Category Archives: Russia

UN Report: Extermination Camps, Syria

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Syrian victim of torture

UN panel documents ‘extermination’ of detainees in Syria

GENEVA —International investigators say several thousands of detainees have been executed, beaten to death or otherwise left to die during Syria’s civil war, in policies that appear to amount to extermination under international law.

The U.N.-backed Commission of Inquiry on Syria presented a 25-page report Monday on killings of detainees by President Bashar Assad’s government. It also cites execution policies by radical groups like the Islamic State and al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front.

The report is drawn from 621 interviews conducted between March 2011 and November 2015. Investigators say they are short of enough evidence to provide more specific estimates of killings of those detained.

The report seeks “targeted sanctions” against unspecified individuals or groups responsible for such crimes. The investigators lamented inaction by the U.N. Security Council about possibly launching criminal probes.

***

VoA: The U.N. report accused Damascus of starving the detainees or leaving them to die with untreated wounds and disease. It said Assad’s government has “engaged in the multiple commissions of crimes, amounting to a systematic and widespread attack against a civilian population.”

The report covered the period from March 2011 to November 2015 — the first 4½ years of the ongoing Syrian civil war.

Investigators

The U.N. investigators said they believed that “high-ranking officers” and other government officials knew of the deaths and of bodies being buried in mass graves.

The special inquiry into the Syrian treatment of its civilian population called for the U.N. Security Council to impose “targeted sanctions” against Syrian civilian and military officials complicit in the deaths and torture, but did not name them.

The investigators called for referral of the cases against the suspected war criminals to prosecutors at the International Criminal Court at The Hague in the Netherlands. Their names are being kept in a U.N. safe in Geneva.

***

BBC: Their report describes the situation of detainees as an “urgent and large-scale crisis of human rights protection”.

Survivors’ accounts “paint a terrifying picture of the magnitude of the violations taking place,” it said.

The civil war in Syria has claimed an estimated 250,000 lives so far.

About 4.6 million people have fled Syria, while another 13.5 million are said to be in need of humanitarian assistance inside the country.

Extract from February 2016 report for UN Human Rights Council

Main detention facilities controlled by the General Intelligence Directorate include Interior Security branch 251 and Investigations branch 285 located in Kafr Soussa, west of central Damascus.

Former detainees described inhuman conditions of detention resulting in frequent custodial deaths.

Officers were observed giving orders to subordinates on methods of torture to be used on detainees.

Corpses were transported by other prisoners through the corridors, sometimes to be kept in the toilets, before being removed from the branch.

Evidence obtained indicates that the superiors of the facilities were regularly informed of the deaths of detainees under their control. Prisoners were transferred to military hospitals before they were buried in mass graves.

Both government and rebel sides are accused of violence against people they detain, the investigators say, but the vast majority are being held by government agencies.

A pattern of arrests since March 2011 targeted Syrian civilians thought to be loyal to the opposition, or simply insufficiently loyal to the government.

Senior government figures clearly knew about and approved of the abuse, says the report entitled Out of Sight: Out of Mind: Deaths in Detention in the Syrian Arab Republic.

Most deaths in detention were documented as occurring in locations controlled by the Syrian intelligence services.

“Government officials intentionally maintained such poor conditions of detention for prisoners as to have been life-threatening, and were aware that mass deaths of detainees would result,” UN human rights investigator Sergio Pinheiro said in a statement.

“These actions, in pursuance of a state policy, amount to extermination as a crime against humanity.”

Torture ‘routine’

The report also accused opposition forces of killing captured Syrian soldiers.

Both so-called Islamic State militants and another group, al-Nusra Front, had committed crimes against humanity and war crimes.

IS, the report said, was known to illegally hold a large, unknown number of detainees for extended periods in multiple locations.

It had set up detention centres in which torture and execution are “routine”.

Detainees were frequently executed after unauthorised courts issued a death sentence.

