DECEMBER 4, 2015

A group of the world’s leading international broadcasters say that freedom of information and access to fact-based, verifiable journalism is critical to peace.

The statement, issued on behalf of the representatives of Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) [Australia], British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) [United Kingdom], the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) [US], Deutsche Welle (DW) [Germany], France Médias Monde [FMM], Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) [Japan] and Radio Netherlands Worldwide (RNW), said:

“We, the members of the DG7, at our annual meeting this year in Tokyo November 30-December 1, have reaffirmed our support for global freedom of information and expression, articulated in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

The DG7 comprises publicly funded international media organizations from seven democratic nations: Australia, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States, represented by their respective directors general or chief executive officers.

Following the recent attacks in Paris and ongoing extremist violence in many parts of the world, including the Middle East and North Africa, the African Sahel, and South Asia, we condemn the contributing role of information as a weapon of terror and tool for recruitment of extremists.

We further note the continued decline of media freedom around the world as documented by international organizations such as Freedom House and Reporters Without Borders.

It is in this environment that we renew our call for unfettered access by citizens everywhere to free flows of fact-based, verifiable journalism. This we do in recognition of the critical role freedom of information and freedom of expression play in supporting peaceful and prosperous societies.”

The Broadcasting Board of Governors is an independent federal agency, supervising all U.S. government-supported, civilian international media, whose mission is to inform, engage and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy. BBG networks include the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (Alhurra TV and Radio Sawa), Radio Free Asia, and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (Radio and TV Marti). BBG programming has a measured audience of 226 million in more than 100 countries and in 61 languages.

Source: http://www.bbg.gov/blog/2015/12/04/joint-statement-by-dg7/

BY THOMAS E. RICKS

DECEMBER 3, 2015

By Ajit Maan
Best Defense office of narrative affairs.

Ajit Maan, Ph.D. is Vice-President of Research and Analysis, ENODO Global, affiliate faculty, Center for Narrative Conflict Resolution, George Mason University, author of Counter-Terrorism: Narrative Strategies, and editor of the blog: www.narrative-strategies.com

There is considerable confusion about ideas and narratives — about the difference and which does what. We constantly see comments such as:

“We Are Losing the narrative battle” 

“We Are Losing the Battle of Ideas”

“ISIS Is Not Winning The War Of Ideas”

That ambiguity leaves us unable to determine what is working and what is not. If we are not clear about what sort of non-kinetic battle we are in, claims about winning and losing are premature. Worse, the vast power of narrative remains untapped and relegated to the domain of Information Operations and “messaging” within it. Messaging is associated with “spin” or propaganda, and then leaves some disillusioned with the potential of any kind of non-kinetic approach to counter extremism.

The title of a recent Atlantic article, and its primary assertion, “ISIS is Not Winning the War of Ideas,” is followed by the subtitle and secondary assertion, “The Islamic State isn’t succeeding because of the strength of its narrative. It’s succeeding because it can mobilize a microscopic minority.” These paired assertions evidence the common conflation between ideas and narratives and a misunderstanding about how each functions. It is the narrative that is doing the mobilizing.

I don’t think ISIS is winning the war of ideas. They have some pretty lame-brained ideas. But the ideas are not what are operating. They have a very functional robust narrative and it is working. It is working well. But are they winning? Let’s sort it out.

1. Ideas and Narratives are Different Things.

Often ideas inform narratives — the most influential ideas are presented in narrative form. But more fundamentally, narratives form our ideas.

Actions/Behaviors

^

Ideas/Beliefs

^

Narrative/Identity

Narrative is not just a mode of communication, messaging, explanation or description. It is operating at the most basic neurological level of perception, thought (both conscious and unconscious), and most fundamentally, identity.

Through narrative we co-construct our personal and cultural identities. Ideas and beliefs result from those identities, and actions follow. Combined research in philosophy, cognitive science, and neurobiology is demonstrating how narrative exposure affects biological and cognitive processes including neurotransmission. That effect can be seen clearly on neuroimaging of the “This is your brain. This is your brain on narratives” variety.

DARPA is currently using neuroimaging to determine precisely what features internal to narratives interrupt or facilitate narrative comprehension and they have uncovered structural features, not just content, that impacts narrative influence. This finding has tremendous relevance for strategic narratives to counter terrorist recruitment, including, I would add, an imperative to examine cultural assumptions beyond what narratives are about but also how they proceed.

Ideas, on the other hand, have no inherent strategy. Ideas alone do not mobilize action — not until they are narrated.

The simplest form of an idea is an assertion, for example, “Islam is under attack.” People often mistake this simple assertion as the Islamic State’s narrative. It is not.

“Islam is under attack” is a simply asserted idea. And it is the title of an ISIS narrative. But it is not the narrative itself. The narrative lies in the assignment of motivation and meaning to all the events that support the title – attacks on Muslim populations (including “attacks” by apostates) starting with the Crusades in the 7th century, moving forward into the present, and projected into the future anticipated conflict in Dubiq.

The potential for narrative strategies in warfare and peace-building has barely been tapped. What is needed is a more nuanced understanding of what narrative is and how it functions/influences.

2. Narratives are about meaning, not truth

Ideas are almost always true or false. Narratives are successful or not, interesting or not, influential or not, but narratives do not rely upon truth-value for their success. That is why ISIS ideology doesn’t have to be grounded in truth; the narrative carries the day.

Islam may be under attack, or it may not be. The assertion may be true or it may be false. The point is it doesn’t matter. The assertion alone is not mobilizing. To mobilize action, a narrative is needed. An idea can be logically unsound and still be influential if it is housed in a powerful narrative.

But that doesn’t mean we should assume a dichotomy between narrative and truth. It means that to understand its power we need to get beyond thinking of narrative as just communication (true or false messaging). If we don’t, then we don’t understand the power of extremist messaging. Their messages are not judged by their truth value. In fact, they are not rationally judged except by us.

Credibility, not truth, is an important aspect of narrative influence. In order to assure credibility, the narrator needs be viewed as credible. That means it would be most effective if the narrator is “in” the target group. If that is not possible, the narrative should be shared by civilians rather than state or military representatives. The narrative itself, in order to be received as credible, must reflect the experiences of the audience.

That is different from reflecting “reality” or “truth.” There are realities that are more essential, more basic, than specific realities on the ground. The ISIS narrative resonates off the ground. Particular facts and falsehoods are immune to correction because the power of the narrative lies in the interpretation of the facts. To judge a narrative by its truth value is to weigh it on the wrong scale in a way that accommodates new events, losses, hits, mistakes, even air strikes, into its narrative..

Narrative is like poetry. It doesn’t make sense to say a poem is untrue or inaccurate. Truth is irrelevant to poetry. What is relevant is that it strikes a cord in experience. The same is true of narrative.

We tend to judge other people’s narratives consciously and rationally and then only if they do not compliment our own. Our own narratives, the narratives we live by, are not usually rationally judged or constructed. Most often they are uncritically inherited. Our own perceptions, and resulting behaviors, are influenced (some would even say determined) by the narratives we are a part of. The same is true for those living by alternative narratives.

In an adversarial situation it is a mistake to understand the opposition’s narrative as a rational construction. And if we are looking at a rational construction, it is usually a message of the variety developed by IO. But the message is not what is really motivating behavior. A successful message taps into the larger motivating narrative. And that narrative is usually an identity narrative.

So, back to the question: Who is winning? Narrative conflict will not be “won” by defeating the adversary’s narrative. Success will require the construction of a shared narrative that leaves the identities of all parties in-tact while putting forth an alternative to violent behaviors working to keep them that way.

Ajit Maan, Ph.D. is Vice-President of Research and Analysis, ENODO Global, affiliate faculty, Center for Narrative Conflict Resolution, George Mason University, author of Counter-Terrorism: Narrative Strategies, and editor of the blog: www.narrative-strategies.com

Source: http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/12/03/narratives-are-about-meaning-not-truth/

Editor’s note: This is the first time in a long time where an article in the Moscow Times was even questioning Russian policy or practices.

Inoculated Against Russian Propaganda

• By Daria Litvinova
• Dec. 04 2015 10:10
• Last edited 10:10

Immediately following the harrowing terrorist attacks in Paris on Nov. 13, Russian pro-Kremlin media adjusted their rhetoric, abandoning their previous anti-Western and anti-U.S. vitriol even before the Kremlin spoke of a broad military alliance.

“A listener called Komsomolskaya Pravda radio station … and said that Americans are not our enemies, that it is politicians and officials who poisoned the well, but people feel good [about Americans]. … The presenter is also very friendly, and the whole program is devoted to [explaining that] Americans are not the enemies,” Andrei Arkhangelsky, culture editor at the prominent Ogoniok weekly magazine, wrote on his Facebook page on Nov. 16. The post received thousands of likes and hundreds of shares.

