I heard Afghan leading cleric and lawmaker Nazir Ahmad Hanafi say “he’ll cut off her nose”. The picture on the right says the same thing. May you rot in hell, Nazir Ahmad Hanafi.
I’ve been searching for this clip for several hours and finally found it.
Now I’m ticked. Pissed is a better word but I’d never type that out loud.
Oops, too late.
The arrogance. The misogyny. The absolute stupidity.
</end editorial>
By Farangis Najibullah and Mustafa Sarwar
April 11, 2016
A new documentary that explores the rights of women in Afghanistan features a clip in which a member of parliament appears to threaten his female interviewer with rape. Now, he is demanding an apology.
The apparent threat from leading cleric and lawmaker Nazir Ahmad Hanafi is made during a testy interview conducted by Isobel Yeung, a reporter for the documentary series Vice on HBO.
“What if a husband rapes his wife, is that domestic abuse?” Yeung asks Hanafi while querying him about his opposition to Afghan legislation that would eliminate violence against women. “Should the man be punished or should the woman be punished for that, in your opinion?”
Speaking through an interpreter, the two debate the definition of rape, culminating with the parliament member from Herat saying, “There is a kind of rape you have and another we have in Islam.”
Yeung begins to ask a follow-up question, “Do you think women should be allowed…”, but is abruptly cut off by Hanafi, who tells someone off-camera that “I think you should stop it now.”
The clip then shows Yeung sitting silently as a conversation in Dari plays out. The cleric is then captured on film suggesting that she should be raped. “Hand her over to an Afghan man so he can give it to her so hard it’ll come out her nose,” he says under his breath.
The exchange was revealed in a promotional video for the documentary Afghan Women’s Rights And Floating Armories, which aired on HBO on April 10.
Hanafi, however, when queried by RFE/RL about his comments, initially denied having ever spoken to Yeung. “I haven’t met such a person, I have no idea about this, and have not said anything,” Hanafi told RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan on April 9, a day after the promotional clip emerged. “No one has spoken with me.”
He continued to deny having participated in the interview, suggesting that someone made a fake video featuring his likeness. “It’s very simple to make a video,” he said. “There are people who put together a head, a beard, and a body in a video that would look more authentic than the real person.”
Under further questioning, Hanafi eventually admitted to having participated in an interview. “When we were talking about marriage issues,” he recalled, “I told her, ‘If you want to know about it, you can marry an Afghan man.'”
When asked if he would apologize if it was determined that he had, in fact, made the remarks, Hanafi struck a defiant tone. “What else do you want? There is a person who fabricated this and I should ask that person why they did it,” he said. “Who should apologize? Me or those who distributed [videos] against me? They are plotting against a person who is minding his own business.”
RFE/RL has yet to view the full documentary, or the unedited version of Yeung’s exchange with Hanafi, to determine the precise sequence of events. In the case of his rape comment, for instance, a man is seen in the background who does not appear in different camera angles during Hanafi and Young’s exchange.
But there is no question that Hanafi made the rape comment during the session, translated by Vice/HBO as “Maybe I should give you to an Afghan man to take your nose off,” and that it has caused a stir.
Responding to a tweet noting that Hanafi had denied participating in the interview, Yeung replied, “Perhaps it was more memorable for me than it was for him.”
In a separate “debrief” video promoting the documentary in which Yeung spoke about her work in Afghanistan, she described her interview with Hanafi as “incredibly awkward and very frustrating.”
The documentary seeks to highlight the plight of women in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. Hanafi, a lawmaker from the western Herat Province, has opposed the Elimination of Violence Against Women Act, which was decreed by former President Hamid Karzai in 2009 to much fanfare, but has yet to be passed by parliament.
Hanafi appears uncomfortable with the questioning at various points of the interview, and at times seems to be avoiding eye contact with Yeung. “He refused to look at me, he talked to my translator, he talked over me, he didn’t listen to my questions,” the reporter said.
The reporter explained that she thought it was understood by everyone that “Hanafi felt rather hostile toward me being a woman,” and that she believes the translator “thought it wise not to translate everything that he was saying.”
This, Yeung said, meant she didn’t “actually realize a lot of the abuse that he [Hanafi] was throwing my way.”
Written by Farangis Najibullah with an interview by RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan correspondent Mustafa Sarwar
Regular readers of our disinformation products know that conspiracies are an essential part of the disinformation campaign. The most resonant pieces of news in the last weeks have led to several waves of conspiracy in the pro-Kremlin media, claiming that almost every major piece of recent news is orchestrated by the West, and that the West is always driven by its never-ending desire to destroy Russia.
Thus, we see claims that the world-wide investigation by dozens of journalists into the leaked “Panama Papers” is just another information attack resulting from Western “Putinophobia”. Putinophobia, or its older sister Russophobia, was mentioned e.g. in the TV show Bolshinstvo (http://bit.ly/1SHKaCi).
We see further claims that such a supposed attack on Russia (or rather on President Putin – for pro-Kremlin media specialised in spreading disinformation, “Russia” and “Putin” are synonyms) must have been prepared by someone with access to great personal resources. The outlets picked the Hungarian-American investor George Soros (http://bit.ly/1MVglld), alternatively the Soros and Ford foundation (http://bit.ly/1YoJ2aM).
But it is not solely about the Panama Papers. One video blogger tried to prove the “American information war” by reference to a recent BBC documentary on President Putin’s wealth (http://bit.ly/1MU8Wm6). Another TV show claimed that the US is aiming to destroy Russia through a plan of the “secret brotherhood of global elites led by the Anglo-Saxons” (http://bit.ly/1quVCLq).
Destroying Russia was also supposedly the main aim of the “coup” allegedly organised by the West in Ukraine. This claim comes from the major Kremlin Think Tank, the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies (http://bit.ly/1SeDFXc).
Wherever a war may be – it is always “a plot against Russia”
So we hear time and time again that Westerners’ only wish is to destroy Russia. And yet they always seem to launch the wars that should fulfil this goal in the wrong country.
Thus, the “coup” in Kyiv aimed to destroy Russia. So did the worsening crisis in the East of Ukraine (http://bit.ly/1Nin7fw). And now also the renewed conflict in Nagorno Karabakh. We read that it was induced by the West, because NATO supposedly wants a war with Russia (http://bit.ly/1Vhqc8a). Alternatively it was induced by Turkey (http://bit.ly/1NjNHFk); or then again by the USA through Turkey (http://bit.ly/1S4B4lM); or even by the USA and Turkey, as presented in Pyotr Tolstoy’s show (http://bit.ly/1qgCCzp). According to the Georgian print outlet, Asaval Dasavali, all these actors also get help from former Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili.
And for a dose of historical revisionism, we learn that such evil plotters even decided to manipulate history and invented the anti-Hitler coalition that defeated fascism. In the world of pro-Kremlin propagandists, it was only Russian soldiers that defeated Adolf Hitler (http://bit.ly/1qgDWCh).
“Czechs will be killed by the CIA”; “Swedes will help Daesh”
For example, consumers of pro-Kremlin media in this country have been told that their freedom of speech has been limited and that they can now go to prison for their opinions (http://bit.ly/20uacik); also that there will be terror attacks organised by the CIA in the period between 4th and 11th April (http://bit.ly/1S0kt02) – happily that particular piece of disinformation has already been disproved by the simple passage of time.
Sweden also received its portion of disinformation this week. According to a letter addressed to Minister of Foreign Affairs, Margot Wallström, Sweden should soon start “fulfilling its promises and support Daesh with weapons and ammunition” (http://bit.ly/23kPza0). Of course, the letter is a fake – and no media apart from pro-Kremlin outlets covered it.
The Disinformation Review collects examples of pro-Kremlin disinformation all around Europe and beyond. Every week, it exposes the breadth of this campaign, showing the countries and languages targeted. We’re always looking for new partners to cooperate with us for that.
The Disinformation Digest analyses how pro-Kremlin media see the world and what independent Russian voices say. It follows key trends on Russian social media, so you can put pro-Kremlin narratives into their wider context. And finally… some Friday Fun before the weekend!
DISCLAIMER: 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.
Imagine if a few centuries ago Russia had as much money and resources for propaganda as it does now. How would have the historical books looked like?
In fact, similar propaganda really did take place at that time. Russia had been rewriting history books centuries ago, as it now rewrites Wikipedia pages about MH 17,Kyivan Rus, Crimea, and others. As the Russian Empire always had more resources on nurturing myths and rewriting history, guess who’s versions became mainstream.