Extract from February 2016 report for UN Human Rights Council

In 2014 Syrian authorities informed a woman from Rif Damascus that her husband and two of her sons were dead, all known to have been held in a detention facility controlled by the Military Security.

The family obtained death certificates from Tishreen military hospital, stating that the cause of death of all the three victims was heart attack.

A third son remains unaccounted for.

The Kremlin’s War Propaganda

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Many in the West, from leaders to citizens are often freaked out at what is published on tens of thousands of websites including media sites. One can never know the extent of propaganda much less which are the nuggets of truth. When it comes to Russia, they are professional trollers, ambassadors of information warfare. Verification of information, checks on people, dates and locations are required. Admittedly, this is almost impossible due to a aggressive news cycle that never ends, events occur too fast. Yet, advancing propaganda is done at a peril to false information. Below will describe this dynamic.

Another reference to an article is also posted below that does explain Ukraine and Crimea demonstrating the depths of concocted and false information.

MoscowTimes: Several years ago, I traveled to the taiga in the republic of Altai with a former KGB officer who had worked in military propaganda during the war in Afghanistan. While we drank tea beside the campfire one night, he described in detail the principles of military propaganda. Today, I see that the Kremlin is implementing all of those principles in its information campaign surrounding the Ukrainian crisis.

In authoritarian countries like Russia, independent information is losing out to mass propaganda, and whole populations have become victims of brainwashing.

The main objective of war propaganda is to mobilize the support of the population — or in the case of Ukraine, an expansionist campaign. It should also demoralize the enemy and attract the sympathy and support of third countries. Widespread support among Russians for the military operations in Crimea and its ultimate annexation indicate that the Kremlin has succeeded in its first two objectives but has gained little ground on the third.

Moscow accomplished this by using seven basic methods:

First, it is necessary to convince the general population that the government is acting correctly and that the enemy is guilty of fomenting the crisis. That is why the Kremlin places the full blame for the entire Ukrainian crisis on the Maidan protesters and what it calls the Western-backed Ukrainian opposition. Moscow conspicuously leaves out the fact that former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych himself provoked the crisis by ruining the country’s economy, double-dealing with the European Union and engaging in corrupt deals while also permitting extreme corruption among members of his family and inner circle.

To incite hatred for the enemy and deflect attention away from Yanukovych’s flaws, the Kremlin says the new government in Kiev, dominated by the main opposition groups, is linked to everything that is despised and vilified in Russia: fascists, extremists, the U.S. and the West in general. It is necessary to paint the Western enemy as the aggressor.

Second, the Kremlin created myths about the terrible persecutions of the Russian-speaking population in Ukraine, particularly in Crimea. Federation Council speaker Valentina Matviyenko even came up with a story about victims of such aggression that nobody has been able to corroborate, saying there were casualties among locals in Simferopol from a Kiev-backed attempt to take over a police building. The claim was never verified.

The main idea behind such claims is to find just the right balance between truth and fiction. Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels once said that if you add one-fourth of the truth to three-fourths of a lie, the people will believe you. Hitler and Stalin applied the principles and techniques of war propaganda on a national scale.

Third, the enemy must be demonized. Just about anything will work, from alleging that one of the leaders of the opposition, acting Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, is a Scientologist, or showing medical records that another leader was treated for a psychological disorder. NTV and other state-controlled television stations have been at the forefront in spreading these smear campaigns.

If an actual radical or nationalist can be found among the enemy’s ranks, such as Right Sector leader Dmitry Yarosh, this is like manna from heaven for propagandists. Although they represent fringe factions, they are turned into the face of the enemy. The entire opposition, which in reality includes a wide range of moderate forces,  is presented as “fascist” and “neo-Nazi.”

Fourth, the authorities always disguise their aggressive actions as a humanitarian mission. “We have to protect defenseless Russians at the hands of fascists. They are in danger of being beaten and killed,” propagandists say.

