NSA Calls Privacy Seekers 'Terrorists' While DoD Spends Millions to Qwell Grassroots Uprisings

Today William Binney and Thomas Drake testified before a German parliamentary committee in an effort to shed further light upon the American intelligence spying apparatus and how it has been effecting German citizens following disclosures from Edward Snowden which revealed that the NSA had been spying on the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, other prominent German politicians, and German citizens.

William Binney worked for the NSA for 32 years and was described as the best mathematician and code breaker in the institutions history.  He was a premier architect of the programming of the project ThinThread, elements of which the NSA later used as a means to illegally wiretap and invade the privacy of US citizens, collecting sweeping and widespread amounts of US citizen’s personal communications and information.  However when he was creating the ThinThread program it was designed to protect the privacy of US citizens, and that it was only until after the events of September 11^th that this concern for privacy was thrown out the window, despite the fact that the NSA had overwhelming intelligence and foreknowledge of the attacks with the programing functioning as it had, this is corroborated by testimonies of Edward Snowden, Thomas Drake, and just about every other NSA whistleblower.  In January of 2014 Willian Binney, Thomas Drake, J. Kirk Wiebe as well as other NSA insiders penned a letter to President Obama which described in detail these facts.  If anyone would know about the NSA’s global spying apparatus and the information that it collects, it would have to be the person who wrote the damn programs.  Binney resigned from the NSA in 2001 stating that he could not stay on board while the agencies purposefully violated the constitution.

Thomas Drake was a senior executive of the NSA who suffered many years of persecution from the Justice Department and the FBI for challenging the NSA Trailblazer program and the overall invasive spying techniques of the agency which violated US citizen’s most basic constitutional rights.  Instead Drake was part of a minority that favored the ThinThread program, which had privacy protection as a key component and utilized encryption techniques so that US citizens communications could only be accessed through obtaining a warrant; this was fully compatible with the protections in the Bill of Rights against illegal searches and seizures.  For this he was spied upon, threatened, got his home raided and ransacked at gunpoint (as did Bill Binney and J. Kirk Wiebe), and despite not being charged for any crimes his rights and privacy continued to be invaded in what amounts to an intimidation campaign against someone who favored protecting Americans constitutional rights over a national security state.  Mr. Drake is a key example of the failure of working through proper channels to expose and oust government illegality; he complained internally to the proper authorities, to his immediate supervisors, the NSA Inspector General, the Defense Department Inspector General, and the House and Senate Congressional intelligence committees as well, and the result for him was disastrous.

The Germans have a unique history with governmental spying and are historically well aware of the tyrannical nature of living under a national security state.  The United States on the other hand has no such historical knowledge, which perhaps helps explain the apathetic and disconnected approach to this problem that most American citizens seem to be guilty of; it seems reminiscent of a sort of disconnected denial, one in which no one wants to talk about the uncomfortable elephant in the room holding a magnifying glass to all of our most sensitive info and communications.

This is most troubling given another report released today, one written in part by privacy advocate and contributor to the Tor Project Jacob Appelbaum, which reveals that the NSA is targeting “virtually anyone who has taken an interest in several well-known privacy software systems,” such as Tor and Tails.  The authors report, 

“The former NSA director General Keith Alexander stated that all those communicating with encryption will be regarded as terror suspects and will be monitored and stored as a method of prevention, as quoted by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in August last year. The top secret source code published here indicates that the NSA is making a concerted effort to combat any and all anonymous spaces that remain on the internet. Merely visiting privacy-related websites is enough for a user's IP address to be logged into an NSA database.” 

It is striking that former NSA director General Keith Alexander would say this given his undoubted authority and supremacy in determining and shaping the course of NSA policy, James Bamford reports in regards to Alexander that, 

“Never before has anyone in America’s intelligence sphere come close to his degree of power, the number of people under his command, the expanse of his rule, the length of his reign, or the depth of his secrecy. A four-star Army general, his authority extends across three domains: He is director of the world’s largest intelligence service, the National Security Agency; chief of the Central Security Service; and commander of the US Cyber Command. As such, he has his own secret military, presiding over the Navy’s 10th Fleet, the 24th Air Force, and the Second Army.”

Given that NSA officials view those engaged in efforts to protect their privacy as ‘terror suspects,’ it is severely troubling that recently an academic study was published by researchers at Facebook, Cornell University, and the University of California in the June edition of the journal ‘Proceedings of the National Academy of Scientists,’ titled, ‘Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks,’ which altered the content that showed up on users Facebook feeds and studied its effects on users emotional responses as well as how this effected their online behaviors.  The study was conducted in order to determine how emotions can spread through social media,

“We show, via a massive (N = 689,003) experiment on Facebook, that emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness. We provide experimental evidence that emotional contagion occurs without direct interaction between people (exposure to a friend expressing an emotion is sufficient), and in the complete absence of nonverbal cues.”

