Erica,
Wow, am I glad that you posted this whole article! First, it's interesting.
Second, I've seen articles by Ken Clippenstein or his name as author of
articles and I didn't know he has a podcast. I wonder what the name of the
podcast is and what it's about. But most interesting to me is what is in the
discussion of antiFa. It isn't an organization or anything. It's just a lot of
people on the left who have been labeled that way. Some of them actively
identify with the label, while others don't. But most interesting to me was the
explanation of who Brace Belden is. For many weeks, I listened to the podcast,
gtrueanon which focuses on the Jeffrey Epstein case, its background and
history, and the fallout. I listened because it's a fascinating case and there
is a set of multiple articles about it on the Mint Press website that were
difficult to access, or at least some of them were, and they were very long. So
when I heard about the Trueanon podcast on Useful Idiots, I subscribed. But it
is a podcast for much younger people and its style is, I thought, sort of
weird. I listen to other podcasts for young people like Unauthorized
Disclosure, but this was different. Anyway, what I learned about Brace Belden
from his participation on Trueanon, is that he had been drug addicted, is
Jewish, and did some kind of manual labor. It was very strange. Now, having
read this article, I understand a bit more about him, but not why he went to
fight in Syria. I suppose he's like some of the other young Americans who,
because of their own personal inner conflicts, went off to fight other people's
wars in Israel, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.
Miriam
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Erica R
Sent: Wednesday, August 5, 2020 8:45 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: can we say, Industrial/Military takeover?
Thank you Miriam. Here is the text of the article for those who are interested.
Homeland Security Is Quietly Tying Antifa to Foreign Powers
An intelligence report obtained exclusively by The Nation mentions several
Americans, including a left-wing podcast host.
Ken Klippenstein
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) intelligence officials are targeting
activists it considers “antifa” and attempting to tie them to a foreign power,
according to a DHS intelligence report obtained exclusively by The Nation.
The intelligence report, titled “The Syrian Conflict and its Nexus to the
U.S.-based Antifascist Movement,” mentions several Americans, including a
left-wing podcast host who traveled to Syria to fight ISIS. The report includes
a readout of these individuals’ personal information, including their Social
Security numbers, home addresses, and social media accounts, much of the data
generated by DHS’s Tactical Terrorism Response Teams. As the intelligence
report states, “ANTIFA is being analyzed under the 2019 DHS Strategic Framework
for Countering Terrorism (CT) and Targeted Violence.”
Dated July 14, the document, marked for official use only and law enforcement
sensitive, draws on a blend of publicly available information and state and
federal law enforcement intelligence. It was provided to The Nation by a source
who previously worked on DHS intelligence.
“They targeted Americans like they’re Al Qaeda” a former senior DHS
intelligence officer with knowledge of the operations told The Nation. The
officer, who served for years in the DHS’s Office of Intelligence & Analysis
(I&A), compared the operations to the illegal surveillance of activists during
the civil rights era. “They essentially were violating people’s rights like
this was the ’60s…the type of shit the Church and Pike committee[s] had to
address.”
While the law generally prohibits intelligence agencies from spying on US
residents, many of those protections do not apply if the individual is believed
to be acting as an agent of a foreign power.
“Designating someone as foreign-sponsored can make a huge legal and practical
difference in the government’s ability to pursue them,” explained Steven
Aftergood, who heads the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of
American Scientists. “It’s a crucial distinction. Once someone (or some group)
is identified as an agent of a foreign power, they are subject to warrantless
search and surveillance in a way that would be illegal and unconstitutional for
any other US person. The whole apparatus of US intelligence can be brought to
bear on someone who is considered an agent of a foreign power.”
Last week, the DHS reassigned its intelligence chief after The Washington Post
revealed that the agency had been compiling intelligence reports on American
journalists and activists in Portland. In response to President Trump’s
executive order to protect monuments and other federal property, the DHS
created the “Protecting American Communities Task Force,” which sent DHS assets
to Portland and other cities. The agency has found itself in transition under
the Trump administration.“They are always pressuring I&A for political reasons;
it’s been like that since the election,” the former intelligence officer said.