Fifth, the Kremlin has attributed its own cynical methods to the enemy. For example, if Moscow intends to annex part of a brotherly, neighboring country, it must first accuse the U.S. and the authorities in Kiev of striving for world domination and hegemony, while depriving Russia of its ancestral territories and its righftful sphere of influence in its own backyard.

Sixth, the authorities must present all of their actions as purely legal and legitimate, and the actions of the enemy as gross violations of international law. That is why President Vladimir Putin refers to the “legitimate and inherent right of Crimeans to self-determination” — the same right he strongly denied to the people of Chechnya and Kosovo.

According to this logic, the parliament’s unanimous vote to strip Yanukovych of his authority on Feb. 22 was illegal, while the referendum for secession in Crimea — which violated the Ukrainian Constitution — is completely legal and legitimate.

Seventh, the success of war propaganda depends entirely on its totalitarian approach. The authorities must shut down every independent media outlet capable of identifying and exposing the propagandists’ lies. That is why Ukraine blocked Russian television. It also explains why Moscow is cracking down on Dozhd television and why it recently replaced the head of Lenta.ru with a ­Kremlin-friendly editor-in-chief.

Information warfare is well known throughout the world and is used by all leading countries. The U.S. government successfully used the same principles when it bombed Yugoslavia and invaded Grenada, Panama and Iraq. The difference, of course, is that the U.S. government does not own mainstream media outlets, so their ability to manipulate the truth is less effective.

Take, for example, the Iraqi invasion in 2003. Within a relatively short time period after the invasion was initiated, leading Western media went the complete other direction by criticizing the U.S. government for misleading the public on the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that were never found. This self-correction process does not occur in Russia, where the main media outlets are state-controlled.

In authoritarian countries like Russia, independent information is losing out to mass propaganda, and whole populations have become victims of brainwashing. Politicians speak about the need for peace even while stirring up war hysteria. And that means the likelihood of war is far closer and more real than many might imagine.

Vladimir Ryzhkov, a State Duma deputy from 1993 to 2007, is a political analyst.

*** Ukraine war points all the way to Putin, even while he played a role of a victim.

dve-bs

In February 2015, pro-Russian separatists aided by Russian troops took the strategic railway hub of Debaltseve in Eastern Ukraine, forcing Ukrainian forces to withdraw.

This investigation intends to prove the decision to take Debaltseve and close the “Debaltseve pocket” was taken at the highest level of the Russian state. Explaining Russian leadership’s actions requires a look back to the international situation in late 2014 — early 2015

(full summary with proof and photos)

After Angela Merkel canceled the Normandy format meeting in Astana and Vladimir Putin wasn’t invited to the 70th anniversary of Auschwitz liberation, a major escalation started in Donbass (mid-January 2015). The main fighting took place around Debaltseve, which is a major transportation hub, giving Donetsk a railway link with Luhansk and Russia. Russia’s 5th and 6th Separate Tank Brigades were proven to have taken part in the battle. During the battle, a serviceman of the 6th brigade Evgeniy Usov got a shrapnel wound and arrived to Moscow’s military hospital named after Burdenko no later than February 14, 2015. No later than February 21, 2015, he was visited by Russia’s Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu, who awarded Usov with a watch bearing a Russia’s Ministry of Defense logo.

We believe the facts mentioned above prove that the decision to escalate the conflict in Ukraine and attack Debaltseve was taken in the highest ranks of the Russian authorities. Given that the Debaltseve offensive started while Russia’s and Ukraine’s presidents were conducting negotiations, it is hard to believe this decision could have been taken by anyone than Russia’s president Vladimir Putin. Such an initiative from Russia’s Minister of Defense could have severely hampered Putin’s negotiation efforts, which is why we believe that the decision to attack Debaltseve and close a pocket around Ukrainian forces was personally taken by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. This decision was a reaction to the actions of the Normandy Four and was used as leverage against Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko and leaders of the West. Full article here.