However this ‘massive experiment’ was connected to a Department of Defense project called the Minerva Initiative in which the DoD funds universities with millions of dollars to research the dynamics, risks and tipping points for large-scale civil unrest across the world, under the supervision of various US military agencies.

SCGnews reports, “In the official credits for the study conducted by Facebook you'll find Jeffrey T. Hancock from Cornell University. If you go to the Minerva initiative website you'll find that Jeffery Hancock received funding from the Department of Defense for a study called "Cornell: Modeling Discourse and Social Dynamics in Authoritarian Regimes". If you go to the project site for that study you'll find a visualization program that models the spread of beliefs and disease. 

Cornell University is currently being funded for another DoD study right now called "Cornell: Tracking Critical-Mass Outbreaks in Social Contagions" (you'll find the description for this project on the Minerva Initiative's funding page).

The Department of Defense's investment in the mechanics of psychological contagion and Facebook's assistance, have some very serious implications…”

RT also reports that Hancocks study “Modeling Discourse and Social Dynamics in Authoritarian Regimes” appeared in 2009, one year before the US Army War College’s Strategic Institute warned that in the wake of a global financial meltdown the US could face massive civil unrest, “Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security,” the report, authored by [Ret.] Lt. Col. Nathan Freir, states.  This study is corroborated by many Pentagon planning documents which suggest that the NSA’s mass surveillance in part is motivated to prepare for the destabilizing impact of coming environmental, energy and economic shocks.

Nafeez Ahmed also reports of the Minerva Initiative program’s interest in gathering information on peaceful activists and conflating these basic rights of assembly as being equal to supporting political violence, 

“Last year, the DoD's Minerva Initiative funded a project to determine 'Who Does Not Become a Terrorist, and Why?' which, however, conflates peaceful activists with "supporters of political violence" who are different from terrorists only in that they do not embark on "armed militancy" themselves. The project explicitly sets out to study non-violent activists: 

"In every context we find many individuals who share the demographic, family, cultural, and/or socioeconomic background of those who decided to engage in terrorism, and yet refrained themselves from taking up armed militancy, even though they were sympathetic to the end goals of armed groups. The field of terrorism studies has not, until recently, attempted to look at this control group. This project is not about terrorists, but about supporters of political violence." 

The project's 14 case studies each "involve extensive interviews with ten or more activists and militants in parties and NGOs who, though sympathetic to radical causes, have chosen a path of non-violence."

I contacted the project's principal investigator, Prof Maria Rasmussen of the US Naval Postgraduate School, asking why non-violent activists working for NGOs should be equated to supporters of political violence – and which "parties and NGOs" were being investigated – but received no response. 

Similarly, Minerva programme staff refused to answer a series of similar questions I put to them, including asking how "radical causes" promoted by peaceful NGOs constituted a potential national security threat of interest to the DoD. 

Among my questions, I asked: 

"Does the US Department of Defense see protest movements and social activism in different parts of the world as a threat to US national security? If so, why? Does the US Department of Defense consider political movements aiming for large scale political and economic change as a national security matter? If so, why? Activism, protest, 'political movements' and of course NGOs are a vital element of a healthy civil society and democracy - why is it that the DoD is funding research to investigate such issues?"

Nafeez only received a cookie-cutter statement in reply from the DoD’s press office. 

These reports indicating the Department of Defense’s extraordinary interest in monitoring how critical-mass outbreaks are started, the effects and dynamics and tipping-points of large-scale civil unrest movements, and how emotional states are transferred ‘via emotional contagion,’ and subsequently how these emotional states and spreading contagion effect individuals behaviors and actions, are very troubling given the fact that anyone engaged in attempting to protect themselves from these kinds of experiments and research studies are labeled as 'terrorists;' more troubling still is the governments increasing interest in monitoring social media sites, recently a senior US intelligence official disclosed while briefing reporters that, “one of the biggest sources of intelligence for American analysts is Facebook and Twitter postings.”

In times like this it is important to remember that peaceful protests movements that challenged the status quo order of society like the one led by Martin Luther King Jr. were looked upon by the establishment as terroristic and a direct internal threat; J. Edgar Hoover, the mastermind behind the COINTELPRO program which was a covert FBI initiative to illegally monitor, survey, disrupt, discredit and neutralize any civil rights groups or protests that were seen as destabilizing the political and social order of society, which just so happened to encompass the entire spectrum of Leftist activism and the Civil Rights Movement as a whole, had an obsessive and vitriolic hate for Dr. King and is quoted as saying in regards to him that, "In the light of King's powerful demagogic speech. . . . We must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro, and national security."

