Kenyan Government Manipulates Courts to Dispossess the Maasai of Their Lands

B.R. Ole Koissaba

After realizing that the Maasai living in Nakuru County have vowed not to move from their ancestral lands to give room for geothermal extraction, the Kenyan government has reverted to the old ways of using the legal system to ensure that the Maasai not only lose the land but will also not be given a fair hearing in land cases they have filed. This is the case when the High Court in Nakuru ruled that the Maasai have no legal right to occupy the land and therefore dismissed the case with costs. Kedong Ranch has been the home of many Indigenous Maasai communities and has from time immemorial been used as wet seasons grazing area for the Maasai people. During the colonial period, and despite having been claimed by the colonialists, many Maasai families continued to live on the land. On attainment of independence and in the quest of the Kenyatta government to grab land, the land in question was transferred to several personalities in government without consulting the local Maasai communities. The said land has over time changed hands and has been a conflict area pitting the Maasai who are the original owners of the land against those that who claim they bought the land through land buying companies.

As pastoralists, the Maasai have been misunderstood and their way of life stereotyped by the so called mainstream communities. They have been referred to as backward, uncivilized, primitive and an embarrassment to development. Such has made marginalization, exclusion discrimination and dispossession legitimate in Government policy making circles. This has a left of suffering among the pastoralists and minorities contrary to Article 5 of the African Charter which states that every individual shall have the right to respect for the dignity inherent in human being and Article 19, which states that all peoples shall be equal, enjoy the same respect.  This discrimination and domination threatens the continuation of their culture that gives them identity and sense of belonging and deprives them opportunities for self- expression in matters affecting their own development.

In making the ruling, the court out rightly exhibited ignorance of both the history of occupancy of the suit land which is not only historically Maasai land but also part of the land that was reserved for explicit use and ownership by the Maasai during the 1904/1911. In justifying the ruling, the judge displayed the existing prejudices against pastoralism by stating that “since the Maasai are nomadic pastoralists, it is impossible for them to have been in one place for such a period as twelve years continuously.” This is the highest degree of ignorance an institution that is expected to not only to know, understand but it is expected to interpret the law in a manner that recognizes and appreciates the diversity of the citizens of Kenya. In the view of many observers, this is the extension of selective justice that has always been used to marginalize and dispossess many Indigenous communities. According submissions by Maa Civil Society and submitted to then Truth Justice and Reconciliation Commission by the Maasai who live in Nakuru County, most of the parcels were registered in 1997 long after the Maasai settled on the disputed land. The court also ignored all established facts that that the Maasai live communally and therefore using the size and location of the settlements does not warrant the delineation of other Indigenous practices that the Maasai practice and should that the Maasai should not be seen as the aggressor.

Coincidentally the ruling was made on the heels of a visit by the World Bank Panel and the representatives from the European Union who visited the affected communities to assess compliance to safeguards. Fearing that the dispute will affect the expansion of geothermal projects that have now stalled for over six months and loss of investors, the government resorted to use the court to dismiss the Maasai cases in order to portray compliance to no conflicts exist on the said land.  To the Maasai the visit by the World Bank and other investors in the geothermal extraction, this was their remedy of the last resort because of the vested interests that the industry has and the recent grants and concessions that the government awarded to multi-nationals to invest in geothermal extraction. The Maasai are hoping that the World Bank Inspection Panel report will not only unearth  the degree suffering, torture and infringement of human rights by KenGen and the investors have wrought on the Maasai but will give recommendation for further investments with a human face. Reminiscence of the famous Maasai case of 1913 commonly referred to in legal circles as Ol-Njogo (Ole Nchoko) case, the cases have already been decided through executive orders that they should all be terminated to pave way for investors and other non-Maasai to be settled or paid off through government coffers to allow for the geothermal extraction

In the past, efforts to move the Maasai have been met by resistance that sometimes resulted into violence and destruction of property. One of the greatest un-doings of these projects is the lack of consultation with the local pastoralist Maasai communities who live off the land where these prospects are located. According to local elders, ever since the beginning of the exploration processes, they have been repeatedly forced to move to adjacent lands only for them to be moved again, when a new project phase is initiated. This is done without any due consideration that the Maasai depend on the land and that every move has a direct impact on their survival because it reduces grazing land for their livestock, their mainstay.

The Maasai in Narasha, Kedong, Satellite, and Namuncha are afraid that the government has a bigger plot to move them from their ancestral land to give room for new settlers who bought the land through land buying companies from central Kenya which were formed after independence to buy land despite the full knowledge by government officials that land was historically Maasai land and the Maasai have continuously used the land for grazing. The fears are as a result of a visit by the Kenya Parliamentary Committee on land on February 14, a planned visit by the president to inaugurate one of the power plants this month which coincides with the day that another Maasai case will be heard in the same court, and a big plan to acquire more land to build an industrial park as well as suspected involvement of Maasai politicians who are said to be beneficiaries from proceeds and contracts from the project. The Maasai have since appealed the court ruling and are awaiting for the hearing. The Maasai are also asking to be treated like other Kenyan communities who live in parcels of land country wide where the government is buying land to resettle them. There is a clear pattern of selective process where certain communities are given preference as opposed to the inhuman and forceful processes that the government is using on the Maasai. To The plight of the Maasai land appropriation has lately received international attention after a campaigns by international human rights organizations raised the red flag.

While the Maasai have repeatedly expressed that they are not against the generation of power within the land that they claim, they are demanding adequate consultation and the adherence of the Free Prior and Informed Consent as well as adequate compensation commensurate to their psychological, social, economic loses. It is also their recommendation that all current and prospecting investors embrace the engagement of local Maasai experts’ in future environmental, social, health, and economic assessments in order to avoid future conflicts.

In a show of defiance, the Maasai communicated their firm stand not to give in to any demands by either the government of those who are claiming to have titles to the Parliamentary Land Committee that visited the area on 13/2/2013. Given previous experiences on Maasai land claims, there is certain fear that there might be violence perpetrated by government through forced evictions. It is therefore the plea of the Maasai to the President, of the Republic of Kenya to intervene in forestalling an eminent confrontation and possible loss of life and property arising from the proposed evictions. It is also the prayer of the Maasai people living in the areas earmarked for geothermal extraction that the companies that were granted concessions refrain from using the police to extract them from their ancestral lands.

Kenya Devolution On Right Track

H.E. Andreas Peschke

Devolution is at the core of Kenya’s transition and reform agenda towards a prosperous nation and one of the most significant political reforms since independence. It is an important part of the implementation of the constitution and crucial for achieving the objectives of Kenya's Vision 2030. It brings participation and service delivery closer to the people and will contribute to fostering growth, prosperity and equity.

