Leaked: How British Intel Infiltrates Lebanon

By Kit Klarenberg

 

In a markedly revealing September 22nd interview with The National, U.S. special envoy to Syria Tom Barrack made a number of stunning admissions about the state of play in Lebanon.

Despite Western governments demanding for months that Beirut disarm Hezbollah, he acknowledged the resistance group had “zero” incentive to voluntarily do so, as “Israel is attacking everybody” across West Asia. As such, Hezbollah’s “argument gets better and better,” and its public support grows. Barrack went on to propose arming the Lebanese Armed Forces [LAF] for the purpose:

“[The LAF] is a good organization and it’s well-meaning, but it’s not well-equipped…Who are they going to fight? We don’t want to arm them so they can fight Israel…So you’re arming them so they can fight their own people, Hezbollah…our enemy…We need to cut the heads off of those snakes and chop the flow of funds. That’s the only way you’re going to stop Hezbollah.”

Barrack’s comments are a uniquely candid admission of Washington’s overarching strategy in West Asia: to construct intelligence, military and security apparatuses in pliable puppet states for the purpose of internal oppression, posing no threat whatsoever to the Zionist entity, while Tel Aviv attacks “everybody” in the region with total impunity.

Yet, efforts to bring Lebanon to heel, and neutralize Hezbollah’s influence in the country, have been ongoing for many years—with London secretly leading the charge.

Leaked documents reviewed by CovertAction Magazine expose how Torchlight, a well-remunerated British state contractor staffed by military and intelligence veterans, has insidiously penetrated Lebanon’s assorted spying agencies at their highest levels.

These efforts are conducted in express support of the British Embassy in Beirut’s “political access and influence objectives.” Under their auspices, British operatives and technology are implanted at the heart of the country’s security agencies, in the process training an unblinking eye on their operations and Lebanese citizens.

One leaked file notes Torchlight staff deployed for these clandestine projects are “highly experienced former UK police investigators, intelligence officers and forensic experts,” providing specialist instruction at one of Britain’s leading spy schools, the Joint Intelligence Training Group.

Furthermore, 90% of the company’s employees have high-level Whitehall security clearances, granting them “frequent and uncontrolled access” to top secret information. Torchlight itself boasts rare ‘List X’ accreditation, meaning the Ministry of Defence has entrusted the firm with storing highly sensitive, classified material on its premises.

Under the auspices of ‘Investigations Advisor and Mentor,’ an endeavor ostensibly aimed at improving the investigative processes of the LAF’s Intelligence Directorate, Torchlight ostensibly teaches the unit to move away from the use of “uncorroborated confession evidence” obtained via torture to “recognition and exploitation” of CCTV footage, phone records, biometrics, forensics and covert on-line and off-line surveillance.

The leaks make clear this drive is not motivated by sincere human rights concerns, but by a desire to “drive down risks” of public association with the Directorate.

“Beneficiary Concerns”

In reality, London seeks to build a “sustained relationship with an important UK [counter-terror] partner” in Beirut and, thus, “enable, support and assure any joint UK-Lebanese operational cooperation and collaboration.”

Intelligence gathered in Lebanon not merely by the LAF’s spying nexus, but Beirut’s other intelligence and security agencies, is fed directly back to SO15, London’s Metropolitan Police counter-terror unit, National Crime Agency and “other members of the UK intelligence community.”

Torchlight’s cloak-and-dagger embedment with Lebanon’s intelligence agencies avowedly grants the firm “enhanced understanding” of “the operational realities of present working practice” in, and “institutional rivalries” between, Beirut’s military, Internal Security Forces, General Security Directorate, and General Directorate of State Security.

Torchlight’s lead “mentor” for the program, William Semple, a veteran SO15 investigating officer, was “well-networked” across all these services, and “highly familiar” with their operating environments. This fly-on-the-wall insight allowed Torchlight to cultivate “strong relationships” with the agencies’ “strategic and tactical operational heads.”

The company is likewise “well-networked” with Lebanon’s military courts, having met with Fadi Sawan, Beirut’s chief military investigating judge, on “multiple” occasions. Coincidentally, Sawan was initially charged with investigating the ever-mysterious August 2020 Beirut blast, but promptly removed from his position due to political pressure.

