Ukraine’s Dark Web Arms Arsenal, by Declan Hayes

Ukraine has been flooded with tens of billions of dollars of NATO weaponry, much of which is now for sale on the dark web and elsewhere.

Although NATO has already supplied Clown Prince Zelensky’s rogue regime with enough materiel, some $50 bn worth (not that anyone is counting), to arm a medium sized nation, there is overwhelming evidence that much of those weapons have found their way onto the dark web for terrorists and sundry other trouble makers to buy and use as they see fit. Although NATO are right to express alarm at this latest development, they should look at themselves in the mirror to see who is responsible for this latest threat.

Rand to the Rescue

Although The UN, the World Economic Forum, the Australian National University and the Cambridge Independent have all opined on how to source weapons on the dark web, their work revolve around this Rand Corp study to which we now also revert. This Rand report tells us that, though the U.S. accounts for almost 60 per cent of the firearms listings, Europe represents the largest market for arms trade on the dark web, generating revenues that are around five times higher than the U.S.

As the report tells us that pistols accounted for 84 per cent of all listed firearms, followed by rifles (10 per cent) and sub-machine guns (6 per cent), Interpol’s warning of sales of Javelin missiles on the dark web, which the CIA now predictably but alarmingly say is Russian disinformation, would be a major step up in such sales, something like children going from a lemonade stand to taking on Coca Cola for market share.

As the Rand report reckons the dark web’s overall monthly value in arms’ trading is only about $80,000, they correctly conclude that “the dark web is unlikely to be the method of choice to fuel conflicts because arms are not traded at a large enough scale and due to the potential limitations on infrastructure and services in a conflict zone”. Though its further conclusion that “the dark web has the potential to become the platform of choice for individuals (e.g. lone-wolves terrorists) or small groups (e.g. gangs)” as well as for sundry other crackpots to obtain weapons and ammunition is worth keeping in mind, such attacks are as nothing compared to a series of NATO inspired missile strikes on Serbian, Hungarian, Chinese or other passenger planes. The British and Americans both have form in that regard.

DW Shift, German Intelligence’s contribution to NATO’s disinformation wars, talks us through the 101 of buying a weapon on the Dark Web; this is of concern to Germans because one of their 2016 mass shooters sourced his weapon on the dark web. DW’s pretty reporter talks to an equally pretty young researcher who is au fait with such dark arts which seem, by the report, simple enough. One shops on the dark web, as one might shop on Amazon or ebay, clicks on one’s orders and checks out. Glock, Colt, Sig Sauer, Beretta, Ekol-Voltran, Ruger and Smith & Wesson are, in that order, the most popular purchases. DW Shift’s pretty fräuleins inform us that because the sellers of these items are rated, just as are their Amazon and ebay equivalents, we can shop in safety and have DHL deliver our purchase to a safe location of our choice.

Enter the IRA

Anybody who believes that NATO mis information deserves every minute of the jail sentence they get. The Irish Republican Army and its offshoots are proof that such purchases are not for DW Shift’s casual browser. If the IRA found sourcing medium grade weapons difficult, then you should perhaps think twice about shopping on these dark sites.

This New York Times article shows how the CIA were supplying the IRA with weapons to stop the IRA shopping elsewhere; that the CIA now control the mainstream IRA through their 1998 Good Friday Agreement shows how successful that strategy has been.

The CIA were not, of course, the IRA’s only American supplier. CIA agent and Boston Mafia boss, Whitey Bulger, also sent them boat loads of weapons, which were duly interdicted. Although Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi became a much more important source, the point is that acquiring weapons is not easily done as there are countless, well resourced parties determined to stop you.

This can be seen in the case of Liam Campbell, who was recently extradited from Ireland to Lithuania on charges of trying to acquire weapons for his rump IRA faction. As a cast of Irish MI5 agents, led by Dennis McFadden, walked Palestinian doctor Issam Bassalat and other gullible marks into an arms-related trap, and as CIA operative David Rupert previously got the rump IRA’a leader jailed for 20 years, caveat emptor, buyer beware applies on the dark web even more so than it does on amazon or ebay. Unless, that is, one is a member of an MI5 controlled death squad charged with killing Catholics, then one can import weapons from South Africa or Australia to do what MI5 has decided must be done.

The Irish lesson then is that, if one wishes to procure arms for a sectarian or other campaign, one needs to work with either governments or gangsters or both to secure the necessary weaponry, which are not cheap. Recent gangland murders and related trials in Dublin as well as the IRA and its rump offshoots confirm that trajectory.

Enter the Kiddy Fiddlers

The experiences of the international pedophile network show the risks that even those criminals most proficient in the dark web’s darkest corners run when these predators become the prey. Australia’s Task Force Argos has brought down many of these kiddy fiddling networks, not the least of which was the very sophisticated operation run by Shannon Grant McCoole, who ran one of the pedophiles’ most depraved websites from his South Australian base. But not, as the case of Peter Scully and Matthew Graham show, the most depraved site. Although Graham, his tech savvy buddies and their tens of thousands of customers are an unspeakable threat to all the world’s vulnerable children, Task Force Argos and their global partners are, thankfully, a threat to them and, by extension any group who wish to line the pockets of Ukraine’s purveyors of death through the dark web.