As development partners, we would like to again congratulate Kenya for embarking on such a broad and ambitious structural change process and for making rapid progress. If we look around the country, devolution is progressing and succeeding.  New county governments have been established, functions have been devolved, significant financial resources have been transferred and public services have been provided in all 47 counties.

However, expectations remain very high, and we all know that the road ahead of devolution will continue to be challenging and long. Some challenges need the attention of all of us in order to make devolution a success story, especially the need to:

*strengthen intergovernmental relations and coordination through, for example, a clearer definition of the roles and functions of the various institutions,

*improve public financial management and the oversight mechanisms at county level,

*strengthen the capacity of all county institutions, so as to ensure transparency, good governance and an efficient delivery of services to the citizen,

*ensure that County Governments establish appropriate fora and mechanisms for active participation – and consultation – with key stakeholders at county level, including civil society and private sector.

The pre-Development Partnership Forum (DPF) that took place on the 5th of February chaired by the principal secretary of the National Treasury, Dr. Kamau Thugge, identified some key recommendations for the DPF. Capacity development for devolution, fiscal decentralization and the coordination between the Government of Kenya, the Council of Governors and development partners have been at the center of the discussion. Development partners hope that we can agree today to the identified key recommendations and commitments for follow-up.

Let me also take this opportunity to emphasize the strong commitment of development partners to actively supporting Kenya in the implementation of devolution. Development partners are currently providing funding for devolution support programs of over USD 100 million in addition to their ongoing sector programs. Unfortunately, too much of this funding is often delayed due to institutional and procedural delays or inefficient communication. So, let us also agree today that we will prioritize and accelerate the implementation of these programs.

Uganda: Success Need Not Dig a Grave for Museveni

Morrison Rwakakamba

In a September 2011 thoughtful essay; “Gravedigger problem: How Museveni’s very success is creating conditions for his fall,” Andrew Mwenda resurrected an old debate. He opined thus; “Museveni has always argued that the problem with “pre-capitalist” societies is that political struggle tends to get polarized along “unprincipled” lines of religion, tribe or even clan. The counterpoint to this, Museveni has always held that in capitalist societies, politics is polarized around “principled” issues of an economic nature; wages, prices and public policies. His stated objective was to transform Ugandan politics from a contest over identity (religion, tribe and clan) into a contest over “real issues” that impact the lives of people; things like trade policy, fiscal policy, foreign exchange policy etc.”

Mwenda argued that President Museveni’s transformative politics have produced new social forces; “traders and vendors, bureaucrats and politicians, students and industrialists, Twitterati and Facebookers, thieves and saints, money making churches and money losing ones; and it has produced the Red Pepper. All these groups are now competing for space in the new Uganda. The old religious, ethnic and clan groups have not gone away, but they are dying, rapidly becoming a thing of the past, yet Museveni is still stuck with them.”

I clearly don’t dispute the power of modern day ‘principled’ organizing. But by plainly faulting Museveni for sticking with “pre-capitalist” groups that organize around identity, Mwenda falls into the same trap of one-dimensional analysis, that absurdly views traditions, cultural identities and networks in past tense.

These networks are alive and kicking, mediating the lives of millions of Ugandans every day. To view them in fossilised terms and pre-reason is inaccurate, intellectually flabby and patronising, and fails to grasp complex and often contradictory realities that give meaning to and shape the thinking of many people in Uganda today.

Mwenda’s articulation in support of Museveni’s ideological thoughts while faulting his actions fails to contextualize Museveni on prevailing ground working conditions. I think that over the years, Museveni has become more pragmatic. He now realises that pre-capitalist societies’ tendencies are not all necessarily backward and archaic. What he has not learnt is how to leverage the good in these ‘pre-capitalist’ networks beyond politics and harness them as platforms for transformational information, capital mobilization and wealth creation.

A pragmatic shift would grasp the opportunity in traditional forms of reference and organizing, even as they are mediated and evolve by changes. If Museveni had embraced this view, he would not view, for example, Facebook and Twitter social platforms as displacing ‘pre-capitalist’ networks such as ethnic or religious identities, but instead as powerful networks that engage people. By not appointing Facebookers and Twitterati into his cabinet, Museveni missed a powerful opportunity to keep up with emerging manifestations of change.

Identity based movements of course have potential dangers. They can turn essentialist, and breed discrimination and extremism.  The 1994 genocide in Rwanda is a reminder of what can go horribly wrong. Religious and ethnic extremism engineered by opportunistic leaders and elites also drove post-independence Uganda into unforgettable bloodshed. Yet identity cannot simply be wished away. And they have not only been negative. In a number of cases, they have promoted alternative economies and livelihoods that we can learn from and harness.

Take the success in business of the Uganda Asian community. This group has a way of scouting business opportunities for each other. They are also keen, especially when it comes to deployment of social sanctions to enforce business ethics within their merchant community. They also have unrivalled pedigree for frugality. For sure, not all Ugandan Asians are successful business people, and among them there are no doubt those who struggle. But that does not wash away the lessons that one can learn from the successes; we can learn something from their ability to organise using and moving beyond identity.

The Ayimara, one of the largest Andean ethnic groups scattered across South America, has similarly organised for success. The Ayimara are a sophisticated informal international network of kin and a highly developed commercial circuit involving truck drivers, custom policemen, border smugglers, wholesale dealers and retailers. These networks and circuits are based on and controlled by more or less visible ethnic lineages that constitute a ‘parallel’ structure to the formal – national and international - market which has been able to carve out a rather powerful and autonomous economic space in which indigenous practices and values are often reconciled with advanced economic know-how.

For example, in 2009 the National Electoral Court (CNE) of Bolivia was in a crisis, failing to raise 1000 generators needed for electronic registration of voters in rural areas. After heated pondering, state agents chanced on an Ayimara woman electronics dealer in La Paz market, the lady used her Ayimara network to deliver 1000 generators in two days! Nico Tassi, in his unpublished paper “The Other Side of the Market: Indigenous Economies in the Global Arena” argues that while the State may not like Ayimara’s informality, from their own perspective, it helps the Ayimara reduce business costs associated with government bureaucracy, and deal with control of market information and managing competition from multinational capital, often subsided by governments. I am not saying that the Ugandan state should establish economic models based on the Asian or Ayimaras, but that the basis of success here, past and present, even as it evolves, is worth reflection.

One wonders how identity-based groups and alliances such as Bika bya Buganda can think and act beyond Engabi, Empologoma, etc and avoid extremism and adjunct social tensions. What would it take for Nkoba za Mbogo, Basoga Nsete, Bahororo of Mpororo, Banyari of Rwanyambari, and Bakimbiri of Nyeibingo to enhance economic wellbeing?