The DoJ Hacked, DHS Files Compromised

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Hackers leaked DHS staff records, 200GB of files are in their hands

A hacker accessed an employee’s email account at the Department of Justice and stole 200GB of files including records of 9,000 DHS staffers and 20,000 FBI employees.

SecurityAffairs: Yesterday, the data related a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) staff directory were leaked online, a Twitter account shared the link to an archive containing 9,355 names.

The responsible for the data leakage first contacted Motherboard to share the precious archive.

Each record of the DHS Staff Directory includes name, title, email address, and phone number.

Going deep in the archive it is possible to note that it includes information of DHS security specialists, program analysts, InfoSec and IT and also 100 employees with a title “Intelligence”.

The same Twitter account has announced later the imminent release of an additional data dump containing 20,000 FBI employees.

DHS firewall

Are the records authentic?

Motherboard that obtained the archive reached the operations center of the FBI, and in one case the individual who pick up the phone presented himself with the same name associated with that number in the archive. A similar circumstance occurred with a DHS employee, Motherboard so confirmed that the information is legit.

Which is the source of data?

According to Motherboard, a hacker accessed an employee’s email account at the Department of Justice. As proof, the hacker sent the email message to Motherboard’s contributor Joseph Cox directly from the compromised account.

“A hacker, who wishes to remain anonymous, plans to dump the apparent names, job titles, email addresses and phone numbers of over 20,000 supposed Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) employees, as well as over 9,000 alleged Department of Homeland Security (DHS) employees, Motherboard has learned.” wrote Cox in a blog post.

“The hacker also claims to have downloaded hundreds of gigabytes of data from a Department of Justice (DOJ) computer, although that data has not been published.”

The hacker first tried to use the compromised credentials to access a DOJ staff portal, but without success, then he called the department directly and obtained the access through social engineering techniques.

The hacker accessed the DoJ intranet where the database is hosted, then he downloaded around the, out of 1TB that he had access to.

“I HAD access to it, I couldn’t take all of the 1TB,” the hacker told to MotherBoard.

The hackers confirmed his intention to release the rest of the data in the near future.Which is the motivation behind the attack?

It is not clear at the moment why the hacker released the archive, surely it’s not financially motivated. The hacker only left the following message when has leaked the data-

“This is for Palestine, Ramallah, West Bank, Gaza, This is for the child that is searching for an answer…” which are the verses of “Long Live Palestine”

The only certainty right now is that similar incidents are becoming too frequent, apparently the government staff is not properly trained on the main cyber threats or the hacking technique. Similar incidents show the lack of knowledge on the most basic security measures.
Whenever a hacker leaks so sensitive data, I think the number of his peers who had access to the same information with the intent to use them in other attacks or resell them, perhaps to a foreign government.

Pierluigi Paganini

*** As a reminder, in 2014 a much more dangerous hack intrusion happened at the DHS:

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) alerted critical infrastructure operators to recent breaches within the sector – including the hack of a U.S. public utility that was vulnerable to brute-force attacks.

This week, the Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT), a subgroup of DHS, revealed information about the incidents in a newsletter (PDF).

According to ICS-CERT, industrial control systems were compromised in two, new incidents: one, involving the hack of an unnamed public utility, and another scenario where a control system server was remotely accessed by a “sophisticated threat actor.”

After investigating the public utility hack, ICS-CERT found that the system’s authentication mechanism was susceptible to brute-force attacks – where saboteurs routinely run through a list of passwords or characters to gain access to targeted systems. The control system used a simple password mechanism, the newsletter revealed.

In

34 Groups Connected to Militant Islam

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UN chief: 34 groups now allied to Islamic State extremists

UNITED NATIONS (AP)— Thirty-four militant groups from around the world had reportedly pledged allegiance to the Islamic State extremist group as of mid-December — and that number will only grow in 2016, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a report Friday.

