https://meduza.io/en/quiz/did-sputnik-really-tweet-that
The Keynote address at the StratCom Center of Excellence in Riga, Latvia, exposed an insidious tool possibly used by the Russians: Bikini Trolls.
They target “vulnerable social group, men over 45”. Funny thing, I’m over 45 and I get my jollies elsewhere.
The concept is that susceptible men are distracted from their work by these beauties in bikinis, so much that I will turn from my work and stare at her pictures and videos.
I’d never do that.
But if I would this would be my favorite: Lena Love or Helga Lovekaty. 
The Saint Petersburg, Russia native is one of Russia’s most potent weapons, she forced me to follow her on Facebook (both names) as well as Twitter.
She forced me, dammit.
The problem is most of my male friends over 45 also follow her.
A female friend from Sweden laughingly referred me to the tweet by Keir Giles, who is from the UK.
I guess Russia finally has an Information Warfare tool that works!
Not on me, mind you. But on other susceptible men over 45…
Enjoy your monday!
NOVEMBER 25, 2015
Developed nations, and most especially The United States, have long been frustrated at their poor ability to do what diplomats and politicos carefully call winning hearts and minds.
From the Cold War to what Pope Francis lately calls a piecemeal World War III, the effort to wage peace and democracy has come in predictable waves of recognition: America has a PR problem. Only a few political cycles ago, for example, Karen Hughes, now global vice chairman of PR giant Burson-Marsteller, was tapped by president George W. Bush to lead a State Department charm offensive. With the recent rash of bombings in Beirut, Paris, Mali and elsewhere, there are sure to be renewed calls to win the love of yankee detractors or at least co-opt the extremists, particularly ISIS.
Unlike past dabblings in public affairs propaganda (yes, this all falls along the spectrum of public manipulation), new designs will enjoy an easing of the draconian Smith-Mundt Act, which required good manners in bad-mannered theaters, and commensurate empowerment of the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees sprawling outlets like Voice of America. But jihadists will still have the upper hand. Just as terrorism is asymmetric so too are the influence strategies that terrorists employ. In the same way that activists hunt and haunt corporations with all manner of publicity stunts, illegal invasions, FOIA attacks and made-for-media misreads, the plays that jihadists can and do run are comparatively unrestricted. As illustrated through the frame of The Standard Table of Influence, consider the composite signatures of the activist-insurgent (above) and the cautious or unskilled playmaker (below). That they are near mirror opposites is not a coincidence. One aims to prosecute a position and advance an agenda. The other is geared to mitigate negatives and promote the positives.
Puzzled by the enemy that can’t be intimidated (i.e., the activist-insurgent), Kathleen Parker of The Washington Post pens this paradox about the war on terror:
We say: If you don’t stop murdering innocent people, we’re going to bomb you into oblivious.
They say: Bring it on. No, wait, we’ll do it ourselves. Boom.
What the columnist describes is bad practice by Americans. The threat to bomb an enemy is an influence play called the Fiat, a strategy of declaration. But to foes with less to lose, threats are taken as dares and, as Parker observes, dares are willingly taken. ISIS calls such bluffs with strategies both unfamiliar to and unanticipated by their western opponents. Suicide bombers, by example, use the bullrush strategy made famous in Hunt for Red October, the Crazy Ivan. Boom.
Just as Exxon jousts with Greenpeace and SeaWorld with PETA, first world democracies must wise up and loosen up in the face of smaller but savvier social warriors. Strategies heretofore shunned by diplomats and information officers, like the Red Herring, Bait, Call Out, Trump and aforementioned Crazy Ivan, are notably counter-intuitive and highly effective. Each, however, requires a certain acceptance that sacrifice must be made for ultimate gain and, often, that ethics must flex to context. In other words, each requires a liberated interpretation of established morals, reputation and risk management. Red Herrings (aka ruses, decoys, smoke screens) are thrown, per se, at the expense of a player’s credibility but provide the benefit of a needed distraction. Baits are issued at the risk of antagonizing a target but draw a rival from a protected position. Call Outs are a similar gamble but have the advantage of shifting an opponent onto the defense. The Trump, named for the card game, not the billionnaire, requires the steely eye because its principal purpose is to steal ideas without blinking.
Will Barack Obama or his successor have the will to run these plays on ISIS? Perhaps, but they require two things first: Permission of a nervous citizenry to play on the broader spectrum of influence. And practice. When story-telling and happy talk is all you know, prosecution doesn’t come naturally.
Whomever the extremists may be, one thing is for sure: They play by different rules and fewer restrictions. Learning those plays and their essential, counter-intuitive nature is key to keeping the peace.
Post by Alan Kelly
Graphics courtesy of Playmaker Systems, LLC
Source: http://www.playmakersystems.com/playmakers-blog/how-to-beat-isis-its-counter-intuitive/
The good news is that Russia is capable of deconflicting an intrusion into another country’s airspace, inadvertent or not.
The bad news is this reflects negatively on Russia when it refers to Turkey. Why didn’t Russia do this in Turkey and avoid an international incident?
Published 30 November 2015
Israel defense minister, Moshe Ya’alon, on Sunday told reporters that a Russian jet recently entered Israeli airspace but was not shot down because Israel and Russia had established an effective open communication system between the two countries. Ya’alon said the plane, by mistake, entered about one mile into Israeli airspace and immediately turned around back to Syria when the Russians were notified.
Israel defense minister, Moshe Ya’alon, on Sunday told reporters that a Russian jet recently entered Israeli airspace but was not shot down because Israel and Russia had established an effective open communication system between the two countries. Ya’alon comments highlight the differences between the Israeli and Turkish approach to the reality of Russian military intervention in Syria.
Fox News reports that Ya’alon said the plane, by mistake, entered about one mile into Israeli airspace and immediately turned around back to Syria when the Russians were notified.
After Russia announced its air campaign in Syria, the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, accompanied by high-level military and intelligence officials, met in Moscow with Vladimir Putin, and the two agreed to open a communication channel for Israeli-Russian coordination “to prevent misunderstandings.”
Ya’alon said that so far there has been only one incident of a Russian plane breaching Israeli airspace and that the mistake was “immediately corrected in the communications channel.” He did not offer additional details.
Ya’alon said: “Russian planes don’t intend to attack us and therefore there is no need to automatically, even if there is some kind of mistake, shoot them down.”
Ya’alon told reporters on Sunday that the Russian military notifies Israel in advance when Russian planes plan to get close to the country’s airspace.
“Just as we don’t interfere with their operations and we don’t get involved, as a policy, in what is happening in Syria, they also don’t interfere with us flying and acting in accordance with our interests,” he said.
Since January 2013, Israel has carried out ten airstrikes on military convoys in Syria which were carrying advanced weapons systems from Syrian military depots to Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon (see “Israel attacks in Syria, destroying Hezbollah-bound arms,” HSNW, 27 April 2015).
Israel has a policy of not confirming such operations, but let it be known that it will not allow Assad or Iran to supply advanced or “game-changing” weapon systems to the Shi’a militant group.
InformNapalm international volunteer community presents an interesting review article written by Vyacheslav Gusarov, an information security expert of ‘Information Resistance‘ group. We have created the infographics to visualize the data of the article.
The well-known military and political events started in Yugoslavia in the early ’90s. And in the summer of 1992 the first Russian ‘volunteers’ went all by themselves into a new hot spot after the war in Transnistria. By someone’s considerations, the local Slavs allegedly had to be defended.
Then the widely known Igor Strelkov-Girkin appeared among the group of ‘patriots’.
Somehow, the Russian media (with tears in their eyes) presented this fact as the archetype of the ‘Russian patriotism’.
However, you should wonder: how could it be possible in post-Soviet Russia to leave the country with combat equipment, and even take part in the hostilities?
The Russian writer Mikhail Polikarpov assures that several hundreds of ‘Russian volunteers’ continuously operated in Bosnia in 1992-1995, using the tactics of reconnaissance and sabotage groups. The fighters of ‘Rubikon’ security company from St. Petersburg formed the basis of that detachment.
Then it would be logical to ask: did they all infiltrate into Yugoslavia under the guise of Russian tourists? It is clear in this case that it was not done without the participation of KGB-FSB. Immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the state security authorities established a special unofficial unit of the militant professionals, which was used in hot spots of the former Soviet Union and abroad.
Under the guise of protection of Russia’s interests, the special unit’s soldiers used to be transferred to areas of conflict – Transnistria, Nagorno-Karabakh, Crimea, Georgia.
