2018

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( 2010s: )     2018
Trump's vaunted tax cuts are another gift to the hyperrich

In 2018, the antics of President Trump dominated commercially-controlled media coverage, "sucking the oxygen" from discussion about more weighty topics such as the rollout of universal surveillance and a police state under the guise of the "war on terror". On 5 November 2018, 'Anonymous' published leaked documents from a hitherto unregarded UK charity named the Integrity Initiative, which was to expose it, and its parent group the Institute for Statecraft as UK deep state run propaganda outfits focussed on promoting Russophobia.

Deep state exposures

The section of the IPA that admits that MI5 operatives can carry out crimes in the UK, as published on March 1st, 2018 by the Investigatory Powers Commissioner's Office after losing a 7 month legal battle

The UK government lost a seven-month legal battle and were forced to admit that MI5 operatives were allowed to participate in crimes. After being legally required to publish the document, they posted a barely legible copy online on 1^st March.

Integrity Initiative leak

Full article: Integrity Initiative/Leak

2018 saw leaks 1, 2 and 3 by 'Anonymous' of material from the Integrity Initiative, followed by another on 5 January 2019, which lead the group to shut its doors. It was exposed as part of the UK Deep state's "fake news" effort - pretending to be exposing Russian propaganda while actually engaging in Russophobic propaganda.

US Citizens' Fears

Skripal Affair

Full article: Skripal Affair

The Skripal Affair saw the UK government accuse Russia of using a nerve agent, novichok, against Sergei Skripal. The Institute for Statecraft, while showing no interest in who was responsible for the attack, showed intense interests into public perceptions of culpability. It paid £12,000 for a report by Harod Associates(an IfS member's company) into media coverage and public reactions to the Skripal Affair. The 47 page report aimed "to provide an initial analysis of mainstream and social media reporting as it developed, following the poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, Wiltshire on 4th March 2018." It had numerous appendices, including a 74 people analysis of how the event played out on social media in USA.

Continuing trends

2018 was a year of expanded internet censorship and continued mass surveillance, amid talk of "fake news", "hate speech", "hate groups" and the online "radicalisation" of vulnerable people through exposure "extremist" material (including "non-violent extremism").

Universal surveillance

Full article: Universal surveillance

Australia lead the way amongst Western "democracies" in rolling back civil liberties about privacy. In December it passed laws which claim the right to compel both "local and international providers — including overseas communication giants such as Facebook and WhatsApp — to remove electronic protections, conceal covert operations by government agencies, and help with access to devices or services."

Internet Censorship

Full article: Internet censorship

YouTube was increasingly aggressive in closing down channels which breach its guidelines, closing down channels with hundreds of videos at a stroke. KPFA banned Guns And Butter after 15+ years due to "anti-semitism".

Austerity

In UK, the NHS was predicted to delay over 50,000 operations as funding and resources are throttled, in USA trumps budget reduced funding for the EPA while prioritising the MICC and other big businesses.

CPU Design Flaws

In early January, a range of flaws were revealed, including 2 problems with the design (not the implementation) of both Intel and AMD CPUs going back around 20 years. They reportedly have great potential for exploitation to compromise data security.

 