Ban said IS poses “an unprecedented threat,” because of its ability to persuade groups from countries like the Philippines, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Libya and Nigeria to pledge their allegiance.

He said U.N. member states should also prepare for an increase in attacks by IS associated groups traveling to other countries to launch attacks and develop networks.

“The recent expansion of the ISIL sphere of influence across west and north Africa, the Middle East and south and southeast Asia demonstrates the speed and scale at which the gravity of the threat has evolved in just 18 months,” Ban said, using another abbreviation for the group.

Adding to the threat, IS is “the world’s wealthiest terrorist organization,” Ban said, citing estimates the group generated $400-$500 million from oil and oil products in 2015, despite an embargo.

According to the U.N. mission in Iraq, cash taken from bank branches located in provinces under IS control totaled $1 billion. The mission also estimates that a tax on trucks entering IS controlled-territory generates nearly $1 billion a year, he said.

The extremist group captured large swathes of Iraq and Syria less than two years ago and despite international efforts to oust them, Ban said IS continues to maintain its presence in both countries and is expanding to other regions.

But the report and vote was in November of 2015:

UnitedNations: The Security Council determined today that the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant/Sham (ISIL/ISIS) constituted an “unprecedented” threat to international peace and security, calling upon Member States with the requisite capacity to take “all necessary measures” to prevent and suppress its terrorist acts on territory under its control in Syria and Iraq.

Unanimously adopting resolution 2249 (2015), the Council unequivocally condemned the terrorist attacks perpetrated by ISIL — also known as Da’esh — on 26 June in Sousse, on 10 October in Ankara, on 31 October over the Sinaï Peninsula, on 12 November in Beirut and on 13 November in Paris, among others.  It expressed its deepest condolences to the victims and their families, as well as to the people and Governments of Tunisia, Turkey, Russian Federation, Lebanon and France.

The 15-member body condemned in the strongest terms ISIL’s gross, systematic and widespread abuses of human rights, as well as its destruction and looting of cultural heritage.  Those who committed, or were otherwise responsible for, terrorist acts or human rights violations must be held accountable.  By other terms, the Council urged Member States to intensify their efforts to stem the flow of foreign terrorist fighters into Iraq and Syria, and to prevent and suppress the financing of terrorism.

Following the vote, nearly all Council members took the floor to decry the “barbaric” attacks and hateful world view espoused by ISIL, reaffirming their support in both stemming the threat and bringing perpetrators to justice.  In an echo of the sentiments voiced by many around the table Spain’s representative declared:  “Today, we are all French, Russian, Malian and Arab,” adding:  “It is time to act with a French, Russian, Malian and Arab heart.”  The Council had a duty to guarantee the values and principles of the United Nations, and all must close ranks to vanquish terrorism, he stressed.

France’s representative, recalling that Da’esh had perpetrated an act of war against his country on 13 November, said today’s vote signalled recognition of the threat’s exceptional nature.  The fight against terrorism could only be effective if combined with a political transition that would eliminate Da’esh, he said, adding that France had obtained activation of the European Union’s mutual solidarity clause.

The Russian Federation’s representative said today’s unanimous vote was a step towards the creation of a broad anti-terrorism front aimed at eradicating root causes.  That also had been the aim of a Russian draft presented to the Council on 30 September, he said, describing attempts by some to block his delegation’s efforts as politically short-sighted.

Also speaking today were representatives of China, United States, Nigeria, Lithuania, Jordan, New Zealand, Chile, Angola, Venezuela and the United Kingdom.

Putin’s Hidden Agents in ISIS

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It is about a global power-ranking. When Russia and Iran team up to destabilized Syria, refugees, millions of them flee. Destination for the refugees, The West. The West is forced to accommodate millions, pay for them, house them, educated them and provide medical care, breaking the financial structure. How come Russia has not taken any refugees or Iran or any country in the Middle East? They already know. Now the challenge for the West is to have aggressive leadership by the United States, not until 2017 will that be realized or will it?