The state terrorists has left their bloody footprints in many places.
Over time, a need arose to create a legal basis which would legalize the activities of illegal armed groups in the state interests of Russia.
Legal and regulatory illusion
The global informatization is a headache for the Russian special operations – more and more often undesired materials appear in open sources. There was a need for legal platform as in other civilized countries.
However, the old Russian tradition to create dual-use laws became a habit of the Russian officials. This feature was once expressed in folk proverbial wisdom: “one law for the rich, and another for the poor”.
One of the first attempts was the amendment to the ‘Weapons act’ (2008), which allowed the abroad security structures of ‘Transneft’, ‘Lukoil’ and ‘Gazprom’ use weapons for ensuring objects’ security. Under the cover of this amendment, the first abroad armed formations were created.
But it appeared to be insufficient, so, starting from 2011, the Russian media began to actively discuss the establishment of a Russian military instrument of government influence. Then a huge amount of articles about the need to form “voluntary detachments of reservists in the FSB, the Foreign Intelligence Service, as well as in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation” appeared in different media. The information campaign was organized according to the classical scenario:
As a result, the law was passed, and many of the specific issues that it solved, were hidden under the weasel words.
For the reference: Law N 288-FZ (2012), determines the order of service in the special services of the Russian Federation by staying in the reserve created by the Russian president. Staying in the reserve is defined by a special status and “other regulatory legal acts of the Russian Federation”. Duties of a reservist may be identified by “other federal laws and other regulations”. In addition, reservists can receive training in “special professional institutions”, which today might be the Russian PMCs (they have the right to educate and train specialists in the required profile).
In 2013, the Russian Duma’s deputy Aleksandr Mitrofanov submitted a draft law No. 62015-6 “Concerning the State Regulation of creation and activities of private military companies”. The law allows PMCs the following (quotations):
For reference: in Art. 27 of the Law “The authority of the Government of the Russian Federation” states thatfederal authorities fully control the activities of PMCs and ‘carry out other powers in the field of private military companies’. The law did not explain the concept of “provision of other military services” (Art. 18, p. 2).
It is characteristic that a year earlier, in 2012, deputy Mitrofanov received from the Prime Minister Vladimir Putin blessing for the development of this law. Then Putin named the system of private military companies in Russia a “tool for the implementation of national interests without the direct participation of the state“. Well, this is the exact definition of the activities of the Russian PMCs.
Deputy G. Nosovka submitted another draft law “Concerning private military companies” to the State Duma in October of 2014. Now both drafts are passing the review process.
Russia’s private military companies
Around ten private military companies have been created in Russia over the last few years. The militants who have previously passed special training in Russian PMCs are often met in the area of ATO. The most famous among them are:
‘RSB-Group‘ – a private company which calls itself a military consulting company. An important detail: the official ‘RSB-Group’ operates in areas with unstable political situation in coordination with the legitimate government of other countries. The military activities in ‘LPR’ and ‘DPR’ fit this formulation easily since the leaders of these entities are recognized representatives of the ‘state government’;
‘Anti-Terror‘ – a group of companies, consisting of a training center, demining squad and several non-governmental organizations of former officers of special forces. The organization specializes in education and training of soldiers for special tasks of different nature in areas with high war risk. The company has the direct support of the FSB, which helped it gain a foothold in the Iraq region;
‘MAR‘ – a private military company that provides a full range of ‘security services’ in areas with high terrorist activities or unstable political situation. It is engaged in training, consulting, intelligence, sales of military goods, etc. In its practice, ‘MAR’ has sent fighters to the ATO zone, ostensibly to ensure the delivery of ‘humanitarian aid’ to ‘DPR’;
‘Moran Security Group‘ – a group of military-oriented companies, which focus on the protection of marine and land cargoes. It has a naval training center in St. Petersburg;
‘Center R‘ (other names – ‘Tiger Top-rent security’ and ‘Redut-Antiterror’) – a typical private military organization, whose experts have participated in the hostilities in Yugoslavia, Caucasus, Iraq and Afghanistan. The company trains sniper (and anti-sniper) specialists, shooters, combat engineers, radio engineers, rapid response fighters in urban environment, and so on.
It is likely that the activities of the listed above PMCs have been linked to the war in Ukraine in some way – recruitment, fighters training, or providing support. However, militants from ‘ATK GROUP’, ‘Slavonic Corps Limited’, ‘Vizantiya’ have been met in the area of the ATO, as well as in Syria.
In addition to that, PMC with ‘shady reputation’ work in Russia as well. Such companies can be ranked together with terrorist groups.
For example, ‘Vagner’ private military company (incorporated in Argentina) poses itself as a closed militarized structure; its training camp is located in the village of Molkino in Krasnodar krai, at the training site of the 10th special forces brigade of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Federation. With high probability we can assume that we observe here the mentioned above mechanism for the creation of voluntary units of Russian GRU’s reservists.
Everything is organized as in a Special Forces: arrival, interviewing, testing, quarantine, intensive special training, examination and sending on a mission. At the same time the main priority is to keep the information in secret.
According to closed sources, the main task is to prepare the ‘Vagner’s fighters for the war in Syria and send them there. This version is confirmed by the data from numerous printed materials.
Obviously, these men are the backbone of ground operations’ troops and they fight under the guise of Assad’s volunteers. Detachments of ‘vacationers’ are sent to Syria from Primorsko-Akhtarsky military airfield, which is located in 200 km from the training center.
According to confidential information, there are hundreds of killed fighters in the ranks of ‘Vagner’ PMC. This information is partially confirmed by the data in open sources:
24.09.2015 – 10 coffins arrived to Sevastopol from Syria;
20.10.2015 – Vessel with bodies of 26 killed marines from 810th brigade arrived to Sevastopol;
27.10.2015 – A coffin with a soldier died in Syria arrived to Sevastopol.
For reference: the 810th separate marine brigade (military unit No. 13140) has a double location – the headquarters are in Sevastopol and the main part is in Temryuk (Krasnodar krai), which is 200 km away from the headquarters of the ‘Vagner’ PMC. It is not difficult to assume that ‘Vagner’s personnel was recruiting fighters for Syria in the 810th brigade – trained marines can quickly form a special squad.
‘E.N.O.T. Corp’ PMC from Moscow has the same ‘shady’ structure. Unlike the previous one, this company has a website where it place a short description of its tasks.
‘E.N.O.T. Corp’ is allegedly engaged in military-patriotic work and collecting aid for ‘Novorossiya’. However, other materials indicate the involvement of ‘E.N.O.T. Corp’ into military operations in the ATO area – “mopping-up of militia in Antratsyt”, “fighting on the terrorists side” and “protection of ‘humanitarian’ convoys“. A. Borodai, who is directly connected with the FSB, is involved in the MPC’s activities.
The company has an arsenal of weapons, the possibility of training in shooting, engineering, reconnaissance and battle planning. It is likely that the military-patriotic and humanitarian component of their activity is a concealment element for the main objectives – special operations of arms and materiel delivery to militants from Luhansk and participation in hostilities.
According to confidential sources, curators of ‘E.N.O.T. Corp’ PMC recruit terrorists in Donbas for operations in Syria. There is information that from 700 to 1000 fighters have already left the occupied regions of Ukraine. The Russian citizenship, removal of criminal records and a decent salary (from 90 to 250 thousand of rubles) are offered to ‘DPR’ militants as a motivation. Further, these militants are recommended to go to ‘defend Russia’ not only in Syria, but also in Tajikistan and Nagorno-Karabakh, where the situation is complicated and can be escalated at any moment.
Cossacks as a public Russian military organization
The historical function of the Cossacks on the protection of the empire’s borders has degenerated over the past century, and this social group has turned into a bunch of mercenaries. The Russian Cossacks units are widely used by the Russian leadership to destabilize situation in the neighboring states of Russia.
This practice took place in Chechnya, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria, Crimea, Donbas and in Yugoslavia.
For example, the First Cossack Sotnia [hundred] (70 fighters) was stationed in the Yugoslavian town of Visegrad in 1993. Its members came from Rostov Oblast, Volga region and Moscow. Next, the militants from St. Petersburg and Siberia arrived.
Recently, the Cossacks from Krasnodar took part in the Crimea annexation in 2014, and armed groups from Rostov Oblast came to ‘protect the Russian world’.
As in the previous case, a logical question arises: how can we explain the emergence of paramilitary Cossack units in the opponent’s territory and with the combat task?