EncroChat

EncroChat was a sting operation Australia’s Task Force Argos would have been proud of. EncroChat allowed organized crime members to plan criminal activities through encrypted messages that Europe’s various police forces listened into. Over 1,000 arrests were made across Europe as a result of that sting. As the Australian and American police forces conducted similar stings, conducting these transactions are fraught with more risks than rewards for those unskilled in the dark arts.

Given the Encrochat experience, one should note that Twitter and the CIA both have sizable dark net presences. If you want to be enmeshed in their dark web, enjoy your jail time.

Dark Markets

Interpol has also highlighted the trade in illegal organ harvesting, which has previously crossed my desk as a result of the Muslim Brotherhood’s criminal activities in terrorist controlled Syria which works, like most other markets do, by a system of levers. There is a demand in countries like Israel and Switzerland where donors are in short supply and there is an obvious supply where poverty is king or, as in the case of rebel held Syria, where there is an over supply of captives. Rebel sanctioned brokers will, per Interpol’s report, ensure the markets work at a certain level of efficiency, at least until money changes hands. Because these gangsters are totally unscrupulous, medical complications, which will have to be fixed by Israeli, Swiss or other doctors, will most likely quickly follow from these cut price operations.

More for our purposes is that rebel held Syria provides a safe haven for such criminality.

The CIA: Market Maker

The only groups who can make the dark web in NATO supplied Ukrainian weaponry viable are the Western intelligence agencies and their proxies, who are not honest brokers in this or in anything else. One need only look at the Iran Contra Affair where the Reagan regime supplied Islamic Iran with weaponry to fund the Nicaraguan Contras. Allied to that is the Gary Webb affair, where the CIA flooded America’s ghettos with crack cocaine to fund the Contras’ fight for American sanctioned democracy.

The Ukrainian Bazaar

Ukraine, Europe’s most corrupt country, has been flooded with tens of billions of dollars of NATO weaponry, much of which is now for sale on the dark web and elsewhere. The only possible “hostile” markets for such materiel are criminals and terrorists; nations opposed to NATO can be ruled out because of the reputational damage such shenanigans would cause them. Although the Kinahan Organized Crime Group and their Latin American partners have formidable arsenals, FBI retaliation against them would be sure and swift if they started to use NATO weaponry to shoot down NATO friendly planes.

That just leaves terrorists or, to be more precise, NATO friendly terrorists, like those NATO has nurtured in the Fertile Crescent, the Southern Caucasus, the Indian-Pakistani-Afghan triangle and throughout Africa. As the experiences of the IRA and its various offshoots show that the expertise to obtain and deploy such weaponry has always been far beyond their capabilities, one can only conclude that a major government sponsor is needed to successfully obtain and deploy such firepower.

The experiences of ISIS, which was able to obtain fleets of brand new Toyota trucks, suggest that it is only NATO and its affiliates that can supply the necessary logistics to put such weaponry in the field, not only throughout the Arab and Asian worlds but in Western Europe as well.

This report that these advanced Ukrainian missiles are surfacing in NATO controlled Syria would confirm that hypothesis that NATO are using their Ukrainian involvement to funnel yet more advanced weaponry to their favored zealots elsewhere. NATO’s Ukrainian defeat makes Syrian military and civilian targets the obvious theater for payback, complete with NATO’s usual implausible denials of course.

Globalization

NATO’s dirty war in Ukraine is but one of the many hot wars it is currently engaged in in countries as diverse as Afghanistan, Algeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Colombia, DR Congo, Ethiopia , Iraq, Libya, Mali, Mexico, Mozambique , Myanmar, Niger, Nigeria, South Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Tunisia and Yemen. NATO’s generals move men and materiel around from one theater to another as the need arises.

The war in Ukraine was never about democracy or keeping the idiot Zelensky in power. It was about bleeding Russia, Iran, Venezuela and China dry and, though it seems Russia is not for turning in Ukraine, our earlier precedents show that does not mean NATO will cease and desist from its criminal ways.

Although the corrupt Zelensky junta is awash with advanced NATO weapon that is surplus to their requirements, they are not surplus to NATO’s requirements elsewhere. Therefore, depending on NATO’s needs where you live and according to this NATO report by 26 ethically challenged Ukrainian NGOs, expect Javelin and NLAW anti-tank systems, Stinger and Starstreak portable air defence systems, Switchblade loitering munitions. Harpoon missiles, MQ-9 Reaper and MQ-1 Predator UAVs to show up in a NATO sponsored war near you. And, though NATO’s media will act all surprised as to how that might have happened, remember that you read it here first.

Source: Strategic Culture