The KGB Model of State Subversion

Someone tweeted this part of an interview with an ex-KGB agent, Yuri Bezmenov, from 1984. Bezmenov defected to Canada in 1970.

Back then the Soviet Union was committed to spreading the ideology of Marxism-Leninism throughout the world using these techniques called Ideological Subversion or Active Measures, Psychological Warfare has four stages. Espionage forms only a minor part of this process.
The goal is to "change the perception of reality to such an extent that despite the abundance of information, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions [in their own interests]".

This occurs in four stages.

1. Demoralization. 15-20 years. A propaganda and disinformation campaign aimed at students that contravenes the values of the country. The result is that "exposure to true information does not matter anymore. A person who is demoralised is unable to assess true information." Even if the demoralised person is presented with clear documentary evidence that their view is wrong, they will not refuse to believe. 
2. Destabilization. 2-5 years. The focus shifts from individuals to subverting state essentials: economy, foreign relations, defence. Politicians make extravagant promises.  
3. Crisis. 6 weeks. A violent change of structure. 
4. Normalization. Indefinite. The new "Big Brother" regime exerts itself, crushing the demoralised citizens. 

Note that Bezmenov says that the demoralisation phase of the KGB program in the USA is already complete. "Most of it is done by Americans to Americans, thanks to lack of moral standards."

Bezmenov suggests that aim of Soviet operations was to destabilise the free enterprise system. But we need to look at the history of the collapse of economic liberalism the first time around. Economic liberalism is inherently unstable because it creates a super-rich class who misuse the excessive wealth and power they have to subvert democracy. The Soviets cannot take responsibility for the 1929 stock market crash or the Great Depression.

Bezmenov implicates socially liberal educators. Educated people score higher on the openness trait of the Big Five psychometric test and all people who have high scores on this trait tend to be more socially liberal. Bezmenov also implicates civil rights defenders in destabilisation.

One needs to emphasise in response to Bezmenov that the Marxism-Leninism take over of the USA never happened. Indeed, by the time he was giving this interview, in 1984, the USA was moving decisively to the right economically and it continued to do so until Trump. Bezmenov is in fact quite off-beam in his assessment of US politics and social attitudes.

The methodology he describes however is interesting because what we see in 2019 is Americans refusing to believe authentic, documentary evidence of Trump's misuse of power and his subversion of the economy, foreign relations, and defence for his own ends - sometimes in ways that seem consistent with him furthering his own interests and sometimes seemingly at random (though in ways that play to his base).

Last week it emerged that the combined intelligence community is unanimous about the fact that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump. And that they have presented a classified briefing to the Senate, including authentic documentary evidence, that this was so and that the Ukraine meddling story was a Russian disinformation campaign being promoted by the Russia intelligence community.

Despite the unanimous voice of the FBI, CIA, NSA, and a dozen other intelligence agencies, Republican senators, at the urging of Trump, launched an investigation into the subject of the Russian disinformation campaign. The President and key members of the Republican Party are dismissing the unified voice of the US intelligence community despite the evidence. They seem "unable to assess true information."

At the same time, despite clear and overwhelming evidence of Trump's repeated and ongoing misuse of power for personal gain, half of America and all of the Republican Party are denying that anything untoward happened. The testimony of career foreign service officials made no difference at all.

Although Bezmenov was clearly over-estimating the impact of Soviet Marxist-Leninist propaganda, we are in fact in just the same state of demoralisation as he describes, but with respect to President Trump's agenda and his support amongst the alt-right.

What happened in the USA was not what Bezmenov predicted. Rather it was a replay of the collapse of classical liberalism because of the chaos caused by the super-rich and their irresistible desire to manipulate things for their own ends. The 2019 version of economic liberalism sees billionaires battling it out for control of the government in the open, with the ability to outspend all their rivals combined. Bloomberg, a former Republican, entered the democratic primary by spending $30 million on advertising. The other candidates have raised considerably less than this in total, let alone for advertising.

It's also clear that Russia has also been at work in the UK, especially in the process of the UK leaving the EU (aka Brexit). They seem to have part funded the Leave campaign and to have facilitated a process of demoralisation including 20 years of fake news about the EU.

The Institute for Global Affairs, London School of Economics, released a report in 2017: Soviet Subversion, Disinformation and Propaganda: How the West Fought Against It. An Analytic History, with Lessons for the Present. This provides more details as well as counter-measures that the US Govt developed to combat active measures. They point out that modern Russian propaganda is no longer ideological; it is distributed between state actors and various other interests and it is opportunistic. And there is no concerted effort to combat it.



The full, hour long interview is here.

The Impeachment of Trump in a Nutshell

I've been following the impeachment hearings in the USA with interest. They are not only inherently interesting and political drama of the highest calibre, but they are a welcome distraction from the sewer of British politics and electioneering.