In the Uganda body politic, we veer towards self-defeating cynicism. How can we move from cynicism to optimism? By learning from those who have succeeded? The Ugandan sense of generosity is of legion; witness the wedding meetings many of us attend, where people are willing to contribute because marriage is an important cultural ritual or other interests. What if we met to mobilize venture funds or business startup capital?

Nigeria: Agents of Communal Decline

Andrew A. Moemeka

Reading through the fundamental principles and the demands of communalism, one is wont to wonder why anyone in his/her right mind should have anything bad to say about it, let alone want it discarded. Respect, love, orderliness, unity, humility, service, hospitality, honesty and good neighborliness are values that all human beings cherish. But under the rugged individualistic atmosphere of modern Nigeria, such values are very scarce. Many of us want respect, love, service and fulfillment for ourselves, but are not ready and willing to grant the same to others.  In public, we shout and plead for unity, honesty, orderliness, and love of neighbour only to turn round and quietly and stealthily, not only support but actively engage in actions that openly contradict those ethical values; we do nothing to put into practice what would make the ethical values possible in public life or to encourage their application in our own lives.

The “escape from the tyranny of tradition” referred to above, implies freedom to be oneself, and rights to do what one wants. But true freedom is not personal; it is individual. And it is not the absence of restraints, but the willing obligation to, or acceptance of, an end that is socially beneficial.  This is what Magesa (1997: p. 74) was referring to when he said that freedom is what enables a person to be fully what he or she is. But he failed to take into account the warning by L.P Jacks seventy-two years earlier (1924: p.42) that  --

The value of rights…is strictly contingent on their subsequent development into duties.  Unless this development takes place the rights which the citizen has won are a social danger, for they are apt to become a means in his hand for exercising over others the tyranny from which he has escaped himself.

Two major sets of factors would appear to have created the environment for the devaluation of the significance of communal principles in the lives of majority of Nigerians. The first is the greed of Nigerians – both leaders and the led and the insouciant and exploitative attitude of the powerful towards the fate of the nation, and their carefree attitude and behavior towards the suffering of majority of the citizens. Platitudes and Words which come from lips and not from the heart do not bring about positive change; they are the seed of negative and reverse change which inevitably deadens the spirit of the citizenry. The second factor which has a number of causes and concomitants is the selfish exercise of the right to what many people erroneously see as freedom, and the morbid desire of the majority to get-rich-quick, at all costs. 

Let us take the second first. As a result of education, exposure to the world through the mass media, and the absence of effective leadership and guidance, the power of elders to advice and guide the young on desires, responsibility, relationships, and expectation has been badly, if not completely, eroded.  These days, rarely does a son or daughter need the permission of parents to go out, to decide whom to marry, or to get married; neither is he/she willing to listen to honest advise about temperance, self-control, and family honour. The exercise of such selfishly-based freedoms or rights have now created very dangerous social ills that are rattling the socio-cultural foundation of the nation  – spousal abuse, adultery, separation, divorce, broken homes, abandoned children, destitution, prostitution, rape, teenage pregnancy, and so on.  But the desire for false ‘freedom’ is so strong that some of the social ills that were seen as abominations in the past are now being justified.  

The exposure made possible through travels and by the mass media has also created negative empathy – empathy in a socio-economic vacuum. When a people begins to desire what they cannot afford; when they spend their time plotting out how to get what they want, in an environment in which they have nothing tangible to honestly satisfy those wants, the aspiration raised by empathy soon turns to frustration.  The consequences of this has been with us since the late 60’s – armed robbery, political jobbery, deceit, large-scale cheating, exploitation, bribery and corruption, economic sabotage, organized chaos, importation of fake goods and drugs, and now – insecurity and terrorism.  

For many, if not most Nigerians, it does not matter, any more, the source of one’s wealth; what is important is “making it rich.” The end, indeed, is justifying the means! It is not that there is no corruption in other parts of the world.  But in such other places, Corruption is a drop in an ocean of Honesty. In Nigeria, Honesty is a drop in an ocean of Corruption. People have come to instinctively expect the anti-social behaviors mentioned above; in fact the behaviors have become the order of the day. The adverse effect of such anti-social behaviors has become so pervasive and damaging to the moral fabric, social and economic life of the nation that there is now a quiet but insistent cry for a return to authentic communalistic principles. That cry is silently loud!!

But there is no letting down the guard by those bent on making it rich and getting the satisfaction they want through any dishonest means possible. There is a strong feeling that those who caution moderation and honesty, and a return to communalistic principles are seen as the weaklings of society – those who cannot fight their way through.  The momentum is on the side of the ‘optimists.’ Their statements and their actions bulk large, and are imbued with implicit and explicit approval of modern tendencies. Care for the aged is seen as parental weapon to impede the economic progress of their children. Help to fellow community members and contributions (both financial and manual) for the development of the community are seen as unnecessary burden to prop-up the ‘indolent’ and create undeserved opportunity for the ‘lazy’ ones.  Religion is seen as irrelevant to life; its only function, they claim, is to instill fear into the young in order to subject them to the control of the older generation. Children find pleasure in saving-up for the expected burial ceremony of their aged parents rather than give part of that saving to these parents for feeding and fairly comfortable living condition while they are still alive. Moral, ethical and communalistic points raised by the so-called pessimists are treated as dead on-arrival and as unproductive beliefs that carry disturbing resonance. The so-called pessimists are accused of talking too loud for the people to listen. This is why we have concluded elsewhere (Moemeka, 1998:) that –

Today, the division between those standing firm in favor of the fundamental principles of communalism and those who oppose most of such principles is very clear. They use very contradictory communication codes, communicate on different arenas of the social environment, and have opposing views on what constitutes the “good” and for whom.

Under authentic communalism, the moral legitimation of government and leadership depended to a large extent on  the capacity of the leader to listen and to act on the basis of ‘the good of the community’, He was required to lead, not to rule; he depended on his lieutants for advice and guidance, that always reflected the will of the community.  Therefore, the leader’s true exercise of the right to enforcement of law and social order was basically an exercise that depended on listening.  But under the selfish environment of the new carefree order, most leaders hear the people but do not listen to them.

As has been noted above, communal bonds and their cultural base become weak and loose when leaders live lives that are less than exemplary. The morbid selfishness of most of Nigerian leaders serves as example for the public to follow. It is therefore not a surprise that the behavior and activities of leaders have poisoned the entire fabric of society. It is assumed (and rightly, too) that every leader should have two basic forms of responsibilities.  The first is the responsibility for the conscientious and ethical use of the powers entrusted to him. The second and, perhaps, more important responsibility is that of upholding values that are community-enhancing and citizen-empowering, and ensuring an environment in which individuals can pursue honest and sincere interests that build up their self-worth. 