The KGB/FSB has an agenda, it is well underway…..As you read below, submit your thoughts.

NewAmerican: On December 6, 2015, in a televised interview with the Ukrainian news program ТСН Тиждень (TSN Tyzhden, Ukrainian for TSN Weekly), a former FSB officer admitted that Russia is behind ISIS while ostensibly opposing it.

Former FSB officer codenamed “Yevgeniy” (shown, back toward camera) revealed that Russia’s FSB security services was, at the very least, complicit in the Paris attacks carried out by ISIS, and most shockingly that the FSB was involved in the creation of ISIS, which it influences through its agents who staff it as well as other related Islamic terrorist organizations.

The FSB, which stands for Federal Security Service in Russian, was organized in 1995 as the successor to the Soviet KGB. After the KGB was officially dissolved in 1991, it was briefly renamed the AFB (Agency for Federal Security), which was reorganized that same year as the MB (Ministry of Security). In 1993, the MB became the FSK (Federal Counter-Intelligence Service), which was again reorganized into its present form and name as the FSB on April 12, 1995.

Yevgeniy reportedly specialized in both terrorist organizations and counter-terrorism activities within the FSB. Defecting for personal reasons rather than ideological, Yevgeniy told TSN’s Andriy Tsaplienko that among the vast number of refugees entering Europe were certain Russian operatives whose task it was to infiltrate the Muslim communities. Financed by the FSB, these undercover Muslim operatives would rise to prominence within their respective communities, in turn providing the Kremlin with valuable intelligence of Muslim activates in Europe and allowing Moscow to exert influence over the communities. More here.

****   Russia's Hidden Influence Agents Within ISIS (Pt. 1)

WikiLeaks Forum:
Part one of this series looked at the historical manipulation of Islamists by Russian security services. Jihadists were armed and trained to fight by the FSB and GRU in places like Georgia and Nargono-Karabakh. Domestically, jihadists were infiltrated by the FSB into nationalist separatist movements in Dagestan and Chechnya, effectively painting those movements as religious radicals rather than freedom fighters battling an oppressive regime in Moscow.
Related Posts

Part two looked at a few specific examples of Chechen and Georgian jihadists who are probably witting or unwitting FSB assets, and how they have become power players within ISIS. The reasons for this are twofold and represent a re-creation of the same strategy used in Chechnya. Chechen jihadists helped to re-contextualize the Syrian rebels, Islamizing them in the world’s eyes. By doing this, they also acted as a spoiler force, preventing the CIA from being able to train and arm many Syrian rebels because of the presence of so many jihadi groups, a draw for many of the moderates in the region.
This article will take a look at ISIS propaganda, or what the world’s intelligence services would call information operations or psychological operations, and ask the question as to whether there is a hidden hand behind these propaganda videos.

Wahhabywood

The allure that ISIS holds for young jihadis and the fear they inspire in the rest of the world stems not from the actual combat prowess of the organization, but from its image. That image is carefully crafted, and much has been written about the high production values of the propaganda ISIS puts out. Their videos display dehumanized Islamic warriors in black masks, fully devoted to the cause of creating an Islamic caliphate. They never sleep, they never tire, they will conquer the entire world, bathing it in the blood of infidels and installing some kind of Muslim mojo hocus pocus 7th-century sharia law, or so we are told.

ISIS represents the darkest nightmares the Western world has about the Middle East, Arabs, and Muslims. The Islamic State represents a temporally displaced land of barbarians that has no place in the modern world. These nightmares are carefully cultivated by ISIS in slick propaganda films that show a deep awareness of liberal Western cultural values; the images and actions in these films are often specifically targeting Western audiences. ISIS’s reputation in the Middle East, much of it gained by way of their propaganda, is so profound, this author has been told that when an ISIS convoy rolls up to a village, all they need to do is blink their headlights and the locals will completely abandon their homes without a fight.