Listening to the radio and monitoring the official political line has been Arkhangelsky’s hobby since 2014. He tunes into Moscow FM stations daily, untangling the web of propaganda and describing its development on his Facebook page and in columns for the independent Slon news website.

FM stations are always first to pick up on trends. “Radio — no matter how strongly pro-Kremlin it is — is about live broadcast. It’s about spontaneous reactions, naturalness, directness, emotions,” he told The Moscow Times.

The Russian political and social agenda has become integrally linked with the chorus of  television channels, newspapers, radio stations and social media commentators. While the propaganda industry requires governmental expenditure, resources and management, the Russian government requires propaganda for subsistence — it no longer simply influences public opinion but cannot be extricated from the national narrative.

Its expanding influence has provoked resistance from journalists, who explore and expose exaggerations, manipulations and blunt lies that fill the air on every relatively important subject. They do this as a hobby, separate from their regular jobs in prominent news outlets.

Public activism in Russia comes in waves, the early 2010s were the time of election observers and street politicians — and now television commentators and media observers have taken up their work.

To Understand Society through Radio Language

Arkhangelsky, 41, has been listening to Russian radio for almost a year — stations such as Ekho Moskvy, Business FM, Vesti, Russian News Service and Govorit Moskva.

His columns and Facebook page examine how shades of radio language differ in various situations. “I’m very much interested in the media language, I study it as a cultural phenomenon. This language … draws a portrait of society,” he said.

The tone of pro-Kremlin radio stations has changed significantly in the past couple years, he said. Even a year ago some stations could afford talking about opposition firebrand Alexei Navalny, for example, and give his lawyers airtime, but after things started crumbling in Ukraine, the tune changed into a simplistic opposition of “good guys” versus “enemies.”

Meanwhile, there is no solid ground under current propaganda, he believes — it is all based on the idea of supporting and justifying anything the authorities do. “Current propaganda changes enemies almost every month. And listeners change their point of view as easily — I’ve observed it on numerous occasions,” Arkhangelsky said.

His daily and thorough Facebook observations show that the first time Western countries were excluded from the media’s list of enemies was on the eve of Russia launching air strikes in Syria in late September.

“Today, the airwaves of state radio stations had a year’s worth of good and neutral [information about] America. This amount of positive information about the United States in one day can be called an anomaly,” Arkhangelsky wrote on Facebook on Sept. 29, the day before Russia began its air campaign alongside the international coalition headed by the United States.

A week later Arkhangelsky had concluded that there was no solid official agenda thus far, and state media remained divided between the opposing narratives.

“The official agenda is stuck between ‘America 1’ and ‘America 2’ — between the all-time evil and the insecure partner. It’s a strange, hesitating tone, and it’s not clear which [narrative] will dominate. The propaganda is at a crossroads, it is still deciding how to talk about America,” he wrote on Oct. 7.

According to Arkhangelsky — who said he was also very much interested in journalistic psychology — those who engage in the crusades that state media launch are ordinary people. “Geopolitics are a lot like childhood, when you feel on top of the world and there’s no need for compromises,” he said.

“The past 25 years haven’t changed those 40-50 years old people — they just decided not to grow up. And those who are 20-25 now … were looking for something to believe in, and for them the Soviet Union became that something — a dream of a lost paradise, the time when ‘everyone was afraid and respected us,'” Arkhangelsky added.

To Immunize the Audience

“Nowadays production of false information [in the media] in Russia is almost an industry. It’s not a case of casual inaccuracies or distorted perceptions, it’s a deliberate process of creating fakes, and it’s only gaining speed,” said Alexei Kovalyov, whose website devoted to exposing lies and inaccuracies in pro-Kremlin reports has recently recorded 211,000 visits a month.

Kovalyov, 34, launched NoodleRemover.news — its name originates from a Russian idiom “to put noodles over one’s ears,” meaning to lie — in early October and started regularly exposing  state-owned and pro-Kremlin media for manipulating their readers.

He himself used to work at a state-owned media outlet — the RIA Novosti news agency — but was dismissed, as were many other agency employees, following its liquidation at the end of 2013, when Rossiya Segodnya was launched in its stead under the rule of West-bashing television host Dmitry Kiselyov and Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of RT.

In the spring of 2014, as Simonyan’s team began work in earnest, Kovalyov noticed that the agency changed its tone, embracing RT’s manner of reportage.

According to Kovalyov, RT and RIA Novosti used similar know-hows, publishing stories with headlines like “96 percent of readers of an American newspaper voted for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin” — a claim based on an online poll on a small website where most voters were Russians — and citing experts that were not experts.

“For example, there was this expert on fighting terrorism, Scott Bennett, that both RT and Sputnik (RIA Novosti’s project targeting audiences abroad) used. He was saying that Putin was the best thing that had happened to Russia. But the only thing the English-language Google knows about [Bennett] is that he spent three years is prison in the United States for pretending to be in the military,” Kovalyov said.

Kovalyov began by posting on Facebook, but it proved inconvenient for including screenshots and links, so he started a blog on Medium.com — a popular platform among media professionals.

“My post [on Medium] about RT’s real traffic got 60,000 hits,” he said, in reference to a post about RT overstating its popularity in Western countries. The post is cited by many opposition-leaning outlets, including the blog of opposition leader Navalny.

The post challenged RT’s claims of drawing millions of British and U.S. viewers. The RT reports on its own viewership had cited research carried out by a U.S. Agency, but the agency’s website contained no record in support of RT’s claims, Kovalyov claimed.

With every post receiving 20,000-30,000 hits, Kovalyov started a more ambitious project called NoodleRemover. “I want people to learn to see these things, to make them immune and skeptical enough” to not trust state television channels blindly as they do now, Kovalyov said.

Kovalyov currently works as a reporter and a translator, but has plans to develop NoodleRemover in his free time.

In the future NoodleRemover might become a crowd-sourcing project, where people can share fake or clearly manipulative reports, as well as taking courses on media literacy. “There is no such thing in Russia, but they teach that in Western countries, and also on the [online platform] Coursera,” Kovalyov said.

When asked about the channel’s attitude to someone exposing their content on a daily basis, RT spokespeople told The Moscow Times they were “happy Alexei Kovalyov has found a new occupation — having a blog about bad people that dismissed him. We will be even happier to find out that he’s being paid for it,” the comment read.

Delving Deep Within the Web

It was in late 2011, recalls Ilya Klishin, editor-in-chief of Dozhd television’s website and an expert on social networks, when, after a series of mass protests in Moscow, pro-Kremlin trolls flooded the Internet.

Klishin, 28, launched the famous Facebook page for the first protest in 2011. Tens of thousand of people signed up to gather on Bolotnaya Ploshchad to protest the results of the State Duma elections.

“They were real people. But when we opened a page for the second rally on [Prospect] Sakharova, we found out the Kremlin deployed bots to this page — they had Indian and Pakistani names and wrote [their pro-Kremlin comments] in perfect Russian,” he said.

Consequently, Klishin became interested in pro-government social media activities, and began exploring and writing about it for various media outlets: Vedomosti business daily, Slon news website and others.

People began reaching out to him, sharing stories and documents as proof that the Internet has an entire system of pro-government commentators.

Klishin went through 7,000 tweets in 2012, analyzing how an artificially promoted hashtag — #tukhlymarsh (rotten march), that referred to an opposition rally in Moscow — gained momentum on Twitter by real people trolling the Internet, not automated bots.

According to Klishin, the Russian government contracts so-called advertising and PR agencies, through which people are employed as pro-Kremlin Internet activists.

“It’s not like there are government officials posting comments on Facebook and building up  hashtags on Twitter. There are companies with people on payroll that work in shifts and spend days in their offices writing right comments in the Internet,” he said.

When the Kremlin was expanding its Internet activities abroad in 2014, Klishin was one of the first to take note.

“It was then when prominent Western outlets, including The Guardian and The Huffington Post, raised the alarm about Russian trolls coming. But the panic was premature. Only now, with the topic of Ukraine slowly dying down, the main soft power of the Kremlin can launch in full gear,” Klishin wrote.

Right now the system works quite effectively — it has been established and functions smoothly without major changes, the journalist told The Moscow Times.

Klishin said he would continue tracking and exposing the government’s media minions, but numerous investigations by the Russian media into governmental spending on Internet trolls has failed to spark any major scandal or public outrage. “I think society is not ready, it’s too apathetic right now,” he told The Moscow Times.

Little Hope for Success

Klishin’s sentiment was echoed by Vasily Gatov, Russian media analyst and visiting fellow at the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy in California.