The functioning of the Cossack communities in Russia takes place under the control of the Russian government through the Council for Cossack Affairs under the President of the Russian Federation. The Cossack culture, military life and history are the basic principles of the Cossacks.
But these are just the excuses. Recall the dual-use structure of the Russian laws.
For example, according to the law ‘Regarding the State Service of the Russian Cossacks’, the Cossack units can be engaged in:
It should be understood that the Cossacks troops are officially allowed to deal not only with history and tradition, but also with military and combat training. In reality, in some cities, the Russian Cossacks rule the sphere of security and safety that allows them have their own arsenal of weapons.
Moreover, the Russian Cossacks are supported by the state grants.
This situation allows to use these squads in pseudopatriotic activities in accordance with the plans of the Kremlin.
***
Thus, the wars in Donbas and Syria demonstrate the participation of the Russian private military organizations in these conflicts.
The Kremlin has actually created a hidden lever of influence on the military situation in other states.
Original article by Vyacheslav Gusarov (‘Information Resistance’), translated by Stepan Grishin
With the publication of “Russian Private Military Companies As Licensed Tool of Terror“, a close friend sent me a link accompanied by these words:
I wonder if these guys captured on video in Donetsk in March of 2014 might have been from one of those companies?
Reports of Blackwater on the ground were received during the Crimean ‘Russian invasion’.
This is simple Active Measures, or fabrications meant to throw the trail off Russia and onto the US.
Putin announced on 17 April 2014 that the “Polite Green Men” wearing sterile (without insignia) uniforms were actually Russian Naval Infantry Soldiers.
Then similarly dressed personnel were spotted in Donbass. Were they Naval Infantry again? Were they Russian mercenaries? Read this report from 8 March 2014.
It was not Blackwater, we know that for certain.
Has Blackwater been deployed to Ukraine? Notorious U.S. mercenaries ‘seen on the streets of flashpoint city’ as Russia claims 300 hired guns have arrived in country
Has Blackwater been deployed to Ukraine? Notorious U.S. mercenaries ‘seen on the streets of flashpoint city’ as Russia claims 300 hired guns have arrived in country.
Speculation was growing last night that American mercenaries had been deployed to Donetsk after videos emerged of unidentified armed men in the streets of the eastern Ukrainian city.
At least two videos published on YouTube earlier this week show burly, heavily armed soldiers with no insignia in the city, which has been gripped by pro-Moscow protests.
In one of the videos onlookers can be heard shouting ‘Blackwater! Blackwater!’ as the armed men, who wear no insignia, jog through the streets.
A screengrab from a YouTube video showing armed men on the streets of Donetsk, a largely Russian-speaking city in east Ukraine which has been the scene of large protests against the country’s new regime
Donetsk was this week the scene of civil unrest as pro-Russian elements among its citizens seized control of the regional administration headquarters and another government building.
Yesterday thousands of people gathered in the city centre waving Russian flags and calling for a referendum to determine the status of the strategically important coal-mining region.
Both the videos which purport to show ‘Blackwater’ mercenaries in Donetsk were uploaded last Monday, with their descriptions written in Russian.
The context of the videos is not clear, but it appears that the armed men had turned up at a street protest against the new regime. They wander around brandishing their weapons before suddenly fleeing the scene as passers-by shout ‘Blackwater! Blackwater!’
Both the videos which purport to show ‘Blackwater’ mercenaries in Donetsk were uploaded last Monday, with their descriptions written in Russian. They could give Russia the pretext to invade the region
The armed men hop down from the elevated position where some had been standing and make their exit.
Since the videos emerged, Twitter has been alive with speculation that mercenaries linked to Blackwater, now known as Academi, are active in Ukraine, helping to prop up the embattled new pro-western government.
And a Russian diplomat in Kiev told the Interfax news agency on Wednesday that 300 employees of private security companies had arrived there.
‘These are soldiers of fortune proficient in combat operations. Most of them had operated under private contracts in Iraq, Afghanistan and other states,’ the source said. Interfax reported that the diplomat did not disclose the nationalities of the mercenaries but said, ‘Most of them come from the United States’.
Asked whether the soldiers seen in the videos could be from Academi, Dr Nafeez Ahmed, a security expert with the Institute for Policy Research & Development, said: ‘Difficult to say really. It’s certainly not beyond the realm of possibility – Academi have been deployed in all sorts of theatres.
‘I think the question is whether the evidence available warrants at least reasonable speculation.
‘On the face of it, the uniforms of the people in the videos are consistent with US mercs – they don’t look like Russian soldiers mercs. On the other hand, why run around in public making a show of it?’
He added: ‘Of course the other possibility is it’s all Russian propaganda.’
Any suggestion that a U.S. mercenary outfit like Blackwater, known now as Academi, had begun operating in east Ukraine could give Russian president Vladimir Putin the pretext for a military invasion.
As the armed men left the scene, suspicious bystanders could be heard yelling ‘Blackwater! Blackwater!’
Any suggestion that a U.S. mercenary outfit like Academi had begun operating in the country could give Russian president Vladimir Putin the pretext for a military invasion.
The Russian parliament, the Duma, has already voted to give Putin the authority to take action in the country, where the pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych was last month ousted after mass protests in the capital, Kiev.
Pro-Russian forces have already seized control of the southern Ukrainian province of Crimea, although the Kremlin denies that the thousands of heavily armed, well-equipped men that have appeared there are under its control.
Last month a report in the Daily Beast claimed that ‘informed sources’ in Moscow had said the troops belong to Vnevedomstvenaya Okhrana, a private security contracting bureau similar to Academi that is close to the Kremlin.
The videos which emerged this week come amid reports in Russian media which claimed that 300 ‘strong’ men had arrived at Kiev’s Boryspil airport carrying military-style bags.
Reports speculated that they were being sent to regions in eastern and southern Ukraine where Russian-speaking and ethnic Russian groups posed a secessionary threat to the new government.
Blackwater was founded in 1997 by former U.S. Navy SEAL Erik Prince and were one of several private security firms employed by the U.S. government to protect its diplomatic missions overseas.
With the outbreak of the Iraq war in 2003 the company’s operations expanded and its revenue mushroomed, but a string of controversial killings by its personnel led to a rebranding, first to Xe and then to Academi, its current name.
As well as acting as security contractors, Blackwater are seen by some as a private army that can promote U.S. interests without official military involvement.
Technically they are a multinational company and can by hired by anyone, but the board of directors includes a number of U.S. establishment figures including John Ashcroft, the former Attorney General, and former NSA chief Bobby Ray Inman.
Pro-Russian demonstrators take part in a rally in central Donetsk earlier today: The eastern city is in part of Ukraine where the majority of the population are either Russian-speaking or ethnic Russian
Russia! Help us: Protesters hold signs in English calling for Russian intervention in the region
No to Nato: A woman holds a sign decrying the trans-Atlantic alliance, while the Hammer and Sickle, the flag of the Soviet Union, flies in the background at the pro-Russian demonstration earlier today.
If Blackwater are present in Ukraine, it would make most sense for them to be deployed in the country’s east and south, where pro-Russian protesters raised the Russian flag over the regional parliament last Saturday.
It remained in place until Thursday when Ukrainian police regained control of the building without any resistance.
Donetsk, home city of deposed president Yanukovich, has seen the most persistent pro-Moscow demonstrations in a wave of protests that have erupted across southern and eastern cities.
MailOnline contacted Academi for comment, but there was no reply.
The website of Foreign Affairs ran an article by Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR), “Proxy Wars: Russia’s Intervention in Syria and What Washington Should Do,” November 24, 2015. His many recommendations included:
The United States should also energize its public diplomacy and information strategies. It could take the lead in funding translation services to make Western media available in Russia. The United States needn’t create content. Unlike in Russia, robust debate and diverse viewpoints already exist in U.S. media. The United States simply needs to ensure that this content is disseminated widely in Russia and Eastern Europe to provide a counter-narrative to Russian-controlled media and an example to the Russian people of what free media looks like.
No doubt some will say these policies are unduly provocative. Yet Putin’s provocations have continued unabated for more than seven years. Putin is very consciously challenging the United States and the U.S.-led international order, and is now waging a proxy war against it. It is well past time for the West to recognize his challenge, rise up to it, and move to win the proxy war. Otherwise, Washington may find itself in a genuine war against a nuclear peer.
