Redacted Tonight: CIA Staged Fake Academic Conferences to Encourage Iranian Scientist to Defect

This story comes from the real, whacky world of spies. In this clip from RT America’s Redacted Tonight, Naomi Karavani talks about the bizarre tactics the CIA used to infiltrate academia, and particularly the fake academic conferences the agency set up to encourage Iranian nuclear scientists to defect. She starts with a statement Harvard University gave after it was revealed that the uni was admitting CIA agents. They defended their admission of the spooks, stating that they were proud to offer an education to members of the security services, just as they were proud to offer it to left-wing and peace activists.

The CIA’s attempt to get nuclear scientists from the Islamic Republic was hampered by the fact that none of the agents charged with conducting the project actually knew anything about science. So in the absence of any knowledge about particle physics and the practical engineering required to build reactors or bombs, they fell back on using ‘chat-up lines’. Like ‘Didn’t I see you in Istanbul’, and ‘Don’t you hate crowds’. They also resorted to using personal information that they gained about their targets. One scientist they attempted to recruit said that one of them blithely told him that he understood that he’d had testicular cancer and had ‘lost a nut’. The agents also tried to get their targets alone through poisoning their guards’ meals, so that they got diarrhoea and vomiting.

Karavani also describes how Israel is accused of trying to sabotage the Iranian nuclear programme through the assassination of at least five of its scientists. Israel has denied this, but nevertheless, in 2015 the American government tried to stop Israel from killing anymore.

Karavani concludes by stating that these tactics are hostile and could lead to a war between America and Iran, while in fact, peaceful negotiations have led to Iran abandoning research costing hundreds of millions of dollars.

There’s a very serious point here amidst the comedy. It’s not just about the assassination that have probably been staged by Israel against the Iranian nuclear programme. This presumably also includes the Stuxnet computer virus, which shut down one of the Iranian nuclear reactors and allegedly killed several scientists and engineers. Nor the hypocrisy of this attitude, when Israel, quite against international law, has nuclear weapons. It’s the whole issue of the CIA and other parts of the security state, including the military, on campus.

Way back in the 1980s/ 1990s Lobster carried an article about British universities that were involved in training military personnel and spies. I think some of those, who were being provided with an education at public expense also included the type of characters, who gave covert help to various dictators around the world.

This issue has become very relevant yet again, as American peace protesters, such as Code Pink, have launched a movement to encourage universities to BDS – Boycott, Divest and Sanction – the American arms industry.

Secular Talk: Congress Imposes Iran Sanctions, Upsets Nuclear Deal

This is another piece of American news, which unfortunately has very ominously, and potentially deadly, implications for all of us. In this piece from Secular Talk, the host Kyle Kulinski discusses how the US Congress has managed to upset the deal Barack Obama negotiated with the Iranians over their nuclear programme. The Iranians promised to stop their nuclear programme in return for the Americans lifting the sanctions they had imposed on the country. The international nuclear regulatory body also confirmed that the Iranians were complying with the treaty. The treaty was opposed both by Israel, which wanted a bombing campaign, and the Iranian hardliners, including the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khameini. Nevertheless, the peaceful settlement to this issue was a major achievement for Barack Obama and the reformist Iranian president, Rouhani.

Now Congress has undermined all this, and re-imposed sanctions. For no reason whatsoever. Obama has yet to sign the legislation, and Congress has claimed that they’re just symbolic. Nevertheless, it has caused the Iranians to decide that if the Americans can’t be trusted to fulfill their side of the deal, they don’t have to honour theirs. So they’ve restarted their nuclear programme. Kulinski makes the point how stupid Congress has been in both undermining the treaty, and the Iranian reformists, like Rouhani, who negotiated it. And it seems just about all of Congress, with few exceptions, is responsible for this mess.

My guess here is that the Neocons in both the Republican and Democrat parties are desperate to start a war with Iran, and this is the means of providing a pretext for it. Israel wanted military actions against Iran, and a few years ago unleashed a stuxnet virus attack on the Iranians’ computers. From what I’ve read, this led to a major incident at one of their labs and the deaths of several of the scientists and engineers involved. The Republicans in America have also bitterly hated and opposed Obama’s and Rouhani’s treaty. It’s been revealed that the Republicans had plans even before 9/11 for the invasion of seven countries and the overthrow of their leaders. These included not only Iraq and Syria, but also Libya, Somalia, Lebanon and Iran. 9/11 provided them with a pretext to invade Iraq and Afghanistan, although in the case of the last it was justified, as al-Qaeda in Afghanistan had committed on act of war.

And Hillary Clinton has been no better than the Republicans. She has also pressed for further military action, including against Russia for supposedly leaking the incriminating emails about her corrupt business dealings.

