aptly named Giant Mine have already contaminated surrounding waters and over 300,000 cubic meters of soil.

As Mischa Andrews wrote in an Arctic Resources and Communities article,

“The plan is for the remaining arsenic to remain frozen underground forever, yet ‘forever’ is a concept that transcends budgets and technology. It’s a time frame of myths…” 

And while this mythical time frame splinters along reality’s jagged edges, the Yellowknives Dene First Nations people are left with an abandoned mine, no industrial accountability and a rapidly warming homeland. Meanwhile, across the Arctic, 15 million gallons of mercury lie just beneath the permafrost.

 A U.S. Geological Survey study from February of this year notes that there’s roughly twice as much mercury in the Arctic’s permafrost than in all other soils, the ocean and the atmosphere combined. And as the permafrost thaws, this mother load of mercury will seep into the atmosphere, into all kinds of bodies of water via fluvial systems and of course ultimately, into the ocean.

But wait, it gets worse. 

There’s twice as much carbon dioxide in permafrost as there is in the earth’s atmosphere. There’s methane and anthrax; ancient bacteria and viruses – oh, and nuclear waste. Be it our own stupidity or the earth’s layer cake methodology, the Arctic is a pandora’s box of shit that can kill us; a sealed door that we are both literally and figuratively taking a blow torch to in the interest of short term greed.

The Arctic Council predicts that some 20% of the Arctic’s permafrost may thaw by 2040. Between what lies beneath coming up or being forced up, there’s really no way to sugar coat this issue.

The warming of the Arctic is not only evidence of our irreversible destruction but an opportunity for us to destroy more quicker. We need change now, yet the change we’re mostly seeing is but an adaptation to, if not an acceleration towards, our own suicide.

While there’s no silver lining, there is power and potential in knowledge. Know what we’re up against and know that market forces are hammering nails into coffins rather than digging us out. Build alternatives, plan outside the confines of the capitalist paradigm but know that climate catastrophe is here – and if the mouth watering over melted ice is any indication of our trajectory – that catastrophe is just getting warmed up (pun intended).

(If you think this article was important, please share it. Or become a sustaining member for as low as $5 a month – the same cost as two coffees. Two coffees per month.)

Khan al-Ahmar: Israel's Ethnic Cleansing by the Numbers

Forced Displacement, Again

by Carolyn Coe - VCNV.org

July 10, 2018

Voices' friend (and past delegate) Carolyn Coe writes from Khan al-Ahmar, "a Bedouin community near Jerusalem whose residents face the threat of forcible transfer to white metal housing containers on treeless, highway-sandwiched land."

Yousef and I have barely crossed the highway and climbed over the guardrail to approach Khan al-Ahmar when two Israeli police officers approach. 

They brandish papers in Hebrew and deny our entry into the village. An officer photographs our IDs and then we walk away from the village, along the highway, as we make plan B.

We flag down a ride with some Palestinian Authority (PA) employees who find another approach road.

Part of a caravan of a half dozen PA cars, we slowly snake our way down a dusty rocky road leading into a wadi. 

As we near Khan al-Ahmar, we once again climb the hillside to reach the village. This time, the police are nowhere in sight. 

Within a couple hours, 200+ Palestinian dignitaries and activists as well as foreigners join village men and some children in Khan al-Ahmar's tarped central gathering space.

The forcible transfer of the villagers has been delayed by court order for another six days, until July 16.

Abdul Khader, age 8, borrows my camera and roams the plastic-grass-floored space taking photographs. He takes a photo of village leaders sitting in a line of plastic chairs and one of the top of his spiky dark hair. Later, he takes me by the hand and guides me over to the school, whose walls are constructed out of mud-covered tires.

 

Villagers and the visiting governor of Jerusalem make speeches before a line of video cameras. Water bottles and small cups of coffee appear in timely waves. Circles form with men talking quietly beneath a tree, and other circles of people clapping and singing political songs. A group of argile smokers hang out in one corner, and boy scouts huddle in small clusters, their identifying scarfs tied around their necks.

Someone sets up a TV and a half circle forms with watchers of the France-Belgium World Cup match, the TV shut off temporarily during evening prayers.

After 11 p.m., a bus-load of activists from Hebron arrives chanting and waving Palestinian flags and the quieter energy of the evening re-transforms into exuberance. Men dance the Dabke with a village elder leading the line of dancers and twirling his cane.

 

Around 1 a.m., foam mattresses appear and I lie down. My eyes closed, someone drapes a fleece blanket over me. A few minutes later, I feel the weight of a second blanket. It must have been in the upper 90s but I take no action to remove the extra blanket. A pillow is pushed beside my head. Soon enough, someone re-appropriates the second blanket. When I find the pillow too big and push it aside, and someone takes that, too. During this bedding supply and removal process, I don't open my eyes, exhausted.