Pentagon Ordered to Counter Islamic State Propaganda
By:
November 30, 2015 1:40 pm
Congress is ordering the Pentagon to beef up its cyber operations to counter the Islamic State’s online propaganda campaigns to recruit and radicalize individuals across the globe, according to recently passed legislation.
Defense Department officials have told Congress they lack the ability and authority to launch cyber efforts to counter the terror group’s recruiting efforts, which have radicalized scores of Americans and Europeans, some of whom have traveled to the Middle East to fight alongside the group.
Some reports indicate that the Islamic State has radicalized thousands of Americans and many more in Europe and throughout the Middle East.
Most of the Obama administration’s online operations in this arena have been operated by the State Department, which is traditionally responsible for global outreach of this nature.
However, in the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act, Congress inserted new language ordering the Defense Department to “counter and degrade” terror groups such as the Islamic State from radicalizing individuals over the Internet.
“The secretary of defense should develop creative and agile concepts, technologies, and strategies across all available media to most effectively reach target audiences, to counter and degrade the ability of adversaries and potential adversaries to persuade, inspire, and recruit inside areas of hostilities or in other areas in direct support of the objectives of commanders,” Congress ordered in the defense bill, which allocates all annual funding for these priorities.
“The secretary of defense should request additional funds in future budgets to carry out military information support operations to support the broader efforts of the government to counter violent extremism,” the bill mandates.
U.S. military officials have been trying to boost anti-propaganda efforts but have been stymied by Congress in the past.
“Congress has expressed concern with DOD engaging violent extremist propaganda on the Internet, except in limited ways,” Gen. Joseph L. Votel, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, toldCongress earlier this year.
Votel and other officials argue that they must increase their efforts to counter the Islamic State’s propaganda and online recruitment.
“We [U.S. Special Operations Command] believe there is a complementary role for the Department of Defense in this space which acknowledges the need for a civilian lead, but allows DOD to pursue appropriate missions such as counter-recruitment and reducing the flow of foreign fighters,” Votel told Congress.
Even with the congressional directive, the Pentagon will likely face challenges in launching these efforts due to its inexperience in the cyber realm.
High-level government authority is required to pursue such operations, Votel said.
“The ability to rapidly respond to adversarial messaging and propaganda, particularly with offensive cyberspace operations to deny, disrupt, degrade, or corrupt those messages, requires an Executive Order and is limited by current U.S. government policies,” Votel said.
In addition, “another gap exists in [the Pentagon’s] ability to operate on social media and the Internet, due to a lack of organic capability” in this arena, Votel told Congress.
These efforts may be handed off to independent contractors as military officials figure out a way to “improve the department’s ability to effectively operate in the social media and broader online information space,” Votel said.
The Obama administration has come under fire from its own officials and outside advocacy groups for failing to effectively counter online efforts by terror groups to radicalize individuals.
“The difficulty that the U.S. government has had in confronting the Islamic State on the level of messaging, influence, or propaganda is more than an embarrassing bureaucratic snafu; it has also tended to expedite the resort to violent military action,” the Federation of American Scientists wrote in a report on the efforts and the new congressional directive.
The Islamic State, for instance, operates scores of official and unofficial social media accounts that romanticize the group’s military campaigns. The terror group has put particular emphasis on the recruitment of women, girls, and children.
The Islamic State has even created video games for younger audiences.
The State Department’s most prominent online anti-propaganda campaign is known as Think Again, Turn Away. Via its Twitter account and a YouTube page, the State Department disseminates English and Arabic videos and tweets meant to counter the radical propaganda published by terror groups.
It remains unclear how effective these efforts have been. The Think Again, Turn Away Twitter account has more than 24,000 followers and a similar Facebook page has more than 11,000 fans.
Source: http://freebeacon.com/national-security/pentagon-ordered-to-counter-islamic-state-propaganda/
By Paul Goble
Pavel Basanets, a retired intelligence officer who attracted attention in 2007 when he accused Vladimir Putin of violating his oath, is calling on Russian officers to disobey criminal order from the Kremlin leader to attack in Syria so that with their blood, Putin can support his fellow dictator and control the flow of Pavel Basanets, a retired intelligence officer who attracted attention in 2006 when he accused Vladimir Putin of violating his oath, is calling on Russian officers to disobey criminal order from the Kremlin leader to attack in Syria so that with their blood, Putin can support his fellow dictator and control the flow of oil.
In an appeal posted on Kasparov.ru today, Basanets says that at no point during his 17 year career as an intelligence officer was he ever given a criminal order, one that if he had carried it out would have violated his “officer’s honor, oath and conscience.”
And that makes it especially unpleasant for him to admit that “a certain part of the contemporary officer corps… is prepared to fulfill any order of the supreme command,” regardless of their oaths, first in Ukraine and now in Syria, and who thus become cannon fodder for whoever is in power.
Don’t these officers recognize that they have been given “criminal orders” and that “the entire world considers Russia an outcast,” with not a single “significant country” recognizing the annexation of Crimea as legitimate? And don’t they see that “the newly declared fuehrer, instead of seeking friends and allies, continues to search for ‘enemies’ in the entire world?”
“Russian officers! Perhaps you support the call of that madman clown ‘to launch a nuclear strike’ on Istanbul? Perhaps your mental capacities do not permit you to understand that the existing regime in Russia is leading the country and the planet to a nuclear catastrophe? And you are prepared to die for Zhirinovsky… or so Putin can stay in the Kremlin longer?”
The LDNR leader, of course, is being well paid for his madness, “but how much will be paid to the family of an officer who fulfills a Criminal Order? Were you prepared for big money to kill Ukrainians and citizens of independent Ukraine? Are you prepared to give your life for the international criminal Bashar Assad?”
“In Syria, your blood will be exchanged for oil which will then be sold and money, which doesn’t smell, will be received” but not by you but by Putin and his allies. Russian officers, he continues, “reflect deeply on WHY during the time of Putin’s rule Russia has become impoverished and the entire world has become our potential enemy and opponent?”
“Are you prepared to shed your blood for the fuehrer, his ambitions and his desire to remain in the Kremlin and in the final analysis for oil?” If you are, Basanets says, calculate how little your funerals will cost compared to the money that will flow to him and his comrades as a result of your deaths.
Many commentators in recent days have been discussing how a world war might begin, but Basanets’ article, including in particular its impassioned rhetoric, is an indication of how regimes or at least criminal regime policies in fact go: when those who are called upon to support or implement them begin to ask questions about what their sacrifices are in fact for.
Did the period of propaganda and the manipulation of history end with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet empire? How can distorted history affect current events? A look at contemporary Russia offers some disturbing answers. Thanks to research into Soviet repression, the wealth of knowledge is growing. However, public discourse in Russian tends to ignore it. The official authorities are pressing for a different interpretation of history – in accordance with a priori patterns, more often than not along the lines of the Soviet regime. And institutions which set out to study history critically are facing difficulties.
In the majority Czech society, what has been happening in Russia has not yet sparked any response – despite our own historical experience. But do we have enough information? The aim of the conference is to create a platform for a direct, unmediated encounter with current events happening in Russia and thus to enrich the Czech debate about them.
Remarks on the current situation in Russia from the perspective of Czech policy
Source: http://www.historyxpropaganda.eu/en/
Dear colleagues,
Thank you very much for all your reports. Every one of them provides a better illustration of disinformation – the more we get, the better the knowledge for all of us.
This week, the political and security repercussions of the downing of the Russian Su-24 on Tuesday 24th November were reflected in the media landscape. Since this day, the most prevalent topics of disinformation have been related to Turkey. We have seen a mass of reports, as listed in the Review, claiming inter alia that the jet was downed on the orders of Washington and Brussels (http://bit.ly/1R6rgrU); that it was downed by the CIA rather than by the Turkish air force (e.g. here http://bit.ly/1jr1Lnl); and that the action was approved by President Obama (http://bit.ly/1POL1Vr).
Swift connections were made between this event and the issue of alleged links between Turkey and ISIL – again you will see multiple reports of this in the attached table. Evidence of the link was sourced to stories that President Erdogan’s son had his picture taken with ISIS leaders (in fact, these were the owners of a restaurant taking pictures with famous guests: http://bit.ly/1PUfGkband http://bit.ly/1lnJokq); and that President Erdogan’s daughter owns a hospital, in which ISIS fighters are cured (http://bit.ly/1MLjrVr). Further stories repeated allegations that Turkey buys oil from ISIS, or is partly controlled by the Islamic State. Our contributor, French author and journalist Galia Ackerman highlights a story suggesting that these allegations lead to one conclusion: that “Russia has to help Turkey to get rid of President Erdogan”.