“Exposing lies is an important, but not a groundbreaking element of any counter propaganda work. New goals and values that would replace the ones that are [being imposed and] currently dominate in society, are,” he told The Moscow Times.

Currently there are no such values in Russian society, Gatov said, that’s why exposing propaganda is not effective and mostly influences a small audience — or sometimes benefits the  very propaganda it seeks to discredit.

One of the purposes of propaganda is to depreciate the very concept of truth.

Russian television nowadays performs an important job — it legitimizes lies, says political analyst Vladimir Gelman. “When the television lies and doesn’t even try to hide it, it sends a signal to people that there is no truth — there are simply different kinds of lies, and the one shown on television is the right one,” he told The Moscow Times.

Yet Kovalyov of the NoodleRemover project remains optimistic.

That a blog maintained by a single citizen provoked such a positive response bodes well for the future. “I was surprised at first, but apparently I’m not the only one who needs all this,” the journalist told The Moscow Times.

Source: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/inoculated-against-russian-propaganda/551475.html

—Requires an assessment on the use of “political assassinations as a form of statecraft,” by Russia since 2000.“

With these words, the US is formally investigating Russia’s internal use of assassination to eliminate political opponents.  The latest, and most famous: Boris Nemtsov.

Hey, Russia, Putin personally took charge of his murder investigation.  How’s that going for you?

Yeah, we didn’t think it would work out, either. I didn’t hear a “yes, I ordered that.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Assassinated_Russian_politicians

Houses passes intelligence authorization bill with spending and policy guidelines

U.S. Congress to require from the National Intelligence data on “political assassinations as a form of statecraft” in Russia since 2000, according to the unclassified bill on authorization of appropriations for intelligence for fiscal year 2016.

By KEN DILANIAN, AP Intelligence Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House has passed a bill authorizing a 7 percent spending increase for intelligence agencies and presses President Barack Obama to produce a strategy to defeat the Islamic State.

The bill, passed Tuesday by a vote of 364 to 58, must be reconciled with a similar measure pending in the Senate.

The bill authorizes spending at a level that is 7 percent higher than the current year’s budget, according to a House fact sheet. Most of the measure is classified. The unclassified portions contain a variety of policy guidance and requirements.

Among other provisions, the bill:

—Restricts the president’s privacy and civil liberties board from obtaining information about covert CIA operations.

—Requires regular reports to Congress describing the number of foreign fighters going to and from Syria and Iraq.

—Requires the president to give Congress a written explanation of his strategy to defeat the Islamic State.

—Requires an assessment on the use of “political assassinations as a form of statecraft,” by Russia since 2000.

—Requires the director of national intelligence to conduct a study of how to measure damage from cyberattacks.

“Our enemies are rapidly improving their ability to launch devastating cyber-attacks and deadly terror strikes,” said Devin Nunes, the California Republican who chairs the intelligence committee. “Amid these elevated threat levels, it’s crucial that our intelligence professionals receive the resources they need to keep Americans safe.”

Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the intelligence committee, said the bill “strikes the right balance by providing the necessary means to counter wide-ranging threats we face from state and non-state actors, particularly in cyberspace, outer space and the undersea environment.”

Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2015/12/01/house-passes-intelligence-bill-with-policy-guidelines

(Translated from Russian by my Chrome Browser)

11/29/2015

Author: Aram Sargsyan

Guest Xenia Kirillova

Interlocutor First Information – Ksenia Kirillova, Russian and Ukrainian journalist and political analyst now living in the United States.

– Mrs. Kirillov, you appreciate the political situation Russia today? Does the country have a real opposition and a classic struggle between the authorities and the opposition?

– The opposition exists, but it is extremely marginalized long-term policy of the authorities. In the parliament the opposition in principle is not represented. The so-called systemic opposition is completely controlled by the authorities. This, for example, the Liberal Democratic Party, the Communist Party, “Free Russia”. Of course, they can not be called by the opposition, and the situation with the annexation of the Crimea, the vote in the State Duma in the Crimea is a very good show. As for the non-systemic opposition, among whom was killed by Boris Nemtsov, here, of course, the situation is quite different. These people can be called by the opposition, but the trouble is that they have discredited many years in Russia.

Propaganda has managed to create in society a sort of conditioned reflexes when people automatically builds up a destructive associative array as a reaction to certain terms. Concepts such as democracy, liberal views, (meaning the classical liberalism), cause in many cases is not quite adequate phobias, for example, that behind them is always America that carries worldwide destabilization, revolution, chaos and anarchy;the only thing that the West wants – is the collapse of Russia, and a collapse of Russia is sure to be bloody.

At the same time it is clear that the democratic opposition in Russia to some extent pro-Western: these people have contacts in the West, and they do not hide. And this fact alone already makes these people in the eyes of Russians almost enemies of the people. Therefore, the percentage of support for the democratic opposition in Russia is limited: essentially, it is the intellectual layers, some of the Russian intelligentsia and the middle class – that’s part and not the whole middle class. This destroys the power of the opposition, who are really dangerous for her, such as Nemtsov.

Many people say that the cause of his death was not so much the exposure of the participation of Russian troops in the war in Ukraine, but in the first place that the Germans played an important role in lobbying for sanctions against the Putin elite in the West, that is, carrying a direct threat to the economic well-being of the regime.This report Nemtsov, “Putin said. War “, unfortunately, does not play a determining role in Russia, although it is ideal for the future of the Hague Tribunal.

Those members of the opposition who did not bring the power of the direct damage is not eliminated, but rather discredited. Putin managed to convince that the views of these people, their relationships and, consequently, their activities are destructive to Russia, and while most people will perceive them as agents of influence of America, as people who are trying to destroy the country – these people are not afraid of the authorities.

– And in your opinion, is not an illusion, when they say that Putin will sooner or later be tried in The Hague?

– I think it’s not an illusion, and it is not only in the legal aspects. It plays the role of a purely practical things. Russia’s economy is already in a huge crisis. So the fact condemn Putin or not – it’s not just a question of law, and the question of how the elite is ready to give it up.

As I said, the economy is not forever, and sooner or later the country will come to this catastrophe, which can still result in social protests, while it does not necessarily democratic slogans. And if Putin elite are smart enough to figure it out, the scenario of a palace coup can not be ruled out. And when a coup occurs in a very difficult situation in the country – meaning the new government in any case will have to normalize relations with the West, because without that Russia simply can not survive. Even now absolutely clear that the Putin government proclaimed “import substitution” – a myth.If the elite will turn self-preservation instinct, and they can somehow remove Putin, the next will be a question of normalizing relations with the West, they will understand that it needs to sacrifice something. It is quite possible that they will decide to donate Putin because he is a truly international criminal. What he did – it really is war crimes and crimes against humanity. Proof of this is more than enough. It is enough to initiate appropriate processes.

Therefore, the democratization of Russia and trial of Putin – is a little bit different processes. I do not believe that the people of democratic views may come to power in Russia in the near future, however, the court in The Hague does not exclude.However, I fear that in the event of a palace coup to power, people can come from the same Soviet Secret elite, and that the regime can remain authoritarian.

– Many today believe, including Nemtsov in his time talked about it, that the war needed Putin to keep a high rating to perpetuate their power. Do you share that opinion?

– It’s quite a controversial moment. In the short period of time, of course, the war strengthened Putin’s power, because Putin’s support is so high not only because the Russians – incorrigible “Imperials” and they flattered greatness. In fact, the percentage of genuinely ideological Imperial is quite low, as any percentage of passionate, active population. Still, we must not forget that the majority of the population – it is ordinary people, and they support Putin’s largely because it is by promoting artificially created a situation of extreme conditions.

Yes, not all believe in the “Nazis in Ukraine”, but many believe, for example, in the “evil West” and “terrible America” ​​because information on US policies for ordinary people to check more complicated. Many actually believe that in Ukraine, Russia at war with America, and if she will not fight with her in the Ukraine, you will have to fight on its own territory. This foolishness really believe very many. In this situation, Putin appears the only one who can save the country in extreme conditions hostile environment. It creates the illusion that he was holding back a dam that Russia is surrounded by enemies. And his imperial fantasies for these people, too, are tied to a protective reaction.

People think that they need to restore the Soviet Union to become stronger, to repulse the enemy, appeared to buffer between us and the potential “invaders.” And it is pumped continuously injected, people are taught that for the sake of this goal is to endure any hardships, “Yes, let prices rise in the shops, even destroyed medicine – but you do not over bombs fall, your home is not shell, you do not pounce with knife for what you say in Russian. ” In Putin’s people see the salvation of the daily hell, in which they are immersed media. At the same time, of course, can not be discounted and the compensatory effect: people compensate for their lack of rights, lawlessness impotence in the face of corruption and the lack of real support in life (such as law, inviolability of private property, an independent judiciary, etc.) substitute their involvement in serious geopolitical processes.