Events

Event	Date	Description
Danske Bank money laundering scandal
Brexit
Reframing Russia		An IfS/II discussed project about "The RT Challenge" which was publicly launched in 2019, not under the II/IfS name.
Saratov Airlines Flight 6W703
Stoneman Douglas High School shooting		A school shooting in Florida in 2018
Skripal Affair		A purported chemical weapons attack
2018 Gaza Massacre		A massacre of at least 135 unarmed protestors including many women and children, and the wounding of many thousands more by Israeli IDF sniper teams, during the Palestinian 'Great March of Return' and the weeks following its end on 15 May 2018
Douma attack
2018 Brussels DisinfoLab
Clade X		A spooky pandemic/biowarfare exercise by Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security
Bilderberg/2018		The 66th Bilderberg Meeting, in Turin, Italy, known for months in advance after an unprecedented leak by the Serbian government.
2018 Riga Stratcom Dialogue
Cold War Then and Now?		A free conference that appears to have been part of a broader campaign by the Institute for Statecraft to promote Cold War 2.0.
Tackling Tools of Malign Influence		Integrity Initiative conference about "Russian Propaganda"
Integrity Initiative/Leak		A series of 7 leaks, starting on 5 November 2018, of unknown origin and veracity. After some time, the II disputed the authenticity of some of the documents, but was not clear about which.
Integrity Initiative/Leak/1
California Fires		An Extenstiv
Yellow vests movement		A series of mass demonstrations in France expression dissatisfaction with the political process. Subject to increasingly violent repression.
Integrity Initiative/Leak/2
Le Cercle/2018 (Washington)		Dates maybe not exact
Integrity Initiative/Leak/3
Workshop on Identifying and Combating Disinformation in Big Data

 

New Groups

Group	Image	Description
National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence
Independent Office for Police Conduct
Global Counter-Terrorism Coordination Compact
Brood of Holy Wisdom
Extinction Rebellion		A mass civil disobedience movement
Poynter Institute/List		The Poynter Institute list was a list of 515 websites that it termed "untrustworthy".

 

New Websites

Event	Image	URL	Description
The Deep State Blog		http://deepstateblog.org
DisinfoPortal		https://disinfoportal.org/	A "one-stop interactive online portal and guide to the Kremlin’s information war" from the Atlantic Council.
Rogue Media Labs		https://roguemedia.co/	A website which republished all the Integrity Initiative Leak documents

 

Groups that were Wound Up

Group	Image	Description
"Independent Police Complaints Commission"
UN/Counter-Terrorism Implementation Task Force		A part of the UN's "counter-terrorism" project.

 