My fear is that the hawks in Congress are hoping to provoke the Iranians into resuming their nuclear programme, so they have an excuse to launch another invasion. I’ve also written extensively elsewhere on how this would be disastrous. Like Iraq, Iran is a mosaic of different ethnic groups. The majority religion is Twelver Shi’ism, but three per cent of the population are Armenian Christians. The country is also the birthplace of the Baha’is, a religion which grew out of Islam in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Baha’is are not recognised as a distinct religion, and have suffered terrible persecution as heretics and suspected agents of Israel. There is also a growing movement of underground Christianity, which is also severely persecuted. If America invades, you can expect the same process of balkanisation, tribal bloodshed and persecution, as has occurred in Iraq.

And this will not be done to protect America or Israel from any nuclear threat from the Islamic Republic. Shirin Ebadi in her book on the current social unrest in Iran makes the point that when the Iranians say they are developing nuclear power as a source of domestic electricity, they’re speaking the truth. The Iranian regime is supported internationally by its oil exports. In order to maximise these, the regime is determined to cut down on domestic oil consumption. Other sites I’ve seen on the web have also suggested that if the Iranians were to develop nuclear weapons, it would be as a deterrent against the other, neighbouring regimes which pose a possible threat, such as Saudi Arabia and possibly Pakistan, both Sunni regimes.

Any war which America and its allies fights with the Islamic Republic will be done for the very same reasons America invaded Iraq: to safeguard Israel, seize the country’s oil and other industries, and comply with the Saudis’ campaign to destroy Shi’ism, moderate Islam, and non-Muslim religions in the Middle East.

This deliberate attempt to increase tensions with Iran should be stopped right now, before any more of our brave servicemen and women are killed, and more millions are massacred or made homeless, just for the profit of big oil and Wahhabi intolerance.

Immigration, ID Cards and the Erosion of British Freedom: Part 2

In the first part of this post I discussed the way successive administrations since Mrs Thatcher – those of john Major, Tony Blair, and now, possibly, the coalition, had planned to introduce ID cards. Privacy campaigners such as Simon Davies have opposed them, because of the immense potential they represent for human rights abuses, the mass surveillance of the population, and discrimination against immigrants and minorities. I posted it as a response to Mike’s piece on Vox Political, which I reblogged, on Theresa May’s latest campaign against illegal immigration, and the fears landlords and immigrants’ rights groups have about the terrible effect this will have on them. The landlords in particular were concerned that this would lead to the introduction of 404 European document-style ID cards. In this part of the post I will discuss the dangers ID cards present, and their failure to do what is often claimed for them, such as to prevent crime and illegal immigration.

It looks like illegal immigration will be the platform by which ID cards will be introduced in this country. Mike and a number of other bloggers have commented on the way recent statements and policies by coalition ministers to combat illegal immigration suggest that they plan to introduce ID cards as part of their campaign. Illegal immigration has been the main issue driving their introduction in Europe, America and some developing nations. Davies book on the growth of the surveillance society in Britain notes that as the European Union dissolves borders in Europe, so the police were given greater power to check people’s ID. As for fears that ID cards will somehow stop illegal immigrants from claiming benefits, this has been disproved in Australia. The Joint Parliamentary Committee on the Australia Card found that of 57,000 people, who overstayed their visa in New South Wales, on 22 were illegally claiming Unemployment Benefit.

Anti-racism campaigners are right to worry that ID will increase discrimination. ID cards carrying information on the bearer’s ethnic groups or religious beliefs have been used to discriminate against minority groups in many countries. The Japanese were accused of racism when they passed legislation forcing all foreigners to carry ID cards. The French police were similarly accused of racism in demanding Blacks and Algerians carry and produce ID cards. This was one of the reasons behind the race riots in France in the 1990s. In Greece, the authorities were also accused of using the religious information on the card to discriminate against those, who were not Greek Orthodox. Down Under, Aboriginal and Jewish Australians joined the campaign against the Australia Card from fear that they would also suffer discrimination. A few thousand miles across the Pacific in New Zealand, Kiwi trade unions and civil liberties groups also feared ID cards would lead to discrimination against minorities and the poor.

Contrary to the frequent claims made by various Right-wing governments like Thatcher’s, Major’s and Blair’s, ID cards don’t actually stop welfare fraud. Says Davies ‘the key area of interest lies in creating a single numbering system which would be used as a basis for employment eligibility, and which would reduce the size of the black market economy’. In Oz, the Department of Social Security stated that much less than 1 per cent of overpaid benefits came from identity fraud. The true figure for such crime is probably 0.6 per cent. Most fraudulent or overpaid benefit claims – 61 per cent – came from the non-reporting of variations in the claimant’s income.