This weekend, Politico reported that DHS Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli
loosened oversight of I&A. Cuccinelli, at I&A’s request, curtailed the
requirement that the DHS’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties approve
I&A’s intelligence products prior to distribution to law enforcement partners.
The intelligence report’s executive summary states:
In June 2020, U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) National Targeting
Center (NTC) Counter Network Division (CND) compiled CBP encounter data on
individuals who returned from Syria and fought with the Yekîneyên Parastina Gel
(YPG, translation: PEOPLE’S PROTECTION UNITS), and had some with reported ties
to a U.S.-based ANTIFA (Anti-fascist) movement. CBP concerns about and interest
in these individuals stem from the types of skills and motivations that may
have developed during their time overseas in foreign conflicts.
These skills were also appreciated by the US military, which cooperated with
the YPG in fighting ISIS for years. Last year, President Trump enraged many in
the US military when he green-lighted a Turkish offensive against the Kurdish
militia. Jim Mattis reportedly resigned as defense secretary in part because of
what he considered a betrayal of our Kurdish allies.
The intelligence report describes over half a dozen people who traveled to
Syria in order to fight alongside Kurdish factions—usually the YPG, but also
other Kurdish groups like the PKK and the Peshmerga. Some of the individuals
described have denied membership in antifa but variously identified with
far-left causes. The DHS appears to define antifa broadly, to encompass various
left-wing tendencies: “[A]ntifa is driven by a mixed range of far-left
political ideologies, including anti-capitalism, communism, socialism, and
anarchism.” In two cases, evidence of antifa affiliation was limited to photos
taken in front of an antifa flag. As the intelligence report itself notes,
“ANTIFA claims no official leadership,” raising questions about whether antifa
even exists in any sort of operational capacity.
The first individual mentioned in the intelligence report, Brace Belden,
cohosts the popular left-wing podcast TrueAnon, and fought with the YPG in
2016. The information appears to be partly drawn from a 2017 article on Belden
in Rolling Stone. Belden is described as “a minor criminal and drug addict who
started reading Marx and Lenin in drug rehabilitation treatment and became
involved in a number of political causes before deciding to fight alongside the
YPG.”
The report goes on to describe an encounter between Belden and border
authorities.
U.S. citizen (USC) Brace BELDEN was encountered on 08 April 2017, arriving in
San Francisco, California from Frankfurt, Germany. BELDEN was returning from a
six month tour of volunteering to fight with the YPG under the umbrella of the
Syrian Democrat Forces (SDF) fighting ISIS in Syria as part of the ongoing
Raqqa offensive starting in November 2016 to retake Raqqa from ISIS. BELDEN
stated he recently learned that an open source article had been written about
him and his “Anarchist” fighters.
Belden scoffed at the association. “I am not now nor have I ever been a member
of any antifa organization,” he told The Nation. “The US government has been
spying on and smearing communists for 100 years, but they usually have the
decency not to call a Red an anarchist!”
“There appears to be a clear connection…between ANTIFA ideology and Kurdish
democratic federalism teachings and ideology,” the intelligence report states.
At least one of the activists listed is described as being ethnically Kurdish.
On May 31, Trump vowed to designate antifa a “terrorist organization.” While
antifa groups have engaged in acts of property destruction, antifa has not been
linked to a single murder in the United States, according to data compiled in
the past 25 years by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. By
contrast, the same data found that far-right extremist groups had killed 329
people.
The intelligence report appears to conclude that the individuals described were
not acting on behalf of a foreign group—save for one unnamed person.
“Aside from a single instance derived from open-source reporting, there does
not appear to be evidence of a centralized effort to give marching orders to
returning ANTIFA-affiliated USPER [US person] foreign fighters once they return
to the United States.”