The next morning, some of us bag up the plastic bottles and paper coffee cups that litter the floor. Bread, falafel, and hard-boiled eggs appear along with coffee. By about 8 a.m., almost all have left the community except for the villagers.

Here's a link to Mazin Qumsiyeh's post about our previous Khan al-Ahmar visit on Sunday: http://popular-resistance.blogspot.com/2018/07/khan-al-ahmar.html

And to Jonathan Cook's article about the community: https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/10/by-razing-khan-al-ahmar-israel-will-bulldoze-illusions-of-peace-process/

After the Game: The Not So Beautiful Fate of Croatia's Footballers

The Woes of Luka Modrić: Croatia, Nationalism and Football

by Binoy Kampmark - Dissident Voice

July 14th, 2018  

Juraj Vrdoljak of Telesport was convinced.

“I think half the population didn’t show up to work on the morning after the win against England.”

The victory had inspired early shop closures, a feeling of rampant escapism.

“Croatia is a country with a deep economic crisis. Every day, life is really hard. It’s full of bad stories and tough times. There is lot of poverty. A lot of people are emigrating.”

Members of Croatia’s football team have become national talismans of endurance, the shock troops of resilience and hope. Ivan Rakitić, when he takes the field against France, will be playing his 71st match of the season, the most than any top-flight player this year. Luka Modrić remains unflinching in the midfield as the team’s general. Domagoj Vida has been granite in defensive solidity.

Football teams can be held up as mirrors of the nations they represent. This sociological gazing can always be taken too far, a scholar’s fruitless pondering, but Croatia’s national side is instructive. It was Dinamo Zagreb’s Zvonimir Boban who stirred matters with his heralded assault on a police officer engaged in a violent scuffle with fans in a match against Red Star Belgrade. Croatian football was fashioned as a vehicle of protest and dissent against what was seen as a Serb-dominated federation.

In time, football kicks became shells and bullets in the murderous dissolution of Yugoslavia. To this day, a legend stubbornly holds that the truculent Bad Blue Boys of Dinamo and the countering Deljie of Red Star precipitated the first shots of that war.

Starting with its current inspirational captain, the link between social ill and patriotic performance can be seamless. When he finishes the tournament in Russia, Modrić will have to turn his mind back to his relationship with mentor and former Dinamo Zagreb executive Zdravko Mamić, a towering figure who finds himself facing a six-and-a-half year prison sentence for corruption and fraud. From Bosnia and Herzegovina, he does battle with the authorities, attempting to avoid extradition after fleeing Croatia.

A bursting feature of the case mounted against Mamić involved claims of ill-gotten gains from transfers of Modrić from Dinamo Zagreb to Tottenham Hotspur in 2008 and Dejan Lovren to Lyon in 2010. Modrić, it seemed, was implicated in signing an annex to his Dinamo contract, suggesting a 50-50 split of any future transfer fee. What was significant was the timing – 2015 as opposed to any earlier dates. Through his tenure, suggestions that Mamić had conducted a “silent privatisation” of the club were rampant, producing inflated transfer prices and a cult of acquisitiveness.

Modrić, having been billed as a star witness who initially supplied anti-corruption investigators with gold dust on Mamić’s penchant for cooking the accounts, notably in terms of pocketing millions of euros of the transfer fee, froze in the dock. His memory, it seemed, had failed him; the contract annex was not signed, as he initially claimed, in 2015 but 2004. This testimony was effectively rendered worthless. Croatia’s captain now faces the prospect of a perjury charge that carries a possible sentence of five years in prison.

The Croatian Football association, in an official statement in March, was not having a bar of it, unsurprising given the powers that be within the country’s football hierarchy. The body insisted upon “the principle of innocence and considers every person innocent until proven otherwise.” It was also “deeply convinced of the correctness of Luka Modrić’s testimony before the court in Osijek, and especially because of Modrić’s behaviour since his first appearance for the Croatian U-15 team in March 2001 to date.”

While every inch the commander in the field, with his team keen to impress in their following, not all Croatian supporters are in the Modrić tent of fandom. The Bad Blue Boys have found themselves split in loyalties over the years, with some, such as Juraj Ćošić, forming a breakaway team, Futsal Dinamo. “Zdravko Mamić,” claims football sociologist Ben Perasović, “is a typical member of the new rich class.” It is a class that continues to afflict Croatian football with their depredations, a looting tendency that is only now being reined in with mixed success.

