Category Archives: Also in Media

Also in Media: “The Kremlin’s Newest Hybrid Warfare Asset: Gangsters” | Foreign Policy | June 12, 2017

14 Wednesday Jun 2017

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. . . as they look to prosecute their “political war” against the West, the Russians are emerging as the most enthusiastic users of gangsters’ services. Given that their intelligence services are now up to Cold War levels, it seems ironic that they would even need such amateur auxiliaries. However, so ambitious and numerous are their operations that even they sometimes need some extra capacity or deniability.

Mobilizing Moscow’s Mob

Some of the instances when Russia has used criminals as proxies are well known. Russia’s seizure of Crimea, for example, and the subsequent undeclared war in Ukraine’s Donbass region were carried out not just by Russian special forces, but by local gangsters serving as so-called self-defense volunteers. Similarly, many Russian cyberattacks, especially large-scale ones, involve mobilizing criminal hackers. (Indeed, the cyberespionage division of the Federal Security Service has actually recruited hackers by giving them the choice of prison or service.)

Read the whole enchilada: The Kremlin’s Newest Hybrid Warfare Asset: Gangsters | Foreign Policy

Ukraine – A Litmus on the Further Ejection of Medieval Practices

17 Wednesday May 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Anti-Semitism, Ukraine

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Wiesenthal Center Urges Ukrainian Authorities to Take Action Against General Who Threatened to Murder Jews

May 17, 2017

Jerusalem-The Simon Wiesenthal Center has called upon the Ukrainian government to take legal action against retired Security Service General Vasily Vovk in the wake of a recent Facebook post of his in which he wrote that he intends to murder Jews, among them Jewish MP Vadim Rabinovych. In a letter sent to Ukrainian ambassador to Israel Hennadii Nadolenko by its Director of Eastern European Affairs, Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the Center emphasized the severity of the general’s comments and lack hitherto of an appropriate response by the Ukrainian authorities.

According to Zuroff’s letter:

“I am aware of the fact that the embassy here in Israel responded to express your regret about the ‘highly provocative post of [an] anti-Semitic character,’ but there is no indication that any legal action of any sort has or will be taken against General Vovk. So although the embassy ‘condemns all kinds of manifestations of anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and other forms of intolerance,’ the bottom line as far as the Ukrainian authorities are concerned, is absolute impunity for vicious anti-Semites.

“We urge you to convey our concerns to the authorities in Kiev with a demand that appropriate and resolute action be taken against General Vovk, to send a clear message that in democratic Ukraine there will be no tolerance whatsoever for anti-Semites and bigots of any type.”

BackChannels snipped the contact data and boilerplate from the press release.  The original may be found here: http://www.wiesenthal.com/site/apps/nlnet/content.aspx?c=lsKWLbPJLnF&b=8776547&ct=14995945&notoc=1

On the same topic, there’s an ages old Russian story:

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/27/excerpt-1920s-the-spread-of-hate-russia-germany-laqueur/

Scaptegoating and targeting Jews, among others, seems ever more a part of feudal control and not the modern world.

To his credit, Putin maintains a stance best described as anti- anti-Semitism.  However, the same would seem belied by Moscow’s continuing relationships with Tehran, Hamas, Hezbollah, and PFLP.

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Also in Media: “Live from the Bully Pulpit: The Abuse of Obligatory Presidential Broadcasts in Latin America” | By Andrés CañizálezCenter for International Media Assistance | May 15, 2017

17 Wednesday May 2017

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After only a few minutes at the podium, however, the transmission of his speech was interrupted without warning.1 President Maduro had ordered a blanket broadcast across all radio and television stations–what is known in Spanish as a cadena nacional. These presidential broadcasts resemble a US Oval Office address in style, but in Venezuela the law obliges both state‑owned and private media to carry the transmissions, which have lasted as long as eight hours. When Maduro invoked this law to interrupt Torrealba’s speech, Venezuelans had no choice but to listen to Maduro or simply switch off their TVs and radios.

Source: Center for International Media Assistance – 5/15/2017

Also in Media: “Ukraine Freedom March set for May 20 in Washington” | The Ukrainian Weekly | May 14, 2017

14 Sunday May 2017

Posted by in Also in Media, American Domestic Affairs, Politics, Ukraine

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The march – with a full police escort – is scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. at the Washington Monument and conclude at the Holodomor Memorial, near Union Station, where a vigil is to be held, concluding at approximately 5:30 p.m.

Among the invited guest speakers are analyst Paul Goble, Peter Borisow, president of the Hollywood Trident Foundation; other noted Ukraine advocates are expected and, at the time of writing, were still being confirmed, among them Ukraine’s Ambassador to the U.S. Valeriy Chaly. Clergy from the Ukrainian Orthodox and Ukrainian Catholic Churches, as well as leaders of the Jewish and Muslim faiths in Ukraine have been invited to properly represent the people of Ukraine.

As stated by Mr. Skibicki: “We demand that the Russian-backed terrorists immediately vacate the Donbas region and that Crimea be returned to Ukraine. If these demands are not met, we insist on the American government to stick to its promise made in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which is to provide the full and immediate defense of Ukraine by providing modern defensive weapons in order to help the Ukrainian people restore the territorial integrity of Ukraine. We are NOT calling for American troops to be deployed to Ukraine.”