These basic responsibilities have not been taken up seriously by most National leaders – Presidents, Ministers, and government officials, leaders in industry and commerce, even by most religious leaders.  What conspicuously exist almost everywhere are examples from these leaders that implicitly as well as explicitly approve of selfishness, dishonesty, disregard of law and order, fraudulent practices and freedom seen as the “right” to do anything one wants, any time, any where, irrespective of who is hurt or what damage is done to the image of the nation.

“A selfish person,” says Melvin Rader, (1964) “will deliberately choose his own lesser good in preference to the greater good of another person (or of the community) simply because it is his own good.” Is it any wonder that Nigeria, after more than half a century of independence, and with enormous financial resources, has much less to show economically, politically and socially than she would have if honesty and the good of the nation had been the guiding principles of those in power?  With a broken heart one is wont to ask: where is the once-thriving Nigerian Railways, the once-thriving Nigeria Airways, or the once famous Ogba Palm Oil Estate/Institute?  Indonesia came to us to learn about palm oil production and palm produce and went home with some seedlings; today she is a thriving palm produce exporter. Where is Nigeria? And where have our Ground-nut export, our Cotton production, and our Rubber Industry gone? 

Need one talk about the damage contractors and the powers that award contracts have done to the socio-economic life of the nation! Here, corruption is a given.  It is here that the devastating impact of corruption on national development is conspicuously evident.The impact of corruption is also evident but covertly in the deteriorating physical and academic condition of our universities!! Our premier universities of the sixties and seventies are today almost shadows of what they were – suffering from financial handicaps, overcrowded classroom, and very uncomfortable levels of student/lecturer ratio. Yet, they are dolling out more than ten-to-fifteen times the number of First Class degrees they did award in their hay-days. No longer is a distinction made between the best students and the best of the best students, which used to be the distinction between 1st Class and 2nd Class Upper Division degrees. And the newer universities have refused to be left out of this First Class degree rat-race. University education which was once directed towards Intellectual Certitude is now mostly for University Certificate. And students like it! Do we really need more evidence to show to what extent morbid selfishness has openly and forcefully put a strangle-hold on the nation’s image and progress?

Sydney siege survivors speak on Australian television

Richard Phillips

Survivors of last December’s Lindt Café siege in Sydney’s Martin Place have criticised the refusal of police and government officials to negotiate with the hostage-taker, Man Haron Monis, during the 16-hour incident.

Interviewed last week on “Inside the Siege: The Untold Story,” a Seven Network documentary, and the Nine Network’s “60 Minutes,” it was the first time any of those held captive had spoken publicly.

The siege began at 9.45 a.m. on December 15 when Monis, a highly unstable individual armed with a shotgun, took control of the café and told frightened hostages that Australia was under attack by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The self-proclaimed Iranian cleric had no connection to ISIS, a fact that was well known to Australian police and spy agencies, which had had frequent dealings with him.

The federal Coalition government of Prime Minister Tony Abbott immediately escalated the incident into a national “terrorist” crisis and, in league with the state government, flooded central Sydney with hundreds of police. The lockdown was accompanied by saturation media coverage, all of which was carefully controlled by the governments and the police.

Monis attempted to make his demands known via the media and social media, but at the request of the police no demands were made known publicly. He offered to release some of his captives if given an ISIS flag, allowed to speak with Abbott on air and news services reported that Australia was under attack from ISIS.

None of these demands was met and no serious negotiations took place, compounding Monis’s frustrations and greatly exacerbating the fraught situation inside the café. The siege ended tragically when heavily-armed police commandos stormed the building after Monis killed café manager Tori Johnson. Police shot Monis dead. Their bullets also killed Sydney barrister Katrina Dawson and wounded three other hostages.

While last week’s television documentaries were tightly controlled and no doubt vetted by police and government authorities, siege survivors Marcia Mikhael and Selina Win Pe made a number of damning statements.

Win Pe told “Sixty Minutes” that the hostages “truly felt alone, abandoned; left here to die.” She explained that she angrily told the media in one phone call: “I don’t think you realise the magnitude of the situation we are in. I hope you sleep well tonight because we are not going to get out of here.”

Mikhael, who was wounded by police when they stormed the café, criticised the lack of negotiations. She was told by one police operator during the siege that Prime Minister Abbott was “a very busy man” and could not come to the phone.

“I yelled at him and I just couldn’t believe it,” Mikhael told the Seven Network. “I said that I don’t care what he is doing right now, whether he’s walking his dog or he’s playing golf with his mates, I’m sure there’s nothing more important happening in Australia right now than this, and the lives of the people in this café… It was then that I knew that there was not going to be any negotiation and we were just left there.”

The 43-year-old mother of three added: “I’m very angry. Why do I have two legs that don’t work now? Why are there two dead people besides the bad guy? I feel like I’m treated like a criminal myself. I can’t get my police statement. They won’t give it to me. Why am I the criminal?” Mikhael also said the police had played “a waiting game” and that the military should have been used.

While Mikhael’s exasperation and anger are understandable, there was a logic to what took place. It was not that the police were inept or incapable of negotiating, but that a conscious political decision was taken not to negotiate.

Rather than defuse the situation, the Abbott government, backed by the Labor opposition, exploited the siege to create a major “terrorist” scare as a test run of the police-security apparatus, as well as to justify a further raft of anti-democratic, anti-terror laws and Australia’s military involvement in the new US-led war in the Middle East.

The government-police clampdown on the media served to ensure that no information got to the public that would puncture the state of fear and uncertainty. If it had become known that the siege was the work of one deranged individual, not connected to ISIS or Al Qaeda and making limited demands, public opinion could have turned against the government. Questions would have been raised as to what negotiations were taking place and why Monis’s demands could not be met.

New South Wales Deputy Police Commissioner Catherine Burn told a late afternoon press conference on December 15 that the police were using “a very, very well tested system of negotiation” that was “world class.” This was a lie. The latest comments by hostages confirm that no serious negotiations were taking place. (see: “The Sydney siege: Official lies and contradictions”).

The governments and police went to extraordinary lengths to ensure a complete clampdown on news of what was happening. Families of the hostages were contacted by the police and gathered together. In the name of providing them with support, the authorities ensured that they did not speak out. A number of hostages who escaped were immediately led off by police and also said nothing.

At the same time, a decision was made to turn down offers from Muslim leaders to enter the café and defuse the situation. Islamic Friendship Association spokesman Keysar Trad, who knew Monis, told the media following the siege: “If I had known who he was, I could have talked him down into surrendering.”