==Quotations== 

Deaths

Title	Born	Died	Place of death	Cause of death	Summary	Description
Herman Sandberg	1918	2018			Journalist
Philipp Jenninger	10 June 1932	4 January 2018	Germany Stuttgart Baden-Württemberg		Diplomat Spook Politician	Spooky german politician
Peter Preston	23 May 1938	6 January 2018			Author Journalist Propagandist Editor
Peter Sutherland	25 April 1946	7 January 2018	Dublin Eire	Infection	Lawyer Deep politician Businessperson	A deep politician who held some key posts including Chairman of Goldman Sachs, WTO head, Attorney General of Ireland ...
Luc Beyer de Rycke	9 September 1933	18 January 2018	Paris		Journalist Politician	Cercle visitor.
Franz Lütolf	6 June 1924	18 January 2018			Academic Banker Economist Deep politician
William McDonough	21 April 1934	22 January 2018	New York U.S. Waccabuc		Deep state operative	CFR, TLC, 7 Bilderbergs, Group of Thirty, NY Fed Chairman..
Robert Parry	24 June 1949	27 January 2018			Journalist	Veteran US investigative reporter
John Perry Barlow	3 October 1947	7 February 2018	California San Francisco U.S.		Musician Activist Poet
John Orr	3 September 1945	19 February 2018			Police officer	DCS John Orr led the Lockerbie investigation (1988 to 1990)
Nils Wilhjelm	17 June 1936	5 March 2018	Denmark Nykøbing Falster		Politician Businessperson
Peter Peterson	5 June 1926	20 March 2018			Banker Deep state functionary Businessperson	Long time CFR chair
Dagfinn Vårvik	8 June 1924	25 March 2018			Politician
Peter Munk	8 November 1927	28 March 2018			Businessperson	Suspected Canadian deep state operative
Arthur S. Hulnick	1935	April 2018			Spook Academic
Milagro de Mier		April 2018	Washington DC	Drowning	Activist	An anti-GMO activist who reportedly drowned in 2018.
Winnie Mandela	26 September 1936	2 April 2018	South Africa Johannesburg
Mete Sozen	22 May 1930	5 April 2018	London UK		Academic Deep state functionary	A professor of Structural Engineering who wrote a series of official government reports after "terrorist" deep events.
Maksim Borodin		15 April 2018	Russia Yekaterinburg	Falling	Journalist
Vittorino Chiusano	27 February 1925	17 April 2018	Italy Turin		Politician	Italian politician who promoted a unified Europe. Attended all the Bilderberg meetings from 1963 up to 1967.
Bernard Lewis	31 May 1916	19 May 2018	US New Jersey		Historian
Joseph Recarey	5 June 1967	25 May 2018			Police officer Epstein Affair/Premature death	A Palm Beach detective who pursued Jeffrey Epstein. Died, aged 50, "after a brief illness."
Mārtiņš Bunkus		30 May 2018	Latvia Riga	Gunshot	Lawyer	Assassinated lawyer who had worked on suspect financial institutions in Riga
Razan al-Najjar	11 September 1996	1 June 2018	Gaza		Nurse
Frank Carlucci	18 October 1930	3 June 2018	Virginia McLean U.S.		Spook Deep state actor	A Princeton roommate of his fellow US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld.
John Thomson	27 April 1927	3 June 2018			Diplomat
Charles Krauthammer	13 March 1950	21 June 2018		Cancer	Journalist Neoconservatism	Single Bilderberger Washington Conference on International Terrorism visitor
Şarık Tara	22 April 1930	28 June 2018			Billionaire Businessperson	Turkish single Bilderberger billionaire businessman
Peter Carrington	6 June 1919	9 July 2018			Politician Deep politician	UK Deep politician. Bilderberg chairman. President of the Pilgrims Society. Secretary General of NATO. Chairman of the UK Conservative Party. Busy guy.
Ron Dellums	24 November 1935	30 July 2018
Stephen Goodson		4 August 2018			Author Politician Banker
Mark Minnie		14 August 2018		Gunshot	Author Police officer VIPaedophile/Premature death	A paedophile investigator shot dead nine days after publishing a book about a 1980s VIPaedophile network involving members of the South African government
Uri Avnery	10 September 1923	20 August 2018			Author Activist
John McCain	29 August 1936	25 August 2018	Arizona Cornville U.S.	Brain tumour	Politician Deep state functionary
Lars Wohlin	24 June 1933	24 September 2018			Politician
Viktoria Marinova		October 2018
Jamal Khashoggi	13 October 1958	2 October 2018	Turkey Istanbul	Violence	Author Journalist Editor	assassinated journalist
Saak Karapetyan		3 October 2018			Spook Lawyer	"Russian deputy attorney general" who reportedly died in a helicopter crash
Pik Botha	27 April 1932	12 October 2018	South Africa Pretoria		Diplomat Politician Lawyer
Donald MacDonald	1 March 1932	14 October 2018	Canada Ontario Toronto		Politician Lawyer	Canadian Bilderberg Steering committee member
Walter Huddleston	15 April 1926	16 October 2018			Politician
Cornelius Gallagher	2 March 1921	17 October 2018
Robert Faurisson	25 January 1929	21 October 2018	France Vichy		Historian	Europe's foremost Holocaust revisionist scholar
John Taylor Gatto	15 December 1935	25 October 2018	New York US	Heart attack	Author Whistleblower Teacher	Probably the most famous teacher in USA, who became an unschooling activist, having turned up irrefutable proof that the forced schooling system was never intended to benefit children, but quite the reverse.
Whitey Bulger		30 October 2018	West Virginia Preston County U.S.		Deep state functionary Crime boss Informant	MKULTRA connected US Crime boss assassinated in prison.
Alain Chevalier	1931	1 November 2018			Businessperson
Igor Korobov	3 August 1956	21 November 2018				Russian military officer
George H. W. Bush	12 June 1924	30 November 2018	Texas Houston U.S.		Spook Politician Deep politician Businessperson	Skull and bones mastermind of the bush family busine$$.
William Blum	6 March 1933	9 December 2018			Author Historian	A prominent critic of US empire
Paddy Ashdown	24 February 1941	22 December 2018			Diplomat Spook Politician
... further results