During engagements with Russian trolls, their favorite tool is to say how high-tech the Russian military is.

I worry about the quality.

In this article are three perfect examples of poor quality Russian workmanship, a lack of attention to detail, poor training, poor execution, and a lack of adequate military specifications.

When Russia wants something bad, sometimes they get it bad.  That’s an American colloquialism which says if you are desperate to get something, sometimes what you get is bad.

When you up-armor (which means add armor) a door, you must increase the tensile strength of the handle to accommodate the increased weight of the door.  I wonder what else they forgot?

What an embarrassment.  Russia.  I heard a Russian engineer is about to come up missing.

</end editorial>

May 12, 2016

BERLIN (AP) — The head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency warned Friday that Russia is engaged in electronic espionage efforts and appears willing to conduct cyber sabotage against critical infrastructure.

The BfV agency said Russian intelligence agencies appear to be behind an “aggressive” campaign of electronic espionage going back at least seven years known as Sofacy/ATP 28, whose targets have included the German Parliament.

It identified another campaign, codenamed “Sandworm,” that it said appeared to be aimed at sabotaging universities, telecoms firms and energy companies.

“Cyberspace is a place of hybrid warfare,” said BfV chief Hans-Georg Maassen. “The information security of German government, administrative, business, science and research institutions is under permanent threat.”

“The campaigns observed by the BfV are generally directed at obtaining information, i.e espionage,” he added. “Meanwhile, though, Russian intelligence agencies are also showing a readiness to (carry out) sabotage.”

Germany’s defense ministry announced recently that it is creating its own cyberwarfare department in response to what it says is the growing threat of electronic attacks.

The notion of ‘hybrid warfare’ – mentioned by Maassen – refers to a mixture of conventional attacks, special operations, sabotage and propaganda.

Source:  AP

I would not normally blog such an article if it were not for the fact that Russia uses the Olympic Games almost solely for propaganda purposes.

If this were not the case, Russia would not have such a strong doping and illegal drug use coverup program.

Even Russian boxers are doping, “Russian Boxer Povetkin Fails Drug Test Ahead Of Wilder Fight“.

This appears to be a systemic Russian cultural problem, that cheating is permissible in Russia. Corruption is also systemic in Russia, as well as theft and graft. Assassination appears to be permissible for Russian leaders.

Of course, Russians deny a large doping program, Olympic Gold Medalists From Russia Deny Doping Claims.  Rebecca R. Ruiz and Michael Schwirtz, , in the New York Times , show differently, “Russian Insider Says State-Run Doping Fueled Olympic Gold“.  RT responded jokingly, ‘April Fools’ Day joke?’ Sportsmen ridicule Sochi doping allegations, Russia may sue NYT.

I predict the testing facility at Sochi will have to be demolished for ‘safety purposes’. That or an errant cruise missile intended for Syria. There will be no evidence.   This is yet another systemic embarrassment for Russia.  There seem to be so many, I wonder why?

Russian cross-country skier Alexander Legkov, who won a gold in Sochi, said “It is a political game. Everybody is set against our country because it is one of the strongest in the world”.  

Mr. Legkov, I disagree.  “Everybody” points out Russian failures because almost everything Russians do stands for everything the rest of the world considers bad, evil, corrupt, unethical, immoral, and/or wrong.   Much of it is also illegal.  Heck, as individuals, Russia is full of a lot of really nice people. It’s just that Russian leaders seem to believe they have to lie, cheat, and steal (and bluster) just to exist. Never mind working hard to get ahead.

I only point all this out as part of a larger program to counter Russian propaganda, misinformation, disinformation, fabrications, and the revisionism of history. Using the Olympics for propaganda purposes is just disgusting.

I feel sorry for you, Russia.

</end editorial>

When officials from the New York City Marathon decided against inviting elite Russian runners to compete in the race last fall, they didn’t explicitly say that the cloud of doping over Russia and its athletes was the reason.

They didn’t have to. It was obvious.