Moreover, Torchlight’s in-country team includes a number of “highly networked” former Lebanese intelligence operatives, advising the firm on “constructive” engagement with their former employers, “[facilitating] introductions and meetings” and ensuring the project avoids “pitfalls and obstacles” to “buy-in” from senior leadership.

“Passive resistance” from high-ranking staff was forecast to be a potential pitfall in another secret program, through which Torchlight equips Beirut’s Military Intelligence Directorate with technology to process and manage digital evidence.

A leaked file notes 90% of Lebanese citizens use the internet, while 75% have smartphones, which “presents major opportunities for intelligence and law enforcement to use digital forensics techniques to drive and support investigations, providing high quality evidence”—and British spooks to closely monitor the local population in the process.

The leaked files outline how Torchlight overcame even sterner resistance from “negative blockers” within the LAF’s Intelligence Directorate, upon launch of the firm’s “mentoring” initiative. The agency’s top brass harbored entirely legitimate “suspicions” about the true purpose of the project.

However, having conducted analysis to “understand the root causes of beneficiary concerns” and allayed them, the effort not only went ahead, but Torchlight was allocated a dedicated office within the Directorate’s headquarters.

Nonetheless, “complex political and institutional landscapes” were predicted to “likely present engagement challenges” throughout the program, in particular “sensitivities with regards to access to data.”

Given the “possibility of reluctance” to allow British intelligence full access, “rapidly developing relationships of trust” was key.

The “privilege” of Torchlight’s office within LAF headquarters was to be leveraged for the purpose. Perhaps more illuminatingly than intended, one file concludes by stating that, for Torchlight, “the most important consultancy skill is listening.”

“Elite Incentives”

While local stakeholders were “unlikely to say ‘no’ to project proposals” as a result of Torchlight’s penetration, the company suggested its work could still “meet with passive resistance.” It is clear certain elements and individuals within Beirut’s power structure were extremely wary of London’s activities.

A document outlining engagement strategies for Lebanese government personnel notes the country’s military court commissioner was “unsupportive” of London’s involvement. However, due to having recently been “mired in controversy,” his tenure in the post was reportedly “coming to an end.”

The nature of the controversy is not stated, and the commissioner is not named in the file. The post was at that time held by Judge Peter Germanos, who briefly garnered Westernmedia attention in March 2019 after he ruled homosexuality was not a crime in Lebanon and, thus, refused to prosecute military officers charged with “homosexual activity.”

Just as Torchlight predicted, he duly resigned in February 2020. It is a matter of speculation whether Germanos’s downfall was British-engineered.

Leaked files related to a “rule of law initiative” in the former Yugoslavia covertly run by the British National Security Council’s Stabilisation Unit make amply clear London does not tolerate high-level opposition to its overseas skullduggery, and readily employs active measures to comprehensively crush any and all resistance:

“In contexts where elite incentives are not aligned with [Britain’s] objectives/values…an approach that seeks to hold elite politicians to account might be needed…We can build relationships and alliances with those who share our objectives and values for reform. It is critical that the media have the capacity and freedom to hold political actors to account.”

We must ask ourselves whether Britain’s wide-ranging infiltration of Lebanon’s corridors of power has been pivotal in encouraging Beirut’s leaders to support Hezbollah’s disarmament.

President Joseph Aoun, who was inaugurated in January 2025, quickly made clear that neutralizing Hezbollah was one of his primary objectives. When Iran vehemently objected in August, Aoun robustly responded: “We reject any interference in our internal affairs.” His riposte was sickly ironic, given Beirut’s Internal Security Forces, which Aoun led for many years, is also heavily penetrated by the British.

On October 2nd, it was announced that the Trump administration had dispatched $230 million to Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah, just prior to the end of Washington’s fiscal year. The effectively British-run ISF and LAF will use the funds to forcibly take over the resistance group’s responsibilities. The pair may have quite a fight on their hands—but London, Tel Aviv and Washington no doubt stand poised to assist. West Asia could be on the brink of yet another war.

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2025/10/19/leaked-how-british-intel-infiltrates-lebanon/

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

 

A Break in the Search for the Origin of Complex Life

A group of newly discovered microbes, named after Norse gods, may belong to the lineage from which we evolved.