A US Civil Court in 1999 found that US government agencies were found guilty and complicit in the death of Martin Luther King Jr.

Dr. King was the leading figure of the Civil Rights Movement, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, and widely recognized as one of the world’s greatest speakers for human rights and what it means to be human.  Let us not forget how governmental agencies and the establishment elites view these kind of heroic efforts and how they respond to them, or else we will be doomed to repeat this sordid history when we stand up for our own rights and freedoms.

A Quick Look at the Syrian Death Toll Figures: What They Tell Us

An April 1st report posted on the blog portion of the Council on Foreign Relations website by CFR members Micah Zenko and Amelia M. Wolf pointed out an interesting analysis on the Syrian casualty numbers, one that throws a wrench in the mainstream consensus which states that the Syrian crisis is a result of President Assad systematically murdering his own people.  According to Zenko and Wolf, there is a much different side to this story, but one that should at least be considered given the ubiquitous protestations in the media and leading academic journals and neo-cons like Senator John McCain who stated that, “The fact is [Syrian President] Bashar Assad has massacred 100,000 people.”

Yet as Anti War Blog has pointed out, 

“Actually, he hasn’t. According to SOHR data cited by Micah Zenko and Amelia M. Wolf of the Council on Foreign Relations, “most of the reported deaths in Syria have not been committed by forces under Bashar al-Assad’s command.”  While noting “the potential bias and the methodological challenges” of the data, Zenko and Wolf show that, despite depictions of the Syrian civil war as a regime indiscriminately killing its civilians, “more pro-regime forces than civilians have been killed during the Syrian civil war.”

In the most recently updated numbers given by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an anti-Assad website run out of a two-bedroom terrace in the UK by one person, Rami Abdulrahman, a Syrian Sunni Muslin who also runs a clothes shop (in other words, the “potential bias and methodological challenges of the data,” that Zenko and Wolf were talking about), reveal the same findings; that more pro-regime forces (62,832 total, including members of Hezbollah and Shiite loyals fighting on the regime side) then civilians (53,978) have been killed.  What the new numbers also point out, albeit deceivingly given the fact that rebel deaths are included within the category for civilian deaths, and one has to separate out the 26,858 rebel deaths from the total 80,836 in order to arrive at the corrected numbers that I have above, is that many more pro-regime forces have been killed (62,832) then rebel forces (42,701); this despite the fact that Assad has aircraft and a disciplined army, while the rebels lack cohesion consisting of numerous factions and groups crippled by internecine fighting and squabbles for territory and influence(despite recent reports of Al-Nusra pledging loyalty to ISIL after months of internecine fighting and disputes over territory.) 

So one has to ask, why this disparity? Why would a much stronger army with more resources for killing not be responsible for the majority of the deaths?  Why would a factionalized, non-cohesive group of rebels and foreign fighters prone to internecine squabbles be responsible for most of the deaths, especially given the mainstream consensus in the West that Assad the tyrant is the one systematically murdering all of the civilians that have been killed in this conflict?

A closer look at the SOHR report gives an answer:  

 “The Observatory said its figures did not include 18,000 people who had been detained by authorities and whose fate was unknown, as well as thousands more who were missing after raids by security forces. 

“Another 8,000 soldiers and pro-Assad militia were also missing after being held by rebels, and hundreds of people had been kidnapped, it said. A further 1,500 fighters were abducted during inter-rebel conflict.”

                So what we can see is that the rebels have killed more on Assad’s side then Assad has killed on the rebels side, however as noted above Assad has taken more prisoners then the rebels have.  The Syrian army and pro-Assad forces have killed around 42,701 rebels, but if you add the 18,000 rebels that they have taken prisoner the total number of 60,701 rebels killed and taken prisoner starts to even out the playing field, as the rebels have killed around 62,832 pro-Assad forces and have only taken 8,000 soldiers prisoner; what this means is that Assad has chosen to take the rebels prisoner at an alarmingly higher rate than the rebels, instead of systematically killing them all, whereas the rebels have chosen to kill their enemies on a much larger scale then they have chosen to take them prisoner; if Assad had chosen to kill his enemies instead of taking them prisoner like the rebels have, the numbers on each side would start to look a lot more similar.

                In the Geneva Convention it states that, 

“1. All the wounded, sick and shipwrecked, whether or not they have taken part in the armed conflict, shall be respected and protected.
 
2. In all circumstances they shall be treated humanely and shall receive to the fullest extent practicable and with the least possible delay, the medical care and attention required by their condition. There shall be no distinction among them founded on any grounds other than medical ones.”