Ukraine is also blamed for the downing of the Russian Su-24, on the basis that the plane was downed by Turkobanderites (http://bit.ly/1Ip4EM4 andhttp://bit.ly/1XuSOXr). “Experts” already link the downing to a recent deal, whereby Ukraine (ordered by the USA) provided missile complexes to ISIS (here: http://bit.ly/1Nsmjd2). Regular readers of the Disinformation Review will remember that this deal has already been refuted.
There are many factual inaccuracies in the reporting on this subject. For example, Sputnik (http://bit.ly/1NU4C0x) claims that France condemned the downing of Su-24 during a NATO summit and said that Turkey’s actions undermined the operation against ISIS. But on the same day as publication (27 November) the French Ambassador denied he made the comment, sayings: “The remarks that Sputnik is attributing to me are pure fiction” (http://bit.ly/1NhA8cz). The Sputnik article remains unchanged as of this Review date (Tuesday, 1 December).
In line with previous trends that we have reported, we continue to see repetition of “Ukraine and ISIS” disinformation. Our colleague Dmitry Zolotukhin from razvedka.in.ua wrote a longer piece on the story that Ukraine is the source of Chinese MANPAD’s for ISIS terrorists.
In the course of the past week, Russian media has claimed that Russia is the target of attacks by the USA, the EU, the CIA, Turkey, Turkobanderists, Ukraine, ISIS and its business partners (all of the above). Now we have also received a story that Russian military actions in Syria are monitored by UFOs – this was published by the government daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta.
Anne Applebaum wrote in the Washington Post: “Follow the Russian media over any time period and you soon begin to see patterns in the reporting of news. Nothing ever just “happens.” Every event is always part of a larger story, usually a conspiracy theory. Russia, or rather a plot to destroy or undermine Russia, always lies at the center. Elements of reality are included in the story, but distorted with virtual reality in order to suit the story line.”
DOWNLOAD DISINFORMATION REVIEW WEEK FIVE (.pdf)
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Thank you very much once again for your reports, we are looking forward to the new ones,
East StratCom Task Force
Follow us on Twitter @EUvsDisinfo
The Disinformation Review is a compilation of reports received from members of the mythbusting network. The mythbusting network comprises of over 450 experts, journalists, officials, NGOs and Think Tanks in over 30 countries. Please note that opinions and judgements expressed here do not represent official EU positions.
by Julia Davis
Since the start of the Ukrainian revolution, subversive Russian media has been transformed into an outright propaganda machine. Since that time, the Kremlin’s factory of lies extended its operations, along with Putin’s expanding geopolitical objectives. This installment of Russia’s debunked falsehoods includes examples from different parts of the world.
Continue reading: http://www.russialies.com/russias-top-200-lies-international-edition/
Source: http://www.russialies.com/
After only five weeks, East StratCom (EU EEAS-Ukr) has archives available.
One would think that Russia is sufficiently embarrassed at being caught in their lies, deceit, disinformation and fabrications. Russian propaganda and active measures seem to be continuing without pause.
Lying is Russian business and business is good.
EU vs Disinformation
The main aim of this product is to raise the awareness about Russian disinformation campaign. And the way to achieve this goal is by providing the experts in this field, journalists, academics, officials, politicians, and anyone interested in disinformation with some real time data about the number of disinformation attacks, the number of countries targeted, the latest disinformation trends in different countries, the daily basis of this campaign, and about the coordination of the disinformation spread among many countries.
Our global network of journalists, government officials, academics, NGOs, think tanks (and other people / initiatives dealing with this issue) provides us with the examples of current disinformation appearing in their countries. East StratCom Task Force compiles their reports and publishes a weekly review of them. The document with the data collected is public and free for further use – journalists may use it as a source for their products, decision makers and government officials may find relevant information about the latest state of events, experts may find data for their analysis, NGOs and think tanks may share the knowledge about this issue with the rest of the world.
Download publication file (2.64 MB)
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
SCOPE
The findings consist of analysis of the questionnaire results filled in by 11 NATO nations and structured interviews with 6 NATO nations during the first half of 2015.
DEFINITIONS
Of the 11 nations who responded to the questionnaire, 6 cited the use of the NAC approved definition for StratCom, or a close derivative of it, as their national definition. The following table is an interpretation of the key concepts used by nations in their understanding of StratCom (combined data from questionnaires and interviews):
It would appear that most nations tend towards a description of process rather than mindset in their definition of StratCom. Many described the structure and key personnel used to impart the capability when asked for a definition. There was a popular tendency for audience focus across the definitions of respondent nations, both in mindset and process. Surveyed nations demonstrated a strong tendency towards attitudinal polling as a means to gauge audience perception rather than aspiration towards behavioural change.
Almost all respondent nations agreed upon the importance of cross capability coordination. At the military level this is described as the essential coordination of information activities in support of strategic goal. At the political level the importance of cross departmental consensus was emphasised but most nations described the delivery of this function to be via dialogue and liaison rather than formalised policy or doctrinally led procedure.
The majority of nations described StratCom as a supporting rather than supported role at both the political and military level. However a notable proportion noted the need for this to change and cited developmental projects to increase the relevance of the capability in policy and strategy making.
BEHAVIOUR VS ATTITUDE
When questioned about the degree to which StratCom practices were designed to change attitudes or behaviours among target audiences, very few nations made a distinction between the two concepts. Most respondents did not sufficiently understand or accept the concept of behavioural change leading attitudinal change and therefore relied upon attitudinal surveys and polling to measure changes in behaviour. 3 potential reasons are offered to explain this:
CROSS GOVERNMENT COORDINATION
Analysis of organisational structure gives an insight into the relevance placed upon StratCom at military and political levels. Most nations place a high degree of importance on cross government coordination but few have developed this beyond liaison and dialogue when incorporating communications as a supporting function to policy or operational plans. Increased cooperation between the StratCom sections of various government departments reported by certain nations is encouraging and there is a clear aspiration among most nations to develop StratCom into a fullyfledged command function.
HUMAN RESOURCES
The seniority of key appointments in different disciplines within military and political organisations gives an insight into the degree of importance those organisations place upon StratCom. This provided a further indication of the degree to which communications sits at the heart of strategy. The greatest emphasis in both establishment and in rank across the sample of respondent nations is in Public Diplomacy (PD). The PD therefore forms the core of participating nations’ StratCom capability and is likely to dominate developmental thinking. In lead rank terms the data suggests that status falls off progressively through the capabilities of PA, MPA, Info Ops and PSYOPS. This is mirrored in the reported data for levels of establishment. The highest degrees of creativity in StratCom capability development seems to lie in those nations with the smallest institutional systems.
THE IMPACT OF ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE
Firstly, the organisational culture associated with the “management of information” in any military organisation is heavily influenced by security classification. This has a significant bearing upon its communications culture encouraging, for good reason, the creation and maintenance of information silos and restricting the ability of organisations to adopt adhocracy or market behaviour. Secondly, bureaucratic behaviour is not necessarily a bad thing in the defence communications domain. It is synonymous with a corporately derived and consistently delivered narrative that is managed to maintain resonance among key audiences. Matching words with deeds, it seems, is a great deal more challenging in an environment that encourages initiative and risk taking at subordinate levels of command. A larger comparative sample and more longitudinal research is required to investigate the relationship between bureaucratic behaviour and organisational maturity and the incidence of adhocracy in nations experiencing more tangible and present communications threats.
Download publication file (2.64 MB)
Source: http://www.stratcomcoe.org/mapping-stratcom-practices-nato-countries
A collection of good articles by many friends and colleagues at the CCDCOE in Tallinn, Estonia.
Introduction: Cyber War In Perspective: Russian Aggression Against Ukraine
In the foreword by Sven Sakkov Director, NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, I found the following synopsis:
In brief, the book reflects several mutually reinforcing reasons why we did not witness large-scale or massive cyber attacks with destructive effects:
Espionage and information campaigns conducted through cyberspace trumped other considerations for the Russian side;
It is reasonable to achieve results with less resources and effort involved, i.e. if a cable can be cut physically, there is no need to use sophisticated cyber attacks;
Both sides in the conflict have shown a considerable ability to control the escalation of the conflict. The cyber domain did not witness large scale warfighting, but neither did the domain of air after the tragedy of MH17;
Ukraine did not offer very lucrative targets for destructive cyber attacks.
