social engineering reigns supreme

5 prongs of COIN psywar as summarized by the Communist Party of the Philippines

The power of an insurrection is social.

Video of military forces being routed in Kazakhstan.

Images of riot police being deployed atop riot control barriers that are mounted atop pick up trucks are coming out of Kazakhstan.

Many of the captured security forces in Kazakhstan seem to have been surrounded by cars en route to cities and don’t seem to have much will to resist.

Seattle Police put out misinformation on their scanner as part of a campaign that would fuel a strain of paranoia that proved fatal.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-police-improperly-faked-radio-chatter-about-proud-boys-as-chop-formed-in-2020-investigation-finds/

Analysis from: https://t.me/BO_AK_reborn

"Wahhabis, looters, mambets"? Who and what in Almaty?

In the whirlpool of events we are still trying to analyze something, not to dissolve in the information noise.

Perhaps the most interesting question for us is: what groups and forces are involved in the events in Almaty, where the scenario of confrontation is the most radical and violent at the moment? It is impossible to answer unequivocally right now.

Everything is mixed up in the media-rumor: "militant nationalist squads", "aggressive youths beating up journalists", "drunken marauders from the outskirts", "protesters"... and it's all in one mess. We don't know the disposition of forces among non-state actors of Kazakhstani events. But we are running the risk to suppose, that some people were going out to street marches, some people were taking away the vodka from the broken show-windows, and probably the third or probably the first were in arsenal of KNB.

Journalist Maksim Kurnikov said some very interesting things on Ekho Moskvy's morning broadcast. He reminded that the scheme "to take weapons from gun stores and then attack security forces" is not new in Kazakhstan.

Exactly the same thing happened) in the city of Aktobe in June 2016: several dozen young men, divided into groups, took weapons from two gun stores, seized vehicles and attacked a part of the National Guard, where they were defeated. The authorities of Kazakhstan have been much muddled about the case: their claims of an "Islamist connection" are still not very clear what is the basis for this.

Kurnikov also spoke of paramilitary guards at illegal oil refineries in western Kazakhstan, made up of local villagers, disparagingly called "mambets" (a la collective farmers) by Kazakhstani townsfolk. These groups have also at times had armed confrontations with police officers.

What does all this tell us? Of course, President Tokayev's words about "terrorist groups carefully trained abroad" are pure propaganda and most likely a gross lie. That armed cells capable of seizing security institutions and arsenals suddenly materialized from a motley crowd also sounds unlikely.

That said, we have no evidence of Islamist and/or nationalist involvement in the Almaty events. However, as we can see, organized groups capable of active armed resistance exist in Kazakhstani society in principle.

It is likely that those people who engaged in direct confrontation with the security forces were partly representatives of such groups and partly spontaneous self-organized protesters. The analogy with the 2014 Maidan, where the self-defense also gathered both literally "on the move" in the crowd and with the participation of radical organized groups that had arrived.

These are definitely not identical values to the dudes with vodka at the battered storefronts, although they could be overlapping sets.

P/S: about the "protesters' attacks on journalists." You'd be surprised, but the same thing happens in Paris somewhere. Journalists are certainly doing important work. But by filming the faces of people who oppose the authorities, they voluntarily or involuntarily collect evidence for the punishers. So there is no need to be offended by broken cameras.

Disclamer: we do not condemn, but support active opposition to the authorities of Kazakhstan, as well as any other states. The right to revolt against tyranny is a condition of people's freedom.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Kazakhstan’s KAZBAT peacekeepers that are currently deployed in Almaty are actually NATO/UN trained and were even deployed by NATO to help occupy Iraq.

Kazakhstan’s president Tokayev is following a similar strategy to US oligarchs after the George Floyd unrest: pay lip service to the prominent concerns of the protests without any fundamental change while also demonizing and criminalizing anyone who participated in most potent part of the unrest.

Also because it hasn’t been mentioned as much beyond CSTO and NATO interests in the region, pan-Turkic agit prop has also targeted the area hoping to counter Turkey’s rival and the Armenian state’s ally, Russia.

more from https://t.me/BO_AK_reborn re Kazakhstan 🇰🇿

Tokayev's Carrot and Stick

Totalitarian rap is an abstract carrot and a very concrete stick...

Let's continue to highlight the important details of the picture of what is happening in Kazakhstan. Note, that as soon as the revolt went down, the repressive bodies got violent. That is there was not "pacification" at all, but rampant punitive measures. If on the 8th of January, when the public assemblies had dispersed and the authorities suppressed the main pockets of armed resistance in Almaty, the Ministry of Interior was announcing about 4 thousand detained, then today this figure has increased more than twice and approached 10 000 (!).

This is very similar to the situation in Belarus, where the Ministry of Internal Affairs/KGB bent on terrorism reached its climax immediately after the collapse of the protest wave. Regularity, though. Regimes act according to the principle "Woe to the vanquished! You can't expect from them any peacemaking in case of victory.