In this and the horror of the existing system, in which Putin can not not fight. He tied for the war the whole social structure of Russia. If you remove the effect of extreme conditions, people will see everything destroyed health care, education, the reduction in income, higher prices, and general devastation and crisis that deepened during the war. Up to what point the war is able to override this negative and inspire people that without Putin will be “worse”, but once the economic situation may become so catastrophic that people will begin to understand that the worse is nowhere that Putin neither of which in fact they did not saved.

– When you say that power inspires people worldwide conspiracy theory and so on. E., It is possible to conclude that Putin’s foreign policy is a continuation of domestic policy, right?

– I think that Putin’s policy of both branches is very intertwined. On the one hand, foreign policy, he said, solves many problems in the country, at least, raises its rating.On the other hand, it is really obsessed with restoring the old Russian borders. I watched the movie “The President” about Putin. There is a very interesting phrase, which unfortunately few people paid attention. Putin, in an interview in the film said that “Russia in the 91st, voluntarily gave up part of their territories”, and the West did not appreciate her generous gesture.

In fact, the current Russian Federation is in the same borders as the Russian Federation, that is no territorial changes since the collapse of the Soviet Union itself in Russia did not happen. Republic gained their independence after a 91-year, in the RSFSR were never part. Therefore, when Putin says Russia territorial losses, it is the direct text says that all the former Soviet republics are Russian territory! Note – it indicates they are no longer a “zone of influence” is not an abstract notion of “Taiga”, and “own territory” from which the Russian “voluntarily abandoned.” So he claims an exclusive right to determine the vector of its development of post-Soviet countries, and on this issue does not bother even to negotiate with the United States.

And the second point in the film when one of Putin’s fans breathlessly says that when in 2013, the year Putin agreed with Obama on the Syrian issue, the whole world was quiet, everyone was silent, afraid to say a word and just looked like in the corner talk to the two presidents and the fate of the world.

It seems really Putin understands that Russia lost the Cold War. He behaves as if Russia did not lose the Cold War, and voluntarily decided to join the West. He wants to be the second center of a multipolar world, that is to create a new world order in which America will consult with Russia in its policy and coordinate all with Russia.Accordingly, he dreams of the restoration of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe. But with regard to these countries, unlike the post-Soviet, perhaps, recognition of interests of the West even more important to Putin than the actual impact. He is important to Russia as the new center of a “multipolar world” admitted to the United States so that he could talk with the Americans on an equal footing.

Therefore, any negotiations with the Americans, Putin sees as a victory. He believes that everything in the world can bargain that no objective process is not that the will and the mentality of people does not exist: it does not see people as the subject. He does not perceive that, for example, Ukraine is physically unable to move closer to Russia after the war, because the people will not forgive the spilled blood and the horrors.

I think that these dreams Putin about the restoration of Soviet influence are not derived from domestic politics – they’re pretty self-sufficient. Another thing is that of course he is very afraid of protest activity, and it was really important to suppress the protests, to convert an authoritarian state into a totalitarian. In short, it is important for both the internal and external objectives. It does not represent its authority within its own country without having to do not realize it’s imperial plans. But his imperial plans, I think, is quite sincere. He really believes that this is beneficial Russian geostrategy.

For example right now in Syria. It is understood that in addition to “imperial”, there is also a pragmatic calculation: it is important to destabilize the Middle East, to raise the price of oil. We can not say that Putin crazy fanatic. But at the same time it is very important to raise rates so that the West took it as an equal party to the negotiations.However, this calculation it is faced with an inadequate perception of reality, which, as already mentioned, there is no objective processes, taking into account any guidelines that exist in the Western countries. Putin wants to talk with the West on an equal footing, but he does not understand that he crossed the line, after which it will not be perceived as a full partner. And his inadequacy, sooner or later it will ruin.

– By the way, you have already started to answer my next question is why Russia decided to take military action in Syria?

– Generally referred to as a lot of reasons. There is, first, a distraction from its failure in Ukraine. The second – a society in Russia, as I said, is tied to the war, and if the factor of war disappear, destroying the whole Putin has created an illusory construction. He can not be at war: it is a certain logic to the dictatorial regime. The third point – the pragmatic destabilization of the Middle East could lead to higher oil prices. Fourth – it is the embodiment of his dreams, that is, the creation of an alternative pole of world power. He hopes that he will have access to the Mediterranean Sea, appear certain levers to influence the situation in the world, and the Americans will not be able to ignore him. He is trying to raise rates to the level at which it will talk with.

– By the way, the publicist Andrei Piontkovsky about this in an interview with  us, too, expressed a similar opinion. In particular, he said, “waving his hand already on the economy, in order to maintain his power, he will now go only to foreign adventures. and change the board or table in the “casino” in which he plays, he can as much as necessary. And Karabakh conflicts, if you like, this is one of the possible boards. ” How would you comment on this?

– Piontkovsky quite right, I will add only that Putin will not just change the board, it will raise rates if it sees that do not talk to him, that he would not make concessions after another such increase. Once again I say: he does not understand that in the West there are certain ethical principles. Yes, in politics, they are not always respected, but there is a red line that can not move. With terrorists and war criminals do not agree.West can to a certain point to overstep its own principles, but only up to a point, because the more it threatens to undermine all the foundations of the world order and, and the Western mentality. There are boundaries that the West will not cross. Putin does not understand, and therefore does not doubt in his strategy. Seeing the futility of it, it only concludes that little raise.

With regard to the destabilization of the South Caucasus, ie the supply of arms to Azerbaijan, which can really translate the Karabakh conflict into a hot phase, it is likely no longer in his eyes in the relations between Russia and America, because in matters that relate to the post-Soviet space, he did not consider it necessary to consult with the West. Syria – yes, he’s still willing to consult with the US, Serbia, in former Warsaw Pact countries, could be ready, and the former Soviet country he believes has definitely “his.”

There Putin will simply destabilize the situation, because he believes that he controls the territory. Belarusian experts have developed a good analysis of the new Russia’s geostrategy, which expressly states that Putin will destabilize the situation across the post-Soviet space. And all open data support this conclusion. We see what happened with Ukraine. In Belarus, many experts were really concerned that in the event of Lukashenko to place the Russian military base in their country, Russia will be ready even to organize a coup in Belarus. Another thing is that in Belarus there is also a dictatorial regime, which is very difficult to dislodge.

In Armenia also received alarming information. I’ve seen reports where there are figures on the supply of offensive weapons to Azerbaijan. Clearly, that in this area are preparing provocation. Putin destabilize the entire post-Soviet space, because for him it is – the only way to hold these countries in its sphere of influence. No economically attractive model, he can not offer: it became clear even before the war, in 2013, the year. Now, during the war – especially because the economy is collapsing. The only way to hold a number of allies – that’s blackmail and attempts to make the country unattractive to the surrounding West.

Source: http://ru.1in.am/1125622.html

United States Department of State

Soviet Influence Activities

A Report on Active Measures and Propaganda

August 1987

Source: http://jmw.typepad.com/files/state-department—a-report-on-active-measures-and-propaganda.pdf

This is the famous report that Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev held up when confronting US Secretary of State George Schulz:

In 1983, the Patriot, a pro-Soviet Indian paper that often published pieces provided by KGB (Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti, or Committee for State Security) agents, released a story claiming that the U.S. military created the AIDS virus and released it as a weapon. For a couple of years, the story appeared in minor publications that were mostly KGB controlled or sympathetic to the Soviets. After this incubation period, the slander was picked up in 1985 by the official Soviet cultural weekly newspaper, the Literaturnaya Gazeta. After that, the story began to spread rapidly. In 1987 alone, it appeared over 40 times in the Soviet-controlled press and was reprinted or rebroadcast in over 80 countries in 30 languages.1 The AIDS virus was terrifying and not well understood at the time, so this piece of Soviet disinformation was especially damaging to the U.S. image.