The other team members have also shown this side to be rather prickly. Vida, and the now sacked assistant coach Ognjen Vukojević, were caught on film making comments supportive of Ukrainian nationalists in the aftermath of the side’s defeat of Russia in the quarter-finals. FIFA’s benevolence prevailed, and the centre-back was permitted to play in the semi-final against England.

Such a background adds more than a touch of complexity, with all its discomforts, to the World Cup final against France. Croatia’s team will not merely be facing their opponents on the field in a battle of wits and tenacity. Off it, pens and knives are being readied and sharpened, with prosecutions being prepared.

Even now, the team is being written off by the smug pundits of football orthodoxy, though with less disdain than before. Three matches on the trot into extra-time suggest imminent exhaustion, a possible overrunning by a more refreshed French team. But desperation, in meeting talent, can be the most potent of elixirs. This Croatian team has pushed the sceptics to the edge, and threatens to leave them there. And with players like Modrić, adversity remains their closest companion.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne and can be reached at: bkampmark@gmail.com.

Read other articles by Binoy.

Turning Putin: Middle East Alliance Isolating Iran

Can Trump, Israel, and Gulf Allies Get Putin to Turn On Iran?

by TRNN

July 14, 2018

Days after Netanyahu’s visit to Moscow, Trump will meet with Putin in Helsinki. But despite talk of a “grand bargain” that enlists Russia in helping the US-Israel-Saudi-UAE front against Iran, don’t expect it to happen, says professor and syndicated columnist Rami Khouri.

Rami Khouri is a syndicated columnist, professor of journalism at the American University of Beirut, and non-resident senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School. 

Just Call Me LeRoy: Mueller Trumps Due Process with Lettre de Cachet

Robert Mueller Replaces US Constitution with Royal Lettre de Cachet - Counter-Intelligence Operation As Due Process

by John Helmer - Dances with Bears

July 15, 2018

Moscow - Robert Mueller (lead image), the special US prosecutor of crimes of espionage between Moscow and Washington, picked July 13 to issue his indictment of twelve alleged Russian military intelligence officers for doing their jobs on evidence collected by US intelligence officers doing their jobs.

The Russian crime alleged by Mueller in Paragraph 1 of the indictment was “large-scale cyber operations to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.”

The US crime, revealed by Mueller but unindicted so far by the Russian General Prosecutor, was large-scale cyber operations to interfere with Russian state security.

Mueller could not have picked a more auspicious date if he weren’t an ignoramus on the history of autocracy and democracy, European and American.

For it is one day later, on July 14, when every year France celebrates the start of the French Revolution. The reason for the celebration is the end of abuse of power by kings and pretenders to state authority, and their replacement by the democratic rule of law. That revolution, like the annual celebration, isn’t quite over.

What Mueller did this year was to issue what was called, before July 14, 1789, a lettre de cachet – a letter with the royal signet or seal. In the French practice, this was a combination of indictment, conviction, and order for arrest, confiscation of property, and punishment of an individual, who had no right in law to know the charge against him; prove the evidence; appeal the sentence.

The Mueller indictment of twelve officers of the Russian military intelligence agency, GRU (Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff) is a fresh US-Government style lettre de cachet. It names the men accused, their crimes, and the punishment.

The penalties include:

“upon conviction [the twelve] shall forfeit to the United States any property, real or personal, which constitutes or is derived from proceeds obtained directly or indirectly as a result of such violation, and any personal property that was used or intended to be used to commit or to facilitate the commission of such offense.”

Mueller has neither the power nor the intention of trying the accused, or the particulars of his lettre, in an American court of law. This is why on July 13 he intended to violate the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution, first introduced in Philadelphia on June 8, 1789, just a month before the lettre de cachet lost its power in Paris. The Fifth Amendment says noone shall be “deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.”

Read the 29-page indictment ending with Mueller’s sign here.

Instead of due process in the courtoom, retired US intelligence analysts, cyber warfare specialists, lawyers, and investigative journalists are examining the Mueller indictment point by point in the alternative media. Start here.

Suppose, however, the particulars of the indictment are true as alleged; that a US Government prosecutor has obtained from a grand jury a “true bill” revealing that a Russian intelligence agency was spying on the United States, according to evidence collected by the US intelligence services doing their reciprocal duty of spying on the Russians.

Consider the timeline recorded for the Russian espionage and the US counter-espionage following the start, on March 16, 2016, of the Wikileaks series of publications of emails from Hillary Clinton’s Secretary of State term; followed by emails from Democratic Party organizations released in June and July 2016; continuing through October (the John Podesta archive); and concluding on November 6, 2016, two days before Election Day.