Their propaganda is good. Maybe too good.

ISIS propaganda targets Western liberal sensitivities in a very deliberate manner. There are many ways they do this, but four stand out quite clearly.

1. Mass executions, especially of Christians.
ISIS thrives on the blood bath of mass executions. No one is spared. Shia Muslims, children, ordinary civilians, so-called infidels and apostates, suspected traitors, Kurds, it hardly matters to ISIS. They are also known to carry out summary beheadings when they arrive in a village of the first person they can get their hands on just to prove that they are now in charge. However, it is the deliberate mass murder of Christians in Syria, Iraq, and Libya that is clearly designed to antagonize Western populations.

2. Sexual slavery
Openly flaunting sexual slavery is another propaganda point for ISIS, one that intentionally provokes Western values, but arguably human values across the world. Murder is one thing, but holding slave auctions in Mosul and selling off 13-year-old Yezidi girls or handing them out as gifts to ISIS fighters is particularly vile. ISIS is quite proud of this and brags about it in videos and public statements; their brand of sharia law also openly endorses it. This savage behavior deliberately provokes Westerners sensitive to gender issues.

3. Destruction of antiquities
The truth is that many Americans could care less about what happens in the Middle East. Arabs have been killing each other for hundreds of years and will continue to do so unabated. But even some of the most jaded people in the West get outraged at the destruction of antiquities. Following in the footsteps of the Taliban, who destroyed ancient Buddha statues, ISIS knows that their destruction of ancient Roman and Assyrian artifacts and structure will invite the ire of the world.

4. Targeting homosexuals
ISIS beheads and murders people at whim, but full-page spreads of professionally done photographs capturing ISIS tossing homosexual men from rooftops is something else entirely. Gay rights is an important issue in the West, and ISIS not only murders gays but makes sure that the entire world knows about it by recording these executions.
It is important to remember that none of these propaganda videos or pictures are released without permission from ISIS. We see what ISIS wants us to see. I am not cherry-picking the worst behavior of ISIS to present to our readers, I’m simply pointing out the images they want foremost in our minds. ISIS is baiting the Western world. Their end goal is also stated in the open: They want a coalition of Western nations to attack them.

Reflexive control

Reflexive control is a theory of psychological warfare designed to control enemy perceptions and has been studied and developed by Russian intelligence services for over 40 years. “Reflexive control is defined as a means of conveying to a partner or an opponent specially prepared information to incline him to voluntarily make the predetermined decision desired by the initiator of the action,” writes Timothy Thomas. Reflexive control involves studying the opposition’s decision-making process, then introducing socially, strategically, or politically loaded information into that process in order to influence it in a direction favorable to your objectives.

Russian defense analysts perceive America’s 1980s “Star Wars” or SDI program as a perfect example of reflexive control. According to the Russians, America knew that the USSR would respond to match horizontal and vertical proliferation of weapons, as well as the countermeasures to stop them. Therefore, America instituted the Star Wars program to trick the Soviet Union into investing in novel new weapons programs it could not afford, which then led to the crash of the Soviet economy. By doing this, we “compelled the enemy to act according to a plan favorable to the U.S.” (Thomas, 239).

By definition, reflexive control occurs when the controlling organ conveys (to the objective system) motives and reasons that cause it to reach the desired decision, the nature of which is maintained in strict secrecy. The decision itself must be made independently. A “reflex” itself involves the specific process of imitating the enemy’s reasoning or imitating the enemy’s possible behavior and causes him to make a decision unfavorable to himself (Thomas, 241).

In other words, once you understand how the enemy thinks, you then feed him information you know will cause him to reach an independent decision favoring your own strategy. In essence, you are using deception to trick the enemy, hoping that they will blunder into something that they wouldn’t attempt if they knew that they were being presented with loaded, and potentially false, information. While we are focused on Russian stratagems here, it may also be useful to reflect back of the deception tactics used by China as well, many of them derived from the period of the Warring States.