Many have noticed that when he agreed with CSTO interventionists about deployment of troops, Tokayev has immediately toughened his rhetoric: instead of the previous compromise tone, there were curses on the heads of "terrorists" and orders to shoot without warning.

Now the president of Kazakhstan alternates between threats and blackmail. It's interesting, that Tokayev is actively exploiting the theme of social justice: phrases about the unscrupulously rich at the background of general poverty. It goes without saying that this is merely manipulation, and that the president is not interested in social equality. But such "leftist" phraseology shows us the social essence of Kazakhstani protest - the uprising of the deprived and powerless against their exploiters and oppressors. Even if the rebels expressed it weakly conceptually. If the country was risen on the background of radical religious ecstasy (as on it now seekers of "Islamist trace" try to show), Tokayev would be singing something about importance of following the way of prophet...

We fix that the Kazakh uprising is not just a "revolt of the poor for cheap gas with some democratic demands", it is a revolt against inequality as such. There is reason to hope that Tokayev's "carrots," his populist speeches, will not bribe the people of Kazakhstan, just shot on the barricades and thrown into prisons by an authoritarian regime.

LOOKS CAN BE DECEIVING AND DECEIVING LOOKS CAN DRAW HEAT

Throughout the 2010s US “Operators” were routinely outed in Yemen due to their full beards often grown as facial concealment. Yemen being a place where men typically sport mustaches the operators’ beard made them extremely noticeable. This is one kind example of where concealment can I fact actually draw adversarial attention.

In 2020 activists in Seattle found the location of Mayor Jenny Durkan’s house precisely because it was the only house blurred out on google maps to the protected status she obtained after pissing off some bratva.

Police UCs (under covers) and wannabe operators grey manning at protests often dress overly nondescript which in combination with sunglasses and specific facial hair that gives them what activists call “cop face” often alerts protestors etc to their presence.

(continued)

DECEIVING LOOKS (continued)

Protestors, particularly black blocers, who practice outfit changes also have this problem. On their way to or from demos many make the mistake of dressing awkwardly normal, especially in hipper areas, and in combination with awkward use sunglasses and hats and the like they look sketchier than they would if they just dressed how they typically do. Likewise some bloc up to early or come to events where others aren’t in bloc so that them being bloc’d up actually makes them more distinct than anything.

One solution to this UCs have found is dressing like homeless people, people who are typically mentally avoided by passersby and whose odd dress and awkward presence is often accepted.

In South Africa the apartheid resistance used to just send their secret communications through the mail because it was more likely that their curriers would be stopped and searched because of their secretive signaling behavior than the high volume government operated postal service.

It’s also not just in meat space where this occurs. The NSA for example put people on the X KEYSCORE list for looking up how to use the TAILS operating system or and the Tor browser. And internet customers who use Tor have been the victim of dragnet surveillance. Likewise radical email hosts are watched with more scrutiny and since there’s less traffic on them they are more heavily surveilled. Of course it’s true something like gmail will just cooperate with the cops using PGP encryption over gmail has at times been safer than using radical services especially if you’re not encrypting the messages. They’re are also of course benefits having trusted servers etc, but that’s a whole different can of worms.

It is also the case that if you buy a burner style pay as you go cellphone with cash in the US the authorities are notified and your phone is added to dragnet surveillance. Which is not to say they’re less safe than phones linked to ones state name etc but it is a reality to consider. One way this has been subverted is using a prepaid card, another is the more inherently fraudulent; using some other random person’s information to get on a phone plan.

Shoplifters know this rule well many strolling into and out of the store confidently (often leaving with a full cart) dressed in everyday attire rather than in a hoodie and sunglasses and placing things in their jacket which is sure to draw the attention of loss prevention. Of course every context is different and this isn’t a shoplifting 101 but you get the idea. Shifty eyes may give better situational awareness, but they are also a red flag. Sunglasses may hide shifty eyes but on a day without bright sun they may draw attention as well. And so on.

On the plus side we live in an age where masks and encrypted communications are becoming normalized. And while not every tell is as obvious as a person whistling to seem casual, with the proper critical thinking pretty much everyone can avoid the trap of adversarial attention wrought by concealment measures.

some battles can be won before they even begin

Groups like Patriot Front love to talk the talk of operational security and tactical planning but in their need to signal that they’re a strategic force they forget to employ one of the most basic concepts; ‘need to know information.’ They seemingly broadcast a great deal of their internal planning on any network seen as internal instead of just sharing that information with only a select few who really need to know. Of course they do practice this to some extent, but to signal like they have their shit together and to bolster a cool/confident affect in their internal culture they often share things that could probably not have been broadcasted so widely.

One other note re Patriot Front’s continued infiltration is that you’re only as secure as your counter measures ability to take more time and effort to break than your opponent is willing to give. Unfortunately for them there’s some dedicated people who hate them.