Accusations of Russian doping and reported claims of systematic distribution of performance-enhancing drugs and of bribes paid to cover up positive tests would be enough to scare off officials of any event worried about safeguarding its credibility.

So you have to wonder what officials from the World Anti-Doping Agency and the International Olympic Committee are thinking now, in light of the article published Thursday by The Times that detailed a stunningly complex Russian doping scheme at the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

A phantom lab created to process the urine of athletes who had doped. Antidoping scientists who passed samples through a hole in the laboratory’s wall so they could be replaced with drug-free urine. Years of planning for a surreptitious operation that made at least 100 dirty samples disappear, according to the former lab director, and allowed at least 15 Olympic medalists to get away with cheating.

If that isn’t enough reason to deem Russian athletes a risk to the credibility of the Olympics, and reason enough to bar them from competing in this summer’s Rio Games, I don’t know what is. In fact, there are enough red flags that Olympic officials should consider barring the Russians from the 2018 Winter Games, too.

A harsh punishment? Yes. Embarrassing? Surely. But that punishment is proper, and overdue, considering that Russia and some of its athletes have benefited from a state-sponsored doping system that rivals — perhaps even surpasses — those run by Eastern Bloc nations in the 1970s.

It will take time to clean up Russian sports, and that can’t happen in weeks. Or months. Or maybe even years. In the meantime, clean athletes — and, yes, I still believe they exist — shouldn’t have to line up against Russians and wonder, Is this a fair fight?

Steven Holcomb, an American bobsledder, won two bronze medals in Sochi, including the first Olympic medal for the United States in the sport in 62 years. But when he heard the news about the Russians who had beaten him, he told me it made him feel terrible and angry and upset, all at the same time.

After all, if the report is true, it would mean that he was cheated out of two silver medals in Sochi, and perhaps countless others in previous competitions.

“I don’t feel comfortable going to my next Olympic Games knowing that the Russians will be there because they’ve cheated like this,” he said. “I say, ban them from the sport and the Olympics completely until they can prove that they’ve cleaned up their act and prove that they can be on a level playing field.”

To be clear: Thursday’s revelations didn’t emerge from nowhere. Holcomb, who has dedicated 18 of his 36 years to his bobsledding career, said some Russian athletes had told him that doping should be permissible except on competition days.

Indeed, Russia’s doping problem has been an open secret for years.

Last fall, an independent investigation run by the former WADA president Richard W. Pound revealed that Russia’s track and field program was rife with corruption and doping cover-ups. It was enough for that program to be suspended from international competition until it proves that it can follow the rules. A new scandal early this year involving the widespread use of a banned drug, meldonium, by Russian athletes made it seem as if Russia had no interest in fixing things.

Unfortunately, WADA and the I.O.C. have a record of going soft when dealing with Russia.

While the secret lab was expunging dirty samples in Sochi, WADA’s president, Craig Reedie, was praising Russia’s antidoping effort. In the wake of yet another round of Russian athletes testing positive, Reedie said it looked as if Russia had improved its antidoping controls, that perhaps it had learned its lesson.

“I always tried to be a glass-half-full man,” Reedie said.

Half-full, even when athletes wrote to him in recent months demanding — begging for — a deeper investigation of Russian sports beyond track and field. Beckie Scott, an Olympic gold medalist in cross-country skiing and the chairwoman of WADA’s athletes’ advisory council, said Thursday that she and other athletes were frustrated by the continuing inaction of the bodies empowered to do something to stop Russian doping.

“Nothing happened as a result of that report in November — well, anything significant in the opinion of the athletes,” Scott said. “If there was a collective effort of engagement by the I.O.C. and WADA, and really serious intention by both organizations, things would be different now.”

Like Holcomb, Scott favors barring Russia from the Olympics because, she said, “without actual action like that, how can you be taken seriously?

“You can talk about zero tolerance all you want,” she added, “but the punishment has to fit the crime.”