Read More: Ukraine Freedom March set for May 20 in Washington | The Ukrainian Weekly

Notice on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ukrainianfreedommarch/

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Also in Media: “Hacking, Leaking” – Report of Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Open Hearing, March 30, 2017: “DISINFORMATION A PRIMER IN RUSSIAN ACTIVE MEASURES AND INFLUENCE CAMPAIGNS”

11 Thursday May 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Philology, Political Spychology

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Sen-Disinfo-Rpt-3-30-2017-hacks-img

Then, in May and June 2015, the first publicly known large-scale disinformation operation, dubbed “Saudi Cables,” tested an innovative tactic: hacking a target, exfiltrating compromising material (kompromat), setting up a dedicated leak website under false flag, and then passing files to Wikileaks for laundering and wide distribution.9 Between June 2015 and November 2016, at least six front organizations sprung up as outlets  for compromised files by GRU: Yemen Cyber Army, Cyber Berkut, Guccifer 2.0, DC Leaks, Fancy Bears Hack Team, and @ANPoland.

Finally, in past year, the timeline of US-election operations began to align. In early March, GRU began to train its well-established, semi-automated targeting tools from worldwide military and diplomatic targets to US political targets. Between 10 March and 7 April, GRU targeted at least 109 Clinton campaign staffers with 214 individual phishing emails (with 8 more attempts on 12 and 13 May). 36 times Clinton staffers clicked a malicious link (the success rate of actually breaching the account after a victim clicked this link is 1-in-7). Russian intelligence targeted Jake Sullivan in at least 14 different attempts beginning on 19 March, each time with a different malicious link against two of his email addresses. GRU targeted Hillary Clinton’s personal email account at least two times in March, but the available data show that she did not fall for the password reset trick. The military intelligence agency also targeted DNC staffers with 16 emails between 15 March and 11 April, and 3 DNC staffers were tricked into clicking the treacherous “reset password” button on 6 April 2016.

https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/os-trid-033017.pdf  – 3/30/2017 PDF; same available in other formats (for -e-readers:

https://archive.org/details/ActiveMeasuresPrimer

Passed to BackChannels in the way of all free press, the Senate report retells not only the story of Russian infiltration of the Democratic National Committee’s computers and subsequent access to internal exchanges in e-mail, it touches on the history, scope, and techniques of KGB-style methods involved.

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Kurdish “YPJ in Tabqa, inspecting homes, guiding out civilians”

08 Monday May 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Syria

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https://twitter.com/AzadiRojava/status/861569868478459907

Related Reference

Beirut: A group of Kurdish and Arab militias supported by the United States captured a district of the town of Tabqa from IS on Monday, they said in a statement, a step towards the capture of Syria’s largest dam.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) has been fighting IS in Tabqa for weeks, aiming to capture not just the town but its Euphrates dam, a vital strategic objective before assaulting the extremists’ regional stronghold of Raqqa.

http://timesofoman.com/article/108573/World/Middle-East/Syrian-Democratic-Forces-capture-Tabqa-district-from-IS-militants-in-push-towards-extremist-held-Raq – 5/8/2017.

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Also in Media: “ANF | Journalist Demiralp: Eutelsat officials could be put on trial” | May 4, 2017

08 Monday May 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology

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As French satellite company Eutelsat’s threat to shut down Stêrk TV, News Channel and Ronahi TV which broadcast over satellite from Europe continues, protests from Kurdish media continue to rise. Journalist Maxime Demiralp said the events were scandalous and that “Eutelsat is committing a crime with their compliance with Turkey and thus the administrators of the company can be put on trial.”

Read the whole thing: ANF | Journalist Demiralp: Eutelsat officials could be put on trial

Demiralp stated that Turkey is going back every year in regards to press freedom and freedom of expression and protested Western institutions, saying: “Despite all these, if the West doesn’t speak out, that shows that democracy is also in regression. Because this isn’t just an issue about the Kurds. This is an issue of democracy in general. Democracy is in regression throughout the world, as apparent in the West. We can see this very clearly by the company Eutelsat.”

Demiralp stated that Eutelsat has serious relationships with Turkey and said: “This company has serious alliances. The military and police communications infrastructure is done by this company. The Kurdish media is sacrificed to this. That is the financial side of things. The political side is that the states are silent in the face of this dirty alliance. This silence shows the political side of things.”

Related on freedom of the press in Turkey: https://rsf.org/en/turkey | https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2017/turkey | https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/14/erdogan-free-speech-turkey-journalists-referendum | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Turkey | http://nypost.com/2016/12/04/crushing-free-speech-in-turkey/ | http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/03/turkey-judiciary-sets-example-of-subservience.html |

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Also in Media: “The Operational Ranks and Roles of Female ISIS Operatives: From Assassins and Morality Police to Spies and Suicide Bombers” – ICSVE – April 23, 2017

24 Monday Apr 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology, Religion

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“. . . . You know they have an office for Daesh women? If somehow you forget yourself and speak loudly or take off your gloves, you should pray that if Daesh catches you that it is the Daesh men. You can beg the men, you can apologize, there is a chance that they would limit their abuse to verbal. Daesh women have no hearts.”

Source: The Operational Ranks and Roles of Female ISIS Operatives: From Assassins and Morality Police to Spies and Suicide Bombers – ICSVE

Most pass-along through BackChannels now shows up on the blog’s Facebook page.  However, with this latest from the counterterrorism research community, BC felt it might be helpful to produce greater awareness of the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism.  As Muslims prove most frequently the targets of “Islamist” zealots, BackChannels would venture to suggest that that majority of the world’s military and paramilitary forces and the journalists covering the same have interest in the study of “violent extremism” and the many experiences and methods that channel humans toward the obliteration of conscience.

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