Since the siege, the police and government authorities have kept a tight lid on all information about the events. If Mikhael felt she was treated as a criminal by the police, it was to prevent any leaking of what could be embarrassing facts. It was only when the coronial inquest opened briefly on January 29 that any details were officially made public, including the fact that police bullets killed Katrina Dawson and injured three other hostages.

The inquest will undoubtedly bring provide more details in the course of its hearings, but its central purpose is to cover-up the role of the state and federal governments and the police and intelligence agencies in exploiting the siege and using the hostages as pawns to prosecute their wider political agenda.

Detroit bankruptcy judge approves $178 million in legal and consulting fees

James Brewer

Federal bankruptcy judge Steven Rhodes last week approved the payment of $178 million in fees to the corporate law firms and consultancies involved in orchestrating the Detroit bankruptcy. The ruling comes three months after Rhodes approved the city’s plan to exit bankruptcy by slashing retirees’ pensions and health care benefits.

Most notably, $58 million in fees will go to Jones Day, the law firm at which Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr, who thrust the city into bankruptcy four months after his appointment, had been a partner.

With unbounded cynicism, Rhodes declared that “the residents of the city” should “feel and express a strong and genuine sense of appreciation for these professionals and their service.”

He went on, apparently unable to contain himself; “The city is now on a path to success precisely because of the expertise, skill, commitment, endurance, personal sacrifice, civility and proficiency of all of the professionals in the case, including most certainly those whose fees are subject to review in this opinion.”

The payment of millions of dollars in fees to firms who conspired to push the city into bankruptcy is of a piece with the criminal and predatory character of the entire proceeding. The bankruptcy was part of a conspiracy to set a precedent for using Chapter 9 proceedings to pillage city assets and slash workers’ constitutionally protected pension benefits in the interests of Wall Street.

In 2011, Jones Day drafted a memo declaring that chapter 9 bankruptcy offers a “workable solution to the overwhelming and seemingly unassailable pension obligations of many municipal debtors.” The test case for this theory was provided by the Detroit bankruptcy, which Jones Day and the other conspirators hoped would unlock up to four trillion dollars in pension liabilities nationwide for plunder.

When the legal fees were made public last December, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan professed opposition to them, declaring that, “the bills are too high, that they need to come down.” Though Rhodes went through the motion of granting the mayor’s office legal authority to challenge the bills, Duggan claimed he was under a gag order and could not discuss the matter publicly.

In granting millions of dollars in fees to the law firms and consultancies, Rhodes deemed the amount to be “reasonable” given the billions of dollars that were supposedly saved for the city of Detroit by the firms’ services.

Rhodes proclaimed that city residents should feel a “genuine sense of enthusiasm, optimism and confidence about the city's future.” In fact the only people who will benefit from the bankruptcy are the financial vultures who will make millions of dollars from the slashing of pensions, and billionaire real estate moguls who stand to profit off sweetheart deals worked out as part of the bankruptcy.

For the city’s working class, the bankruptcy has been a disaster. Rhodes approved slashing Detroit city workers’ and retirees’ pensions by 4.5 percent, and eliminated health care and death benefits to 23,500 retirees and dependents.

During the course of the bankruptcy proceedings, thousands of families in the city have had their water service cut off by the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) in an effort to slash its liabilities in order to make the system more attractive for future investors.

The Great Lakes Water Authority, which was established during the bankruptcy to move the DWSD toward privatization, last month proposed double-digit rate increases, to take effect throughout the region in July.

The payment of millions in legal fees to the co-conspirators in the Detroit bankruptcy is Rhodes’s final major action before retiring this month. In an interview with local radio station WDET on Tuesday, his last day in office, Rhodes showed no personal remorse for slashing healthcare benefits for the elderly, declaring, “I was actually of the opinion that Detroit should have filed bankruptcy years before it actually did.”

He likewise defended his decision to slash pensions despite the fact that they are protected by the Michigan constitution, declaring, “it was not a particularly difficult decision.”

UN survey documents Israeli war crimes in Gaza

Jean Shaoul

A survey by the Associated Press of 247 Israeli air strikes that hit residential compounds last summer, provides further damning evidence of the criminality of its murderous 50-day war on Gaza.

The brutality of the US-backed Israeli war against a defenceless civilian population in one of the most densely populated areas in the world shocked and outraged people across the globe including in Israel itself. It was a war characterised by the wanton killing of civilians and the massive destruction of homes, hospitals, schools, mosques and infrastructure such as water, electricity and sanitation.

According to estimates by the United Nations, the war killed at least 2,205 Palestinians, of whom 1,489 were civilians. The dead included 540 children—25 percent of the entire death toll. The large number of civilian deaths, two thirds of the total, emphasises the callous and one-sided nature of the war, especially set against the fact that just 66 Israeli soldiers and seven civilians were killed.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) targeted homes, often of the families of militants belonging to Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other groups. At least 18,000 homes were destroyed or severely damaged, leaving 100,000 people homeless, as well as 111 UN buildings, many of them schools and hospitals.

The purpose of the AP survey was to establish who had been killed in the raids on homes, since neither the IDF nor Hamas, which controls Gaza, nor any of the other militant groups have released information about the targets or the casualties in the strikes on homes. With the help of Al Mezan, a Gaza human rights group, and B’Tselem, the Israeli rights group, the AP team examined 247 air strikes—excluding artillery strikes that are notoriously inaccurate—that witnesses said, and inspections confirmed, hit residential sites.

The survey showed that 508 of the 844 people killed in those 247 strikes—out of some 5,000 air raids—were children, women and older men. Just five percent of the total strikes resulted in a disproportionate number of deaths—one third of the total—with most of the people killed being civilian non-combatants.

The survey also found:

* 280, or one third of the total number killed, were children under the age of 16; 108 were between the ages of one and five, and 19 were babies.

* One third of the strikes resulted in the deaths of three or more members in the same family.

* 96, or 11 percent, of the 844 killed were confirmed or suspected militants.

* The remaining 240 dead were males between the ages of 16 and 59, about whom the AP survey found no links with militant groups.

The deadliest attack occurred early in the morning of July 29, a Muslim holiday, flattening a building in Khan Younis and killing 33 people from four families.

International humanitarian law outlaws the bombing of homes unless they are being used for a specific military purpose such as storing weapons or as a launching site for attacks, or there is a “clear military advantage” that outweighs the civilian death toll.

Alex Whiting, a Harvard law professor and former top official at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, explained that while a high civilian death toll does not, on its own, constitute evidence of war crimes, and each strike must be investigated separately, a high civilian toll “certainly raises a red flag and suggests that further investigation is warranted.”