                What the above numbers suggest is that Assad and the Syrian army have been respectful and in compliance with the Geneva Conventions, and have been taking prisoners when possible, when they have encountered wounded rebels or when rebels have surrendered, this is also corroborated by numerous testimonies from Syrians on the ground who have been unfortunate enough to witness firsthand this horrendous humanitarian crisis that has engulfed their homeland due to outside imperialistic intentions. 

                The numbers also become much clearer given a recent PBS Frontline documentary  which details how the United States military has been training Syrian rebels at a secret base in Qatar.  RT reports, citing the PBS documentary, that, “At a secret base in Qatar, the US military is training rebels to raid government troops and vehicles, as well as to “finish off the soldiers still alive after an ambush,” first-hand interviews from the documentary reveal.” 

The rebels, along with their US financiers and military trainers are therefore in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions.  The killing of wounded soldiers is prohibited under Article 3, (1) of Convention (III) relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War.

                Interviews from the documentary report that, 

“One of the fighters said they received three weeks of training in how to conduct ambushes, conduct raids and use their weapons. They also said they received new uniforms and boots.

“They [The US] trained us to ambush regime or enemy vehicles and cut off the road,” said the fighter, who is identified only as “Hussein.” “They also trained us on how to attack a vehicle, raid it, retrieve information or weapons and munitions, and how to finish off soldiers still alive after an ambush.”

        These facts lie in direct contrast to the scenario portrayed by the Western media, the US State Department, and the Western academic journals, yet this is not at all surprising for anyone not encumbered by the claims that American policy decisions in Syria are directed towards helping or saving people, for those that still are, a useful quote by Chomsky sums this point up very succinctly, 

“It's only in folk takes and children's stories and the pages of journals of intellectual opinion that power is used wisely and well to eradicate evil in the world, the real world teaches quite different lessons, and it takes willful and dedicated ignorance to fail to perceive them.”

        The fact is that American policy in Syria has absolutely nothing to do with saving or protecting civilian lives, quite the opposite, the United States, in coordination with her allies in the Gulf region, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the UK, are systematically arming, training and funding the terrorist entities that are responsible for killing the majority of the Syrian civilians.  Further, they are directly responsible for training the rebels to break the Geneva Conventions and murder wounded combatants, and the US also conveniently turns a blind eye to the religious cleansing conducted by the rebels, the shelling and bombing of peaceful Christian towns, the abductions and rape of Syrian women, and the overwhelming consensus of the Syrian population that they support the government, the presidency of Bashar al-Assad and vehemently oppose the foreign, US-backed terrorist insurgency that is destroying and raping their country, that is responsible for the majority of deaths, combatant and civilian alike, and is working to implement an extremist Islamic rule under the auspices of a tyrannical and immoral version of extremist sharia law, not to mention the fact that these groups are anti-democratic and anti-American in nature, and therefore directly threaten the national security and humanitarian well-being of the people of the West as well as the people of Syria and the greater Middle-Eastern region, however concern for civilian populations has never been a big concern of systems of power, instead designating to them the status of an enemy that needs to be controlled and contained and destroyed in the name of hegemony and power; the Syrian people are direct victims of this and know this maxim all too well, as the above numbers also tell us.

MORE on Svoboda, Right Sector & UNA-UNSO [SHOCKING VIDEO EVIDENCE]

The desire of Washington to integrate NATO with Ukraine, steps of which have already been taken, is a driving force behind the recent coup in Ukraine, another diving force of which is the fascist Neo-Nazi’s who now are integrated into key ministerial positions within the government and parliament.

Pepe Escobar reports:
[RT, Pepe Escobar, March 24 2014, http://rt.com/op-edge/eu-annex-ukraine-nato-agreement-829/] 

 Article 7.2. of the association agreement [between the E.U. and Ukraine] states that Ukraine will have to comply with the common foreign and security policy (CFSP) and the European security and defense policy (ESDP). The conditions are spelled out here and here.

The obscure – even for most Europeans - ESDP happens to be the key European pillar of NATO. Translation: it details how the EU is subordinated to the US (which controls NATO). For instance, the EU may only act in a determined case if NATO first declines to. Additionally, the March 2003 Berlin-plus agreement allows the EU to use NATO’s hardware and software for military operations if NATO declines to.

What this essentially means is that Ukraine is on the road to become legally bound to NATO’s overall project. Along with other independent analysts, I’ve argued from the start that this whole geopolitical drama is first and foremost about NATO annexing Ukraine.