The second bullet, “if a cable can be cut physically, there is no need to use sophisticated cyber attacks” has been a point of my presentations since this whole crisis started. Our reliance on high-tech, high-cost and overly complex weapons, methods and processes exposes our soft, low-tech underbelly.
I could nitpick this entire book to pieces, but these type studies are so necessary, I will only write two very short paragraphs.
My take, only Chapters 2 (Giles), 5 (Libicki), 9 (Maurer) and 10 (Jaitner) really address the overall shortfall of NATO, and especially US, doctrine. All three properly say that cyberplay in Ukraine was negligible. I’ve heard and read cyber ‘experts’ say otherwise; I think they’re smoking dope and need a drug test.
Margarita Jaitner takes the next step and properly categorizes cyber as subordinate to information in Russian doctrine, in Chapter 10.
At 175 pages it is good reading material for students contemplating cyber operations in future conflicts, but one must remember that cyber is a means and not an end, and information is the ultimate objective.
By Brian Whitmore
December 01, 2015
Activists in Moscow burn Turkish flags and pelt the embassy with eggs and rocks. In Crimea, they burn Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in effigy.
Russian authorities detain dozens of Turkish citizens for allegedly violating visa regulations. And, of course, the Kremlin has suspended visa-free travel for Turks and suspended charter flights to Turkey.
And to think it wasn’t so long ago that Turkey was considered one of Russia’s closest…friends? Just a year ago, Vladimir Putin praised Erdogan as “a man of strong character” who ignored Western pressure.
The downing of an Su-24 warplane — which came after Ankara says it repeatedly warned Moscow about violating its airspace — may be the proximate cause of the current Russian-Turkish standoff.
But the underlying cause goes deeper — and has broader implications than Moscow’s relations with Ankara.
Once upon a time, the story of Fortress Russia facing a hostile world was a convenient fairy tale the Kremlin used to mobilize the public.
Today, the fairy tale is quickly becoming a reality. As a result of the Kremlin’s actions in Ukraine and Syria, this well-worn narrative of an isolated Russia staring down the world has come to life.
“Putin’s Russia is not exactly weak, it’s just alone and unloved after alienating even potential friends,” political commentator Leonid Bershidskywrote for Bloomberg.
Likewise, Kremlin-watcher Tatyana Stanovaya noted in Politcom.ru that “Russia finds itself alone, humiliated on a worldwide scale.”
As a result of the Crimea annexation, the Donbas intervention, and the downing of MH17, Moscow has no true allies west of Smolensk.
It has lost any vestiges of goodwill in Europe. Germany has been transformed from a close partner into a harsh critic. Traditionally neutral Sweden and Finland are considering joining NATO.
Russia has turned Ukraine from an erstwhile friend into a bitter foe, perhaps for generations.
And even autocratic Belarus is looking at Putin’s regime with increasing trepidation.
Meanwhile, Moscow’s intervention in Syria’s civil war, its attempts to prop up the regime of Bashar al-Assad, and its air strikes against Assad’s opposition under the guise of fighting Islamic State have alienated powerful players to the south — like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf states.
Moreover, the Kremlin has appeared to abandon its much-vaunted pivot to the east once it became apparent that this would turn a declining Russia into the junior partner of a rising China.
“Russia has no powerful strategic partners; all of its alliances are temporary and can turn into enmity at any moment,” Nezavisimaya Gazeta wrote in a recent editorial.
Moscow’s descent into isolation has its roots in the domestic political dilemma Putin faced following his return to the Kremlin in 2012.
Until that point, the regime’s legitimacy was based on rising living standards and a loyal middle class. That social contract was destroyed by the protests of 2011-12 and collapsing oil prices.
As a result, Putin had to forge a “a new type of legitimacy — which can be found in a military chieftain type of leadership and permanent state of emergency,” Kadri Liik, a senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, wrote recently. “In order to preserve the image of vigorous leadership and deter the feelings of stagnation, bold action is helpful, if not irreplaceable.”
A key element of this “military chieftain” leadership was liberating Russia from the constraints of international rules and norms. According to Putin’s “New Deal,” Putin would return the country to superpower status by sheer force of will.
It would annex Crimea and intervene in Donbas because it could. It would violate NATO airspace because it felt like it. It would kidnap foreign citizens like Nadia Savchenko, Oleh Sentsov, and Eston Kohver, hold them hostage, and dare the world to do something about it.
In a recent article in Vedomosti, Moscow-based foreign affairs analyst Vladimir Frolov called it “the diplomacy of liberation,” which abandons the goals and partnerships Moscow had forged for the previous two decades.
“Russia’s new course means it is free from any and all influences and restrictions,” Frolov wrote. “This freedom means that Russia does not need to abide by international law…and that Russia’s claims to a leading role in the world cannot be contained.”
The cost of this diplomacy of liberation, of course, is increasing international isolation and ostracism.
For the time being, as Frolov notes, Moscow has been able to “divorce foreign policy from economic interests and capabilities.” But in the long run, the current course is not sustainable.
Nevertheless, isolated and resentful powers — particularly isolated and resentful powers with nuclear weapons, large militaries, and vast natural resources — can cause a lot of damage.
Which means that, in the short term, we are in for what Ben Judah, author of the book Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In And Out Of Love With Vladimir Putin, calls “our violent new normal.”
“The unthinkable happens, is quickly accepted, and fades obscure into a darkening background,” Judah wrote recently in Prospect. “Grey wars, is what we have now: creeping skirmishes, proxy clashes, hybrid assaults and dogfights with Russia.”
Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/russis-not-so-splendid-isolation/27400469.html
Nov 2, 2015
The Voice of America’s Charter lies at the heart of VOA’s mission. Using language that’s as simple as it is ambitious, the Charter was designed to govern everything done by VOA, America’s oldest and largest government broadcaster. Its guidelines, signed into law by President Gerald Ford in 1976, are succinct:
“The long-range interests of the United States are served by communicating directly with the peoples of the world by radio. To be effective, the Voice of America must win the attention and respect of listeners. These principles will therefore govern Voice of America (VOA) broadcasts:
1. VOA will serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news. VOA news will be accurate, objective, and comprehensive.
2. VOA will represent America, not any single segment of American society, and will therefore present a balanced and comprehensive projection of significant American thought and institutions.
3. VOA will present the policies of the United States clearly and effectively, and will also present responsible discussions and opinion on these policies. (Public Law 94-350)”
Sounds pretty clear. And except for the reference to radio, it’s as relevant today as it was nearly four decades ago. Yet a key element of the Charter has been so frequently ignored over the years that some members of Congress want to drastically reduce VOA’s mission, if not pull the plug entirely on it.
How did VOA get into this mess?
First, some context: A draft law that has circulated in Congress proposing a major overhaul of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) and its broadcasters, especially VOA, has so far retained the VOA Charter. But there is a yawning gap between how VOA’s defenders (mostly its current and former employees) and her critics interpret the requirements of the Charter’s third pillar.
The critics say that VOA has failed to “present the policies of the United States clearly and effectively,” as the Charter requires, and needs to be overseen by a policy-oriented body such as the State Department so the government can be sure that foreign audiences looking for accurate reporting and descriptions of U.S. policy can find it on VOA.
Their proposed remedy is a new one, but the problem, unfortunately, is not. Critics have complained for years about VOA broadcasts which failed to provide a description of U.S. policy, or balance, or a rebuttal to criticism of U.S. policy when necessary.
My personal experience may shed some light on why this part of the Charter came to be ignored in the newsroom. Not long after my appointment as the VOA director (2002-2006), I noticed a number of VOA stories about important international issues that failed to report what the U.S. position was on the issue, either through a quote from a U.S. government official or a description of past U.S. policy. This wasn’t optional information, or something uniquely required of VOA; this was the kind of information that should be – and was – routinely included in the stories written by news organizations such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. Their stories wouldn’t have been complete without such information. Yet it was missing from VOA’s accounts.
When I asked a top newsroom editor why weren’t U.S. officials quoted, or at least the U.S. position described in these stories, her answer surprised me.
“That’s what the editorials are for,” she replied.
Like most government-funded broadcasters, VOA is facing an uncertain future because of factors that are outside its control, such as budget constraints and censorship by anti-democratic leaders in countries like Russia and China. But VOA’s future is also uncertain because of its own shortcomings.