Thus far, the issue of Israel’s air raids on homes has not featured explicitly in the various investigations into possible war crimes. With working people around the world horrified by Israel’s brutality, the European powers are becoming increasingly concerned that Israel’s actions will spark a broader anti-war movement or a Palestinian uprising that will cut across their own strategic interests and destabilise the oil-rich region.

In January, the Palestinian Authority signed up to 22 UN conventions and institutions, including the ICC, paving the way for the Palestinians to pursue Israel through the ICC for war crimes over its murderous assaults on the Palestinians in Gaza in 2008-2009, 2012 and last summer’s 50-day war. Two weeks later, ICC prosecutors said it would launch a preliminary examination to scrutinise “in full independence and impartiality” whether crimes might have been committed during last summer’s war.

The UN Human Rights Council has also formed a commission of inquiry into the war. Israel has refused to cooperate, claiming that it is biased against Israel.

A second UN investigation is examining the deaths, injuries and damage to UN premises hit by Israeli air raids, and the discovery of weapons in some vacant UN schools.

Israel is carrying out a number of investigations, in order to exonerate itself and challenge any enquiries by the ICC or UN into possible war crimes—which will not investigate if Israel carries out its own criminal investigations. The Military Police, under instructions from the Military Advocate General’s Office, have launched 13 criminal investigations, closing nine, claiming there was no evidence of wrongdoing.

While the military is also examining 85 complaints about “exceptional incidents,” it is highly unlikely they will be upheld or result in any action. Few charges have ever been brought against officers for either criminal or disciplinary infractions in battle. The reports relating to these investigations are not expected before Israel’s elections on March 17.

None of the parliamentary enquiries into the war are likely to be published before the election either, if indeed they are ever published at all.

In December, Amnesty International reported that Israeli air strikes that destroyed four multi-storey buildings in Gaza during the last four days of the war in August 2014, were a deliberate and direct attack on civilian buildings and amounted to war crimes, calling for an independent and impartial investigation.

Philip Luther, director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Amnesty International, said, “All the evidence we have shows this large-scale destruction was carried out deliberately and with no military justification.”

He added, “Both the facts on the ground and statements made by Israeli military spokespeople at the time indicate that the attacks were a collective punishment against the people of Gaza and were designed to destroy their already precarious livelihoods.”

Last month, B’Tselem published a report into 70 air strikes by Israel on homes in Gaza that killed 606 people, including 93 children under five. Significantly, the human rights organisation accused Israel of breaching international humanitarian law, focusing not so much on the military but on ministers, including Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who authorised the policy of attacking homes.

The situation in Gaza remains desperate. Twenty thousand people are homeless and many are sleeping amid the rubble. Children died of hypothermia during the weeklong period of snow and ice in early January that swept the region. There has been little reconstruction, in large part because of the Israeli-Egyptian blockade. Last month, the UN Relief and Works Agency announced it could no longer continue its cash assistance programme in Gaza for repairs to damaged and destroyed homes and for rental subsidies to the homeless because little of the $5.4 billion aid pledged by donors at the Cairo conference last October had been delivered.

German government to establish Eastern Europe Institute

Sven Heymann

The German government plans to open an academic institute that will be tasked with researching the region of the former Soviet Union. This plan is integral to the aggressive reorientation of German foreign policy and its geostrategic aims in eastern Europe.

The goal of the institute is to analyse developments in the post-Soviet areas and advise decision makers, according to an account in the Tagesspiegel. Its purpose will not be pure research, but “application-oriented knowledge”—a thinly veiled reference to the real intended purpose of the institute, which will serve as a think tank for an aggressive German foreign policy in eastern Europe.

According to the Tagesspiegel, the founding of the institute was explained by the fact that there is “barely any research relevant to the present day.” At the end of the Cold War, numerous eastern Europe research institutions were closed and professorships were left unoccupied. In the political and social sciences in Germany, there was a lack of qualified experts.

The Foreign Office will provide more than €5 million by 2017 for the building of the institute, according to information released at the end of January. This year, €500,000 will flow into the project, followed by €2.5 million in both of the next two years.

The Foreign Office explicitly told the news agency Reuters that the founding of the institute was an immediate reaction to the crisis in Ukraine. “Strengthening our understanding of Eastern Europe has been a top priority of the foreign minister. This is all the more important given the paradigm shift in our relations with Russia since the annexation of Crimea,” a source close to Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said.

The founding of the institute is an expression of a new strategic orientation of the German government. Several months before the coup in Kiev and the Russian annexation of Crimea, the government coalition of the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) indicated that the strengthening of academic research on eastern Europe was as one of its goals. In the coalition contract, the coalition partners say they want “to place competence on Russia and Eastern Europe on a solid foundation in Germany. To this end, we want to strengthen academic analysis and expertise about this region.”

The 2013 strategy paper “New power, new responsibility”, of the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP, German Institute for International and Security Affairs), also emphasises the necessity for academic research in the service of German militarism. “A more complex environment with shortened response times also requires better cognitive skills, knowledge,” it says. “Knowledge, perception, understanding, judgment and strategic foresight: all these skills can be taught and trained.”

To this end, concrete investments “on the part of the state, but also the universities, research institutions, foundations and foreign policy institutions”, are necessary. “The goal must be to establish an intellectual environment that not only enables and nurtures political creativity, but is also able to develop policy options quickly and in formats that can be operationalised,” the paper said.

The founding of the new Eastern Europe Institute is a significant step to this end. The Foreign Office had already increased its investment in foreign policy think tanks, including the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) and the SWP.

Another condition further clarifies the goal of the German government in founding the Eastern Europe Institute. The Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) are explicitly excluded as objects of research at the institute. These countries have “already carried out the transformation of their societies into Western democracies to such an extent that they have to be seen in a different context”, the paper notes. The governments of these countries, all of which have become members of the European Union (EU) and NATO, are particularly aggressive toward Russia.

After reintroducing capitalism in eastern Europe and expanding NATO and the EU to the borders of Russia in the past 25 years, the German bourgeoisie now wants to bring the remaining eastern European countries of the former Soviet Union under its domination. Their behaviour in Ukraine in the past year has shown that they will not shrink from open cooperation with fascists and openly supporting a putsch against an elected president.

They now want to turn this into a permanent policy on a professional basis. It is significant that the founding of the institute was initiated by the German Society for Eastern European Studies. Its president, Ruprecht Polenz (CDU), was a representative in parliament and president of the parliamentary committee on foreign affairs from 2005 to 2013.

The German Society for the Study of Russia Deutsche (Gesellschaft für Osteuropakunde, DGO), founded in 1913, was already closely connected with the Foreign Office at that time. Like numerous other institutes that were founded in reaction to the German defeat in the First World War and the treaty at Versailles, it served as a political advisory institution under the Weimar Republic and the National Socialists.

