Thank you Miriam. Here is the text of the article for those who are
interested.
Homeland Security Is Quietly Tying Antifa to Foreign PowersAn 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>
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 <
blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> *On Behalf Of *Erica R
*Sent:* Wednesday, August 5, 2020 5:14 PM
*To:* 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> 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> wrote:
Miriam,Sandy.
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> 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
https://mailchi.mp/mintpressnews/us-aggression-against-chinas-ai-officially-a-bipartisan-effort?e=963fedaebbBut the cable? That, I had no control over. It just came back now.
Miriam
From: Raul at MintPress News <share@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, August 4, 2020 8:09 PM
To: =?utf-8?Q??= <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: US aggression against China's AI officially a bipartisan effort
Add <mailto:share@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> share@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx to your
address book to avoid spam filters.
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Raul Diego
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which
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
https://mintpressnews.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3b33b8b02bdc833e727219156&id=a957f46f04&e=963fedaebbinvolves the implementation of the DoD’s “Ethical Principles for AI,” a
set
of broad
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rules meant to guide “both combat and non-combat functions” of AI, which
are
to be enforced by the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC);
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an agency established in 2018 within the Pentagon.
Should the Pentagon be trusted to dictate AI ethics?
Read more
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about the plan and make sure to share the article with a friend.
In solidarity,
Raul at MintPress News
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