In 1783, Russian empress Yekaterina IIestablishedthe Commission on Creating Notes on Ancient History, Primarily of Russia. The task of the Commission was to “create” the history of the Empire. The following generations of Russian historians also labored to create myths about the great Russian nation.
Swiss historian Valentin Getermannwrote in his work, Studying the History of the Soviet Union:
“Historians in democratic countries are always free to criticize the prevailing philosophy in their own countries…But in the Soviet Union there is, according to all the indications, virtually no scope for the expression of unorthodox opinions. It is even likely that many Russian historians are compelled to suppress utterances which they consider to be absolutely correct, and to declare themselves in favor of opinions which run counter to their convictions.”
Recently Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the creation of the Fund of Popularizing Russian History. The “popularization” will be aimed at Russia, as well as other countries.
Censorship and myths in Russian history are created and propelled on several topics. Crimea is one of them.
The most outrageous of the myths is that Crimea is “primordial Russian land.”
Vladimir Putin has repeatedly exploited the myth. Just after the illegal annexation of the peninsula in one of his statements hesaid: “In Crimea, everything is penetrated by our common [Russian and Crimean] history and pride.”
Crimean historian and publicists Serhiy Hromenko, unmasks the myth of the “primordial land” in hisarticleand quotes the book Crimean Gothia by Igor Phioro, another historian:
“Of all the current hypotheses about Slavs in Crimea, the most probable is probably the opinion of Jacobson and Korzukhina, on emigration of some groups of the population from the ancient Rus in the XIII century during the Mongol invasion … About early Slavs there was no convincing evidence yet – either written or archaeological. All the attempts to find them were biased, and sometimes even with a pseudo-scientific character. Leading Soviet researchers have already given up the majority of the proposed concepts of the early colonization of the Crimea by the Slavs.”
Dynamics of the populations of Russians and Crimean Tatars in Crimea. Image: RFE/RL
A permanent Slavic population appeared in Crimea after the ХІІІ century. Prior to the first annexation of Crimea by the Russian Empire in 1783, it was extremely small.
We see how the population of the Crimean Tatars steadily decreased after the annexation. This happened as a result of their oppression by the authorities of the Russian Empire. The majority of Crimean Tatars fled their homeland and resided in the neighboring Turkey, Romania, and Bulgaria, where large numbers of Crimean Tatar diaspora currently lives. So we can conclude that the Russian population appeared in Crimea because of permanent pressure on the indigenous people of the peninsula. The steep drop in Crimean Tatar numbers in 1941 is their deportation to Central Asia after being accused of “collaborationism” by Stalin.
Another event which is actively exploited by Russian propagandists now is the transfer of Crimea to Ukraine by Nikita Khruschev in 1954, then First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Disregarding the details who exactly decided to transfer the peninsula, it is worth mentioning that the propaganda outlets usually don’t state the reasons of such a step. This step was initiated by Russia itself: almost ten years after the World War II, the peninsula was still devastated and exhausted. This is how in February 1954 the situation wasdescribedby Mykhil Tarasov, the Head of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the RSFSR:
“Considering community of the economy, territorial proximity (the Crimean Oblast, according to the speaker ‘takes up the the entire Crimean peninsula and territorially adjoined to the Ukrainian Republic, being like a natural extension of southern steppes of Ukraine’), and close economic and cultural ties between Crimean region and the Ukrainian SSR, and also having an approval of the Presidium of the of Ukrainian Republic, Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian Republic, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR considers that it is appropriate to transfer the Crimean Oblast to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.”
Check out how much efforts it took from Soviet Ukraine to rebuild Crimea from ruins (infographics in 5 languages available here).
Occupying Crimea in 2014, Russia forgot about the “territorial proximity and the economic and cultural ties” between Ukraine and Crimea became a priority for the Russian Federation in another way – as a military base.
So, let’s assemble all the myths together.
Russian myths about the history of Crimea.
Myth 1. Crimea is ‘primordial Russian land’
Propagandist billboard in Crimea saying: “What is next? Doesn‘t matter, even if stones fall from the sky! We are in our Motherland!”
Reality: Being “primordially Russian” evokes the idea that Crimea has belonged to Russians since the time immemorial. However, this is not true. The first known ethnic group in Crimea – the Cimmerians – appeared nearly three thousand years ago, in the 9th century BC. Russia established its sovereignty over Crimea only in 1783 after the Treaty of Kuchuk-Kaynarca. According to Russian censuses, Russians became the ethnic majority in Crimea only in 1917. It turns out that the peninsula became “Russian” only in the early 20th century, and the period of Russian ethnic domination in Crimea accounts for only 3,5% of its entire history.
Myth 2. Crimea has always belonged to Russia
Myth 3. Ukraine has no relation to Crimea
Myth 4. The transfer of Crimea to Ukraine is illegal – it was a ‘gift’ from Nikita Khruschev
Myth 5: Sevastopol was never transferred to Ukraine
These myths are gathered in the Anthology of Modern Crimean Mythology which is a civic initiative of Internally Displaced Peoples from Crimea. The brochure is printed with the support of the Ministry of Information Policy of Ukraine.
Olena Makarenko is a journalist and an activist. She has studied editing and has more than 7 years experience in writing for different outlets, where her interested topics include international affairs, social issues, sports, advertising and marketing. In 2014, Olena started to work as a volunteer with public initiatives which focus on building civil society and promoting dialog between people from different regions of Ukraine.
The latest edition of StopFake News with Fulbright Clinton fellow Alexis Ramos. This week’s fakes include claims that Dutch voters hid their faces in fear of Ukrainian radicals while voting in the recent referendum, Kyiv is accused of cutting benefits of thousands of internally displaced persons, fake claims about Transcarpathian autonomy and a dubious document allegedly creates a new Crimean Tatar Autonomy together with a newly renamed capital in southeastern Ukraine.
I was researching a probable hoax about a historical event and discovered this. As I glanced through, a few of the websites were oddly familiar. Many are Russian news and Russian proxy news sites.
21stCenturywire.com
GlobalResearch.ca
Infowars.com
PressTV.ir
RandPaulReview.com
RT.com
VeteransToday.com
WesternJournalism.com
These websites are often used for “news releases” which aren’t quite right.
Update. Here are a few updates.
LiveJournal.com
MintPressnews.com
Pravdareport.com
VeteransToday.com
Many others I have seen and ignored, but these are used by the Russians not normally as “fake news” sites, but fake sites posing as a real, legitimate news site. Recently IndiaTimes.com has been used by the Russians, but I’m not ready to post them as a full-time fake site. They’re working on it however.
A few more clues. Here are some keywords which are in the URL, the website name, and/or in the title/headline:
Alternate or alternative
Progressive
Truth
Rossiya
Donbass
Luhansk or Lugansk
Donetsk
Ukrop (but don’t forget there is a legitimate Ukraine Ukrop party)
Just a heads up for fellow researchers. Today a group of us were discussing an article in “The Nation” which appeared to be blatant pro-Russian propaganda, designed to undermine Western efforts to counter Russian propaganda. I looked at the author and discovered he was involved with the “American Committee for East-West Accord”. That struck a chord, so I did a search on a recent blog I wrote, on 1 April. Bingo, “American Committee for East-West Accord” showed up again. A few of us will be exploring this topic more.
Agents of Influence, Useful Idiots, Talking Heads, all terms for possible and probable Russophiles and their groups. I’m working on something else at the moment that actually pays, so I do not have sufficient time to devote to this topic, but it is worth pursuing.
I was recently chatting with a reporter who asked me to describe my blog. Is this a “News Aggregator” or do I write all my own source material? My answer is both. I want to provide a lasting archive of all the articles about Russian propaganda as well as preserve examples of Russian propaganda. I’m using 2+ years of this blog as an archive for my paying job, for source and reference material. There is no guarantee the articles are preserved or will be, so I’m just making sure…
</end editorial>
A small group of morally-challenged individuals have discovered that there is a great deal of money to be made by publishing fake news articles. These rags publish ridiculous headlines like “Monsanto is Killing Your Children”, “Ukrainians Worship the Devil”, and “Hillary Clinton’s Secret Affair with Vladimir Putin”. These inflammatory headlines are then promoted though social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. The owners of these sites make money from ads that display on their sites when people read the articles. It appears that the more inflammatory and unbelievable the headline, the better it spreads through social media. Debunking these stories can be almost impossible, as the “facts” they contain are unverifiable and therefore unfalsifiable. Although there is no evidence that Hillary Clinton is having an affair with Vladimir Putin, there is also not evidence that she is not having an affair with Vladimir Putin.