She’s right. Russia has gone rogue. No more proof is needed. It’s gone to incredible lengths to support (and to hide) its doping program, and there’s no telling what it will do — or, given the unexpected deaths of two high-ranking Russian antidoping officials within two weeks of each other, what it won’t do — to make this all go away.

But the time for WADA and the I.O.C. to play nice with Russia is over, too.

There has to be a price to pay for a country that doesn’t follow the rules. Kenya is in danger of being barred from the Rio Olympics because of the sorry state of its antidoping program, and its seeming unwillingness to improve it. But what Russia has done in falsifying test results is surely more devious than not testing at all.

Olympic organizers can’t look the other way anymore. The Rio Games already have enough problems — the Zika virus, political instability, construction delays — that may not be fixed.

The very least the I.O.C.’s members can do is address the one right in front of its face, taunting them.

Source: New York Times

By Alan Malcher MA

May 14, 2016

This brief introduction argues that what is commonly referred to as Russian Hybrid Warfare is little more than a remodeled and modern version of KGB active measures: the old ‘tool box’ of the Soviet period has been replaced with modern tools to fit 21st century technology along with the socioeconomic and political climate which differs greatly from the Cold War period.

People walk past a mural on a restaurant wall depicting US Presidential hopeful Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin greeting each other with a kiss in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius

Please bear witness to Russian idiocy.

“…the media actually control the opinions”. 

If the US media knew how to control public opinion or anyone’s opinion for that matter, life would be a simple matter of stimulus and response.  This is how Russian propagandists think, or, rather, say. The US media and the CIA control your thoughts, your opinions, through the media. ‘Therefore, we, Russia, must resist. We are under attack’.  *snicker*

Please, bitch.

I think this opinion piece is intended for a Russian audience. Okay, that’s a duh statement. This article is definitely intended for Russians, to propagandize them that the US media, and, therefore, the CIA, are using radio waves and the media to control Russian minds.

While you’re at it, want to buy some waterfront property in Florida?

</end editorial>

(translated from Russian by my Chrome browser with very slightly editing (title only))

Ideals and values of America “exports” in the minds of more than half a million foreign students

I watched Eurovision with interest, the show of what it means to be “Europe” was quite evident.

The overall tone was very inclusive.  Of note, I found it interesting that it was in English.

If you don’t know the outcome, Ukraine won with a very good song with tremendous political overtones. Russia poured several tons of money into their entry, hiring the best coaches, producers, and produced an outstanding entry, and were expected to win, but came in third.

The comment section on YouTube erupted with pro-Russian comments.  Harsh, hateful, seething comments.

Someone sent me a private note, asking why Ukraine won.  I said, quite frankly, it is as much a statement by the judges, a political statement against Russia as it is a statement in support of Ukraine.  This article confirms my thoughts.

What most people are not aware is that Russia even lied about Eurovision to it’s own people. They subtly changed the meaning of the song to say it was dangerous for Crimean Tatars to emigrate to Russia, whereas the words to the song actually say that Russia forcibly shipped the Tatars to remote Russia.

Of note: Russian 2015 Eurovision Entry Exposed As Propaganda, Kremlin PSYOPS Techniques Explained  While I think it’s a nice theory, I consider this a conspiracy theory. 

Bigger picture

Eurovision. Doping. Panama papers. The list goes on…   Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko apologized for the athletes that cheated but did not admit to a state-sponsored program. Surprisingly the BBC forgives Russia. Some athletes disagree.

Europe has spoken, they disapprove of Russia.  If the IOC bans Russia from the Rio Olympics in 2016, Russia just might do something stupid.

Well, actually, more.

</end editorial>

Mary Dejevsky

By accident of geopolitics or diplomatic design, Ukraine has been largely absent from international headlines recently. The violence in the east has subsided; the government in Kiev has been in disarray, and Russia has been distracted by Syria. The Minsk-2 agreement limps along.

But as Saturday night passed into Sunday morning, Ukraine bounced back into the spotlight. This was when Jamala, the country’s entrant in this year’s Eurovision song contest, was declared the winner; her song, 1944, was an elegy for her Tatar grandmother, who was deported from Crimea by Stalin. Russia, the bookies’ favourite to win with Sergey Lazarev’s performance of You Are the Only One, came third behind Australia.