At Paragraph 3, Mueller reveals that,

“starting in at least March 2016, the Conspirators [the GRU Twelve] used a variety of means to hack the email accounts of volunteers and employees of the U.S. presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton”. 

Then, according to Paragraph 4, “by in or around April 2016, the Conspirators also hacked into the computer networks of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the Democratic National Committee (DNC).” The dates of the data thefts are given as March 19, 21, 25, 28, April 6, 7, 12, 14, 22.

It wasn’t long – no more than a month, perhaps days — before US counter-intelligence now says it discovered the Russian operation and broke into it, without revealing to the Russians that they were exposed. Paragraph 32:

“Despite the Conspirators efforts to hide their activity, beginning in or around May 2016, both the DCCC and DNC became aware that they had been hacked and hired a security company (Company 1) [this was CrowdStrike] to identify the extent of the intrusions. By in or around June 2016, Company 1 took steps to exclude intruders from the networks.” 

A month later, according to Paragraph 40, “on or about June 14, 2016, the DNC through Company 1 publicly announced that it had been hacked by Russian government actors”.

If the Russians didn’t get the message, Paragraph 33c reveals they kept trying:

“On or about June 20, 2016, after Company 1 had disabled X-Agent on the DCCC network, the Conspirators spent over seven hours unsuccessfully trying to connect to X-Agent.”

It is now certain, Mueller declares in his true bill, not only that the US and Russian agents knew they were on to each other, but that the US agents had been able to trace the Russian intrusion signals back to their sources, identifying the agents’ names, including patronymics; their ranks and unit assignments; their operating aliases; their GRU unit numbers; and the physical addresses of their offices at 20 Komsomolskiy Prospekt, inside the Moscow city limits, and at 22 Kirova Street, Khimki, a northern suburb.

 20 Komsomolsky Prospekt, Moscow

The US counter-intelligence operation was able to record that a contact with the Trump presidential election campaign was approached by the Russians. This happened many weeks after Wikileaks had started publishing openly. The US operation reportedly failed to detect contact (collusion) with the Trump campaign.

Also, the contact, according to the US espionage record, was slow to notice, and unimpressed by the value of the information. At Paragraph 44:

“On or about August 15, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, wrote to a person [Roger Stone] who was in regular contact with senior members of the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump,

‘thank u for writing back . . . do u find anyt[h]ing interesting in the docs i posted?’

“On or about August 17, 2016, the Conspirators added,

‘please tell me if i can help u anyhow . . . it would be a great pleasure to me.’

“On or about September 9, 2016, the Conspirators, again posing as Guccifer 2.0, referred to a stolen DCCC document posted online and asked the person,

‘what do u think of the info on the turnout model for the democrats entire presidential campaign.’

“The person responded, ‘[p]retty standard.’”

Paragraph 47 reveals that both the Russian and American agents were closely monitoring the Wikileaks computer traffic, hacking and reading their emails, as well as providing click bait. On June 22, US agents discovered,

“Organization 1 [Wikileaks] sent a private message to Guccifer 2.0 to ‘[s]end any new material [stolen from the DNC] here for us to review and it will have a much higher impact than what you are doing.’”

This was ten days after June 12, when Julian Assange had publicly revealed Wikileaks was ready to release “upcoming leaks in relation to Hillary Clinton”. So the Mueller evidence implies the Russians were playing catch-up, with materials which, until that moment, Assange, other Wikileaks analysts and Roger Stone didn’t think much of. For analysis of what Mueller is admitting to here, read this.

“On or about June 27, 2016,” according to Paragraph 45b, “the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, contacted a U.S. reporter with an offer to provide stolen emails from Hillary Clintons staff.” 

Mueller reveals the US was monitoring Russian communications with a US journalist; by inference he also reveals that the journalist refused to publish anything from the materials offered. Which reporter and which American press outlet, its editors and management decided not to publish are not yet known. Nor the reason for the media coverup.

The Russian spies appear to have been undeterred by this rejection, and soldiered on at Wikileaks.

“On or about July 6, 2016, Organization 1 [Wikileaks] added,

‘if you have anything hillary related we want it in the next tweo [sic] days prefable [sic] because the DNC [Democratic National Convention] is approaching and she will solidify bernie supporters behind her after.’

“The Conspirators responded,

‘ok . . . i see. Organization 1 explained, we think trump has only a 25% chance of winning against hillary . . . so conflict between bernie and hillary is interesting.’”

For details of what Assange subsequently offered to disclose about the sources of these contacts to Justice Department, FBI and CIA officials, read this. The only comment Wikileaks has made so far to the Mueller indictment refers to its timing, not its veracity.