Despite years of American protests, the Soviets remained unrepentant and insisted that their reporting was accurate. Then, on October 30, 1987, the Soviet Union promised to disavow the AIDS accusations against the United States. The turnaround in Soviet policy was precipitated by a heated exchange 3 days earlier between Secretary of State George Shultz and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev. In the meeting, a “sour and aggressive” Gorbachev held up a wellmarked and underlined Department of State publication called Soviet Influence Activities: A Report on Active Measures and Propaganda, 1986–1987. 2 Angry, the Soviet premier stated that the report contained “shocking revelations” and that it amounted to “nourishing hatred” for the Soviet Union.3 The report that angered Gorbachev was a detailed exposé of Soviet disinformation. Among other things, it laid bare the factual and scientific falsehoods in the Soviet campaign to attribute the origin of AIDS to the United States. Shultz countered Gorbachev’s complaint that the report went against the spirit of Glasnost with examples of hostile Soviet behavior and the remark that the lies the Soviets were spreading about AIDS were “bum dope.”4

While Shultz refused to apologize for the report, in reality he had not read it; neither had many others for that matter. Released 3 months earlier, the report seemed, in the words of the New York Times, “headed for the oblivion that describes the fate of most government reports.”5 Instead, Gorbachev’s rant drew the attention of the media to the report, which suddenly became a “must read” in the Nation’s capital. In a small, secluded conference room inside the Department of State where the members of a little-known interagency group that produced the report met, there was a brief moment of great satisfaction. Gorbachev’s reaction was taken as prima facie evidence that the group’s work was making a significant impact at the highest levels of the Soviet govern

http://ndupress.ndu.edu/Portals/68/Documents/stratperspective/inss/Strategic-Perspectives-11.pdf

Deception, Disinformation, and Strategic Communications: How One Interagency Group Made a Major Difference by Fletcher Schoen and Christopher J. Lamb, Center for Strategic Research Institute for National Strategic Studies National Defense University, June 2012

United States Department of State

Soviet Influence Activities

A Report on Active Measures and Propaganda, 1987-1988

August 1989

Source: http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112028340161;view=1up;seq=3;size=75

Soviet Active Measures in the “Post-Cold War” Era 1988-1991

A Report Prepared at the Request of the United States House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations
by the
United States Information Agency
June 1992

Update (ht to tf): Source: http://intellit.muskingum.edu/russia_folder/pcw_era/index.htm

Or, Scribd: (Pay Subscription: https://www.scribd.com/archive/plans?doc=30789999&escape=false&metadata=%7B%22context%22%3A%22archive%22%2C%22page%22%3A%22read%22%2C%22action%22%3A%22toolbar_download%22%2C%22logged_in%22%3Afalse%2C%22platform%22%3A%22web%22%7D)

Editor’s Note:  The message by Putin is pointed internally to Russia, what I’ve labeled Russian domestic propaganda.

Notice the vague threats, the imprecise words: “We know what we have to do,” the Russian leader said, without giving specific details.

A warlike rhetoric, a call for war, reinforcing the joy of conquest, fighting the West – all create a common enemy around which Putin rallies the Russians. It has often been said that Putin needs an external enemy so that Russia is constantly fighting in one way or another. Without a common enemy the Russian people might develop thoughts of independence, which leads to a revolution. That is Putin’s biggest fear.  So he creates the illusion that the West is united in their quest to suppress Russia and keep Russia from accomplishing their goals.

This article was published by German State-Run outlet, Deutsche Welle.

Russia ratchets up war rhetoric – and not just in Syria

A rock band sings about taking Berlin; politicians and the media threaten a nuclear attack. The war rhetoric in Russia is impossible to ignore. But there’s a different mood within Russian society.

The popular Russian rock band Va-Bank released a new music video on Wednesday. It’s called “And After Berlin” and is a cover version of the 1980s song “First We Take Manhattan,” by Canadian singer Leonard Cohen. The Russian text contains current political messages. International sanctions, Crimea and the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin are mentioned before the chorus comes: “First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.”

Since the annexation of Crimea , war and conquest fantasies have become commonplace in Russia. You hear them from politicians, journalists and pundits. Apocalyptic photomontages depicting a future war between Europe and the United States are making the rounds on social media. One such photo shows a Russian tank in a demolished Paris with the caption “Tank tours in Europe.”

The threat of nuclear weapons – something that Russians have previously tried to avoid – now surfaces regularly. March 16, 2014, is the day the taboo was broken. That’s the day that a referendum seen internationally as illegitimate was held on Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, which was occupied by Russian troops. “Russia is the only country in the world that is truly capable of turning the USA into a heap of radioactive ash,” star moderator Dmitri Kisseljov said on state television.

Since then, prominent personalities have continued to swing the nuclear club. Right-wing populist Vladimir Shirinovsky, the deputy parliamentary chairman, has threatened to reduce first Kyiv, then Berlin, then Washington to dust. Most recently, he was toying with the idea of throwing a nuclear bomb into the Black Sea near Istanbul. Then the Turkish city would be washed away by a giant wave, Shirinovsky reasoned during an appearance before parliament on Tuesday.

Sociologist Denis Volkov, of the renowned Levada research center, says such comments are a means of testing public opinion. “It would be much more serious, if Putin were to say in a documentary film that Russia was prepared to use atomic weapons in the Crimea dispute,” he told DW.

War in the air

The “expectation of war” is hanging in the air these days, the Moscow-based journalist and blogger Alexander Plushev told DW. He said the media were mainly responsible for spreading such sentiment.

Turkey’s downing of a Russian military jet on its border with Syria at the end of November appears to have heated up Russia’s war rhetoric even more. Moscow’s Novaya Gazeta has warned of the growing risk of an actual nuclear standoff. “Those who would call for the deployment of nuclear weapons out of revenge, and not as a deterrent, are the real criminals,” the paper, which is known for being critical of the Kremlin, wrote on Thursday. It called on readers to sign an online petition for a law to make publicly threatening the use of nuclear weapons a punishable act. Such a petition first needs to gain 100,000 signatures for the government to consider it.

Even some journalists loyal to the Kremlin have shown concern. At the end of November, Ulyana Skoibeda of the tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda questioned the jingoism in the wake of the Turkey conflict. “We’re hearing the word ‘war’ at every turn,” the normally effusive Putin supporter wrote, asking: “Do we really need this war?” Her column disappeared from the paper’s website a few hours after it was published.

Most Russians against war

Skoibeda simply said what most Russians think. According to opinion polls, one of the biggest worries plaguing Russian citizens is the threat of war. The Levada Center’s latest surveys show that 59 percent expect a war between Russia and the terrorist militia ” Islamic State ” in the coming decade in Syria . Every fourth Russian (28 percent) believes in an armed conflict with NATO, the Levada Center found in November. “Most people don’t want a war,” said sociologist Volkov. “But around 20 percent are the so-called hawks, who support radical, aggressive strategies against Ukraine, the West, the United States, and Turkey.” He added that their number appears to be stable.

Jens Siegert, head of the Moscow office of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, told DW that war fantasies are not that widespread in Russia. “If you were to ask, do you want a war, most people would say no, we are a peaceful people. What they do say, is that war is forced on them from outside,” the political scientist said. Siegert added that state propaganda has been fostering an image of Russia as a “besieged fortress” for more than a decade. In addition, there has been a “desensitization.” Violence in international relations is portrayed in Russian media as the norm, not the exception, said Siegert.

“State-controlled television is hyping the already hysterical mood to such a degree that it’s eventually going to backfire,” the blogger Plushev warned. In such cases, the government barely has a chance to change course quickly without disappointing its “enthusiastic followers.” Russia won’t be able to end the conflict with Turkey without “deeply humiliating its opponent,” he said.

That’s the direction Putin took in his speech on the state of the nation on Thursday. Addressing the behavior of the Turkish leadership over the downing of the Russian jet, Putin said: “They’ll regret it.”

“We know what we have to do,” the Russian leader said, without giving specific details.

Source: http://www.dw.com/en/russia-ratchets-up-war-rhetoric-and-not-just-in-syria/a-18896274

Are treaties and diplomatic documents obsolete if they are discarded when inconvenient?

Russia, the US, the UK and Ukraine signed the Budapest Memorandum in 1994, promising to respect the borders of Ukraine and protect Ukraine. Russia violated that diplomatic document when they militarily invaded Crimea and annexed it and then Russia invaded Ukraine again in Donbass.

In the “Budapest Memorandum,” Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States promised that none of them would ever threaten or use force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine. They also pledged that none of them would ever use economic coercion to subordinate Ukraine to their own interest.

• http://www.rferl.org/content/ukraine-explainer-budapest-memorandum/25280502.html

“They also pledged that none of them would ever use economic coercion to subordinate Ukraine to their own interest.”  Russia is clearly attempting to violate this on a daily basis.

Now Oleksandr Turchynov is flatly stating that disarmament makes no sense.

I take that one step further. If neither the United States or Russia abided by their words, for Russia to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty, does that indicate diplomatic documents  are worthless?

Treaties?

Taking this discussion to an even more absurd point, is anything agreed to by Russia legitimate? Can Russia ever be trusted or are agreements just a piece of paper?

The United States did nothing.

There are four elements of national power:

• Diplomatic. The US abrogated any responsibility by doing nothing.
• Information. The US clearly lost.
• Military. The US supplied non-lethal equipment and training for the first 18 months.  We lose.
• Economic. The US issued sanctions against Russia. We guaranteed some loans (not grants).