A few of these web sites may be run by truly insane people who actually believe what they publish, but if so that is a small minority. One of the proofs of this is how obviously fake the articles are. Old and heavily debunked articles from several years age are routinely updated with new dates and names and republished as new stories. Some site owners may believe that they are trying to shift public opinion by convincing the public to believe outrageous lies. Followers of this Overton Window theory believe that by making wildly unbelievable and bombastic claims, their slightly less unbelievable claims will feel more acceptable to readers. While this certainly may be true, that does not make it a morally acceptable strategy for discussing public policy. Other site owners may feel that they are simply “talking to their base” and that this relieves them of any moral duty to tell the truth. This is a reflection of the sad state of moral thinking in our society today. A few sites claim to be “humor” or “satire” sites and exist mainly to provide links which people can use to fool unsuspecting victims on social media. These sites will sometimes post a disclaimer in the site footer, but often these disclaimers will disappear and reappear over time. A small number of sites on our list are simply government-funded propaganda sites which post ridiculous claims from tyrannical governments which want to improve their public image or attack the public images of their opponents.
The sites on the list below are a mix of all of these types of sites. Strict categorization is not simple as many of these sites exist in multiple categories or switch between categories based upon whatever proves to be most profitable at the current time.
21StCenturyWire.com
800WhistleBlower.com
ActivistPost.com
Alternet.org
AmericanNews.com
AntiWar.com
BeforeItsNews.com
BigPZone.com
Chronicle.su
ConsciousLifeNews.com
ConspiracyWire.com
CountdownToZeroTime.com
CounterPsyOps.com
DailyBuzzLive.com
DailyCurrant.com
DCClothesLine.com
Disclose.tv
DuffelBlog.com
DuhProgressive.com
EliteReaders.com
EmpireNews.net
English.ruvr.ru
EUTimes.net
FederalistPress.com
FreePatriot.org
FromTheTrenchesWorldReport.com
GeoEngineeringWatch.org
GlobalResearch.ca
GonzoGlobe.com
GovtSlaves.info
GuardianLV.com
GulagBound.com
HangTheBankers.com
HealthImpactNews.com
HumansAreFree.com
Huzlers.com
InfoWars.com
IntelliHub.com
LewRockwell.com
LibertyNews.com
LiveFreeLiveNatural.com
NationalReport.net
NaturalCuresNotMedicine.com
NaturalNews.com
Newswire-24.com
NoDisinfo.com
NotAllowedTo.com
Now8News.com
NowTheEndBegins.com
PakAlertPress.com
PoliticalBlindSpot.com
PressTV.ir
PrisonPlanet.com
RandPaulReview.com
RawForBeauty.com
RealFarmacy.com
RedFlagNews.com
ResponsibleTechnology.org
RT.com
SecretsOfTheFed.com
SouthWeb.org
TheCommonSenseShow.com
TheControversialFiles.net
TheDailySheeple.com
TheFreeThoughtProject
TheLastGreatStand.com
TheNewAmerican.com
TheRacketReport.com
TheRightPlanet.com
TheRunDownLive.com
TheUSPatriot.com
TopInfoPost.com
TruthAndAction.org
TruthBroadcastNetwork.com
TurnerRadioNetwork.com
UndergroundHealth.com
USAHitman.com
VeteransToday.com
WesternJournalism.com
WhyDontYouTryThis.com
WorldNewsDailyReport.com
WorldTruth.tv
YourNewsWire.com
Each of these sites may, at times, publish legitimate news articles. This is a useful technique for making the illegitimate articles harder to spot. The fact that a home burglar doesn’t rob houses three nights a week does not make him any less of a home burglar. The fact that some of these sites occasionally posts a legitimate article does not make the publication itself legitimate. Any news site will occasionally publish a poorly-researched article. To earn a spot on this list, the publication must show a clear disregard for the objective truth. We all know how terribly mainstream media outlets like ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN fail to promote legitimate news stories. The promise of alternative media is that we can do better than traditional centralized mass-media. The publishers listed above are purposefully failing to do better. They are actually doing a worse job than the mainstream media — something many of us once thought impossible.
Staunton, April 12 – As demonstrating has become more difficult and even dangerous in Russia, some who want to push a political agenda are using posters instead, something that can be put up quickly and unexpectedly and that may attract more attention from more people than most other kinds of protest.
In “Novaya gazeta,” commentator Yan Shenkman says that “this is a completely new protest strategy for Moscow. That is, there were attempts earlier but now it is becoming a trend” given that “unsanctioned and sometimes even sanctioned pickets and meetings” can get people in trouble (novayagazeta.ru/society/72619.html).
But it is happening not only in the Russian capital but in regional centers like Rostov, he points out. (It is also happening in other post-Soviet countries such as Armenia where people are putting up posters challenging Yerevan’s pro-Moscow line. See, for example, proua.com.ua/?p=46115).
The posters can be put up anonymously, and that is part of the intrigue. And they are often extremely clever, avoiding any of the usual pitfalls of protest slogans. That puts the authorities in a difficult position, Shenkman suggests. If they try to tear down the posters, they only attract attention to them and making themselves look ridiculous.
Shenkman gives several examples of posters that have recently appeared on Moscow streets. Perhaps the cleverest shows a piece of cheese in the shape of Crimea in a mousetrap, with the simple but multiple meaning legend “Free Crimea.”
Staunton, April 12 – Germany’s “Bild” has published excerpts from a new book by Boris Reitschuster entitled “Putin’s Secret War” that suggests that Moscow is organizing special military units inside Germany and other Western countries that the Kremlin could use to destabilize these states in the event of a crisis.
According to Reitschuster, the units which have a membership of 300 in Germany alone are organized as sports clubs but are led by Russian GRU and military officers according to an order given by Vladimir Putin to create such diversionary groups in Germany and other countries of Europe.
Reitschuster says that this organization, known as “the System,” is a potentially important resource for Putin “in his secret war against the West.” Members of these units have exercises in the Swiss Alps and the Czech Republic and often go to Russia for advanced training.
According to the German publication, members of “the System” are “active in the ranks of right extremist sects, the rightwing radical movement European Patriots Against the Islamizatin of the West (Pegida), and in disinformation campaigns among Germans from Russia.”
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko puts his fingers on his nose as he listens to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during a joint press conference at the latter’s official residence in Tokyo on April 6, 2016. (AFP) Photo by AFP
Russia has a long history of fabricating and faking news, attempting to insert false stories into Western media.
Here is yet another example of Russia attempting to pass off a lie as the truth.
Ukrainian authorities have accussed Russia’s secret services of posing as Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to hold fake interviews with The New York Times. Ukrainian presidential spokesman Svyatoslav Tsegolko spoke about incident via his Facebook page.
Tsegolko says Russian agents pretending to be Poroshenko sent The New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet a letter asking for a telephone interview. A fake telephone number and email address also accompanied the letter, said the spokesman. Apparently, the Russian agents then held several telephone conversations with journalists and gave answers to their questions supposedly dictated from Poroshenko.
A copy of the fake letter from Svyatoslav Tsegolko’s Facebook account.
Publication of the article containing the fake interviews was only averted, says Tsegolko, because New York Times correspondents contacted the Ukrainian presidential press service to reconfirm what had been said and run some fact checks.
“Russian intelligence services continue to conduct a hybrid war against Ukraine. Using a fake letter, they attempted to set up an interview with American newspaper The New York Times on behalf of the Ukrainian President,” says Ukrainian presidential press secretary Svyatoslav Tsegolko.
The phraseology of this press release is peculiar.
…there are no representatives of the main opposition party “National Coordination Council”, who decided not to participate in the struggle for parliamentary seats.
Pardon me for asking, but if someone shows up from the National Coordination Council, wouldn’t they be shot?
Then there is this:
Residents evacuated from these settlements, can vote in the refugee camps.
Okay, Russia, please explain to me who set up the election ballots in the refugee camps, who is counting those votes, how many voted and what were the results? You know, simple answers to simple questions…
Oh, wait, Russia is involved in this election. 104% voted for Assad.
</end editorial>
(translated from Russian by my Chrome browser)
April 13, 2016, 22:07
Syrians have taken an important step towards the restoration of peace. In the Republic launched the parliamentary elections. They are held on a multiparty basis, for deputy mandates are fighting for more than three and a half thousand candidates. Among them, there are no representatives of the main opposition party “National Coordination Council”, who decided not to participate in the struggle for parliamentary seats.
President Bashar al-Assad welcomed the high turnout. According to him, this suggests that the terrorists could not break the Syrians.
Voting places are equipped in all provinces, except for those that are still controlled by the militants. Residents evacuated from these settlements, can vote in the refugee camps. Due to the influx of voters, work areas extended until midnight.