 Source: https://twitter.com/wikileaks

Mueller reports at Paragraph 31 that,

“during the hacking of the DCCC [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee] and DNC [Democratic National Committee] networks, the Conspirators covered their tracks by intentionally deleting logs and computer files.” 

Altogether, the indictment identifies four separate efforts at deletion of computer logs by the Russian agents — May 13, June 1, June 20, and a date in August. This appears to be a highly sensitive disclosure that US intelligence has the technical capability to defeat Russian methods of computer deletion, not only by detecting Russian deletion attempts when they happen, but by retrieving or reconstructing what the Russians think they have erased securely.

This is an exceptional achievement in US cyber warfare to have slipped out of its TOP SECRET NOFORN classification; it may be a signal that US cyber agents can fabricate Russian tracks to deceive other US cyber agents; Mueller too.

The sophistication, time and labour intensity of this type of warfare is expensive, at least on the US side. Mueller’s investigators report they are spending more than $750,000 per month – and this doesn’t count the cost of the National Security Agency and other cyber intelligence operations which have been provided to Mueller without charge to his budget.

His indictment reveals how much more cost-effective the Russian side is. With just twelve agents, and not counting what the US knows about their rouble paychecks, the indictment reveals at Paragraph 57:

“To facilitate the purchase of infrastructure used in their hacking activity—including hacking into the computers of U.S. persons and entities involved in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and releasing the stolen documents—the Defendants conspired to launder the equivalent of more than $95,000 through a web of transactions structured to capitalize on the perceived anonymity of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.”

Necessary Things: The Five Proofs I Need to Believe Russiagate

Five Things That Would Make The CIA/CNN Russia Narrative More Believable

by Caitlin Johnstone

July 14, 2018

As we just discussed, some major news stories have recently dropped about what a horrible horrifying menace the Russian Federation is to the world, and as always I have nothing to offer the breathless pundits on CNN and MSNBC but my completely unsatisfied skepticism. My skepticism of the official Russia narrative remains so completely unsatisfied that if mainstream media were my husband I would already be cheating on it with my yoga instructor.

I do not believe the establishment Russia narrative. I do not believe that Donald Trump colluded with the Russian government to rig the 2016 election. I do not believe the Russian government did any election rigging for Trump to collude with.

This is not because I believe Vladimir Putin is some kind of blueberry-picking girl scout, and it certainly isn’t because I think the Russian government is unwilling or incapable of meddling in the affairs of other nations to some extent when it suits them. It is simply because I am aware that the US intelligence community lies constantly as a matter of policy, and because I understand how the burden of proof works.

At this time, I see no reason to espouse any belief system which embraces as true the assertion that Russia meddled in the 2016 elections in any meaningful way, or that it presents a unique and urgent threat to the world which must be aggressively dealt with. But all the establishment mouthpieces tell me that I must necessarily embrace these assertions as known, irrefutable fact. Here are five things that would have to change in order for that to happen:

1. Proof of a hacking conspiracy to elect Trump.

 

Glenn Greenwald ✔

@ggreenwald

In most cases, it's so basic that unproven allegations by a prosecutor in an indictment shouldn't be accepted as true one need not even point it out. In this case, pointing it out will be seen as blasphemy. Everyone should want to see the evidence on which the claims are based:

Aaron Maté ✔ @aaronjmate

Based on quick read (maybe I missed something?). Mueller alleges GRU hacked DNC & covered it up. A lot of claims about what Russian officers did online. But I didn't catch any reference to what evidence Mueller has to make him believe it was them. How does he know they did it?

12:07 PM - Jul 13, 2018

The first step to getting a heretic like myself aboard the Russia hysteria train would be the existence of publicly available evidence of the claims made about election meddling in 2016, which rises to the level required in a post-Iraq invasion world. So far, that burden of proof for Russian hacking allegations has not come anywhere remotely close to being met.

How much proof would I need to lend my voice to the escalation of tensions between two nuclear superpowers? Mountains. I personally would settle for nothing less than hard proof which can be independently verified by trusted experts like the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

Is that a big ask? Yes. Yes it is. That’s what happens when government institutions completely discredit themselves as they did with the false narratives advanced in the manufacturing of support for the Iraq invasion. You don’t get to butcher a million Iraqis in a war based on lies, turn around a few years later and say “We need new cold war escalations with a nuclear superpower but we can’t prove it because the evidence is secret.” That’s not a thing. Copious amounts of hard, verifiable proof or GTFO. So far we have no evidence besides the confident-sounding assertions of government insiders and their mass media mouthpieces, which is the same as no evidence.

