New Eastern Outlook
by Vladimir Platov
With each passing day Great Britain is losing its posture of a proud international power since this state has become widely recognized for what it is – an obedient servant of Washington that is losing credibility at a record pace. Therefore, British authorities have been seeking ways to “achieve greatness” in most any “important” field. At the same time, they realize perfectly clear that, given the deepening economic and social crisis in the Kingdom, it could hardly aspire to achieve success in such areas of creative as the reconstruction of its image of a great industrial power, naval warfare champion or a flourishing cultural center. No wonder that over the last decade Britain’s focus was devoted to purely destructive activities, such establishing conditions for new conflicts around the globe and providing “assistance” to the White House in its quest for military and political interventions in the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Hong Kong, and the list goes on.
It’s no coincidence then that the White House advised London to establish a special unit within its military structure – the British Cyber Command, transferring up to 1500 officers under its command “for the starters”. One must note that Washington has already created its on special unit for cyberwarfare back in 2009. This unit goes under the name of United States Cyber Command, with its headquarters being located at the military base Fort Meade (Maryland).
According to The Guardian, the 77th brigade will formally come into being in April. The brigade will be carrying out covert operations in social networks exclusively, in an effort to spread disinformation and manipulate the population of certain countries, which should create “favorable conditions” for applying political pressure or executing of regime change scenarios in the strategically important regions of the world. Its headquarters will be located to the west of London in Newbury (Berkshire) while it’s official Insignia will be a famous badge of Chindits (a mythical god-like lion guarding temples in Myanmar and other countries in South-East Asia), that was used by a a British India ‘Special Force’ participated in the suppression of guerrilla Japanese troops deep in the forests of Southeast Asia.
The use of social networks to overthrow the unwanted regimes has been Washington’s modus operandi for decades now. This led to the creation of a whole industry of disinformation and public opinion manipulation. Events of the Arab Spring, countless color revolutions and the latest events in Ukraine can serve a perfect example of how and unstable socio-political and economic situation in a country can be exploited by Western intelligence agencies to a achieve a radical change in the sovereign governments of other states .
In Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Algeria, Jordan, Syria, Ukraine, and Hong Kong along with a number of other countries social networks have been used to coordinate the movement of protest groups, which allowed gathering a considerable number of protesters in designated areas. Back in 2011 the The Guardian reported the US Department of Defense was developing a special software the solely purpose of which would be manipulating social networks users into buying pro-American propaganda. This operation was codenamed Operation Earnest Voice. This software has been put to “good use” in Britain, the United States and other Western countries during the Ukraine crisis for mass distribution of misleading information about Russia. This operation went as far as attempting to rewrite the history of World War II, with the active participation of Polish and the Baltic states politicians.
The news on the creation of the 77th Brigade came short after the announcement made by the s lieutenant general Marshall Webb the Commander, NATO Special Operations Forces HQ on the need to improve counter-information efforts against the Islamic state, as well as Russia’s and alternative media’s coverage of the true causes of the ongoing events in Ukraine, and the large scale extermination of the civilian population by the Kiev military units. These concerns, along with the recent events in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, was the reason behind the assembly of a British cyber squad.
However, Great Britain has been using the cyberspace to achieve its goal for a long while now, so this trend didn’t emerge today. Back in 2007, under the secret project «Prism» NSA and Britain’s GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters), established a link with a number of international IT giants such as Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk , AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple. Under this project security agencies were allowed to collection and exchange private information, along with using social networks to spread disinformation. From that moment on secret services could read private e-mails and keep track of file transfers in the global information space, which allowed them to control the activities of the leaders of different countries, along with business representatives and foreign diplomats
While attempting to provide British authorities with an excuse for the establish a national cyberwarfare squad, The Guardian notes that such units are being used extensively in the armies of the United States and Israel, where they are responsible for providing “informational support” for the policies that are being pursued by their respective governments. Israel can be considered a pioneer in the modern of cyberwarfare since Tzahal units had been already been using social networks for the aggressive propaganda during operations in the Gaza Strip back in 2008-2009. Today Tzahal is operating on more than 30 social platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and Instagram, to oppose the Palestinian Hamas, Iran and other countries, including those outside the Middle East region.
American and a number of other Western intelligence agencies are spending billions of dollars and euros annually to keep secret programs in cyberspace up and running, while justifying this with convenient guise of “war on terror”, which is not only assaulting the rights of Americans themselves, but also corroding the democratic values in Europe and beyond.
Vladimir Platov, an expert on the Middle East, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”
ConspiracyAnalyst.org 