“The editorials” she referred to were a broadcasting requirement that Congress had imposed on VOA years earlier, to ensure that it had a reliable platform for the government’s views. But the editorials, which were written by a unit of government employees who were not connected with VOA or its editorial operations, were unpopular with just about everyone, from the State department officers who had to vet them, to VOA’s broadcasters, and most of VOA’s audiences. Often stiff and didactic, the editorials were separated from the newscasts by both time and format, to ensure that listeners didn’t confuse the newscasts, which were supposed to be objective, with the editorials, which were clearly opinionated. But that separation also made them easier for listeners to miss or to ignore them, and our research showed that many listeners did just that.
Of course, the editorials were never meant to replace the basic elements that should be included in any story, whether it was by a VOA journalist or one from the private sector. But the editor’s belief that they somehow absolved the newsroom from reporting the U.S. position on issues revealed a serious misreading of the Charter.
Today, despite numerous personnel changes over the years, critics are still complaining about stories in which VOA has failed to live up to the requirements of the Charter. Wall Street Journal op-ed writer Sohrab Ahmari recently noted, for example, that a VOA English-language story on the Iran nuclear agreement did not quote any domestic U.S. critics of the deal, and two weeks ago, VOA aired an hour-long forum examining the threat from ISIS terrorists, and how they use social media, but did not include any U.S. government officials on its panel.
Like most government-funded broadcasters, VOA is facing an uncertain future because of factors that are outside its control, such as budget constraints and censorship by anti-democratic leaders in countries like Russia and China.
But VOA’s future is also uncertain because of its own shortcomings. Both secretaries of State in the Obama administration have been critical of the BBG, and members of Congress from both parties have made it clear they expect the BBG and its multimedia broadcasters to play a constructive role in the nation’s public diplomacy efforts.
VOA can still do that, but only if it fulfills all elements of its Charter, a document that clearly lays out the broad range of coverage that Congress expects. Just as importantly, VOA’s journalists need to understand that while the Charter gave them the editorial freedom they need to do their job, it did not give them the freedom to ignore their Charter.
Photo by Karl Schumacher / Public Domain
Moscow seeks to discredit west in news reports as it abuses the rights of minorities in Ukraine.
BY:
December 1, 2015 5:00 pm
Russia is said to be tightening its grip on news sources in Crimea during a power blackout on the peninsula, according to reports, as the Kremlin continues to wage information warfare in Eastern Europe and abroad.
After pro-Ukrainian militants detonated explosives on electricity lines that feed into Crimea, the peninsula’s 2 million residents have faced power shortages for long periods in recent days. Ukrainian nationalists and Tatar activists, a Muslim minority group in Crimea, targeted the power lines in retaliation for Russia’s annexation of the peninsula last March, which Western officials said was illegal and involved Russian troops.
Reuters reported that Crimeans, including a large percentage of Russian speakers and consumers of Russian TV networks, have blamed Ukraine rather than Moscow for the crisis. Earlier this year, Russia cut off the last independent Tatar TV station and expanded the reach of its own outlets. Those networks feature a heavy dose of anti-Ukrainian and anti-Western propaganda.
There are also reports that Moscow is using mobile TV units on vans to broadcast Russian news to Crimeans without power.
Russia has employed a variety of tactics to spread propaganda that portrays Western countries as ideologically extreme and aggressive toward Moscow, including using social media to promote hoax stories and linking Ukrainian forces to fascist movements and terrorist groups. The recent downing of a Russian warplane by Turkish fighter jets provides another example of how Russian propaganda manipulates events to sow distrust and confusion among its audiences.
While President Vladimir Putin officially criticized Turkey for the incident and called it a “stab in the back delivered by the accomplices of terrorists,” Russian media and state agencies broadcast several different theories about the culprit behind the jet downing. Some reported that the CIA was “controlling” the Turkish F-16s, others said that President Obama approved the actions by the Turkish air force, and still others attributed blame to terrorists shooting anti-aircraft missiles supplied by Ukraine.
“Follow the Russian media over any time period and you soon begin to see patterns in the reporting of news,” wrote columnist Anne Applebaum last week in the Washington Post. “Nothing ever just ‘happens.’”
“Every event is always part of a larger story, usually a conspiracy theory,” she continued. “Russia, or rather a plot to destroy or undermine Russia, always lies at the center. Elements of reality are included in the story, but distorted with virtual reality in order to suit the story line.”
Conditions for Crimean residents have steadily deteriorated since Moscow assumed control of the peninsula and its news sources, anti-Russian activists say. In addition to the power shortages at schools, homes, and businesses, Russian authorities have denied free speech and assembly rights to dissidents and raided the homes of Tatars, who were previously deported by Stalin.
Christoph Bergner, a member of Germany’s parliament, said in October that, “the human rights situation in Crimea today is deplorable.”
“It is telling that, on the 70th anniversary of the deportation of Crimean Tatars, Crimea’s chief prosecutor placed a ban on assembly in Crimea,” he said.
Source: http://freebeacon.com/national-security/russia-spreads-propaganda-in-crimea-during-blackout/
Where does one get a list of the blocked URLS from Russian Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications (Федеральная служба по надзору в сфере массовых коммуникаций и связи) aka Roskomnadzor?
My blog appears to not work in Saint Petersburg, Russia, but it works fine in the rest of the world. As a matter of fact, I’m getting more hits than ever.
No word, yet, from Moscow, if the URL works or not.
I’ve looked through the Roskomnadzor website at http://rkn.gov.ru, and either they’ve hidden the list very well or they don’t post it.
I’m relatively certain they post the list, how else do Russian ISPs know which URLs to block?
Update: I received this URL, but it’s not a list or a spreadsheet. https://eais.rkn.gov.ru I’m sure there is a better list.
Update 2: I just received these URLs, which I don’t believe are quite right, but it’s something.
Update 3:
There are at least four types of Russian propaganda, each with different modus operandi in a strategically diverse environment.
Russia’s propaganda operation is now so vast that it is diversifying. Its institutional channels have spread from RT TV to Sputnik multi-media, to multi-lingual YouTube channels, and through the capillaries of social media. Propaganda is carefully differentiated by national (UK, US) and language (Arabic, Francophone) audiences; the message and the tone seem infinitely variable. This essay, however, argues that there are at least four types of Russian propaganda, each with different modus operandi in a strategically diverse environment.
There are many ways of measuring Russia’s propaganda effort. There is no doubt that it is well-funded. RT claimed its 2014 budget was 13.85 billion rubles or 225 million dollars; total official Kremlin spending on mass media was 72.1 billion rubles or 1.1 billion dollars. The true amount spent will likely be in the billions.
There is less agreement on the size of the audience. Publicly-cited data is no doubt inflated by the Soviet tendency to over-claim in order to increase said levels of funding, plus the tendency to cite availability rather than actual audience, and because social media data tends to be only “likes” and “followers.” According to Maria Snegova, “RT’s official Twitter account has 815,000 followers, compared to 8 million followers of BBC World News and the 14.9 million CNN’s followers… RT has around 2.2 million fans on Facebook, compared to the 8.7 million and 16 million fans of BBC World News and CNN.”
TV figures roam widely, from RT’s claim to reach a potential audience of between 600 million and 700 million to the assertion that it only has 0.1% of the European audience.
The picture on YouTube is also mixed. According to Orttung et al., as of early 2015 “the RT flagship channel has a total of 1,471,491 subscribers,” and in one month “garnered 10,492,598 views,” but it was unclear how many “viewers [we]re coming for the helicopter golf,” rather than “staying for the Ukraine message.”
Judging the overall effect of Russian propaganda is even more difficult. The well-known analysis of Peter Pomerantsev and Michael Weiss concentrates on short-term effects. They claim that Russian propaganda is self-consciously post-modern: its purpose is not to convince or convert, but to confuse—to spread enough versions of reality to leave the target audience flailing in moral and even factual relativity, resigned to the unknowability of the world, and unable to find the cognitive basis for policy action.
Maria Snegova places contemporary Russian propaganda within the older Soviet tradition of the ‘4D’ approach: dismiss, distort, distract, and dismay. Moreover, she argues that obfuscation only works in the short-term, and undermines credibility in the long-term. The scatter-gun approach prevents coalescence around an alternative narrative. Snegova even argues that “the most successful period of RT has likely passed. Its audience has drastically shrunk following the Ukrainian crisis and unfavorable view of Russia spreading around the world.”
Both points of view are right, of course. But one might add that the key effect is in the medium term, although the medium term is very short indeed. The West’s first point of vulnerability is indeed its immediate judgment (or lack of judgment) of events. Its second point of vulnerability is Attention Deficit Disorder. In modern news cycles there is little time to actually think before the cycle moves on. For the mass audience at least, Russian propaganda only has to work until then.