2. Proof that election meddling actually influenced the election in a meaningful way.

Even if Russian hackers did exfiltrate Democratic party emails and give them to WikiLeaks, if it didn’t affect the election, who cares? That’s a single-day, second-page story at best, meriting nothing beyond a “Hmm, interesting, turns out Russia tried and failed to influence the US election,” followed by a shrug and moving on to something that actually matters.

After it has been thoroughly proven that Russia meddled in the elections in a meaningful way, it must then be established that that meddling had an actual impact on the election results.

3. Some reason to believe Russian election meddling was unwarranted and unacceptable.

Consortium News

 @Consortiumnews

Highlighting the U.S.’s long history in meddling in other countries’ elections is not #whataboutism, but rather a highly germane point to understanding the context for allegations of Russian meddling in Election 2016, Caitlin Johnstone observes. https://consortiumnews.com/2018/02/20/americas-election-meddling-would-indeed-justify-other-countries-retaliating-in-kind/ … @caitoz

3:20 AM - Feb 20, 2018

America’s Election Meddling Would Indeed Justify Other Countries Retaliating In Kind

Highlighting the U.S.’s long history in meddling in other countries’ elections is not “whataboutism,” but rather a highly germane point to understanding the context for the allegations of Russian...

consortiumnews.com

The US government, by a very wide margin, interferes in the elections of other countries far, far more than any other government on earth does. The US government’s own data shows that it has deliberately meddled in the elections of 81 foreign governments between 1946 and 2000, including Russia in the nineties. This is public knowledge. A former CIA Director cracked jokes about it on Fox News earlier this year.

If I’m going to abandon my skepticism and accept the Gospel According to Maddow, after meaningful, concrete election interference has been clearly established I’m going to need a very convincing reason to believe that it is somehow wrong or improper for a government to attempt to respond in kind to the undisputed single worst offender of this exact offense. It makes no sense for the United States to actively create an environment in which election interference is something that governments do to one another, and then cry like a spanked child when its election is interfered with by one of the very governments whose elections the US recently meddled in.

This is nonsense. America being far and away the worst election meddler on the planet makes it a fair target for election meddling by not just Russia, but every country in the world. It is very obviously moral and acceptable for any government on earth to interfere in America’s elections as long as it remains the world’s worst offender in that area. In order for Russia to be in the wrong if it interfered in America’s elections, some very convincing argument I’ve not yet heard will have to be made to support that case.

4. Proof that the election meddling went beyond simply giving Americans access to information about their government.

If all the Russians did was simply show Americans emails of Democratic Party officials talking to one another and circulate some MSM articles as claimed in the ridiculous Russian troll farm allegations, that’s nothing to get upset about. If anything, Americans should be upset that they had to hear about Democratic Party corruption through the grapevine instead of having light shed on it by the American officials whose job it is to do so. Complaints about election meddling is only valid if that election meddling isn’t comprised of truth and facts.

5. A valid reason to believe escalated tensions between two nuclear superpowers are worthwhile.

Caitlin Johnstone

 @caitoz

The Increasing Likelihood Of Nuclear War Should Straighten Out All Our Priorities | Zero Hedge #ColdWar #NuclearWar #Russia https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-02-05/increasing-likelihood-nuclear-war-should-straighten-out-all-our-priorities …

11:38 AM - Feb 6, 2018

The Increasing Likelihood Of Nuclear War Should Straighten Out All Our Priorities

"The Russiagate psyop exists because the western power establishment is trying to cripple the Russia-China tandem in order to ensure US hegemony, and if they tried to thrust us all into a new cold...

zerohedge.com

After it has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Russia did indeed meddle in the US elections in a meaningful way, and after it has then been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Russia actually influenced election results in a significant way, and after the case has been clearly made that it was bad and wrong for Russia to do this instead of fair and reasonable, and after it has been clearly proven that the election meddling went beyond simply telling Americans the truth about their government, the question then becomes what, if anything, should be done about it?

If you look at the actions that this administration has taken over the last year and a half, the answer to that question appears to be harsh sanctions, NATO expansionism, selling arms to Ukraine, throwing out diplomats, increasing military presence along Russia’s border, a Nuclear Posture Review which is much more aggressive toward Russia, repeatedly bombing Syria, and just generally creating more and more opportunities for something to go catastrophically wrong with one of the two nations’ aging, outdated nuclear arsenals, setting off a chain of events from which there is no turning back and no surviving.