Conclusion: US fail.

Here is the article.

(Translation by my Chrome Browser)

Oleksandr Turchynov: Budapest Memorandum – disarmament makes no sense!

21 years ago, on Dec. 5, 1994 the Budapest Memorandum was signed. While Ukraine, a young independent state, which was three years old, was convinced that it did not need nuclear weapons, as the guarantors of its sovereignty, inviolability of borders and independence were such super states like the US, Britain and Russia.

At the time Ukraine’s political leadership believed in the efficacy of international guarantees, but 20 years later it turned out that the guarantees were empty and had no basis, although they were signed by the highest officials of the signatory countries.

We have taken not only nuclear weapons, but all the delivery systems that not only could carry nuclear warheads. Were blown missile silos, utilized rocket fuel, control centers destroyed … Ukraine has lost its strategic bombers and cruise missiles, which, incidentally, now Russia uses in the Syrian war. Kremlin puppets that were in Ukrainian power corridors, trying to finally finish and destroy the Ukrainian army and the entire unit that was responsible for the security and defense of the country.

In February 2014, 20 years after the signing of the memorandum, one of the signatories treacherously attacked our country – began the occupation of Crimea by the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, and the Russian parliament allowed Putin to introduce troops into Ukraine. At this time in Ukraine was completely destroyed by the system of power, utterly destroyed economy, non-combat capable army, demoralized structures of state power  …

Being in the midst of the events immediately after the election of Speaker, as acting President, while still controlling the remnants of the Cabinet, I turned to our strategic partners in the context of their obligations under the Memorandum. But we were politely told that the Budapest Memorandum – a formal document, it does not provide real implementation mechanisms to provide guarantees. That is real … Ukraine disarmed and guarantees were “conditional”.

We were sympathized with, they supported us politically and economically, but it was clear that no one would protect us and we should rely on our own strength. Even lethal weapons, which we were so lacking, especially in the first phase of aggression, we are still not supplied by our partners without giving any real arguments why.

The failure of the Budapest Memorandum proved the futility of disarmament, demonstrated the complete destruction of the system of collective security, paradigm translated in the new century is the medieval format “might is right”, which creates a potential threat to all. Weapons again become the main argument in international relations, bringing to the fore the old rule: if you want peace for your country – carefully prepare for war.

And another conclusion of these events for Ukraine in the new millennium, everyone should rely solely on themselves. Therefore, the value of the Armed Forces of our country is difficult to overestimate. At an extremely high price we realized that the key to our independence and freedom are the most powerful and modern military weapons. Revitalize our military and economic potential – the only way to restore territorial integrity and democratic development of Ukraine.

And at this point only we can help ourselves!

http://www.rnbo.gov.ua/news/2327.html

Author: Donald M. Bishop

Wednesday, December 2nd 2015

The full text of Section 1056 of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2016, signed into law by President Obama on November 25, 2015, is below.

Although paragraphs (b) and (c) focus on technology and demonstrations, Section (a)(2) provides DOD with very broad authority – “concepts,” “strategies,” “media,” “audiences,” “counter,” “potential adversaries,” “persuade,” “inspire” — that overlaps with traditional missions of Public Diplomacy and U.S. international broadcasting. 

Section (a)(2) thus raises a few questions.  How will “support the broader efforts of the Government to counter violent extremism” be implemented?  If DOD, State, and BBG programs overlap, how will they be coordinated or aligned?  Will there be separate “lanes”?  Will programs in other nations require ambassadorial approval?  What kinds of “engagement technology” are contemplated?

For technology, the Act provides that DOD inform Congressional committees of a “coordination structure to include participation between the technology development and the operational communities, including potentially joint, interagency, intergovernmental, and multinational partners” within 180 days.  On first reading, a “coordination structure” will be needed not only for technology, but for overall policy and implementation.

SEC. 1056. Information operations and engagement technology demonstrations.

(a)  Sense of congress.—It is the sense of Congress that—

(1) military information support operations are a critical component of the efforts of the Department of Defense to provide commanders with capabilities to shape the operational environment;

(2) military information support operations are integral to armed conflict and therefore the Secretary of Defense has broad latitude to conduct military information support operations;

(3) 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; and

(4) 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.

(b) Technology demonstrations required.—To support the ability of the Department of Defense to provide innovative operational concepts and technologies to shape the informational environment, the Secretary of Defense shall carry out a series of technology demonstrations, subject to the availability of funds for such purpose or to a prior approval reprogramming, to assess innovative new technologies for information operations and information engagement to support the operational and strategic requirements of the commanders of the geographic and functional combatant commands, including the urgent and emergent operational needs and the operational and theater campaign plans of such combatant commanders to further the national security objectives and strategic communications requirements of the United States.

(c) Plan.—By not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Defense shall provide to the congressional defense committees a plan describing how the Department of Defense will execute the technology demonstrations required under subsection (b). Such plan shall include each of the following elements:

(1) A general timeline for conducting the technology demonstrations.

(2) Clearly defined goals and endstate objectives for the demonstrations, including traceability of such goals to the tactical, operational, or strategic requirements of the combatant commanders.

(3) A process for measuring the performance and effectiveness of the demonstrations.

(4) A coordination structure to include participation between the technology development and the operational communities, including potentially joint, interagency, intergovernmental, and multinational partners.

(5) The identification of potential technologies to support the tactical, operational, or strategic needs of the combatant commanders.

(6) An explanation of how such technologies will support and coordinate with elements of joint, interagency, intergovernmental, and multinational partners.

(d) Congressional notice.—Upon initiating a technology demonstration under subsection (b), the Secretary of Defense shall submit to the congressional defense committees written notice of the demonstration that includes a detailed description of the demonstration, including its purpose, cost, engagement medium, targeted audience, and any other details the Secretary of Defense believes will assist the committees in evaluating the demonstration.

(e) Termination.—The authority to carry out a technology demonstration under this section shall terminate on September 30, 2022.

(f) Rule of construction.—Nothing in this section shall be construed to limit or alter any authority under which the Department of Defense supports information operations activities within the Department.

http://euromaidanpress.com/2015/12/06/know-your-refutations-5-myths-that-are-used-to-legitimize-russias-war-in-ukraine/

2015/12/06

Throughout the crisis in Ukraine, Kremlin has spent countless millions of Russian taxpayer money to impose its narrative of the crisis on the West. Unfortunately, while this task may be failing, Putin’s propaganda effort covering the war in Ukraine finds somewhat unexpected allies, like the British Stop the War coalition.

In August 2014, as regular Russian troops were pouring into war-torn Eastern Ukraine, Stephen Cohen penned an article about the “US-NATO drive to war” in Ukraine,republished by Stop the War. The article presented five purported facts and fallacies in the Western point of view on the Ukraine crisis. The resulting picture is distorted and enabling Kremlin’s war in Ukraine, to the contrary of “Stop the War’s” stated goals.

Now, as NATO has formally asked Montenegro to join the alliance on Dec,2nd , Moscow didn’t hesitate to threaten Podgorica with stopping any military cooperation if the accession becomes official. Cohen’s statements are still being used by Kremlin propaganda narrative supporters, so here are the refutations handy for the discussion with opponents.

The first point, perhaps unwillingly, parrots the Soviet revanchist narrative on Russia’s post-Cold war treatment as a defeated nation. “This triumphalist, winner-take-all approach has been spearheaded by the expansion of NATO,” argues Cohen, completely oblivious to the fact that the ex-Warsaw pact nations joined NATO willingly, the older member states reluctant about the Alliance’s expansion.

The pattern seemed to repeat with Ukraine, which Cohen calls NATO’s “biggest prize”: despite Ukraine’s previous pro-democracy president Yushchenko’s will to do so, Ukraine never joined NATO during his 2005-2010 administration. Only after the Russian invasion did public opinion in Ukraine turn towards NATO, with 64% of the populationwilling to join the alliance in search of security guarantees.

During a recent meeting with NATO’s secretary general in Kyiv, Ukraine’s president Petro Poroshenko suggested that the reforms required for NATO membership would take as much as 6 years, and even then the Alliance issues will be decided via referendum. So far, NATO has failed to provide its “biggest prize” with lethal weapons to counter the modern Russian equipment used by the so-called “separatists”, despite numerous requests to do so.

In his second point, Cohen describes Ukraine as a “country long divided by ethnic, linguistic, religious, cultural, economic and political differences ”. Perhaps Cohen would be surprised to know that even according to Soviet statistics Ukraine’s populationoverwhelmingly identified themselves as Ukrainians. This map from 2001, showing the percentage of Ukrainians in the country’s population, brings the point home even better. In 1991, during Ukraine’s independence referendum, a majority in every region, including Russian-occupied Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk, voted to break free from the Soviet Union.