Putin just announced he wants to “rehabilitate” Soviet history and make Stalin more palatable.
This appears to be the perfect way to change Russian perception of a Soviet mass murderer.
He only murdered 40 million Soviet citizens. What could possibly go wrong?
Oh, yes, please. Who conducted the Vkontakte survey? Could they possibly share the raw results with me, I’d like to crunch the numbers? Who verified the survey? Who vetted the questions? Did the survey actually take place? Was Stalin a pre-named choice, thus skewing the outcome?
I have strong doubts about the survey, I have strong doubts about the outcome. I actually have doubts that they survey was actually conducted, that any Russian actually wrote in Stalin’s name as a choice for the new 2,000 Ruble note. I’m not in Missouri
I’m not in Missouri, but “show me”. Otherwise, Russia, once again you are lying. Busted – Russian-fabricated propaganda.
</end editorial>
(translated from Russian by my Chrome browser)
Users of social networks have already decided that or who would like to see on a new banknote of 2000 rubles -. Which will be printed in 2017. The Central Bank According to 23% of active subscribers Vkontakte, with two thousand notes on the Russians should look Joseph Stalin .
Earlier, the central bank said that the design of banknotes of 200 and 2000 rubles choose the Russians themselves – is now only know that on the banknote of 200 rubles is proposed “to portray the views of the Crimea”, and on the bill in 2000 rubles ironic Internet users “see” Vladivostok (remembering the song ” Vladivostok-2000 “).
The users were asked the question “What or who would like to see in the bill?”. Most Viewed The second response was “Why the need in 2000, when there is a 1 and 5 thousand rubles?”. More users supported version of the “legendary symbol of a city” – similar to those cities and the symbols that are already printed on the Russian banknotes. They, for example, can become a recognizable silhouette of the main building of Moscow State University and Ostankino Tower, finch-Pyzhik in St. Petersburg, etc.
Even users offered to print on the banknote image of the “Great Patriotic War veteran”, so that the descendants did not forget about the heroism of their ancestors, and even the President of Russia “as a historical figure.”
Option also with famous actors, musicians, writers, special popularity not won. However, in the free part of the questionnaire were offered a “bridge to the Crimea”, Sevastopol, silhouettes of the “working” and “collective farmer”.
Even the inhabitants of social networks would like to see on the bills of the king, the symbols of the Russian Empire as well as the liberation of Russia ancient Palmyra. By the way, Russians are more likely to express their support of Joseph Stalin and approve of his policies suggests the December poll “Levada Center” .
Curiously, the poll in social networks, including among young people has shown – on the whole 87% expressed the need and support for the installation of a monument to Stalin in Moscow and in the streets of their cities.
In this regard, it makes sense to recall the words of Sovietologist and Professor Kyle Dawson.“Now Russia is in clear and unprecedented hostile environment and a request for people to clear defense of foreign policy interests, tough on the urgent establishment and development of the economy, industry, technology”
– I had previously stated in an interview with Western expert Politonline.ru .In his opinion, “the rise of Stalin’s popularity – a request is not on the” black funnels “and denunciations, and the notorious” strong hand “on a tough decision to corruption issues, it is the expectation of hard geopolitical decisions”.
Russian SU-24 within 9 feet of USS Donald Cook, a hyper-aggressive action.
Russia sent a message to the US in no uncertain terms.
“We are asking you to shoot down our aircraft, we are trying to provoke you.”
The US military is not so immature, so unprofessional, or so unthinking as to do this.
This is the time for the US to take more action, say more harsh words, increase sanctions, and make Russia pay for their hyper-aggressive actions. Make Russia pay.
Now is the time to choke the living heck out of any hope Russia has for normalcy. Russia must feel genuine pain.
</end editorial>
Two Russian planes flew close to a US guided missile destroyer almost a dozen times, American officials have said.
The Sukhoi SU-24 warplanes, in international waters in the Baltic Sea, had no visible weaponry and the ship took no action.
One official called the events on Monday and Tuesday “one of the most aggressive acts in recent memory”.
The commander of the missile destroyer, the USS Donald Cook, described the flights as a “simulated attack”.
The passes were “unsafe, potentially provocative” and “could have caused an accident,” officials said in a release.
Image copyright US NavyImage caption A Russian Kamov KA-27 Helix surveys USS Donald Cook on 12 April 2016
At one point the jets were so close, about 30ft (9m), that they created wakes in the water around the ship.
The actions may have violated a 1970s agreement meant to prevent dangerous incidents at sea, but it is not clear whether the US is going to protest.
A Russian helicopter taking pictures also passed by the ship seven times.
The Donald Cook was conducting deck landing drills with an Allied military helicopter when the jets made their passes, according to a statement from the United States European Command.
Flight operations were suspended until the jets left the area.
The next day, a Russian KA-27 helicopter did circles at low altitude around the ship, followed by more jet passes.
The aircraft did not respond to safety warnings in English or Russian.
Analysis: Gary O’Donoghue, BBC News Washington
Image copyright US NavyThe jets were so close they created wakes in the water near the ship
These close encounters of a military kind between the US and its allies and Russia have escalated significantly over the past two years, ever since Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the substantial break down of relations between East and West.
They take various forms. They can be violations of national airspace; narrowly avoided mid-air collisions, close encounters at sea and simulated attack runs.
The incidents have taken place over a wide area – in and around the Baltic states; in the Baltic sea; the Black Sea and even close to Stockholm, when the Swedish authorities believed a Russian submarine had violated its territorial waters in 2014.
They are regarded by defence analysts as a flexing of muscle – a reminder that Russia has military might and cannot be pushed around.
But the frequency of such situations means many fear that a full on confrontation – be-it deliberate or accidental – is just a matter of time between the world’s two great military powers.
“We have deep concerns about the unsafe and unprofessional Russian flight manoeuvres,” the statement read. “These actions have the potential to unnecessarily escalate tensions between countries, and could result in a miscalculation or accident that could cause serious injury or death.”
US officials are reviewing the incident.
A similar incident occurred last June, when Russian warplanes made close passes over a US destroyer in the Black Sea.
Russian media had reported at the time that the USS Ross was acting “aggressively” but the Department of Defense refuted that.
Maxim Zmeyev / Reuters Ukrainian military pilot Nadiya Savchenko stands inside a defendants’ cage as she attends a court hearing in Moscow on March 4, 2015.
Not for the first time this year, Nadiya Savchenko’s health is worrying doctors, supporters and, apparently, the Russian government.
“She is thin, with black circles under her eyes,” her lawyer Nikolai Polozov wrote on April 11. “Doctors say her blood has turned resinous and is very difficult for the heart to pump; there’s a good chance of a blood clot and sudden death in sleep.”
The day after her sentence came into force on April 5, Savchenko renewed a dry hunger strike, refusing to take any food or water until she is released. The former Ukrainian servicewoman was controversially sentenced by a Russian court to 22 years imprisonment on the charges of abetting in killing two Russian reporters in eastern Ukraine. Savchenko explicitly refused to appeal the sentence, making prisoner exchange at the highest level the only option that might lead to her walking free.
Savchenko’s extreme hunger strike set a pretty tight timeframe for conducting the exchange. Even with vitamin supplements and glucose injections, it is unlikely she will last more than two weeks without food or water.
Yet so far — seven days into the strike — there’s little clarity about when it might happen.
Savchenko’s lawyers say they are optimistic about the exchange. The mere fact that she is still being held in a pretrial detention centre — not yet transferred to a prison colony — is a good sign, they say. “There are details about the exchange negotiations that I can’t reveal to the public, and chances are good the exchange will happen soon,” Ilya Novikov, one of the lawyers, told The Moscow Times.
According to Novikov, Russian authorities are also well aware of Savchenko’s worsening condition. And there are signs that it seems to worry them. Top-rank prison service officials have been assigned to monitor her, the lawyer reported.
Officially, the Kremlin has been playing it cool. Its spokesman Dmitry Peskov insists the Kremlin is not aware of Savchenko’s health issues, and remains vague regarding any possible exchange.
While silent about Savchenko’s fate, Russian authorities have announced that they are ready to decide the fate of four other high-profile Ukrainian convicts. On April 8, the Russian Justice Ministry asked bureaucrats to prepare paperwork for an exchange of four other Ukrainians controversially being held in custody by Russia. These include Oleg Sentsov, the prominent Crimean film director convicted to 20 years in prison in August 2015, and activist Oleksandr Kolchenko.
Just like with Savchenko, however, it is not clear when the actual exchange might happen.