And the pundits and politicians keep pushing for more and more escalations, at this very moment braying with one voice that Trump must aggressively confront Putin about Mueller’s indictments or withdraw from the peace talks. But is it worth it? Is it worth risking the life of every terrestrial organism to, what? What specifically would be gained that makes increasing the risk of nuclear catastrophe worthwhile? Making sure nobody interferes in America’s fake elections? I’d need to see a very clear and specific case made, with a ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ list and “THE POTENTIAL DEATH OF LITERALLY EVERYTHING” written in big red letters at the top of the ‘cons’ column.

Rallying the world to cut off Russia from the world stage and cripple its economy has been been a goal of the US power establishment since the collapse of the Soviet Union, so there’s no reason to believe that even the people who are making the claims against Russia actually believe them. The goal is crippling Russia to handicap China, and ultimately to shore up global hegemony for the US-centralized empire by preventing the rise of any rival superpowers. The sociopathic alliance of plutocrats and intelligence/defense agencies who control that empire are willing to threaten nuclear confrontation in order to ensure their continued dominance. All of their actions against Russia since 2016 have had everything to do with establishing long-term planetary dominance and nothing whatsoever to do with election meddling.

Those five things would need to happen before I’d be willing to jump aboard the “Russia! Russia!” train. Until then I’ll just keep pointing to the total lack of evidence and how very, very far the CIA/CNN Russia narrative is from credibility.

_______________________

Internet censorship is getting pretty bad, so the best way to keep seeing the stuff I publish is to get on the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My articles are entirely reader and listener-funded, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, checking out my podcast, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, or buying my book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.

Bitcoin donations:

1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Drifting Right: Undoing UNASUR, Undoing Social Progress in Latin America

Rightward Shift in Latin America Spelling End of Regional Integration

by TRNN

July 12, 2018

The Union of South American Nations – UNASUR – was an ambitious project to integrate South America not just on economic terms, but also on political and social terms, but the rightward drift in Latin America is leading to its dissolution, with the unfortunate help of Ecuador’s government, where its headquarters are, says former foreign minister Guillaume Long.

Guillaume Long was foreign minister under Rafael Correa from 2016-2017, as well as Ecuador’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, but resigned last January because of political differences with the Moreno administration. 

Not Taken on Faith: The Holey Official Skripal Story

The Holes in the Official Skripal Story

by Craig Murray 

12 Jul, 2018 

In my last post I set out the official Government account of the events in the Skripal Case. Here I examine the credibility of this story.

Next week I shall look at alternative explanations.

Russia has a decade long secret programme of producing and stockpiling novichok nerve agents. It also has been training agents in secret assassination techniques, and British intelligence has a copy of the Russian training manual, which includes instruction on painting nerve agent on doorknobs.

The only backing for this statement by Boris Johnson is alleged “intelligence”, and unfortunately the “intelligence” about Russia’s secret novichok programme comes from exactly the same people who brought you the intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s WMD programme, proven liars. Furthermore, the question arises why Britain has been sitting on this intelligence for a decade and doing nothing about it, including not telling the OPCW inspectors who certified Russia’s chemical weapons stocks as dismantled.

If Russia really has a professional novichok assassin training programme, why was the assassination so badly botched? Surely in a decade of development they would have discovered that the alleged method of gel on doorknob did not work? And where is the training manual which Boris Johnson claimed to possess? Having told the world – including Russia -the UK has it, what is stopping the UK from producing it, with marks that could identify the specific copy erased?

The Russians chose to use this assassination programme to target Sergei Skripal, a double agent who had been released from jail in Russia some eight years previously.

It seems remarkable that the chosen target of an attempt that would blow the existence of a secret weapon and end the cover of a decade long programme, should be nobody more prominent than a middle ranking double agent who the Russians let out of jail years ago. If they wanted him dead they could have killed him then. Furthermore the attack on him would undermine all future possible spy swaps. Putin therefore, on this reading, was willing to sacrifice both the secrecy of the novichok programme and the spy swap card just to attack Sergei Skripal. That seems highly improbable.

Only the Russians can make novichok and only the Russians had a motive to attack the Skripals.

The nub of the British government’s approach has been the shocking willingness of the corporate and state media to parrot repeatedly the lie that the nerve agent was Russian made, even after Porton Down said they could not tell where it was made and the OPCW confirmed that finding. In fact, while the Soviet Union did develop the “novichok” class of nerve agents, the programme involved scientists from all over the Soviet Union, especially Ukraine, Armenia and Georgia, as I myself learnt when I visited the newly decommissioned Nukus testing facility in Uzbekistan in 2002.

Furthermore, it was the USA who decommissioned the facility and removed equipment back to the United States. At least two key scientists from the programme moved to the United States. Formulae for several novichok have been published for over a decade. The USA, UK and Iran have definitely synthesised a number of novichok formulae and almost certainly others have done so too. Dozens of states have the ability to produce novichok, as do many sophisticated non-state actors.