Ukrainian speaker of parliament and interim president Olexander Turchynov (R) speaks with U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman (2nd L) during a meeting prior to talks in Kiev on March 20, 2014. (AFP Photo)

The NATO-Ukraine twisted love affair started in the early 2000s. After some soul-searching, it was decided NATO or no NATO should be the subject of a national referendum in the future. In the 2008 Bucharest summit NATO opened its arms, stating that Ukraine could join as soon as it met the criteria. In 2010 Yanukovich announced Ukraine was not interested anymore. Still, Ukraine remains quite a muscular member of NATO’s innocent-sounding Partnership for Peace (PfP).

No wonder NATO is now in overdrive selling the notion that Ukraine is “under threat” – and should join as soon as possible. NATO’s secretary-general – the astonishingly mediocre American poodle, Anders Fogh Rasmussen - said we’re living the most serious threat to Europe’s security since the end of the Cold War: “This is a wake-up call. For the Euro-Atlantic community. For NATO. And for all those committed to a Europe whole, free and at peace.’’

He forgot to add: a Europe under free and peaceful submission to the Pentagon.

And behind all of this NATO fervor are the 'pre-NATO' paramilitary forces in the form of brutal, organized Neo-Nazi groups Right Sector, Svoboda and UNA-UNSO.  Here F. William Engdahl reports from Boiling Frogs Post on the role of these thuggish, racist fascists (SHOCKING VIDEO EVIDENCE OF BRUTAL ULTRA-NATIONALISTS):

[Boiling Frogs Post, William Engdahl, March 25 2014, http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2014/03/25/shocking-videos-here-is-ukraine-since-the-nato-coup/]

In the days since the US-backed coup, according to citizens in Ukrainian I am in contact with, after the new regime dissolved the National Police, members of the Right Sector took over police functions in Kiev. Groups of young men, mainly members of Right Sector, have been patrolling the streets armed with baseball bats and weapons. In some documented instances according to these reports from ordinary Ukrainians, they come in groups to homes of people identified as “pro-Russian” and force them out of their homes or take their possessions, as they term it “privatization” actions. The population lives in a state of terror they liken to the Stalin-era terror.

There are reports that the some 5,000 members of Right Sector are being incorporated into a newly-organized National Guard. 

Right Sector is trying fast to clean up its image. Last week the group issued a VKontakte (Russian Facebook equivalent) appeal to anyone in the West with ability to edit Wikipedia, asking them to delete references to their anti-semitic and neo-fascist background.

According to Wikipedia’s logs, on a Monday the Right Sector entry described the party as having “borderline fascist or neo-fascist views.” On Tuesday the page was modified 174 times, including changes to describe Right Sector as an “organization to protect demonstrators” and a “youth patriot organization.” After the intervention of Wikipedia administrators, the page was locked and reverted to saying that Right Sector was “described by major Western newspapers as having far right or neo-fascist views.” [3]

A relevant question is what role NATO and the US intelligence and special forces have played in training and deploying Right Sector (Pravy Sektor) as well as Svoboda and, especially, UNA-UNSO in Ukraine.

This is now the regime the United States State Department has forced on Ukraine. This side of the Ukrainian opposition has yet to be honestly reported in any of the mainstream Western media. We might ask, Why?

For speculation as to 'why?' see my latest report:  http://undergroundreports.blogspot.com/2014/03/neo-nazi-media-black-out-lifted.html?m=1

Neo-Nazi Media Black-Out Lifted/ Muzychko (Sashko Bilyi) Killing

After the convenient media blackout of the Neo-Nazi contingencies in Ukraine which provided the smokescreen for their violent and illegal seizures of political power within the region, which was further aided by the United States government who labelled the protest movements as ‘peaceful’ despite the fact that they were armed and militant, now it seems as though the utility of these contingencies has been exhausted, and the masters who gave them, with their silence, carte-blanche to commit illegal actions of aggression, violence and murder are realizing now that the once useful auxiliary paramilitary forces have since turned into a political liability.

Most media reports failed to depict the pivotal importance that the Neo-Nazi paramilitaries had in overtaking the government of Viktor Yanukovych, and while the American public was conveniently ignorant to their existence the U.S. and the E.U. were happy to utilize their special talents of guerrilla warfare to realize their intention of installing a Western-friendly puppet regime the composition of which was deliberated by Victoria Nuland in the leaked phone call to the U.S. ambassador of Ukraine, whose ‘recommendations’ broadly coincide with the installment of the new authorities that have since come to take power in Kiev.  Before the transfer of power the Svoboda and Right Sector parties were a valuable resource, without which the transfer of power never would have been able to have been realized, yet now after the transfer of power has been completed and more and more reports start to come out depicting the true nature of these paramilitary forces the new interim government and their Western masters are finding it harder and harder to maintain the ‘peaceful revolution’ dialogue that they have clung to thus far, and at this point it is impossible for them to deny the influence Svoboda and Right Sector have within the new coalition government as they have been appointed key positions within the areas of Defense, Law Enforcement, Education and Economic Affairs.