Jamala had hardly begun her victory performance when Russia’s Twitterati started to call foul. Ukraine’s song, they objected, was blatantly political, by which they meant “anti-Russian”, and as such should have been excluded.

They weren’t completely wrong. Stalin’s deportation of the Tatars was one of the more heinous Soviet-era atrocities, and it resonates anew following Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. Eurovision wisely bans political lyrics, and has managed, amazingly, to pretty much hold the line.

But questions had been asked at an early stage, and Ukraine’s song was permitted. As a result this year’s Eurovision laid bare the extent and depth of Europe’s continuing divisions over Russia and Ukraine in a visceral, dramatic way, in part because of the new system devised for presenting the scores.

Politicised voting, of course, is hardly new. With polling always organised on a national basis, Eurovision has never been able to stop people voting for friends, allies and fellow believers. The predictability with which, say, Greece and Cyprus vote for each other and against Turkey, and with which the Scandinavians cluster together, has become a standing joke.

Those same tendencies were all on display this year. But the separation of the national juries’ votes from the popular vote – disaggregated on the website for all to see – permits some further-reaching and discomfiting conclusions.

First is the clear evidence of how sharply Ukraine and Russia have divided the rest of Europe, and the difficulty many voters feel in deciding between their merits. The two countries remained in contention for the top slot until the very end.

Second was the striking disparity between the votes of the national juries (the professionals, you could say), and those of “the people”. The juries betrayed the same political instincts as in the past; there was a marked preference for Ukraine over Russia, while some seemed to opt for Australia as an ingenious third way. The “people” were braver. Rather than treating Russia and Ukraine as either-or, they often plumped for both, putting them close together, at or near the top. It could be a matter of musical taste, but across the board Russia received far more votes from the “people” than from the national juries.

Nor is the glaring gap that the Eurovision voting exposed, between elite and popular opinion about Russia, unique to the song contest. It is replicated in views about Russia itself, especially as expressed in “old” Europe. When western condemnation of Russia over Ukraine was at its height, many people used social media to insist that the arguments were more finely balanced. When official contacts were severed, they said dialogue should remain open. These were not so-called Kremlin trolls, but non-specialists with a different view.

Even in the unlikely event that Minsk-2 is implemented by this time next year, it is hard to envisage Jamala and Lazarev, say, sharing the Eurovision platform in Kiev. Just maybe, though, the professionals need to take their cue from the people and accept that it might be time for the diplomatic stand-off over Ukraine to be wound down.

Mary Dejevsky is a writer and broadcaster

This is especially worrisome as there are very few places in Russia allowed to do polling and now their results may be skewed.

One may account for the fear of truthful disclosure in Russia with comments, but the quantifiable data cannot be adjusted.

Which leads to online data gathering.  Still, only 41% of Russians get onto the internet to gather news, communicate, or work.  The quantity who get news in Russia via television is down to about 50%.  We can measure the 41% of Russians online and assess if the numbers go up or down, but it seems like, save Levada, we’ll never get reliable data.

At least one of the electronic data gathering tools, I believe, exceeds Measures of Effectiveness and is approaching Measures of Impact.

The good news is that Russian propaganda and reporting is less reliable, as they seldom cite publicly available data or real studies which can be referenced. This means that any statements by Russia regarding increases or decreases in Russian public opinion can be dismissed as pure conjecture.

</end editorial>

Paul Goble

One of the few Russian sociologists who predicted the mass protests against the Putin regime in 2011-2012 says that the attitudes behind those protests are intensifying even though they are not yet captured by polls because fear has returned and ever more Russians are afraid to tell pollsters what they really think.

In an interview with “Moskovsky komsomolets,” Sergey Belanovsky of theMoscow Center for Strategic Research, argues as was true five years ago, “’official’ sociology is far from always capable of tracking trends” and that unexpected developments are thus likely.