While some elections in the 21st century did show a divide between a pro-European West and a pro-Russian East (not unlike the electoral divides seen in many Western countries, like, for example, the US), it was Maidan that united Ukrainians in their pro-Western positions.

For example, during and after the revolution public opinion regarding joining the European Union started to noticeably shift toward pro-European direction, with the latest poll demonstrating even 57% in favor of joining the EU rather than the Custom Union (17%).  As of joining NATO, Ukraine’s support for joining the alliance grew drastically in September of 2014 – exactly after Russia-backed separatists took Donbas’ Illovaysk and Debaltseve.

Meanwhile, 56,5% of Ukrainians believe that Ukraine shouldn’t concede to Russia’s aggression and has to aim on restoring control over the lost territories even if much effort is needed. Almost 70% won’t accept the idea of leaving Crimea to Russia while 65,4% are sure Ukraine shouldn’t be afraid of provoking Russia by it’s eurointegrational decisions.

“Long divided”, as put by Cohen, Ukraine miraculously manages to stay united in the face of external aggressor and show solidarity on the most contradictory topics.

Moreover, every country has its internal differences. Ukraine’s population is not more divided than, for example, the people of the US, traditionally divided between the Democrats and the Republicans, or the Poles, usually divided by liberal VS conservative preferences to the eastern and western regions.

Cohen’s third point vehemently denies Putin’s pressure on Ukraine’s ex-president Viktor Yanukovych to dump the EU association agreement. Let’s not forget a lucrative $15 bln loan and 30% gas price cut Putin offered Yanukovych after he dumped the EU deal, to name one thing.

More than that, the “democratically elected president” Yanukovych had been consequently promoting Ukrainian integration with Europe. In summer of 2013 government even allocated funds for a pro-European promo campaign: European activists and politicians held open lectures describing the benefits of European integration.

Before that, “European integration” had been enshrined in the laws starting from 1998, long before Yanukovych.

More importantly, the description of the Ukraine crisis as a powerplay between Kremlin and Brussels is the worst example of orientalism – denying agency to the Ukrainian people, that stood up to Yanukovych regime’s turn towards the Kremlin, performing a grassroots revolution that started with a Facebook post by a Ukrainian journalist – not EU meddling.

Cohen’s fourth point attempts to re-tread the history of the Euromaidan movement, yet in doing so parrots Kremlin propaganda clichés of a “fascist Euromaidan” and “street radicals”.

First of all, sociology shows that any organizations, not just “nationalist forces”, played a very minor role in the protests, initially making up fewer than 10% of the protesters and later rising up to 30% of permanent Maidan camp residents, the vast majority remaining unaffiliated. While Western Ukrainians did dominate among the camp dwellers, over 45% of the non-Kyivans there came from Central, Southern or Eastern Ukraine.

The obvious radicalization of the protests was triggered by the forceful breakup of the protest in November 2013, passing laws against protests commonly known asdictatorship laws in January, and, finally, killing over a hundred of protesters by riot police and snipers.

After the Yanukovych fled the country, his own parliamentary majority turned against him in a vote of impeachment supported by the 328 of 447 MPs. 3 months later, presidential elections were held and a stable government replaced the temporary one formed by the former parliamentary opposition.

That parliament, widely believed to have been elected fraudulently in 2012 under Yanukovych, was replaced in an October 2014 election, where none of the far-right parties won seats. How, according to Cohen, Russian army invading Crimea and an Russian ex-intelligence officer entering Eastern Ukraine east from occupied Crimea with his own unit to “pull the trigger of war” are reactions to ousting a dictator, is anyone’s guess.

In his final point, Cohen blames the war on Ukraine’s “anti-terrorist operation” waged “mainly in Luhansk and Donetsk.” First of all, the operation never touched other regions than Luhansk and Donetsk, and secondly, it was launched days after Igor Strelkov’s unit seized police arsenals across Eastern Ukraine.  During the next few months, all major successful “rebel” operations, like the battle for Debaltseve, were due to direct Russian involvement.

In August 2014, Cohen argued that “if Kyiv’s assault ends, Putin can probably compel the rebels to negotiate”. The loss of the strategic town of Debaltseve and Donetsk airport after the ceasefire was signed in September suggests that Ukraine’s anti-terrorist operation probably wasn’t the main driver of the war after all.

The alleged “long-term Ukraine’s internal divisions” didn’t manage to tear the country apart during two decades’ independency. Yet the conflict sparked as soon as Putin’s troops arrived.

“Stop the War’s” attempts to describe a Russian invasion of Ukraine as a “Russian-American conflict” and a result of Ukraine’s internal divisions at the same time does nothing to stop the war in Ukraine. On the contrary, it undermines the Western resolve which, manifested in the form of sanctions, has been one of the few things keeping Kremlin from imposing its will on the Ukrainian people. This war, which has already claimed 8000 lives and displaced over 2 million people, can only be stopped by one man: Vladimir Putin.

Source: http://euromaidanpress.com/2015/12/06/know-your-refutations-5-myths-that-are-used-to-legitimize-russias-war-in-ukraine/

This past week I spoke at and attended the entire NATO Senior Psychological Operations Conference,  hosted by the Joint Special Operations University and co-sponsored by the US Special Operations Command.

The topic was “Hybrid Warfare”, Russian Information Warfare and Russian propaganda.  Yes, I was happier than a pig in mud.  Everybody was talking a common language, talking about Measures of Effectiveness (which is good), Measures of Performance (which is bad in my opinion) and so on.  Hanging out with strangers who speak a common lingo, many of whom read this blog, felt like a reunion of sorts. There were quite a few old friends, but everybody felt like good friends, right from the beginning.

As I sat, observed and participated in the discussions, I couldn’t help but notice so many different approaches and perspectives about many of the same topics.  I was invited to talk about Russian propaganda, so I gave a 30 minute version of a two-hour presentation I have presented often.  My perspective was more hands on, interpreting and offering examples of more pointed propaganda.

I was sitting next to a retired Psyop Colonel, who pointed out the Source, Content, Audience, Media and Effects (SCAME) propaganda assessment or analysis.  I was introduced to a number of familiar documents from the US as well as a document from NATO.

US documents:

• FM 3-05.301 (FM 33-1-1) MCRP 3-40.6A December 2003 Psychological Operations Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures https://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-05-301.pdf Chapter 11 Propaganda Analysis and Counterpropaganda
• FM 3-05.302 MCRP 3-40.6B October 2005 Tactical Psychological Operations Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures https://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-05-302.pdf Appendix D Propaganda Assessment

NATO:

• AJP-3.10.1(A) ALLIED JOINT DOCTRINE FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATIONS https://info.publicintelligence.net/NATO-PSYOPS.pdf ANNEX D COUNTER PSYOPS TECHNIQUES AND PROCEDURES

I plan to use the SCAME analytical technique here, for standardization, when analyzing possible/probable propaganda.  Try it!

I have many, many more lessons learned from this week to share with you, gentle readers…  read on!

Things are more screwed up than I originally thought and we, collectively, seem to be incapable of clawing our way out of the hole.

We, as a military information community (Psyop and IO) are hobbled by our bureaucracy and most practitioners, doctrine writers and observers appear constrained by conventional thinking.

On Thursday, at the NATO Senior Psychological Operations Conference, I participated in a small group discussion (1 out of 10) about the role of Psyop in Hybrid War.  Two Psyop Lieutenant Colonels lead a discussion about using Psyop in a “supporting” vs. “supported” role – perhaps taking the lead in a hybrid war. At one point I realized I had to push the envelope, so I walked them through the evolution of information in importance on the battlefield and the need for information to take the lead prior to bullets and bombs (kinetics) being unleashed.

Clearly in my mind Russia put ‘information’ in the lead in Crimea and the military and intelligence were supporting.  That was a clean, crisp and clear operation.

Then the discussion deviated into ‘when do we move from Phase 0 (Shape) to Phase 1 (Deter)’. http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/new_pubs/jp5_0.pdf  We had a discussion on definitions and on Hybrid War.

Timothy L. Thomas had previously proposed that there is no such thing as Hybrid War and Russian doctrine bears that out.  I’ve had this opinion for the past 18 months or so, Tim and I fully agree. NATO is using the term, so we operated under their conditions.

Bottom line, our small group had more questions than answers and it is such a simple scenario. I later discovered that almost all the small groups had exactly the same problem.

Periodically some participants referred to Information Operations as unnecessary, Psyop (in Europe they use Psyops) could take the lead.  Until IO gets its act together, this may be a good thing.