Professor Michel Chossudovsky reports on the positions of power within the Ukrainian government that have been appointed to Neo-Nazi Svoboda and Right Sector party leaders:

While Yatsenuyk’s Fatherland Party controls the majority of portfolios and Svoboda Neo-Nazi leader Oleh Tyahnybok was not granted a major cabinet post (apparently at the request of assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland), members of Svoboda and the Right Sector occupy key positions in the areas of Defense, Law Enforcement, Education and Economic Affairs.

Andriy Parubiy co-founder of the Neo-Nazi  Social-National Party of Ukraine (subsequently renamed Svoboda) was appointed Secretary of the National Security and National Defense Committee (RNBOU). (Рада національної безпеки і оборони України), a key position which overseas the Ministry of Defense, the Armed Forces, Law Enforcement, National Security and Intelligence. The RNBOU is central decision-making body. While it is formally headed by the president, it is run by the Secretariat with a staff of 180 people including defense, intelligence and national security experts.

Parubiy was one of the main leaders behind the Orange Revolution in 2004. His organization was funded by the West. He is referred to by the Western media as the “kommandant” of the EuroMaidan movement. Andriy Parubiy together with party leader Oleh Tyahnybok is a follower of Ukrainian Nazi Stepan Bandera, who collaborated in the mass murderer of Jews and Poles during World War II. 

In turn, Dmytro Yarosh, leader of the Right Sector delegation in the parliament, has been appointed Parubiy’s deputy Secretary of the RNBOU.

Yarosh was the leader of the Brown Shirt Neo-Nazi paramilitary during the EuroMaidan “protest” movement. He has called for disbanding the Party of the regions and the Communist Party.

 The Neo Nazi party also controls the judicial process with the appointment of  Oleh Makhnitsky of the Svoboda party to the position of prosecutor-general of Ukraine. What kind of justice will prevail with a reknown Neo-Nazi in charge of the Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine?

Cabinet positions were also allocated to former members of the Neo-Nazi fringe organization Ukrainian National Assembly – Ukrainian National Self Defense (UNA-UNSO):

“Tetyana Chernovol, portrayed in the Western press as a crusading investigative journalist without reference to her past involvement in the anti-Semitic UNA-UNSO, was named chair of the government’s anti-corruption committee. Dmytro Bulatov, known for his alleged kidnapping by police, but also with UNA-UNSO connections, was appointed minister of youth and sports.

Yegor Sobolev, leader of a civic group in Independence Maidan and politically close to Yatsenyuk, was appointed chair of the Lustration Committee, charged with purging followers of President Yanukovych from government and public life. (See Ukraine Transition Government: Neo-Nazis in Control of Armed Forces, National Security, Economy, Justice and Education, Global Research, March 02, 2014

The Lustration Committee is to organize the Neo-Nazi witch-hunt against all opponents of the new Neo-Nazi regime. The targets of the lustration campaign are people in positions of authority within the civil service, regional and municipal governments, education, research, etc.  The term lustration refers to the “mass disqualification” of people associated with the former government. It also has racial overtones. It will in all likelihood be directed against Communists, Russians  and members of the Jewish community.

It is important to reflect on the fact that the West, formally committed to democratic values, has not only spearheaded the demise of an elected president, it has instated a political regime integrated by Neo-Nazis.

Now that these forces have already been successfully used by their Western financiers to obtain power, after a media and governmental black-out of their crimes has kept the American public in the dark and provided the Neo-Nazi's the opportunity to continue their atrocities, that smokescreen has now been lifted by the corporate media as the utility of these contingencies has been exhausted; they were already used to obtain power and now that power has been obtained the credibility of the government has been harmed by their presence, turning the new authorities into an international pariah instead of a recognized and legitimate state; the people of Europe have not forgotten the recent history of the rise of fascism and the devastating destruction it has caused, even if the West conveniently has.

As the go-ahead to report on these uncomfortable realities was given, on March 18^th both Reuters and Foreign Policy finally began reporting on the Neo-Nazi influence in the Ukrainian government.  In a Reuters article, titled “In Ukraine, nationalists gain influence – and scrutiny,” the reporters laughably write:

  When protest leaders in Ukraine helped oust a president widely seen as corrupt, they became heroes of the barricades. But as they take places in the country's new government, some are facing uncomfortable questions about their own values and associations, not least alleged links to neo-fascist extremists.

Perhaps the personnel at Reuters were hailing these racist, violent Nazi’s as heroes during the protests, but others of us were reporting on the atrocious nature of a United States government that actively supports, aids and shields Nazi’s all just to meddle in the affairs of another country in order to exert Washington’s influence over the region in a brazen display of imperialist foreign policy.