As for motive, the Russian motive might be revenge, but whether that really outweighs the international opprobrium incurred just ahead of the World Cup, in which so much prestige has been invested, is unclear.

What is certainly untrue is that only Russia has a motive. The obvious motive is to attempt to blame and discredit Russia. Those who might wish to do this include Ukraine and Georgia, with both of which Russia is in territorial dispute, and those states and jihadist groups with which Russia is in conflict in Syria. The NATO military industrial complex also obviously has a plain motive for fueling tension with Russia.

There is of course the possibility that Skripal was attacked by a private gangster interest with which he was in conflict, or that the attack was linked to Skripal’s MI6 handler Pablo Miller’s work on the Orbis/Steele Russiagate dossier on Donald Trump.

Plainly, the British governments statements that only Russia had the means and only Russia had the motive, are massive lies on both counts.

The Russians had been tapping the phone of Yulia Skripal. They decided to attack Sergei Skripal while his daughter was visiting from Moscow.

In an effort to shore up the government narrative, at the time of the Amesbury attack the security services put out through Pablo Miller’s long term friend, the BBC’s Mark Urban, that the Russians “may have been” tapping Yulia Skripal’s phone, and the claim that this was strong evidence that the Russians had indeed been behind the attack.

But think this through. If that were true, then the Russians deliberately attacked at a time when Yulia was in the UK rather than when Sergei was alone. Yet no motive has been adduced for an attack on Yulia or why they would attack while Yulia was visiting – they could have painted his doorknob with less fear of discovery anytime he was alone. Furthermore, it is pretty natural that Russian intelligence would tap the phone of Yulia, and of Sergei if they could. The family of double agents are normal targets. I have no doubt in the least, from decades of experience as a British diplomat, that GCHQ have been tapping Yulia’s phone. Indeed, if tapping of phones is seriously put forward as evidence of intent to murder, the British government must be very murderous indeed.

Their trained assassin(s) painted a novichok on the doorknob of the Skripal house in the suburbs of Salisbury. Either before or after the attack, they entered a public place in the centre of Salisbury and left a sealed container of the novichok there.

The incompetence of the assassination beggars belief when compared to British claims of a long term production and training programme. The Russians built the heart of the International Space Station. They can kill an old bloke in Salisbury. Why did the Russians not know that the dose from the door handle was not fatal? Why would trained assassins leave crucial evidence lying around in a public place in Salisbury? Why would they be conducting any part of the operation with the novichok in a public area in central Salisbury?

Why did nobody see them painting the doorknob? This must have involved wearing protective gear, which would look out of place in a Salisbury suburb. With Skripal being resettled by MI6, and a former intelligence officer himself, it beggars belief that MI6 did not fit, as standard, some basic security including a security camera on his house.

The Skripals both touched the doorknob and both functioned perfectly normally for at least five hours, even able to eat and drink heartily. Then they were simultaneously and instantaneously struck down by the nerve agent, at a spot in the city centre coincidentally close to where the assassins left a sealed container of the novichok lying around. Even though the nerve agent was eight times more deadly than Sarin or VX, it did not kill the Skripals because it had been on the doorknob and affected by rain.

Why did they both touch the outside doorknob in exiting and closing the door? Why did the novichok act so very slowly, with evidently no feeling of ill health for at least five hours, and then how did it strike both down absolutely simultaneously, so that neither can call for help, despite their being different sexes, weights, ages, metabolisms and receiving random completely uncontrolled doses. The odds of that happening are virtually nil. And why was the nerve agent ultimately ineffective?

Detective Sergeant Bailey attended the Skripal house and was also poisoned by the doorknob, but more lightly. None of the other police who attended the house were affected.

Why was the Detective Sergeant affected and nobody else who attended the house, or the scene where the Skripals were found? Why was Bailey only lightly affected by this extremely deadly substance, of which a tiny amount can kill?

Four months later, Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess were rooting about in public parks, possibly looking for cigarette butts, and accidentally came into contact with the sealed container of a novichok. They were poisoned and Dawn Sturgess subsequently died.

If the nerve agent had survived four months because it was in a sealed container, why has this sealed container now mysteriously disappeared again? If Rowley and Sturgess had direct contact straight from the container, why did they not both die quickly? Why had four months searching of Salisbury and a massive police, security service and military operation not found this container, if Rowley and Sturgess could?

I am, with a few simple questions, demolishing what is the most ludicrous conspiracy theory I have ever heard – the Salisbury conspiracy theory being put forward by the British government and its corporate lackies.

My next post will consider some more plausible explanations of this affair.