According to Svetlana Sidorkina, Kolchenko’s lawyer, the final decision will be made by the Supreme Court, and legal proceedings could take months. Sidorkina told The Moscow Times that, unlike Savchenko, who will most probably walk free after returning to Ukraine, Sentsov and three other convicts will continue serving their sentences there. Yet few believe Ukrainian authorities would keep Sentsov and Kolchenko, who have become national heroes in Ukraine, behind bars for long.
A major prisoner exchange would be welcomed by the West. The renewed peace accords — agreed in Minsk in February 2015 by Russia, Russia’s proxies, Europe and Ukraine — are now a long way from reality on the ground. Any concession on Savchenko and Sentsov would offer Europe’s Russian lobby much needed ammunition when the extension of sanctions comes up for discussion in July.
At the moment, however, the exchange equation is missing a crucial component: Which Russians Ukraine is willing to swap for Savchenko and Sentsov. So far, the most likely candidates are Yevgeny Yerofeyev and Alexander Alexandrov, two Russian intelligence officers caught fighting near Luhansk in eastern Ukraine — Russia claims both had been discharged before traveling. Both soldiers remain on trial in Ukraine, and so far there’s no end in sight.
In the meantime, Savchenko’s defense is pushing for a direct answer from President Vladimir Putin, and have taken to unconventional means of getting one.
On April 14, the Russian president will field questions from members of the public in the course of an annual “Direct Line with Vladimir Putin” phone-in. This year, Savchenko’s lawyer Mark Feygin has submitted a question.
It could not be simpler. “Savchenko is dying on a dry hunger strike. Are you ready to exchange her for Alexandrov and Yerofeyev?” it reads.
It couldn’t have unfolded any better for the Kremlin.
In late February 2014, the Russian Community of Crimea, a pseudo-NGO largely funded by Moscow, appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin and other high-ranking officials to prevent a potential “genocide of the Russian people.” Shortly after, reports of looming ethnic cleansing in the Ukrainian peninsula dominated the Russian airwaves. A few days later so-called “little green men” in Russian military uniforms took control of airports. On March 1, 2014, the Russian parliament authorized sending its troops into Ukrainian territory. By March 18, the annexation of Crimea was complete.
This is how Crimea was taken without a shot — and Chatham House, a London-based think tank, sees Moscow’s conquest of the Ukrainian territory as a textbook example of Moscow’s evolving strategy of blending military force with grassroots advocacy by ostensibly independent groups that are actually in the pocket of the Kremlin. The organization maps Moscow’s new approach in a new report.
“Their purpose is to project Russian ‘soft power’ abroad and help turn the hearts and minds of citizens in neighbouring countries towards accepting Russia’s supremacy,” said the report.
The report’s author, Orysia Lutsevych, told Foreign Policy that Moscow is increasingly using state-controlled media organizations and pseudo-activists working for the Kremlin to create friction and stir up conflict in neighboring countries to justify increased Russian involvement in the nation’s internal affairs.
“Russia wants to have its sphere of influence, and one way or another it will find a way to attain it,” Lutsevych said. “What the Kremlin is doing is less using soft power and more using soft coercion.”
Using civil society groups to advocate a country’s foreign policy wasn’t a tool invented by Russia, but it is increasingly integral to Russian foreign policy. The United States funds democratic civil society groups around the world and China invests heavily into Confucius Institutes, which promote Chinese language and culture. But Russia, says Lutsevych, has taken the concept to a new level.
“The goal isn’t to look at the local agenda and see where the Russian experience can fill a void. It’s simply to promote the Kremlin’s agenda and amplify it,” she said.
The origins of this emphasis on controlling information and using proxy groups to change public perceptions began in the chaotic aftermath of the color revolutions in former Soviet countries: the 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia, the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine, and the 2005 Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan. These events were widely viewed by the Kremlin as being fomented by American NGOs and exaggerated by U.S. media companies working at the behest of Washington.
In response, Moscow moved to create a network of advocates and activists to promote its nativist policies under the guise of the “Russian World,” a term defined by Putin as people in neighboring countries who feel culturally close to Russia.
These foundations and groups have close connections to the FSB, one of the KGB’s successors, and are funded by both the Kremlin itself and private individuals close to the Kremlin, according to Lutsevych. The groups vary in their function from humanitarian assistance to paramilitary training, and notably include the Night Wolves, the motorcycle club that Putin famously rode with in 2011.
According to the report’s estimates, these organizations received in total around $130 million per year from the Russian government for projects in former Soviet countries like Armenia, Moldova, and Ukraine, as well as in Balkan countries like Bulgaria and Serbia. The Night Wolves themselves received $500,000.
“They have been very effective with such little funding,” Lutsevych said. “This shows you just need a small minority and then can magnify them with state-controlled television and social media.”
Yet despite Russia’s apparent triumph in Crimea, its push for greater control over Ukraine as a whole have been less successful. Following the outbreak of fighting in April 2014, Russian-backed separatists called for the founding ofNovorossiya, a region loyal to Moscow stretching from the Russian border into southeastern Ukraine. However, with the exceptions of rebel-held Donetsk and Luhansk, the pro-Russian message was not as warmly received as expected, and the majority of the area remains loyal to Kiev.
“The partial failures in Ukraine have stirred discussion whether this was effective enough or whether they should invest more,” said Lutsevych.
In early April, Moscow announced that it would be looking into ways to adjust its foreign policy moving forward. The exact changes have not yet been made public, but the lessons from Ukraine are likely to weigh heavily into the new approach.
“Do they want to be aggressive or try to project influence more subtlely? They chose a harsh line in Ukraine and it has isolated them,” Lutsevych said.
Colonel Maxim Dotts, Commander of the 559th Bomber Regiment of the 4th Command (army) Air Force
Interesting premise. Inform Napalm has the personal information of the men in charge of Russian operations in Syria and was publishing the information – but stopped out of respect. All Open Source information, legally obtained.
Now Russian bombing is again indiscriminately killing innocent civilians. Russia just killed Dr. Hassan, often interviewed by Inform Napalm. Therefore, game on. Publishing Russian Commanders’ personal information is back on…
I guess if Russia wants to commit war crimes and bomb civilians, Inform Napalm is going to make the Russian commander’s lives completely vulnerable…
It’s a technique.
What are YOUR thoughts? Is this legal? Is this moral? Is this ethical? Is this effective? Can this be effective? How can this be improved?
</end editorial>
(Translated from Russian by my Chrome browser)
The international volunteer community InformNapalm continues to publish the personal data of the flight and the commanders of the Russian aerospace forces involved in the bombing of peaceful towns and villages of Syria. Yesterday, in an airstrike killed Dr. Hassan familiar to our readers on a recent exclusive interview. In this regard, the decision to lift the moratorium and continue the series of publications about the Russian officers videoconferencing, responsible for the deaths of peaceful Syrian citizens. At this time the defendant in our investigation was the commander of the 559th Bomber Regiment of the Rostov region, Colonel Naduda and a number of pilots this regiment.
The impetus for the investigation was a series of video reports of Russian television, including Channel 1 (archive material , backup video ). Reports have been shown at the end of 2013, in which Colonel Naduda appears in the status of commander of the 559th Bomber Regiment of the 4th command (army) Air Force and Air defense of the Morozov (in / h 75392, earlier / h T-40491 in / h 21385, Rostov reg.), where the latest multifunctional fighter-bombers began arriving.
According to the information of Russian mass media on January 18, 2016, the acting commander of the 559th Bomber Regiment Morozovsk is Colonel Maxim Dotts (archive Profile ) , full-time post which – deputy commander for work with personnel (in common parlance – political officer) of the Aviation Regiment . A reasonable question arises: where are gone Colonel Naduda? Apparently, the commander of the regiment, along with most of the Su-34 bombers and personnel traveled to the Middle East trip.
As a result of OSINT (open source intelligence) were able to establish the following.
Colonel Gennady S. Naduda , born 01.01.1967, originally from Pervomaisk Mykolaiv region of Ukraine.In 1988 he graduated from the Chernigov Higher Military Aviation School ( CHVVAUL ), Faculty of fighter aircraft. The last years of his military career, Mr. Naduda held in the Far East of Russia, in the Primorsky Territory, from which he was transferred to the rise in the south of Russia.
Marital status – married, two children. Daughter – Alain G. Naduda (profile in the social network, ” VK ” deleted), 26, a specialist of the 1st category of the 13th group of basic forensic service of the Federal Service for Drug Control for the Rostov region. Son – Stanislav G. Naduda (profile in the social network ” OK “), aged 12, lives with his parents in Morozovsk.