By Ed Yong

 

In Norse mythology, humans and our world were created by a pantheon of gods who lived in the realm of Asgard. As it turns out, these stories have a grain of truth to them.

Thanks to a team of scientists led by Thijs Ettema, Asgard is now also the name of a large clan of microbes. Its members, which are named after Norse gods like Odin, Thor, Loki, and Heimdall, are found all over the world. Many of them are rare and no one has actually seen them under a microscope. But thanks to their DNA, we know they exist. And we know that they are singularly important to us, because they may well be the group from which we evolved.

If Ettema is right, then around two billion years ago, an Asgardian microbe (or an incredibly close relative) took part in a unique event that gave rise to the eukaryotes. That’s the group which includes humans, our fellow animals, plants, fungi, and every living thing made from large, complex cells—all the living things we’re most familiar with, and all the ones we can actually see. Our origins lie either in Asgard, or next door to it.

To understand this story, we have to go back to the very beginning. The Earth was created around 4.5 billion years ago, and judging by some astonishingly ancient fossils, life emerged relatively soon after. For the longest time, living things belonged to two great domains: the bacteria and the archaea, both microscopic and both comprising single cells. That was the status quo for at least 1.7 billion years, until the two domains were joined by a third: the eukaryotes. And they were very different.

Eukaryotic cells are generally much bigger than either bacteria or archaea. They also have larger genomes. They have internal compartments that act like our organs, each with its own special job. They have an internal skeleton that acts as a transport network for molecules. There’s this huge gulf of complexity that separates them from the other two domains. It’s a gulf that has only ever been crossed once in life’s history. Bacteria and archaea are capable of amazing feats of evolution, but in over 3.7 billion years of existence, none of them have ever evolved into anything approaching a eukaryote-like cell—except that one time. Why?

One possible answer, which I’ve written about before, says that eukaryotes were created through an incredibly unlikely merger between members of the other two domains. Somehow, a bacterium found its way inside an archaeon and, rather than being digested or destroyed, became a permanent part of its host. In doing so, it provided the archaeon with an extra source of energy, which allowed it to get bigger, accumulate more genes, and evolve down new paths that were previously inaccessible to it. That fusion cell gave rise to the eukaryotes, and the bacterium eventually turned into the mitochondria—little bean-shaped structures that still power eukaryotic cells to this day.

Once the eukaryotes evolved, they repeatedly engulf microbes and fused with them—a process called endosymbiosis. But that’s much easier to do when the host cell is already big, and can engulf smaller neighbors. If the host is an archaeon, the feat becomes much harder and far more improbable. That’s maybe why the merger between an archaeon and a bacterium—the one that gave rise to mitochondria and may have spawned the eukaryotes—has only happened once.

What were those two ancient partners like? We know that the bacterium belonged to a group called the alphaproteobacteria (which also includes Wolbachia, a microbe that I’ve repeatedly written about here.) But until recently, no one knew anything about the archaeon host.

Ettema changed that in 2015. His team at Uppsala University collected samples of sediment from Loki’s Castle—a field of hydrothermal vents that lie between Greenland and Norway, at depths of 2,300 meters. By analyzing the DNA within their sample, the team identified a new archaeon that they called Lokiarchaeota (low-key-ar-kay-oh-tuh). Their DNA revealed that they are the closest living relatives of all eukaryotes. They’re the best approximations that we have for that ancestral archaeon that gave rise to us all.

Loki isn’t alone. Last year, another group led by Brett Baker at the University of Texas in Austin discovered a related group of archaea in the mud of North Carolina’s White Oak River; continuing the theme, they called it Thorarchaeota. Now, by teaming up, Ettema, Baker, and others have found even more relatives in sites around the world: Yellowstone National Park, a hot spring in New Zealand, deep-sea vents lying near a Japanese island, and many more. “This work is fantastic: going out to the sediments of the planet and digging up the weird and wonderful bugs that live there,” says James McInerney from the University of Manchester.

“It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack, but we’re working on it.”

These microbes fall into four major groups: Lokiarchaeota, Thorarchaeota, Odinarchaeota, and Heimdallarchaeota. “There’s around 50 more Asgardian gods, we’re good to go for the next few years,” says Ettema.