The information coming out is complex and in order to organise it I started a diagram of how the players are connected.

click to embiggen.

This diagram is still a bit messy, but it does help me to see certain things. I say "in a nutshell" but it's a big nut. I'll keep working on the diagram and update it as and when I can.

Here is the story as I understand it.

Joe Biden was instrumental in removing corrupt Prosecutor General Shokin from office. Shokin wanted revenge and so floated the story that he had just been about to open an investigation into Burisma and Biden's son Hunter who was a fig-leaf on the board. His replacement Lutsenko did investigate Burisma, but found nothing. He supported Shokin's allegations and helped to spread them to the US via various channels: a journalist named John Solomon, Paul Manafort, and the President's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who met with both Shokin and Lutsenko.

Manafort was Trump's campaign manager. He formerly worked on Ukraine President Yanukovych's campaign and when this came out he was forced to resign (because of corruption) and fled to Russia. Later he was convicted of financial crimes and is still in jail and facing further indictments.

As well as his connections to corrupt government officials, Giuliani has been cultivating business interests in Ukraine via Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. These two were involved in a number of business deals including the ironically named Fraud Guarantee which has no customers and provides no actual services, and thus has no bone fide income, yet paid Giuliani $500,000 to provide legal services. Parnas and Fruman are charged with campaign finance violations after they channeled Russian money to Trump's campaign via fake intermediaries. Foreign political donations are illegal in the USA. Parnas has agreed to testify to Congress although I don't think he is scheduled yet.

Another story, possibly originating from Putin (who spoke about it in a 2017 press conference) was circulating that it was Ukraine who hacked the DNC server and meddled in the election. Though this story is confused because they are supposed to have intervened on Clinton's side but all the leaks were damaging to Clinton. The hacking was interference in favour of Trump, who subsequently won the election (although he lost the popular vote). Also the US intelligence community conclusively proved that is was Russia that had hacked the server. The idea is that a physical DNC server was somehow smuggled out of the US and is being hidden in Ukraine.

The Biden story made its way to Trump. He put two and two together and made five. Trump saw two opportunities. Firstly he could hurt his main political rival, Joe Biden. Secondly, he could cast doubt on the work of the US intelligence community (who he felt were working against him) and exculpate his friend and ally Vladimir Putin. He decided to use his the weight of the office of president and the apparatus of state to force the new and inexperienced Ukraine president Volodimir Zelensky to publicly open investigations into the Bidens and the server. This would achieve both aims.

It's possible that Trump believed the stories to be true, but even so, he was clearly abusing his power in choosing to take this action, whether or not it succeeded.

Trump's first problem was the Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovich. She was competent, intelligent, and actively fighting corruption. She had implicated the head of the anti-corruption unit of the Prosecutor General's office, Nazar Kholonitsky, in witness tampering (they bugged his fish tank). Yovanovich was publically calling for his removal and prosecution.

Rather than simply recally Yovanovich, as he could have done, Trump allowed Giuliani to cook up a smear campaign against her. Her exemplary record and character notwithstanding, Yovanovich, who had served in active war zones and been shot at in the course of her duties, was smeared by Lutsenko, which was repeated by Giuliani, lawyers for the President DiGenova and Toensing (picked up by Fox News), and by Trump Jr. Finally she was smeared by Trump just before he removed her from her role and again while she was giving testimony to Congress (thus committing the federal crime of witness tampering).

Yovanovich was replaced by William Taylor a man of impeccable record and character. Although he was named Chargé d'affaires rather than Ambassador (the post remains unfilled). Taylor's appointment was a smoke screen as he soon came to realise. He took up the regular role of representing the US's interests in the Ukraine. However, there was another White House team at work in Ukraine, seemingly managed by Giuliani.

Three WH officials operated an alternative mission to Ukraine. Ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland bought his post with a $1 million donation to the Trump campaign. The hotelier has no political experience. He was teamed the Secretary of Energy, Rick Perry, and the Special Envoy to Ukraine, Kurt Volker. They affectionately referred to themselves as the "three amigos". The trio were charged by Donald Trump to put pressure on Zelensky to publicly support Trump by announcing investigations into Biden and the mythical server. Giuliani was their line manager, but SOndland at least spoke directly with Trump about this project.

In a series of meetings they conveyed Trump's message that US support was contingent on support for Trump's witch hunt to Zelensky and his top officials. On offer in payment for this compliance was a public meeting in the White House for Zelensky (which would help bolster his support and legitimise his presidency). Trump has often publicly supported his allies such as Kim, Putin, and Erdogan in this way.

Mike Pence was also roped into delivering the ultimatum. He claims ignorance of the machinations, but this hardly seems credible. If he did not know then he is incompetent. Zelensky, faced with multiple White House Officials bullying him had to play along. But he could not easily capitulate to the US without a backlash from Russia and from his own people. He was in a serious bind and stalled for time.