Russia has released an edited video of its warships launching cruise missiles at Islamic State positions in Syria on October 7.
By Mike Eckel
October 07, 2015
The plumes of flame light up the early morning skies over the Caspian Sea: Russian cruise missiles, fired from a flotilla of ships, rising into the air and then turning westward to hit sites in Syria nearly 1,500 kilometers away.
The spectacle appeared in a two-minute video posted to YouTube by the Russian Defense Ministry just hours after the missiles slammed into targets in Syria.
(Translated from Russian by my Chrome browser)
The massive strike with precision weapons on targets in Syria LIH of the Caspian Sea
Published on Oct 7, 2015
This night ship strike group of the Russian Navy launched cruise missiles against ISIS infrastructural facilities in Syria. Tonight naval strike group (IBM) Russian Navy as part of the missile ship “Dagestan”, small missile ships “Grad Sviyazhsk”, “Uglich”, ” great Ustyug “struck by cruise missiles from the designated area of the Caspian sea on the infrastructure facilities LIH in Syria. the shooting was carried out by ship high-precision weapons” Caliber NK “cruise missiles which have successfully and with great accuracy struck all the specified goals. This night loe the ship strike group of the Russian Navy Consisting of the Dagestan missile ship, the small-sized missile ships Grad Sviyazhsk, Uglich, Veliky Ustyug the launched cruise Missiles Against the ISIS infrastructural facilities in Syria from the Assigned district of the to Caspian the Sea. of the firing WAS conducted by high-precision ship missile systems Kalibr NK , the cruise missiles of which engaged all the assigned targets successfully and with high accuracy.
That Russia’s military is capable of sophisticated air and sea bombardment — in this case against Islamic State (IS) militants and other Syrian rebel groups — isn’t novel nor surprising. Under President Vladimir Putin, the armed forces have seen major investments in technology, hardware, and equipment.
What is noteworthy is how the Kremlin is broadcasting its campaign in Syria. With slickly produced videos, quick-cut drone footage of air strikes, animated graphics, on-the-ground photos, and rapid-response Twitter and Facebook updates, the Kremlin has taken a page from Washington’s operations manual, embracing information warfare for the 21st-century media environment.
It is, says Harlan Ullman, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington, a variant of “shock and awe” — the military doctrine that gained notoriety in the early days of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq with spectacular air strikes over Baghdad.
“The Russians are smart. They understand that he who dominates the message, dominates. It’s Leninism in the 21st century,” says Ullman, who helped conceive of the shock-and-awe idea in the 1990s.
“They fire a handful of cruise missiles…and everyone is saying, ‘Wow,'” he says. “Now Putin gets great credit for doing the same thing that we did, but he’s done it in a political context and then has the Ministry of Defense spin it with Hollywood or Madison Avenue like PR. Through gritted teeth, you have to admire that.”
The Defense Ministry video of the Caspian Sea missile launch was posted on October 7 at approximately the same time as a meeting between the Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and President Vladimir Putin was televised on state-run TV.
Putin used the opportunity to endorse the makers of the Kalibr cruise missiles, in what may have also been a sales pitch for Russian technology prowess. “The fact that we launched precision weapons from the Caspian Sea to the distance of about 1,500 kilometers and hit all the designated targets shows good work by military industrial plants and good skills of personnel,” Putin said.
The video and its rollout was only the latest iteration of the Russian media campaign that coincided with the beginning of the Moscow’s air campaign in Syria on September 30.
The ministry’s official Twitter handle has posted daily clips of grainy black-and-white silent videos, taken from surveillance drones, of air strikes on sites in Syria. The ministry’s Facebook page is updated with details like the number of sorties flown and targets hit, sometimes more quickly than the ministry’s website itself.
Many Western officials have warned that the United States and its NATO allies have been slow to figure out how to respond to Russia’s tactics not only in Syria, but also in Ukraine, where the stealth invasion of Crimea by masked, unidentified Russian troops in March 2014 resulted in the peninsula’s annexation by Moscow just a few weeks later.
Six months later, NATO’s supreme commander, General Philip Breedlove, paid homage to Russia’s tactics in the Crimea seizure, calling them “the most amazing information-warfare blitzkrieg we have ever seen in the history of information warfare.”
‘Confuse The Enemy’
Soviet intelligence services honed the tactical use of information to gain a strategic military advantage, deploying campaigns of deception, misinformation, and propaganda during the Soviet Union’s decades-long standoff with the United States, which itself used the CIA and other intelligence and information agencies to shape public opinion throughout the Cold War.
Given that Putin is a former KGB officer, it’s not surprising that these techniques are being repurposed for new tactical goals, says Maria Snegovaya, whose recent report for the Institute for the Study of Waranalyzed the how the Kremlin used “information warfare” in Crimea and Ukraine last year.
That sort of information warfare is part of the larger strategy known as hybrid warfare, which uses unpredictability, efficiency, and speed, says Snegovaya, who also writes a column for the respected Russian newspaper Vedomosti.
“The hybrid approach is taken out of weakness. It is something that allows you to be efficient given a lack of resources,” she says. “Information power works specifically to achieve that purpose, to achieve unpredictability. It works to confuse the enemy.”
Since last year alone the Kremlin has learned to centralize how information or propaganda is both generated and disseminated, Snegovaya said.
That mirrors the wider propaganda effort, with hundreds of millions of dollars invested in the government-owned cable network RT, previously known as Russia Today, and more recently the news agency Rossia Segodnya, which further amplifies Kremlin messaging.
“They’re definitely learning and trying to master the skills, and learn from past mistakes,” Snegovaya says.
Michael Kofman, a Russia analyst most recently with the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute, says the missile firing videos were slick and, along with the drone footage and regular press briefings being held by military and Foreign Ministry officials, were representative of the Kremlin’s effort to “control the information space” in Syria.
“When you look at how Russia is attempting to copy Western style press briefings by the military…it speaks volumes to their understanding of how better to structure public opinion around a military operation,” he says. “Still, the effort seems clunky by comparison, but they’ve not had decades of practice dealing with a free press which is what hones those skills.”
The Russian hardware appearing in Syria, documented by social-media bloggers and other observers, is among Russia’s most sophisticated: S-300 antiaircraft missiles, new-generation T-90 tanks, and Su-30SM fighter jets. But the overall deployment is numerically small, and Ullman argues that a sophisticated media campaign thus serves to give the impression of much more fearsome forces.
Invoking the name of bombastic real estate developer Donald Trump, currently a leading Republican candidate for the U.S. presidency, Ullman says: “This is a relatively tiny military deployment, which is getting enormous amounts of publicity. You know what it is? Putin is the Donald Trump of world politics. He is getting all this great press coverage.”
US Secretary of State John Kerry denounces Russia’s RT network as a “propaganda bullhorn” during remarks on April 24, 2014.
An opposing perspective, from Johnathan Marshall.
Marshall neglects to mention Russia saturates media outlets with fabricated stories, lies, misinformation, disinformation, and active measures, coordinated with a Russian whole-of-government approach which amplifies this deceit at every opportunity in addition to suppressing opposition perspectives.
Marshall seemingly also chooses to ignore more than 200 other ‘official’ state sponsored ‘news’ channels and outlets, in television and radio alone. Each has a corresponding web presence, augmented by countless proxy sites, set up, seemingly, solely to disseminate Russian propaganda. Some are oriented at the internal Russian population, but most carry a message intended to stir up sensationalism and conspiracy theories, to undermine Western theories and messages.
Marshall also, however conveniently, forgets to include the countless foreign sites set up by Russia’s intelligence services to spread patently fake news stories, cited by still more foreign sources, intended to sow discontent and undermine Western countries and alliances.
Marshall has a good message but he is examining only a tiny part of a much larger overall effort. His focus is far too narrow to be a credible reference.
If I had to make a Silly Wild-Assed Guess (SWAG), I would say Marshall is an unapologetic Russophile who happens to be a Russian “useful idiot”. I fully expect to see this story widely cited by Russian sources.
Keep your eyes peeled for Johnathan Marshall.
</end editorial>
April 13, 2016
Exclusive: Despite Western media dominance, the U.S. government wants to stop the world from hearing the “other side” on foreign disputes by “countering” or discrediting those voices, explains Jonathan Marshall.
By Jonathan Marshall
“[Russia] is conducting an intensive propaganda campaign directed primarily against the US and is employing coordinated psychological, political and economic measures . . . The ultimate object of this campaign is not merely to undermine the prestige of the US and the effectiveness of its national policy but to weaken and divide world opinion to a point where effective opposition to [Russian] designs is no longer attainable by political, economic or military means.”