German “eastern research” was considered “study of the enemy” at that time and was aimed above all at fashioning a pseudo-academic foundation for revanchist territorial claims in Poland and Czechoslovakia. Numerous historians, sociologists, geographers, ethnologists, linguists and other academics were already working in the 1920s on laying the foundations for the future expansion of Germany. Institutes such as the Foundation for German People and Agriculture Research, which was founded in Leipzig in 1920, and the Institute for Border and Foreign Studies, which has worked in Berlin since 1925, played an important role in this effort.

In the course of the Second World War, numerous institutes and academics performed the ideological work involved in planning and carrying out National Socialist crimes all over Europe. The so-called Operation Ritterbusch, named after the Kiel legal expert Paul Ritterbusch—and also known as the “military deployment of the humanities”—is particularly significant. At their own initiative, approximately 500 academics from different disciplines took part in the German campaigns of conquest, particularly those in eastern Europe. The refurbishing of this operation began once again in the late 1990s and has still not been completed.

The only criticism of the most recent project of the Foreign Office to be heard from the universities comes from the right. Several professors who are themselves researchers in the area of eastern Europe demanded that the government invest in existing institutes and integrate them into German foreign policy in this way.

Susanne Schattenberg, director of the Eastern Europe Research Department at the University of Bremen, complained that the existing institutions are “not being expanded and given increased funding.” Furthermore, she told theTagesspiegel, when there is a failure to invest in the universities, there is a failure to cultivate the next generation of researchers, asking, “Where are the Eastern Europe experts supposed to come from, if they are not being educated?”

Klaus Segbers, chair for Eastern European Studies at the Free University in Berlin, argues in this way. There is no incentive for young students to specialise in regional studies today, he complains. There is a lack of demand on the job market and there is only short-term work available at the universities. Segber’s plea implies young academics will be offered the best career chances to the extent that they orient their future careers to Germany’s return to aggressive great power politics.

However, it is not as though there has not been any cooperation between universities and the government and military up until now. The universities in Berlin in particular are known for their connections in the highest ruling circles and in the military.

The name of the Eastern Europe Institute remains undecided. As theWirtschaftswoche reports, the government does not want to create the impression “that we are thinking of Russia within Soviet parameters.” The goal is to find a construct in which academic independence is protected in spite of state financing. This is especially important in times “in which the Kremlin is pouring money into a propaganda and information war with the West and building a state controlled foreign media.”

The Foreign Office finds itself in the embarrassing position of trying to obscure the true character of the new Eastern Europe Institute, an institution that is tasked with preparing and legitimising the drive of German imperialism to expand to the east the same way it did in the twentieth century

Defence establishment complains of Britain’s “irrelevance” in world affairs

Mark Blackwood & Paul Mitchell

There is growing criticism of the Conservative/Liberal-Democrat coalition, and Prime Minister David Cameron, from leading figures in Britain’s defence establishment.

On February 1, the former head of the British general staff, Lord Dannatt, called for a “debate” on the deployment of British troops “on the ground” in Iraq and Syria, saying that the current strategy of reconnaissance flights and aerial bombings was unlikely to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIL or ISIS).

Dannatt’s remarks were a response to the British government’s decision to delay the dispatch of hundreds of British troops back to Iraq. According toJane’s Defence Weekly, the decision to mothball the plan was taken at a meeting of the UK’s National Security Council in mid-December chaired by Cameron. The magazine reported “fears that UK troops could be killed or taken hostage in the run-up to the UK general election in May were behind the rejection of the plans.”

More-forceful criticisms were made by former NATO deputy supreme commander Sir Richard Shirreff. He said a few days later about Ukraine, “This is the most serious crisis to have faced Europe, arguably, since the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. There is the threat of total war.”

Shirreff complained that while German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande had been in talks with Russian president Vladimir Putin, it was “unfortunate” that the UK, “a major NATO member…a major EU member [and] member of the UN Security Council” had a prime minister that appeared “to be absent.”

“Where is Britain? Where is Cameron? He is clearly a bit player,” he added. “Nobody is taking any notice of him. He is now a foreign policy irrelevance.”

Such statements have been prominently highlighted in the press. The defence editor of the pro-Tory Daily Telegraph, Con Coughlin, declared that Cameron’s desire to be “laid-back” had become “so all-consuming that he has all but given up on the decidedly time-consuming business of providing clear and decisive leadership on the world stage.”

Coughlin’s tirade was taken up by the nominally liberal Guardian. Assistant editor Michael White opined on how “'Bit player' Britain risks being stuck on foreign policy sidelines.”

White lamented to his readers, “…what remains of post-imperial British power projection is more marginal to any of these threatening events than at any time I can remember in my lifetime.”

European Union (EU) officials, White declared, “complain that British diplomatic expertise and influence is shrinking—not only in Brussels but in far-off capitals where it once had clout.”

What made things worse was that Labour leader Ed Miliband had “struck an even more low-key note on foreign policy than Cameron,” so much so that “whoever wins on 7 May, it seems likely that, lacking either the will or capacity to intervene, the ‘bit player’ will remain in charge of foreign policy at No 10—and mostly stay indoors.”

The crisis enveloping British foreign policy has also been commented on by the international media. Germany’s Deutsche Welle, in an article, “Ukraine crisis: Are the British backing down?” contrasted Britain’s previous role as a “major player on the foreign policy stage” with today. British foreign secretary Philip Hammond, the paper noted, was “unusually defensive” about Britain’s role in the Ukraine crisis and the Franco-German peace initiative.

Britain’s place in the world was also the subject of the House of Commons Defence Committee’s latest report published February 5. It declared that the UK, with its expertise and resources, ought to play a “much larger role” in the fight against ISIS, yet it had been “strikingly modest.”

The committee expressed its shock at the failure of military chiefs to provide a “clear and articulate” explanation of what was happening in Iraq and questioned whether Britain had any policy objectives or strategy in the country at all. It revealed that the UK had only conducted 6 percent of the air-strikes against ISIS, only three British military personnel were operating outside the Kurdish regions of Iraq (compared to 400 Australians, 280 Italians and 300 Spanish), and there was no one on the ground who understood “the tribes, or politics of Iraq, or a deep understanding of the Shia militia, who are doing much of the fighting.”

The committee proposed further “strikingly modest” proposals—a few hundred personnel with a “modest” budget to help to train anti-ISIS forces to deal with roadside bombs (IEDs) and more “diplomatic and defence engagement” with the key powers in the region.