ID cards also don’t stop crime. This is again contrary to the statements made by governments wishing to introducing them. The problem is not the identification of criminals, but in collecting sufficient evidence and successfully prosecuting them. The Association of Chief Police Officers in Britain concluded in 1993 report that burglaries, street crime and crimes committed by people impersonating officials could be reduced through ID cards. They did not, however, present any evidence for this. The Association did fear that the introduction of ID cards would make relations between the police and the general public worse. Davies considered that only a DNA or biometric database could possibly link perpetrators with their crimes.

The introduction of ID cards do, however, increase police powers. Police routinely ask for ID cards in all the countries that have them, and detain those, who don’t possess them. In Britain the wartime ID cards were removed in 1953 after a High Court judge ruled that their routine demand by the police was contrary to the spirit of the National Registration Act, and adversely affected the good relations between police and the public.

In fact, instead of helping to combat crime, ID cards actually help it. ID cards provide a ‘one-stop’ proof of identity, and this can and is used by criminal gangs in their crimes. The technology used to manufacture the cards is now available and used by such organisations. As ordinary organisations, such as companies and the state civil service increasingly rely on ID cards as the unquestioned proof of an individual’s identity, so they abandon the other systems used to check it that they have been using for decades. As a result, crimes using fake identities are actually easier with ID cards.

ID cards are a real danger to the privacy of personal information. About one per cent of the staff of companies involved in collecting the personal information used to construct the relational databases used in such cards are corrupt and prepared to trade confidential information. Each year, one per cent of all bank staff in Europe are dismissed for corruption. This is a minuscule percentage, it is true, but nevertheless it still presents a danger to the privacy and safety of the public. In Britain, computer crime amongst the civil services own ID staff massively increased in the 1980s and 1990s. The National Accounting Office estimated in March 1995 that hacking, theft and infection by viruses were all increasing on the IT network in Whitehall. In one year, for example, hacking rose by 140 per cent and viruses by a massive 300 per cent. Of the 655 cases of hacking in the Whitehall network identified by the NAO, most involved staff exceeding their authority to obtain the personal information of members of the public, which was they then passed on to outside individuals.

ID card schemes also tend to be much more expensive than governments’ estimate and allow for. Once again, Australia provides a good example of this. When introducing the Australia Card scheme, the Ozzie government failed to take into account training costs, and the expenses coming from administrative supervision, staff turnover, holiday and sick leave, as well as compliance, the issue of the cards overseas and fraud. They also underestimated the costs of issuing and maintaining the cards and how expensive they would be to private industry. In the first part of this post I mentioned how leading Australian bankers and financiers, such as Sir Noel Foley, were openly hostile to the scheme. This is not surprising, as the Australian Bankers’ Association estimated that the ID card their would cost Ozzie banks A$100 million over ten years. The total cost of the cards to the private sector was estimated at A$1 billion per year. At the time Davies was writing, the cost of the card system in the UK had not taken into account of administration and compliance costs. These could be as high as £2 – £3 billion. When Tony Blair launched his scheme to develop biometric ID cards, there was further embarrassment to the government when it was revealed by the papers that the scheme had also gone massively over its budget due to problems in developing the technology.

Another factor against the cards is the distress and inconvenience caused to the individual by their accidental loss or destruction. About five per cent of ID cards are either lost, damaged or stolen every year, and it can be several weeks before a replacement is received.

Governments have frequently insisted that ID cards will be voluntary. This was the stance taken by Tony Blair’s government on them. It is misleading. There is a tendency for them to become compulsory. Even in nations where they are voluntary, there is considerable inconvenience if they are not carried, so that they are actually compulsory in practice if not in law.

ID cards also have a tendency to become internal passports as they acquire other uses through function creep. These will include all government and a significant number of important, private functions.

Finally, opponents of ID cards object to them because they feel that they damage national identity and personal integrity. The movements against ID cards in America, Australia, Canada and New Zealand called attention to the fears of ordinary people that the introduction of such cards would reduce them to mere numbers. They were a symbol of oppressive authority, and represented popular anxieties that their countries were ruled, not by elected officials, but by bureaucracies driven by technology.

Actually, reading through all the considerable negative aspects of ID cards and the list of the dangers and damage they represent to society and the safety and privacy of its members, I can see why the Coalition government would see no problem in introducing them. After all, such schemes are inefficient, corrupt and massively expensive. They expand the power of the state and the police at the expense of the individual, and are used to persecute and victimise minorities and the poor. Pretty much like all the Coalition’s policies, then. And ID cards are exactly like IDS welfare schemes and workfare in that, undercover of eliminating welfare fraud, which they actually don’t do anything about, they’re really about controlling the movement of labour.

So, corrupt, authoritarian and discriminatory: just right for Theresa May and the rest of the Coalition then!