With that justification, the Truman administration secretly authorized the start of covert operations by the CIA against America’s wartime ally, the USSR, in December 1947. It was one of the seminal decisions that launched the Cold War.
Fast forward now to March 2016, when the “Countering Information Warfare Act of 2016” was introduced in the U.S. Senate — as if nothing has changed in nearly seven decades.
The bipartisan bill, co-authored by Senators Chris Murphy, D-Connecticut, and Rob Portman, R-Ohio, declares that the Russian government uses “disinformation and other propaganda tools to undermine the national security objectives of the United States and key allies and partners” and achieve “a destabilizing effect on United States allies and interests.”
It further asserts that “the challenge of countering disinformation” requires “a whole-of-government approach leveraging all elements of national power,” coordinated by the Secretary of Defense and Director of National Intelligence.
Last year, in the same spirit, the House Armed Services Committee sought to add $30 million to funding of the U.S. Special Operations Command to combat Russian and Islamist information operations. It accused Russia of challenging “the NATO system” by engaging in “propaganda, diplomatic and economic measures to . . . preserve and extend its perceived sphere of influence” in Ukraine and beyond.
Philip Karber, president of the hawkish Potomac Foundation in Washington, D.C., agreed that Russia’s success in “hybrid warfare,” above all in Ukraine, requires a much bigger response from the American military. “Against the Russian media machine, you cannot just depend on a free press alone to defend against their multi-front ‘Big Lie’ campaign,” he declared.
Karber is one of many neo-Cold Warriors who warn that the United States and its NATO allies are falling behind Russia in the information war. In 2014, NATO’s Supreme Commander, General Philip Breedlove called on the alliance to prepare responses to what he called “the most amazing information warfare blitzkrieg we have ever seen,” related to Russia’s support for separatists in the eastern Ukraine.
Spreading Hysteria
Similar hysteria spilled into the pages of The Atlantic magazine, which complained that Breedlove had actually understated the threat.
“The new Russia doesn’t just deal in the petty disinformation, forgeries, lies, leaks, and cyber-sabotage usually associated with information warfare,” cried author Peter Pomerantsev. “It reinvents reality, creating mass hallucinations that then translate into political action. . . . We’re rendered stunned, spun, and flummoxed by the Kremlin’s weaponization of absurdity and unreality.”
Pomerantsev is affiliated with the Legatum Institute, a London-based think-tank that brought together “senior British and American officials” and “top Germans” with “frontline information-warriors from Ukraine” in 2014 to help expose “Kremlin propagandists.”
Alarmists say Russia’s information war is aimed at persuading gullible Westerners to render their governments “largely passive” in the face of Russia’s hostile actions, for example, in Ukraine. (The claim of passivity may surprise some Russians, who attribute their serious economic recession in part to Western economic sanctions.)
Russia’s deadly weapons in this information war are its TV and web channels, RT (formerly Russia Today) and Sputnik. Edward Lucas, senior vice-president of the U.S.-based Center for European Policy Analysis, calls RT “a fearsome adversary” and “a corrosive, anti-systemic force.” [Also, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Who’s the Propagandist: US or RT?“]
Russia’s dastardly tactic is to allocate “disproportionate coverage to speakers who echo the Kremlin’s preferred narratives” on controversial issues, according to a recent paper for the House of Commons on “Russia’s Information Warfare — Airbrushing Reality,” by former NATO press officer Ben Nimmo and Dr. Jonathan Eyal, international director of the Royal United Services Institute, a defense and security think tank.
Among other things, their paper complains, these media channels air Russia’s claim that NATO violated Western promises by expanding after the breakup of the USSR. Apparently, “many Western academics” have been hoodwinked by this claim. (So, apparently, was Der Spiegel, whose extensive report on the issue cited Secretary of State James Baker’s explicit promise to Mikhail Gorbachev on Feb. 9, 1990, that there would be “no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east.”)
As a result, the “Airbrushing Reality” paper claims, “Moscow has succeeded in getting across a set of messages which may well hobble European security, and which need to be urgently confronted.”
RT’s Tiny Audience
These alarmists generally offer no statistics to support their warnings about the mass brainwashing of Western viewers. No wonder: RT garnered “less than 0.1 percent of Europe’s television audience.”
It proved only slightly more popular in Great Britain, where it ranked 175th out of 278 channels. The British government nonetheless deemed RT a big enough menace to threaten to revoke the network’s license. Among other sins, it was apparently guilty of airing “anti-Western comments in a late-night discussion on Ukraine.”
Anti-Russian investigative journalists have also gleefully reported that RT is “woefully failing in its mission” and misleading its Kremlin funders by “pretending that it has had a far bigger impact in the Western media sphere than it has, particularly online.” RT’s most popular videos evidently pertain to natural disasters, crime stories and social reporting, rather than politics.
Ironically it took a reporter for the U.S.-government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty to admit that the propaganda war isn’t entirely one-sided. As Russia “embrac[es] information warfare for the 21st-century media environment,” he wrote, the “Kremlin has taken a page from Washington’s operations manual.”
The reporter added, as if the USSR had never dissolved, “Soviet intelligence services honed the tactical use of information to gain a strategic military advantage, deploying campaigns of deception, misinformation, and propaganda during the Soviet Union’s decades-long standoff with the United States, which itself used the CIA and other intelligence and information agencies to shape public opinion throughout the Cold War.” (emphasis added)
Created at the end of the 1940s as a propaganda arm of the CIA, Radio Free Europe proudly called itself a “political warfare operation engaged in a struggle against Soviet Russian colonialism behind the Iron Curtain.” But it also sought to counter “communist influence [on] this side of the Curtain” — meaning that it aimed its propaganda toward Western Europe and the United States as well.
Today, the CIA’s former international broadcasting operations enjoy lavish overt support from U.S. taxpayers through the federal Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). For fiscal year 2017, BBG has requested $778 million in funding.
BBG works closely with the hawkish Victoria Nuland, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs, to counter what she calls the “Kremlin’s pervasive propaganda campaign poisoning minds . . . on Russia’s periphery and across Europe.” (Nuland’s husband Robert Kagan is a veteran of Reagan-era “public diplomacy” and “perception management” programs led by a senior CIA covert operations specialist with the National Security Council.)
BBG has increased spending “to engage young audiences who are impacted by Russian . . . disinformation” and “launch digital teams for Central Asia and other areas where Russia supports frozen conflicts.” It created a Russian-language TV program carried by 25 outlets in eight countries along Russia’s periphery, including Ukraine,” to “correct the disinformation that is driving conflict in the region.”
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty also funds an online magazine, The Interpreter, which in the words of one enthusiastic supporter, “relentlessly exposes the liars, scaremongers and cranks who feature on RT’s programmes.”
So all this heated concern among Western politicians, military brass and policy analysts over Russia’s “information warfare” comes despite the tiny market share of Russia-funded media outlets in the West and enormous spending by the U.S. government on its own propaganda.
It also comes despite the almost suffocating homogeneity of major U.S. media and politicians in their condemnation of Russia governance and policies. As the noted Russia scholar Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus at New York University and Princeton University, has rued, virtually no conflict in recent memory has attracted less debate than America’s dangerous revival of the Cold War with the world’s only other nuclear superpower.
Perhaps the “information warfare” alarmists worry that some Russian claims might contain enough truth to sow seeds of doubt in Western minds and spark that long-overdue debate. But spending tens of millions of additional taxpayer dollars to swamp Russia’s voice with our own government’s version of truth is no way to realize the democratic values we profess.
America needs to hear a wider range of opinion — not because Russia deserves particular support, but because wise policy cannot emerge from today’s group think.
Follow us: Latest research on disinformation on Twitter
Analysis: 460 pages about non-existent fascists
Response: EU Member States using our products
Friday fun: There is no Panama
“National traitors on national TV”
In the course of the last month, Russian state-controlled national television channels have broadcast a series of so-called “documentaries”, all of which throw negative light on Russian opposition leaders, mainly through exposing their involvement in what are presented as Western-led, sometimes clandestine operations.
One such documentary titled “The Information War against Russia” was broadcast on 30 March by the state-owned TV national channel Rossiya. The programme was embedded into the popular talk show “Special Correspondent”, which is broadcast every week by “Rossiya”, and presented a compilation of different stories which all built up to the claim that Russia is the target of an EU and US led “information war”. For example, the programme showed how Russian opposition politicians had appeared at recent hearings about Russia and media propaganda in the European Parliament and in the OSCE in Vienna, where they expressed critical views of the Russian government. Many of the recordings, even those from public hearings, were deliberately blurred and the sound quality poor; an attempt to make the events appear dubious and covert. Among many different aspects of what the programme labelled “the information war” it found time to mention the East Stratcom’s Disinformation Review, which [watch from 29.05] was presented as “the EU’s instruction manual” providing “correct” political views to Russia’s opposition.