These four lineages all belong to an overarching supergroup that the team have called Asgard. And we eukaryotes either sit within the Asgardian family tree, or just outside it. We descend directly from either members of the group (perhaps within the Heimdall branch), or from incredibly close relatives.

The genomes of the Asgardian microbes hold many surprises. When Ettema looked at their DNA, he was surprised to find genes that are supposedly unique to eukaryotes. Some are for building and remodeling internal skeletons, which archaea don’t have. Others are involved in pinching off bits of the outer membrane to create little pockets that can move molecules around large cells—and yet, archaea are small. Yet others are typically involved in shuttling molecules between the compartments inside eukaryotic cells—compartments that typically don’t exist in archaea.

When Ettema first found these genes in Loki two years ago, other scientists were skeptical. Perhaps they came from eukaryotes that had contaminated Ettema’s samples. But the presence of such genes in other members of Asgard, collected by different teams from different corners of the world, suggests that they’re real.

This doesn’t mean that the Asgardians are eukaryotes themselves, or even anything close. As James McInernery and Mary O’Connell write, “The distribution of genes formerly thought to be eukaryote-specific is patchy,” so that no single Asgardian has “a full set.” Instead, it seems that “the building blocks for those eukaryote-defining traits were most likely already present in our archaeal ancestors,” says Ettema.

This feeds into a long-running and still unsettled debate about the origin of eukaryotes. Some scientists believe that the bacterium that would become the mitochondria was swallowed by a host cell that was already big, complex, and most of the way to becoming a eukaryote. Others hold that the host was still a true archaeon, and that it was the merger that allowed it to become more complex.

On the face of it, the presence of eukaryote-y genes in Asgard supports the former idea. But Ettema disagrees. Based on their genomes, “they’re not very sophisticated cells, but they have many of the right components in place,” he says. “They were primed to become eukaryotes.”

This debate is likely to rage on for a while, because no one has actually seen the Asgardians themselves. In the 1980s, scientists developed ways of identifying microbes by searching for their DNA amid environmental samples. This is now the main way of finding new species, but it means that many microbes—like Loki and its kin—are only known through their DNA. No one knows what they look like.

“It’s high on our priority list,” says Ettema. “It’s crucial that we have a look at the cells to see what they’re doing, but that’s extremely hard. Loki was discovered in deep-sea ocean sediments, where you don’t go every day. Thor and Heimdall are present in shallower environments, but they’re less than 0.1 percent of the total microbial community. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack, but we’re working on it.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/01/our-origins-in-asgard/512645/

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

Imaginations of Modernity

BY Pranay Kumar Shome

An idea that has dominated the global social discourse over the years, it is time that newer ideas of modernity are explored.

 

One of the most influential concepts in the intellectual history of the world, modernity has contributed profoundly to the change in the trajectory and existence of different societies. Born in the period between the 16th-17th centuries in Europe, modernity was essentially a product of the Enlightenment period. This period was characterized by the marked decline in the influence of religion and the monolithic religious institution called the Roman Catholic Church.

The decline in the hold of religion was followed by the corresponding ascent of a new school of thought-the urge to look at the world around us from a distinctly humanistic perspective undergirded by materialism. This weltanschauung was the culmination of the transformational process that had been set in motion by the Renaissance. The Age of Enlightenment led to the rejuvenation of human cognition, resulting in the unprecedented advancements in the fields of technology, health, arts, culture, literature, and other varying fields.

These developments marked the transition from the medieval to the modern period.

Western Idea of Modernity 

Owing to the material and martial progress of Europe since that time, modernity has come to be understood distinctly in Western terms. Therefore, it becomes essential to analyze it.

Modernity according to Western civilization, is predominantly anchored in three themes.

Asia, Africa, and Latin America became colonies of Europe, with West European countries competing and fighting wars to preserve and expand colonies 

The first theme is rationalism. Rationalism is an idea that argues human cognition should always be guided by science. This denotes that every phenomenon in nature is observable, explainable, and understandable. Such phenomena are comprehensible to human nature. Rationalism asserts that human beliefs and ideas be based on facts-information that has been verified and authenticated by rigorous testing and experimentation. Scientists like Isaac Newton Galileo Galilei and philosophers like David Hume Immanuel Kant are some of the outstanding figures of that period.