Seemingly Trump did not feel enough pressure was being brought to bear on Zelensky so he had his Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney, intervene in the Office of Budget Management to hold up financial aide to Ukraine. Zelensky did not know about this during the infamous phone call, but he was already under considerable pressure from Trump's goons. The hold on the aide was made known to Ukraine, who were agreeing to do what was asked, but not actually doing anything. Zelensky was trapped and agreed to make the required announcement, but still stalled.

Finally a whistleblower who heard about the call and some of the machinations going on, reported this to their boss. The complaint was illegally withheld from Congress, but eventually released and impeachment inquiry announced within days. At this point, the aide to Ukraine was released and Zelensky escaped from the trap Trump had set for him. However, he was still compelled to support Trump publicly, he is still under Trump's thumb and having serious problems at home. At the same time the call was moved to a high security server set up for matters of national security in a rather inept attempt at a cover up.

As pressure mounted on the President in the form of openly leaked excerpts of secret depositions in the impeachment hearings, Mulvaney went on national television and confessed that they had been trying to bribe Ukraine (by demanding investigations into Biden and the mythical server) and asserted that this was simply the norm in foreign policy. "Get over it". This has caused an ongoing rift with top White House lawyer, Pat Cipollone. There has been no coherent message from the White House.

The impeachment hearings continue and the Congress are still taking depositions in private.

Sondland is the weak link of the White House goons. His testimony to date could well leave him open to perjury charges as its apparent he knew much more than he is saying - he was fully involved and fully informed, even he is was not experienced enough to know he was breaking the law. Ignorance is not a legal defence. If you watch no other public hearing, watch Sondland's testimony on Wed 20th. He had personal phone calls with President Trump about his clandestine mission in Ukraine. Weirdly he had them on an unsecured line in a country where Russia routinely monitors communications, and with Trump speaking so loudly that others could hear the whole conversation.

Sondland is going to have to betray Trump or face jail time. And this may weaken Trump enough open the floodgates. 

The way I read it, Trump is guilty of abusing his power in the form of bribery to seek foreign interference in the 2020 election. Of course the call notes so far released are clear evidence of this, but the weight of it is in the actions of his goons in Ukraine. He is also guilty of obstruction of Congress for refusing to comply with lawful subpoenas and for blocking others from complying with lawful subpoenas. And he is guilty of obstruction of justice in the form of witness tampering. All are impeachable offenses. However, as we know, he is also guilty of obstruction of justice in the Mueller Inquiry.

It seems to me that many of the people involved have criminal liability including Giuliani. Interesting just a few days he "joked" that he had insurance in case Trump did not remain loyal to him. I do not believe for a second that this was a joke. It was a threat.

It seems clear to me that Pence, Pompeo, and Barr all knew was was going on. Mulvaney was probably involved in the strategy. They are all complicit. And it's no wonder that the GOP are fighting so hard to undermine the credibility of the impeachment inquiry. Knowingly supporting a corrupt President is hard to sell to voters. If they fail to dismiss the charges they are all going down with Trump. Indeed it seems likely that, if they fail, Trump would consider them his enemies and make a point of taking them down with him.

Many more Trump aides are looking at criminal indictment (joining the long list of criminals that Trump has associated with over the years).

Last week Trump was found guilty of misappropriating and misusing funds from his charity for personal gain. It is now a matter of public record that he is corrupt. Trump is presently being investigated by the Southern District of New York for fraud and is likely to spend the rest of his life in court if not in prison once he leaves office. He has been fighting very hard to prevent his tax returns from being released and we can only assume that this is because they are incriminating in some way. His business empire is crumbling now that his father is no longer able to bail him out. The transparent attempt to subvert the emoluments clause in holding the G7 at this own resort failed, which leaves Doral losing vast sums of money for Trump.

The institution of democracy and the validity of the Constitution of the USA hang in the balance. But the Founders anticipated this moment. They gave the three branches of government equal status and power. It will all turn on whether Republican senators back Trump and corruption or back the Constitution and take their bitter medicine.

The British Elite Are Terrified of Corbyn

This comparison of two stories from the Express says it all.

One party want to raise the minimum wage to £10.50. The other party wants to raise the minimum wage to £10.00. One is hailed as a boon for workers while the other is derides as destroying jobs. Logic suggests that the higher amount ought to draw fire for hurting jobs, since the argument is that higher wages suppresses job creation.

But the paper does not follow logic. In Sept 2019 it rails against £10.00 proposed by Labour, but in Nov 2019 it hails the Tory proposed increase to £10.50.

This is nonsense. This is fake news. This is misinformation. The "free press" may be free, but they are liars. What the hell do we do about this?