The latest example in this genre is a production which was broadcast this Wednesday (13 April), also on Rossiya and, again, embedded into Evgeny Popov’s “Special Correspondent” talk show. This time the focus was moved from media to alleged covert cooperation between the prominent opposition leader Alexey Navalny and the British security service, MI6. However, already before the full programme was broadcast, Russian critical media, among them The Insider, scrutinized material from the production that had already been made available, and showed that documents and letters, which the documentary claimed had been written by native speakers of British and American English, had mistakes that were typical of native Russian speakers. For an analysis of some examples, see also this BBC’s article.
With the September Duma elections appearing in the horizon, these documentaries send a clear message to Russian voters: opposition to the Government and its policies is the result of interference of foreign states and therefore a fundamental threat to national security. The message often repeatedly refers to the fundamental narrative about an alleged American led conspiracy, which undermines the strategic aim of political continuity. Also, the narrative is in line with Putin’s identification of what he labelled called “national traitors” in his often-quoted speech on the occasion of the annexation of Crimea from March 2014.
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The East Stratcom Task Force’s Disinformation Review regularly reports about disinformation spread by analysts from the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies (RISS), a think-tank established by the President of the Russian Federation. Last week’s edition featured Artur Atayev (Head of the Section for Caucasus, RISS), who believes that the UK’s approach to the so-called Litvinenko case confirms that London merely considers Russia an enemy, not as a strategic partner and Alexei Samoylov (Expert Group on Ukraine, RISS), who claims that “Ukraine is an artificial nation” and “Ukrainians are Russian by origin”.
This week, Oleksandr Nykonorov, journalist for Depo.ua, drew attention to a recently released propaganda book written by Maxim Grigorev, political scientist and director of the Fund for the Research of Problems of Democracy. The 460 pages long analytical piece, titled “Ordinary Fascism”, builds on the frequently repeated pro-Kremlin myth that “Ukraine is a fascist state” and the “Ukrainian government is waging war against its own people”. The alleged atrocities of the Ukrainian “siloviki” are discussed through five chapters, each dedicated to a specific war crime. They include the “mass killing of innocent civilians” (Chapter III), the “purposeful destruction of orphanages, schools and hospitals” (Chapter IV) as well as the “torture of the Donbass region residents” (Chapter V).
Our colleagues in the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs have produced an Estonian version of our infographic that marked the second anniversary of the illegal annexation of Crimea. We are very happy to share our infographics, videos and press material for you to use them in your language.
Friday fun: There is no Panama
Not surprisingly, the scandal around the ”Panama Papers” caused lively reactions in Russian social media. Putin’s explanation that his friend Sergei Roldugin, who allegedly controls assets worth 2 billion dollars, was simply buying musical instruments and donating them to public institutions, resulted in this tweet:
“Why did he transfer money to Panama? He just wanted to help the kids and buy them some balalaikas”.
Roldugin’s statement that he has often had to beg on the streets for money did not seem very persuasive to the Sputnik parody account Sputnik_Not:
Finally, Russian cartoonist Sergei Elkin summarized the reaction of Russian state TV in this caricature:
“As you can see, there is no Panama”
The Disinformation Review collects examples of pro-Kremlin disinformation all around Europe and beyond. Every week, it exposes the breadth of this campaign, showing the countries and languages targeted. We’re always looking for new partners to cooperate with us for that.
The Disinformation Digest analyses how pro-Kremlin media see the world and what independent Russian voices say. It follows key trends on Russian social media, so you can put pro-Kremlin narratives into their wider context. And finally… some Friday Fun before the weekend!
DISCLAIMER:The Weekly Digest is based on the analysis of the EU East StratCom Task Force; opinions and judgements expressed do not represent official EU positions.
Photo: Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation
Russia conducted a military exercise, firing an Iskander-M missile against a simulated enemy 200 km away.
The range is in far Southern Russia, in Astrakhan, along the Caspian Sea, at the outlet of the Volga River.
Iskander missiles are currently based in Kaliningrad, fairly close to where the SU-24 Russian fighter jet recently buzzed the USS Donald Cook.
The press release by the Russian Ministry of Defense coincides with various efforts by the Russians to justify their “aggressive and unprofessional” fly-by of the US destroyer in the Baltic Sea.
Russia is sending another message. In response NATO has not shot down a Russian warplane, their behavior can be categorized as the opposite of the Russians – professional.
</end editorial>
(Translation from Russian by my Chrome browser)
Crew PTRC complex “Iskander-M” successfully made a combat cruise missile launch high power to exercise in the Astrakhan region, the press service of the Central Military District.
The rocket was carried out at the Kapustin Yar firing range in the Astrakhan region on the imaginary enemy command post at a distance of about 200 km.
“The missile, manufactured by using radar signature reduction technology, has not been detected by means of electronic warfare imaginary enemy and successfully hit the target,” – said in a statement.
Most of the flight of the missile took place at an altitude of 40-50 km and conducted intensive maneuvering with congestion in some parts of the flight.
Combat missile launch was the final stage of the camp fee, where soldiers spent more than a month. The next week will begin the march compound in a combined way to the place of permanent deployment in the Orenburg Region.
The timing on this is perfect, I’m doing a section on a paper on Russian NGOs being used on behalf of Russian Information Warfare. This was proposed by Dr. Igor Panarin of the Russian Foreign Ministry in 2008 but I cannot attribute the “Russian World” to him.
Excellent paper, although a few of the assumptions in the paper force you to read the footnoted references to establish the logic flow.
Bottom line, Russian NGOs are being used as tools to augment or enact less than overt Russian government programs to incite changes in support of Russian national interests. This paper establishes clear lines connecting the Russian government attempts to effect changes using NGOs, especially in Ukraine.
Chatham House. The Royal Institute of International Affairs
Summary • Anxious about losing ground to Western influence in the post-Soviet space and the ousting of many pro-Russia elites by popular electoral uprisings, the Kremlin has developed a wide range of proxy groups in support of its foreign policy objectives. • This network of pro-Kremlin groups promotes the Russian World (Russkiy Mir), a flexible tool that justifies increasing Russian actions in the post-Soviet space and beyond. Russian groups are particularly active in Ukraine,
• Anxious about losing ground to Western influence in the post-Soviet space and the ousting of many pro-Russia elites by popular electoral uprisings, the Kremlin has developed a wide range of proxy groups in support of its foreign policy objectives. • This network of pro-Kremlin groups promotes the Russian World (Russkiy Mir), a flexible tool that justifies increasing Russian actions in the post-Soviet space and beyond. Russian groups are particularly active in Ukraine,
• This network of pro-Kremlin groups promotes the Russian World (Russkiy Mir), a flexible tool that justifies increasing Russian actions in the post-Soviet space and beyond. Russian groups are particularly active in Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova – countries that have declared their intention to integrate with the West.
• Russia employs a vocabulary of ‘soft power’ to disguise its ‘soft coercion’ efforts aimed at retaining regional supremacy. Russian pseudo-NGOs undermine the social cohesion of neighbouring states through the consolidation of pro-Russian forces and ethno-geopolitics; the denigration of national identities; and the promotion of anti-US, conservative Orthodox and Eurasianist values. They can also establish alternative discourses to confuse decision-making where it is required, and act as destabilizing forces by uniting paramilitary groups and spreading aggressive propaganda.
• The activities of these proxy groups – combined with the extensive Russian state administrative resources and security apparatus, as well as the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church, proRussian elites, mass culture and the media – could seriously damage political transitions and civil societies in the region. Events in Crimea and Donbas have exposed the supportive role of Russian non-state actors in fomenting conflict. • In the medium term, the contest for the ‘hearts and minds’ of citizens will persist, with the scale and outreach of anti-Western groups continuing to testify to the presence of active networks of genuine
• In the medium term, the contest for the ‘hearts and minds’ of citizens will persist, with the scale and outreach of anti-Western groups continuing to testify to the presence of active networks of genuine believers within this new Russian World. However, greater transparency and deeper engagement with citizens as part of independent civil society organizations could bridge opposing views and help counter the challenge of artificial divisions nurtured by the Kremlin-funded non-state actors.
I heard different words than a translation. 
2016/04/11 • 
I discovered this wonderful website, 
Wednesday, April 13, 2016
Putin just announced he wants to “
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Analysis: “National traitors on national TV”