The March 18^th Foreign Policy article states:

The uncomfortable truth is that a sizeable portion of Kiev's current government -- and the protesters who brought it to power -- are, indeed, fascists. If Western governments hope to steer Ukraine clear from the most unsavory characters in Moscow and Kiev, they will need to wage a two-pronged diplomatic offensive: against Putin's propaganda and, at the same time, against Ukraine's resurgent far-right.

And this was apparently the plan all along: to use the violent extremists to stage a coup and worry about cleaning up the mess afterwards.  Again, this is a classic Machiavellian example of ‘the ends justify the means,’ whereas the ends of imperialism and containment of Russia are justified in the eyes of the West, even if the means involved consist of supporting the rise of fascism in Europe for the first time since WWII.

Now that Western friendly puppets have come into power in Kiev, the ultra-nationalists have become a liability.  Mounting pressure from the international community for an investigation into the February 20^th sniper provocations, the incessant concerns that Russia voices over the Russo-phobic factions within the government, and recent damning actions by ultra-nationalists all heighten the liability status that is now being placed over the heads of members of the Right Sector and Svoboda, not to mention the striking similarity between the incident in Simferopol which left 2 dead, one from the Russian side and the other from the Ukrainian, and the February 20^th sniper provocations in which both sides were also targeted, which are now widely believed to be orchestrated by the Neo-Nazi’s as there is ample evidence to support this conclusion.

As video reports began to surface of Svoboda MP Igor Miroshnynchenko and a group of others violently threatening and intimidating the acting CEO of Ukraine’s National Television Company, forcing him to sign his own confession under duress in the process, many responded with outrage and Amnesty International has called for an urgent investigation into the matter. 

Heather McGll, Amnesty International’s Ukraine researcher, had this to say about the incident:

    “It is astonishing that a member of the parliamentary committee on freedom of speech was involved in this attack. The acting authorities must send a signal that this sort of behaviour will not be tolerated in Ukraine.

    “This assault on freedom of expression must be immediately investigated and those responsible must be prosecuted. Anything less will only open the door to further attacks against media professionals and activists.

    “The acting Ukrainian authorities must waste no time in demonstrating that basic human rights are protected in Ukraine and that nobody will face discrimination because of their political views or ethnic origin.”

And the U.S. embassy in Kiev has also condemned the action:

The United States Embassy in Kyiv condemns the heavy-handed bullying and physical abuse of  Mr. Oleksandr Panteleymonov, head of Ukraine’s National Television Channel, UT-1, by members of the political party “Svoboda” on March 18.  We welcome today’s statements by both Prime Minister Yatsenyuk and Minister of Interior Avakov decrying this behavior as unacceptable.  We urge the Svoboda party to discipline Svoboda MP Ihor Miroshnychenko and other party members involved in the incident.

The Neo-Nazi’s are getting out of line, and it is starting to make the new coalition government look bad, therefore steps have to be taken to mitigate this liability.

One of the most salient liabilities comes in the form of Right Sector leader Aleksandr Muzychko, also known as Sashko Bilyi.  Sashko Bilyi played an active role in the First Chechen War in 1994-1995 where he led a group of Ukrainian nationalists to fight against Russian soldiers.  For his actions during this time Russia’s Investigative Committee, in early March, has brought criminal offenses against him and has issued an international warrant for his arrest, accusing him of torturing and murdering at least 20 Russian soldiers as he fought alongside the Chechen militants.  Ironically the witness to these events was a man who joined the ultra-nationalists organization UNA-UNSO, an organization that fought alongside Muzychko during the Chechen War, and yesterday it was reported that UNA-UNSO has integrated itself into and has become a part of the newly formed political party of the Pravy Sektor (Right Sector):

As of today, the Ukrainian National Assembly (UNA) – which dates back to 1990 and was regarded as a far-right political organization in Ukraine – has ceased to exist, instead transforming into the Pravy Sektor (Right Sector) party, Igor Mazur, the party’s Kiev branch leader, said after the UNA meeting on Saturday.

He added that the leaders of UNA branches – the Ukrainian People's Self-Defense (UNSO), a paramilitary force, and Trizub (the ultra-right Stepan Bandera All-Ukrainian Organization) – have agreed to join the Right Sector.

And already after the announcement of this new Right Sector/ UNA-UNSO coalition political party, internecine fighting was already apparent between the ultra-nationalists and the authorities within Kiev:

The Right Sector also slammed the coup-appointed authorities in Kiev, including the acting president, Aleksandr Turchinov, saying that he is playing “undercover games.”