Russian propaganda can still have a long- term effect, if it can affect and strengthen opinions which already exist. The second type of Russian propaganda is less about creating confusion and is more about “nudge effects.” It works by finding parties, politicians, and points-of-view that are already sure of their world-view rather than confused, and giving them a nudge—so long as these views are usefully anti-systemic.
For this type of Russian propaganda there is no such thing as strange bedfellows. Left or right, nationalist or separatist, jihadist or Islamophobic— all have featured on RT. The breadth of RT’s claimed audience is partly due to this superficial Catholicism—all are welcome, and all are welcome to talk about themselves and their pet causes. Therefore by definition there is no central narrative. Russian propaganda concentrates on supporting tropes, taking advantage of the world Raphaël Glucksmann describes in his 2015 book Génération gueule de bois [Generation Hangover]: a West that grew used to a world without existential opponents after 1989, where people protest under old slogans without new thinking, and make strange alliances and metamorphoses. Though, anti-Americanism writ large is a guiding theme for many of the other tropes: the decline of Europe, the rise of other powers, the crisis of global capitalism, and the re-definition of liberal interventionism and misguided democracy-promotion as the Empire of Chaos, to quote the 2014 book by the RT favorite Pepe Escobar.
Russia’s propaganda is Janus-faced; though a metaphor closer to home might be the double-headed Russian eagle. If the point of pluralistic propaganda abroad is to nudge or confuse, domestic propaganda is monopolistic. Its point is to create and maintain the super-majorities of Putin support that are the lodestone of the current Russian political system. A system without real ideology in a country as large as Russia can easily fall victim to bureaucratic and local interests. The famed “administrative vertical” is a myth. Thus Putin’s 89% rating is not just a sign of him heading a popularity contest; it is a tool to ensure that the actions of the otherwise disparate parts of the political system are scripted by that virtual unanimity. And it also means that 89% are signaling their loyalty to the system by formally acquiescing in its narrative (like Václav Havel’s greengrocer placing a Communist slogan in his window).
The Levada Centre has some quite extraordinary data showing the Russian equivalent of Orwell’s Two Minutes’ Hate—the rise and fall of negative attitudes towards Ukraine, Georgia, and the USA. In all cases, with a time-lag, they closely track the efforts of the Russian mass media. Negative attitudes towards “fraternal” Ukraine, for example, barely existed before being inflamed during various crises that predated the EuroMaidan—the Orange Revolution, the gas disputes of 2006 and 2009—before really taking off in 2014. Now they have bottomed out, with the Russian mass media switching its attention to Syria. Negative attitudes towards Russia in Ukraine, on the other hand, seemed to have grown for the long-term.
The way the data changes so predictably suggests that such attitudinal changes are in large part ritualistic and may not go deep. As in 1984, venom can be easily targeted and turned. However, Russia is not a totalitarian state. There are corrective mechanisms. Sergey Aleksashenko describes one as “the opportunity to ‘prove harmony by algebra’” (to borrow a line from Pushkin’s “Mozart and Salieri”). Once Russians “compare the stream of official information to surrounding realities and their own life experience, then it turns out that the effectiveness of state propaganda sharply drops.”
There is a much more radical corrective mechanism—the Emperor’s Clothes moment for the Bolotnaya protestors in 2011, when they mocked the naked Putin, the man behind the message, the man suddenly without a message, as just “a thief.” This sudden éclaircissement could also be called the Mourinho Effect, after one of Europe’s most successful football managers, currently with Chelsea, ironically owned by Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich. José Mourinho has copied an old trick: building a sense of team spirit, of us-against-the-world, by picking fights with everybody—other clubs, other managers, referees, the football authorities. This might work for a year or two; but most of Mourinho’s enemies are imaginary. His natural life-span at any given club is two to three years; once the effect wears off and the trick becomes obvious, even his own players may get embarrassed by higher and higher doses of artificial drama.
The political equivalent for Russia would be the moment when the domestic audience gets tired by, alienated by, or even sees through, the simplicities of this year’s propaganda show. This is where the EU and USA should concentrate their anti-propaganda efforts—correcting the Russian propaganda view of the West is fine in theory, but risks feeding the idea that this is all about hostile external powers. The aim should be to talk to the Russian audience in its own language about its own interests, and tell them their leaders are selling them short.
But the danger of some sudden éclaircissement is also the main reason for fearing that the Kremlin needs not just new stories and repeat doses of propaganda, but higher and higher doses to overcome the potential alienation effect. Particularly because the other obvious danger is that reality will bite back; and nothing could illustrate this better than the venture into Syria. Unless the strategy is to invite reality to bite back, and heighten the sense of Russia- under-siege.
In the world between Russia and the West, not surprisingly perhaps, there is a fourth, hybrid type of propaganda. 89% unanimity is beyond Russia’s reach, there is relative freedom of speech, and rival narratives, both pro-Western and loyalist, already exist. So the purpose of Russian propaganda in the “near abroad” is to create parallel alternative realities.
Not just an alternative message, but an alternative reality, with a cast of supporting characters to deliver it. In Russia, the supporting cast is less important, the media itself is now the main event. In the West, Russian propaganda may “nudge” key actors, but it doesn’t create them. In the “near abroad” of other former Soviet states, however, the media message is accompanied by a virtual chorus of pro-Russian parties, politicians, NGOs, and even Churches. The message and the medium are mutually reinforcing; parties, NGOs, media, and Church read the script, and the script makes more sense for being embodied.
Georgia is increasingly a good example of this kind of dual reality. The Saakashvili era bequeathed pro-Western parties like the UNM and media like Rustavi 2. However, there are also pro-Russian parties like Nino Burjanadze’s Democratic Movement-United Georgia and the Alliance of Patriots, pro-Russian NGOs like Eurasian Choice and pro-Russian media like Obieqtivi TV and the tabloid Asaval-Dasavali. And the Georgian Orthodox Church has been staunchly pro-Russian under the banner of “Orthodox Civilization,” at least since the purges of the 1930s. All put together, this creates a parallel universe in which Russia is Georgia’s savior, rather than the country which invaded it in 2008.
The Baltic States have a similar triad: the media world centered around First Baltic Channel; the political parties like Latvia’s Harmony Centre; and the NGOs like Native Language.
The cast is narrower in more authoritarian states. Azerbaijan has Sputnik and NGOs, but political parties matter less. Belarus has few open pro-Russian actors apart from the Orthodox Church and linked groups like Holy Rus. In Belarus the problem is that 90% watch Russian TV, and Russian social media are extremely popular.
Ukraine of course is a key battleground, not just of men and arms, but of rival narratives. Ukraine has hybrid war, but it also has hybrid politics and media—not just pluralistic, but schizophrenic. On the Russian side is the Opposition Block, which is more simplistically pro-Russian than the Party of Regions ever was. Much of the old Yanukovych elite is still intact; and many of the other oligarchs are “biddable.” There are NGOs like Viktor Medvedchuk’s Ukrainian Choice. Pro-separatist social media like rusvesna.su and cassad.net bubble away. Mainstream media like Inter TV or Rinat Akhmetov’s Segodnya newspaper currently treads a careful line, advocating both peace and patriotism, but they could easily switch to a more hostile tone.
Putin is banking on this “alternative Ukraine,” just as much as on the self-appointed leaders of the Donbas Republics, to expand the Russian voice within Ukraine. And it already has its tropes: “the new politicians are just as corrupt,” ”reform isn’t working,” “the West isn’t helping us,” and so on. The danger of roll-back in countries like Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova, in other words, comes just as much from shifts in narrative as it does from hard security or economic concerns.
The West has woken up to the reality of Russian propaganda. So it is time to look more closely at how it actually works. In part, this is a technical question of identifying trolls and planted op-eds. But if Russia works with the grain in the West and the “near abroad” we also need to look at “the grain”—we need to know why Russian propaganda gets the audience it does. We should also understand how Russian propaganda works at home, and how dangerous it is—Russia’s actions are not explicable by “realist” analyses, because Russia is lost in un-reality. And the level of expenditure, either by Russia or by the West in response, is not really the point. The point is the message and why the message works.
Source: http://www.aspeninstitute.cz/en/article/4-2015-four-types-of-russian-propaganda/
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Editor’s note: I thought the following video was an ad for a game, I’m not quite sure why it’s there, but the video is real.A word of caution: when they say propaganda, they mean MISO.
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
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