Psyop as a community desperately wants, correction, it needs, a General Officer, to lead the Psyop community.  US military Psyop does not think of itself as part of the larger Information Operations community, and IO deserves that.  US military IO is leaderless, quite literally.  There is no strategy, no plan and nothing to execute, therefore IO is floundering and will continue to flounder until a leader is put into position. Because of the lack of leadership within the IO community (at OSD specifically), this is needlessly causing Psyop great pains.

Worst of all, conventional thinking within the Psyop community puts a brake on what psyop is allowed to do to counter Russian propaganda, and it is desperately needed. I met the people sent to State, to CSCC, and the numbers are miniscule.  I wanted to stand up and loudly proclaim “that’s it?”

Looking at NATO HQs and SHAPE, Psyops is needlessly hobbled by a lack of manpower. They have the initiative, they have the expertise, but the dearth of resources unnecessarily limits their capabilities and restricts what they can do, especially in Phase 0 and Phase 1.

Bottom line, Psyop and Psyops are the experts meant to be the experts in proposing a message:

The mission of PSYOP is to influence the behavior of foreign target audiences (TAs) to support U.S. national objectives. PSYOP accomplish this by conveying selected information and/or advising on actions that influence the emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign audiences. Behavioral change is at the root of the PSYOP mission.

• https://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-05-30.pdf

If Psyop and IO cannot convince the senior leaders of the US military and the National Command Authority of their importance in all phases, if Psyop and IO are not ascending in importance on a continual basis, then perhaps Psyop and IO are less than capable of performing their mission during a crisis and war.

I didn’t even take the next step and propose where kinetics would support information through all phases.

Buh bye.

Poland deports the correspondent of the news agency “Russia Today” Leonid Sviridov, which has worked there since 2003. Poland cancelled his accreditation the residence permit, Joinfo.ua reports with reference to Vesti.ru.

The Russian Foreign Ministry stated that Warsaw did not explain such actions. Russian Ministry consider this as blatant disregard to the international obligations in the field of media.

Leonid Sviridov said to the edition: “Right after I was deprived of accreditation, the Internal Security Agency made a submission to the local governor in Warsaw on depriving me of the residence permit.”

He also said that The head of the Security Service of Poland issued a statement, which says that “Mr. Sviridov is a real and serious threat to Poland’s security.”

“I was expelled from the country without trial, it is a fact,”- said Sviridov.

Source: http://joinfo.com/world/1012643_poland-deports-the-correspondent-of-russia-today.html

Vitaly Churkin exercised his right to free speech at the UN on Friday and demonstrated a Russian alternate theory of reality.

Russia is demonstrably:

• more neo-nazi than almost any country in the world, including Ukraine.
• more extremist than Ukraine.
• more nationalistic than Ukraine, even dangerously so.

Stepan Bandera, since he was killed by the KGB on orders from Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, has been routinely and systematically denigrated by the Russian media and now, officially, by the Russian government.

The man, Stepan Bandera, is an esteemed figure who fought for Ukrainian independence.  He represented such a threat to Russia that he was assassinated by the KGB in 1959.  Choosing Bandera as the name for a new Ukraine aircraft is a nod to the person who dedicated his life to the existence of Ukraine.  That Russia routinely continues the practice of political assassinations is a testament to Russian deep seated fear of individuals capable of fomenting a revolution within their fragile country.  Independence, revolution, ideas – are all a threat to Russia.

This is Putin’s nightmare.

The rest of Churkin’s speech was ‘blah, blah, blah, Russia is a victim, the United States is picking on us, Third Carthage.  Nobody likes us, we’re going to eat some worms. Oh, yeah, we have nukes.’

Russia’s Churkin questions legitimacy of Ukraine authorities, accuses of neonazism

Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN Vitaly Churkin questioned the legitimacy of the Ukrainian authorities due to it allegedly being followers of the ideology of neonazism and aggressive nationalism, while speaking at the meeting of the UN Security Council on Dec 11.

“One of the factors that is behind what the Kyiv authorities are doing is the ideology of extremism that is widespread in Ukrainian society, as is neo-Nazism and aggressive nationalism,” said Churkin.

Russia’s representative said that “until this ideology is seen in Ukraine as somebody implementing their right to free speech, we can’t have legitimate authorities in Kyiv.”

Besides, Churkin said Russia was “shocked that the new Ukrainian military cargo plane is to be called ‘Bandera’,” [the option to name the new An-178 aircraft after Ukraine’s historic figure, leader of nationalist and independence movement Stepan Bandera, who is widely associated in Russia with collaboration with the Nazis, now tops the popular voting set up by Antonov design bureau] and wondered, whether a “swastika” will be drawn on it.

The diplomat also criticized the stance of the U.S. on the Ukrainian issue in the context of implementation of the Minsk agreements, saying that Washington plays a destructive role, which is falling beyond the context of the Normandy Four” by constantly backing its Kyiv partners. Churkin named this as one of the main reasons for a hampered process of political settlement in Donbas.

UN Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson stressed on the need to fulfill the Minsk agreements in full. “The conflict zone remains highly militarized, there is an ever present danger of serious escalation,” he said, appealing to all sides to provide “unrestricted and unconditional access for critical humanitarian assistance and to guarantee freedom of movement for civilians throughout the country.”

Source: http://www.unian.info/politics/1210378-russias-churkin-questions-legitimacy-of-ukraine-authorities-accuses-of-neonazism.html

A video about Russian information warfare from Lithuania’s TV3.

I review parts of the video in the description following the posted video, below.

At 1:04:21 in length, it’s fairly long but portrays how Russia is building their Information Warfare program against the west.

(2015) WAR 2020 Russia’s information aggression – Barely known documentary about Russian propaganda. Really interesting. Documentary itself is somewhat of propaganda though, so think with your own head :)

• https://www.reddit.com/r/Documentaries/comments/3vrtzi/2015_war_2020_russias_information_aggression/

Already the Russian trolls are countering with comments, such as:

• That’s rich. A propaganda piece about Russian propaganda.
• So typical of Western propaganda, accuse Russia when it’s the West.

Personally, I hate watching videos.  One must sit through a flood of stuff before getting the point. In this video, however, there are a lot of points made consistently.  Too many to list here.

The video begins with a hoax perpetrated by Russians, of a chemical plant explosion in Centerville, Louisiana.

From Wikipedia, a lack of in-depth work doomed the hoax:

Betaworks CEO John Borthwick described the hoax in an essay as an unsuccessful attempt to “hack” social media. The essay uses analysis by Betaworks data scientist Gilad Lotan to argue that the effort likely originated inside Russia, and failed to achieve virality in part because the fake identities it used had little connection with genuine human identities. Borthwick concludes that a successful hoax would have required its creator to embed the fake identities in real social networks, which he argues would have required considerable time and effort.^[2]

In June 2015, the New York Times Magazine published an extensive article by Adrian Chen, claiming the hoax to be the work of the Internet Research Agency, a Russian institution specialized on nationalistic online propaganda, funded either by the Russian Government or a close ally.^[9]

They use the term “brainwashing” in the video, which I believe might be used credibly.

Listen carefully. Fabrications, lies, inventions, concoctions, deceit, falsehoods, forgeries, myths, figment, untruths. These are all words for much of what Russian television, news, and online “news” publish to weave a web of delusions.  Dr. Christopher Paul recently coined a phrase, Russia’s “Firehose of BS”, or, translating American English into British English, “Hosepipe of Bollocks”.  This documentary portrays so many Russian lies – because Russian news lies so frequently, consistently and continually.

“Disinformation chaos”, former RT anchor Liz Wahl describes how Russia is saturating the world, substituting lies for fact.

It’s interesting that Lithuanian children have bought into Russian propaganda completely.

Russian ‘news’ and television hires various ‘experts’ with no expertise whatsoever.  Some of these so-called experts are exposed, the same can be said of the ‘experts’ used by RT and other Russian media outlets in many countries around the world.

The Russian Troll Factory, the Internet Research Agency at 55 Savushkina Street, St Petersburg, Russia is directly tied to Trolls. This documentary ties their “Technical Brief” (point paper) into Russian news stories, to create an overwhelmingly supportive story in favor of a centrally coordinated Russian position.

Zhanna “Jeanne” Nemcova, now a journalist, spoke of the plethora of preposterous theories pushed by Russian media.  The purpose was to draw public attention away from the truth about her father’s murder.  They were attempting to “drown the truth in a massive flood of false information.”

According to Lyudmila Savchuk, an investigative journalist who worked at 55 Savushkina Street, St Petersburg, it was a tasking that originated there.  Russia, especially the trolls at the Internet Research Agency, flooded every available site with alternative theories from what it really was, a political assassination ordered by Russia to a politician who posed a credible threat to Russian absolute control of information.

Take an hour out of your day and view this… it’s sobering.