“Turchinov should have reported to the Ukrainian people a long time ago,” said party member Andrey Denisenko. “Even the Maidan from the tribune of which the opposition leaders reported [to the people] every day has gradually calmed down. This may be some kind of indecisiveness or maybe some undercover games that have already hurt many Ukrainians. We must understand that these authorities are not in their place, so we consider the need to hold early parliamentary elections in the near future.”

Adding to the divide between the authorities in Kiev and the Right Sector is the incessant, heavy-handed tactics of force and intimidation employed by Aleksandr Muzychko (Sashko Bilyi).  Filmed evidence confirms Muzychko roughing-up and intimidating a local prosecutor, threatening authorities with an AK-47, and making openly racist and anti-Semitic statements.  Obviously Muzychko had overstepped his bounds, and Muzychko himself might have even realized this, as a recently uploaded YouTube video shows Muzychko stating that the Interior Ministry of Ukraine wanted him captured or dead,

“the Prosecutor General's office and the Interior Ministry of Ukraine made a decision to either eliminate me or to capture me and hand me over to Russia, to then blame it all on the Russian intelligence.”

Yesterday on Monday Aleksandr Muzychko was shot dead during a police raid, Ukraine’s Ministry of the Interior confirms.

Muzychko was killed in Rovno, western Ukraine, where he coordinated actions of local groups belonging to the nationalist Right Sector movement.

Muzychko received three gunshot wounds to his chest and two to his right leg, the official said.

At a press conference dedicated to Muzychko‘s death, First Deputy Interior Minister Vladimir Yevdokimov announced that charges of hooliganism and obstructing law enforcement agencies had been filed against Muzychko March 8, and on March 12 Muzychko was put on the Ukrainian police’s wanted list.

A former senior official at the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) speculated to RIA Novosti that the objective of the operation carried out by SBU and the Interior Ministry, was to kill Muzychko:

“The goal of the operation was not to detain, but to neutralize Muzychko, to remove him from the stage,” the source said, adding that the militant leader was undermining the new Ukrainian authorities and pursuing his own interests through his leadership of the Right Sector movement.

Today on Tuesday, a day after the incident, Right Sector announced that it is holding the acting Interior Minister Arsen Avakov responsible for the death of Muzychko:

“We will take revenge on Arsen Avakov for the death of our brother,” said Rovno coordinator of the Right Sector Roman Koval, as cited by charivne.info news portal. “The shooting of Sashko Bilyi [Muzychko’s nom de guerre] is an assassination ordered by the minister. Muzychko never received any notices concerning criminal offences and was never summoned anywhere.”

The killing of Muzychko is not surprising given his image and status as a liability, however what is surprising is the fact that Ukrainian intelligence and police enforcement agencies would conduct a raid mission to neutralize him given the fact that Dmytro Yarosh, leader of the Right Sector delegation to the parliament, has been appointed Andriy Parubiy’s deputy secretary of the RNBOU, which oversees the Ministry of Defense, the Armed Forces, Law Enforcement, National Security and Intelligence.  With a high member of Right Sector holding authority over law enforcement and intelligence operations, which were instrumental in the killing of Right Sector leader Muzychko, this internecine battle does not seem as black and white as ‘Right Sector vs. the Interior Ministry,’ instead what seems to be taking place is a coordinated effort by the top level ultra-nationalists who have already been given positions of power and other moderate factions within the Ukrainian government to purge the liabilities from the regime.  

As the Western propaganda machine has been given the go-ahead to start reporting and bringing exposure to these elements, it becomes apparent that the Western financiers of regime-change in Kiev have deemed that their utility has been exhausted.  However the damage has already been done and key ministry positions have already been afforded to the fascists, yet it should be noted that these leaders are completely subservient to the West and perhaps the Western diplomats feel that they can be tamed and given a much needed PR face-lift, whilst others who cannot be tamed are singled out and neutralized.  The Neo-Nazi’s, both the fringe outside extremists and the figures in positions of power alike, pose a liability to the legitimacy of the coalition government in Ukraine, a liability that the Western masters cannot afford to entertain any longer, one that puts increasing pressure upon the West as more accounts of radical behavior begin to surface and as a growing awareness to the realities of the February 20^th sniper shootings becomes elucidated and individuals seek to investigate and persecute those responsible for such a vicious and disgusting act of murder and assassination.

All told, the fact that the corporate media ban on these Neo-Nazi's has been lifted and mainstream reports are beginning to surface as to their existence, coupled with the West's nascent denouncement of some of the Neo-Nazi's radical actions (as much worse actions were sanctioned during the EuroMaidan) and the murder of a prevalent Right Sector leader, it is safe to say that the West, who protected these elements when it was convenient for them, is now choosing to expose them when it is similarly convenient... either forgetting or being all too aware of the fact that timing is everything.