ISIS feeds the West loaded information

There is no proof that Russian intelligence has a hand in ISIS information/propaganda operations. However, considering what we have discussed thus far, this scenario should be taken seriously. ISIS is actively gaming the psychological makeup of Western audiences in order to provoke the United States and allied nations into a full-blown military confrontation with the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. If the hypothesis about Russian influence agents in ISIS is correct, and if they are participating in ISIS propaganda efforts, then we should ask why Russia would be interested in doing this to begin with.

The answer is fairly straightforward. Keeping America bogged down and preoccupied in the Middle East is of massive benefit to the Russian Federation. By goading America into another war in the Middle East, Russia has more opportunity to engage in military aggression in Ukraine, Dagestan, Chechnya, Georgia, Moldova, Akbazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and on and on throughout Russia’s near abroad. For sure, there would also be some more specific tactical and strategic goals, but in the general sense, the Gulf War III would help keep America off Russia’s back.

ISIS, and perhaps Russian intelligence, understands America’s future rationalizations for war very well. In the past we could justify war as being battles against communism or fascism for the preservation of the American way of life. Before that, more jingoistic narratives about manifest destiny were brought into play. But these justifications for war, racial or nationalistic, will have no place in future liberal Western nations. Instead wars will be justified as fights for gay rights, women’s rights, and other equality issues. One hypothetical example: Americans will be told that we have to invade Iran because gays are stoned to death or beheaded by the Iranian regime.

The Islamic State knows that there is no better way to terrify and incite Americans than to use mass executions, the murder of Christians, the use of sex slaves, the destruction of ancient relics, and the killing of homosexuals. ISIS is at war with Western consciousness, and it is a very deliberate effort.

Basically, we see Daesh, we see the Islamic State — especially in the West — we see it from the surface, which is the mix of their propaganda; their version of what they really do. You see the pictures of actual killings, slaughtering, beheadings, blowing up things, mixed with their propaganda, or mixed with the things which are not true. They are controlling whatever comes out of their area. For example, if you take the pictures and the images we have of the Islamic State, 99% are approved by their PR department. They give us pictures of all these lined-up Humvees, guys with guns, perfect afternoon light set in the desert. They have accepted the presence of a few photographers who are in the area, from AFP, Reuters, AP; the big agencies, no matter if they would be considered Zionists, masons, imperialists, infidel agencies — they are in their area and they had to swear allegiance and in most cases the office is directly controlling all the images before they are permitted to submit them or it’s made clear to them. They sort of tell them, ‘if you do something wrong which harms our reputation, you know what will happen to you. We know you; we will find you.’ So the images that are transferred through the agencies, all the big agencies, are images that have been approved by Daesh. And Daesh invites the photographers to their events.—Christoph Reuters

None of this proves that this effort is being led, sponsored by, or covertly influenced by Russian intelligence assets. ISIS seems quite capable of hiring contractors with technical expertise, from oil industry engineers to computer hackers. Also, it is not as hard to make professional-looking films as it was 10 or 20 years ago. A kid with a decent digital camera and a laptop with film-editing software can do a pretty good job at filmmaking. Perhaps ISIS has developed all of this methodology on their own, but I am far from the first person to be surprised by ISIS’s slick Madison Avenue-worthy propaganda.

There are far more questions than answers here. For example, what about the Baath party leadership cells that actually run ISIS? These old dogs are not suicidal by any means and are actually quite cunning. A coalition of Western states spearheading a third Gulf War seems like it would be counterproductive to their goals. Yet, it would be impossible to believe that a few influence agents within ISIS have completely hijacked their propaganda efforts away from the Baathists. Maybe they are getting something in return? One can only speculate. While the first two parts of this article give some solid evidence for the reader to ponder, part three is an extrapolation on the first two articles. We don’t know if Russian intelligence has a hand in ISIS propaganda.