On Wed, Aug 5, 2020 at 4:25 PM Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> > wrote:
Hello Erica,
Yes, it's fine to share a link. I try, when it's not too difficult, to share
the article because it's more difficult for some of us to get to some links
than for others of us, me included. I guess I don't try to read more of those
online Nation articles than three because I've never been barred when I access
an article from that free daily email I receive each day.
That reminds me, I do read The Nation which I download from BARD, or some of
it, and also, The New Yorker. Just now, I've been reading an article in the
August 3/10 issue of The New Yorker about the 1960 Kennedy campaign by Jill Le
Por. It reminds me that political campaigns are run by incredibly cynical
people and some of what happened, is reminiscent of the 2016 primary campaign
between Clinton and Sanders.
Miriam
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> > On Behalf Of Erica R
Sent: Wednesday, August 5, 2020 5:14 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: can we say, Industrial/Military takeover?
Thanks for the share. I was particularly struck by this passage: "AIC acting
director Nand Mulchandani advanced this narrative when he claimed China had
“the world’s most advanced [AI] capabilities, such as unregulated facial
recognition for universal surveillance and control of their domestic
population, trained on Chinese video gathered from their systems.” Mulchandani,
nevertheless, conceded that the “U.S. is capable of doing similar things,” but
offered only the U.S. Constitution as the barrier that would prevent America
from building “such universal surveillance and censorship systems.”"
Regarding the constitutionality of surveillance--I was reminded of reports
released earlier this week by The Nation's Ken Klippenstein revealing DHS
surveillance of Americans with previous involvement in the YPG. Linked here
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/dhs-antifa-syria/
I am new to the list. Let me know if this is an appropriate way to share links.
The Nation does have a paywall after 3 articles have been read in a month, I
believe.
Erica
On Wed, Aug 5, 2020 at 9:52 AM Carl Jarvis <carjar82@xxxxxxxxx
<mailto:carjar82@xxxxxxxxx> > wrote:
Of course we can!
Miriam, I was going to comment on the post, along with my complaining.
When we look at our military expenditures and the profits "earned" by
the Corporations profiting directly off the military, and the huge tax
supported employment of military personnel(servicemen and service
women, generally known as Grunts)what more proof will it take?
Strange behavior for a nation that professes to be able to communicate
directly with God, but can't hear the rattle of sabers and the
explosion of many bombs.
Carl Jarvis
On 8/5/20, Carl Jarvis <carjar82@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:carjar82@xxxxxxxxx> > wrote:
Miriam,
I thought I'd sent out several messages, but happened to check to see
if I'd entered the right address on an email, and discovered that the
process of entering only part of an address, and having the entire
address appear, no longer worked. Since I have over 800 names in my
Contact file, having to search for each address makes me feel like
shutting down my computer and getting some long overdue work around
the house taken care of.
I've tried everything including contacting the google help center.
They gave me a huge number of suggestions, and people who had the same
problem, but most of it was not helpful, and the rest did not work on
my ancient machine.
Carl Jarvis
On 8/5/20, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> > wrote:
The reason I couldn't send this article last night was that as I was
trying,
my internet went down. We had a severe tropical storm yesterday. Up to
that
point, we'd been unaffected because when this house was purchased, I
purchased a generator for it, having been traumatized by Hurricane Sandy.
But the cable? That, I had no control over. It just came back now.
Miriam
From: Raul at MintPress News <share@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:share@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> >
Sent: Tuesday, August 4, 2020 8:09 PM
To: =?utf-8?Q??= <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> >
Subject: US aggression against China's AI officially a bipartisan effort
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reports on the bipartisan anti-China plan for Artificial Intelligence
Does anyone really believe the US has public interest in mind when it
comes
to technology and artificial intelligence?
The bipartisan plan on AI offers five “Key Principles” the first of which
involves the implementation of the DoD’s “Ethical Principles for AI,” a
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Should the Pentagon be trusted to dictate AI ethics?
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