The diplomatic engagement emerged within days, with a visit by Prince Charles to the Middle East autocracies. The heir apparent expressed his bewilderment that young British Muslims were not persuaded by “British values” and the plight of Middle East Christians. He told a group of Iraqi refugees, “For what it’s worth, you have nothing but my entire sympathy…. I cannot imagine a worse situation to be in and it won’t be of any consolation but I have been praying every day for all of you.”

The prince visited Saudi Arabia to mourn the death of King Abdullah. Flags at UK government buildings were lowered to half-mast, apparently at the request of Buckingham Palace.

Attacks from assorted military chiefs and defence hacks are a sign of the huge crisis confronting the British ruling elite. There are growing calls for Britain to leave the EU, jeopardising the “special relationship” with the US. The UK has always been the US catspaw in Europe, and US president Barack Obama made it clear recently that it had to remain part of the EU. According to the Centre for European Policy Studies’ Michael Emerson, declining British influence could even jeopardise the “jewel in the crown of British foreign policy”—its United Nations Security Council permanent seat.

Above all, the government is confronted by the overwhelming opposition of the British public to further military adventures. This lies behind its historic defeat in a Commons vote in 2013, which sought approval to join a US-led campaign against the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria. When the government attempted to claw its way back from that defeat and solicited a huge cross-party parliamentary vote to join the US-led war against ISIS, its feeble measures only earned further derision.

Labour, too, has been seeking to claw back its militarist pedigree after accidentally precipitating the 2013 crisis vote. Shadow Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander, positioning Labour as a war-mongering critic of the Tories, declared, “Britain is a big beast in the European jungle. It makes up almost a sixth of the EU’s population and economy, and around a fifth of its exports. Before David Cameron became prime minister, Britain was at the heart of EU decision-making. Yet when he leaves Downing Street in May, he will have presided over the most significant decline in British influence in Europe for a generation.”

“Unlike David Cameron,” he added, “Labour believes that the UK will stand taller in Washington, Beijing, Moscow and Delhi—when we stand firmly at the heart of the EU. The idea that our influence in world capitals would grow as our influence in Europe diminished is not just a Eurosceptic fantasy, but a post-imperial delusion.”

Report points to global spyware operation by US

Thomas Gaist

A shadowy hacking unit likely run by the US National Security Agency (NSA) or other spy agencies has deployed an arsenal of sophisticated spyware against computers and networks of foreign governments, research programs and corporations beginning in at least 2001, according to a report released Monday by Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky.

The “computer network exploitation” (CNE) hacking and data mining operations deploy an intricate malware architecture against targeted systems, carefully tailored to render it invisible to anti-virus and anomaly scanning software. Attacks were carried out by the so-called “Equation group,” described by the Russian firm as “one of the most sophisticated cyber attack groups in the world.”

The Equation group has targeted systems in numerous locations including Russia, China, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Yemen, Mali, India, Philippines, South Africa, Germany, Iraq, Mexico, Brazil and others, the report found.

The hacking operations bear striking similarities to previous NSA hacking operations, according to Kaspersky, displaying a level of technical sophistication that “suggests developers of the highest caliber.”

“The similar type of usage of both exploits together in different computer worms, at around the same time, indicates that the Equation group and the Stuxnet developers are either the same or working closely together,” Kaspersky wrote. Stuxnet was an earlier cyberwarfare operation targeting Iran and run by the US and Israel.

Code-names embedded in malware programming sequences analyzed by Kaspersky strongly resemble those used by known NSA programs.

The Equation group infiltrates and sabotages targets using a “vast command and control infrastructure,” including hundreds of domains and servers, the report found. Equation’s targets can be selected individually but are also assessed automatically through algorithms to identify “interesting” targets.

Kaspersky found coding on a machine in the Middle East that had been targeted by previous generations of US government-designed spyware, offering damning evidence that “Equation” is run by the NSA.

Islamist parties and organizations have been heavily targeted by the Equation operations, and analysis by the security firm suggests that special code was created to limit infections of machines in Middle Eastern countries closely aligned with the US, including Egypt, Jordan and Turkey.

The Equation spyware is designed to remain concealed on a targeted machine for long periods of time, collecting and storing data from the hard drive in a Virtual File System (VFS) and initiating sudden attacks and “malicious commands” at a future time of the programmer’s choosing. The spyware is able to remain active on a targeted machine even when the disk is wiped clean and operating system is reinstalled.

The spy operations were largely directed against foreign militaries and government-run research and development programs, including nuclear and nanotechnology research.

The Equation group appears to have established “sinkholes” in parts of China, which simultaneously exploit large clusters of networked devices, and has been found on the machines of major corporations, including Samsung and Western Digital.

Equation makes use of a toolkit of exotic malware programs, which are deployed in a coordinated fashion to locate, infiltrate and exploit high-security, high-value targets. When fully deployed, the Equation group malware packages give their handlers complete control over the operating systems of infected devices, and can subsequently be upgraded with new plugins. The spyware is able to reprogram the hard drives of infected machines and generate maps of broader network infrastructure in which targets are embedded.

Equation utilizes devious techniques to download Trojan-style malware onto targets, the report found, including a method referred to as “interdiction,” involving direct physical seizure of electronic devices mid-transit, and their infection or replacement with pre-infected replicas. In one example described by the report, the spy group distributed infected CD-ROMs to participants at a research symposium in Texas.

Even while the US public is subject to a continuous bombardment of media propaganda warning of Chinese and Russian hacking operations, in reality the US government is by far the leading purveyor of cyberwarfare on the planet, militarizing vast sections of the world’s communication infrastructure.

Brookings Institution Security and Intelligence Director Peter Singer noted, in comments to TechRepublic, the vast scale of efforts to develop Stuxnet, which caused more than 1,000 Iranian nuclear centrifuges to spin uncontrollably.

“Stuxnet was almost a Manhattan Project style in terms of the wide variety of expertise that was brought in: everything from intelligence analysts to some of the top cyber talent in the world to nuclear physicists to engineers, to build working models to test it out on, and another entire espionage effort to put it in to the systems in Iran that Iran thought were air-gapped. This was not a couple of kids,” Singer said.

Reviewing the contents of the Kaspersky report, there can be little doubt that similarly massive efforts were orchestrated, at the highest levels of the US government, to develop the technology associated with the “Equation group.”

The destructive purposes for which the malware is being prepared were outlined last June in statements by Admiral Mike Rogers, who predicted that by the year 2025, “Army commanders will maneuver offensive and defensive [cyber] capability much today as they maneuver ground forces.”

“The ability to integrate cyber into a broader operational concept is going to be key,” Rogers said.

While the specific purpose of the Equation group is not known, it is clear that the US military and intelligence agencies are working systematically to infiltrate and disrupt computer systems all over the world.