The second theme is anthropocentrism. It is an idea that states that humans constitute the pinnacle of evolution. They are the most important beings in the cosmos, and nature is to be subservient to the cause of Homo sapiens. It adopted a distinctly materialistic approach to life. The Industrial Revolution of the 18th century in Britain, followed by its spread to other European countries and later on to North America, is a manifestation of anthropocentrism.

The third theme is individualism. An invention of the political ideology of liberalism, Individualism contends that human beings are rational creatures who are capable of determining what’s best for themselves. In that context, the locus of a society is the individual, not the community or the nation. It repudiates the collectivistic idea of human existence, arguing that rights and liberties are vested in each individual.

Flawed Character

Notwithstanding the fact that the Western idea of modernity has been the de facto social norm globally for the past three to four centuries, it is fundamentally flawed. This is due to several reasons-

Firstly, anthropocentrism is a recipe for disaster. Treating nature as a resource and exploiting it in the name of furthering ‘progress’ has been responsible for the current ecological crisis of the planet. Unregulated discharge of greenhouse emissions by polluting industries across the length and breadth of the Euro-Atlantic region for over two centuries has resulted in extreme weather conditions. Floods, landslides, droughts, and extreme summer temperatures are becoming a routine occurrence. Sea levels are rising. To make matters worse, rising global temperatures are threatening the biodiversity of Mother Earth, resulting in the change in migratory patterns of species, inability to adapt to abrupt weather, and other serious conditions. The world as it appears today continues to suffer from this crisis, with little or no serious initiative being taken by the West in the fight against climate change.

Anthropocentrism was also the driving force behind Europe’s obsession with more material progress. This progress manifested itself in the search for new markets that would serve as destinations for European products and could be effectively exploited by them. It was this search for new markets that birthed the age of Imperialism and its egregious manifestation Colonialism. Asia, Africa, and Latin America became colonies of Europe, with West European countries competing and fighting wars to preserve and expand colonies. J. Sai Deepak in his book India, That is Bharat-Coloniality, Civilization, and  Constitutionhas brilliantly exposed this face of the West.

Secondly, in regarding individuals as the center of social consciousness, Western modernity has undermined the organic foundations of not only its own society but has exported this controversial idea to collectivistic societies. Today, even in a highly collectivistic society like India, we find the institution of the joint family facing extinction. Individualism has led to the alienation of human against human, leading to a detached social existence that is lacking in the element of human touch.

Alternative Idea

In this atmosphere, examination of alternative ideas is the sine qua non. One such form of modernity is Indic modernity. It states that individuals are products of a society and are firmly embedded in the unique socio-cultural and socio-historical context of the concerned society. With that being said, it also considers individuals as important stakeholders of the society who influence and get influenced by social institutions and, therefore, are essential for the successful functioning of a social compact.

Unlike Western modernity, Indic modernity believes that modernity must be a blend of material and spiritual development. Material development leads to the satisfaction of the urges and aspirations of the scientific man. However, for the scientific man, a void still remains. This void is fulfilled by the spiritual uplifting not only of one’s own consciousness but also of the consciousness of others. India’s poet laureate Rabindranath Tagore, in his famous text The Religion of Man explained this idea beautifully. He highlighted that Indic modernity believes in the satisfaction of all the four purusharthas, or organizing principles of human life-artha, dharma, kama, and moksh.

Further, Indic modernity believes that human civilization has a strong connection with nature. We are a part of nature; it is from nature that we derive our existence, and it is from nature that we draw our sustenance. Hence, nature worship is an integral part of Sanatan Dharma.

In conclusion, it must be emphasized that humanity is standing at a critical juncture where we need to make the right decision. Hence, the idea of modernity the West espouses must be eschewed, and alternative forms of social existence, particularly those that prioritize harmony with nature along with balanced economic development, embraced.

 

Pranay Kumar Shome, a research analyst who is a PhD candidate at Mahatma Gandhi Central University, Bihar, India

https://journal-neo.su/2025/10/02/imaginations-of-modernity/

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.