Until recently, the sociologist said, he had been among those who argued that Russians were not so fearful that they would not tell poll takers what they felt but that his recent research, which he admits was on a small and thus less than fully representative sample, has convinced him otherwise.

Among the signs that Russians are afraid to express their real opinion, he says, are “extraordinarily short responses, refusal to take part, and like ‘I don’t know,’ ‘everything is fine,’ and so on.” Such people will respond more openly only if they become convinced that others they know about have.

In his experience, Belanovsky says, repeat surveys show that prior to Russia’s “involvement” in Ukraine, that is, “before the Olympiad and the annexation of Crimea,” people answered more or less honestly and the major polling agencies could be more or less trusted most of the time. “Then people responded without any fear.”

But now things have changed, in large measure because of “the aggressiveness of [Russian] television with its rhetoric in the spirit of ‘who is not with us is against us.’” That makes people fear expressing an alternative position lest they fall into the categories of fifth column or worse.

Young people show less fear and those who grew up in Brezhnev’s time show the most, he continues. “Propaganda has begun to use its former algorithms and the reaction of people has not been slow to follow.” Of course, Belanovsky says, “this is not 1937.” But fear has returned and is spreading.

He says that the initial Russian reaction to Crimea with its explosion of patriotism was “sincere.” But “the peak of enthusiasm has passed.”

This “fear will intensify if repressions intensify,” the sociologist says, although he says he finds it difficult to imagine that they will go further than in 2011-2012. But at the same time, he points out that “at one time, it was difficult for [him] to imagine the annexation of Crimea and the war in the Donbas.”

Expressions of support for Putin reflect not only this fear but also the sense that there is no real alternative, a view that the Moscow media have done everything they can to promote. Indeed, he recalls, at the end of Soviet times, polls found high levels of support for the CPSU even as that organization was collapsing – and for the same reason.

Russian public opinion is largely “inert,” that is, it continues in one direction for a long time;  but then it can change suddenly. Immediately after Boris Yeltsin sacked Yevgeny Primakov as his prime minister, many expressed anger. But that anger lasted only a day or two and then people found reasons to support the new man. That can happen again.

Beginning in Soviet times, the security agencies sampled public opinion in various ways; and it is entirely probable that they are continuing to do so with their own polls, Belanovsky says. But the authorities should not rely on these, although they may feel they cannot afford to offend the security agencies by stopping the program.

Russia is entering a new period of change, he argues.

Some of this has been picked up by the major polling agencies, but “’official’ sociology still does not reflect” just how dramatic this shift really is.

Source: http://euromaidanpress.com/2016/05/15/return-of-climate-of-fear-makes-russian-polls-ever-less-reliable-sociologist-says/#arvlbdata

My favorite Russian proxy site, GlobalResearch.ca released a steaming pile of…   a useful guide to identifying Western propaganda.  Incidentally, this article was originally published by Media Lens, which is now included on the Russian proxy site list.

There is so much this article leaves off, this is sure to cause me hours of agony to research and write what should have been written in the first place. What is missing fills volumes.

Turnabout is fair play, however, so think of this as a guide to identifying Russian propaganda. Here is their five-step process.

1. Dramatic New Evidence
2. Emotional Tone And Intensity
3. Manufacturing ‘Consensus’
4. Demonising Dissent
5. Timing and Strange Coincidences

I have not yet begun a “guide” to identifying Russian propaganda, this might be a good basis for a beginning.

</end editorial>

We live in a time when state-corporate interests are cooperating to produce propaganda blitzes intended to raise public support for the demonisation and destruction of establishment enemies.

Below, we will examine five key components of an effective propaganda campaign of this kind.

1: Dramatic New Evidence

A propaganda blitz is often launched on the back of ‘dramatic new evidence’ signifying that an establishment enemy should be viewed as uniquely despicable and targeted with ‘action’.

The Blair government’s infamous September 2002 dossier on Iraqi WMD contained four mentions of the claim that Iraq was able to deploy WMD against British citizens within 45 minutes of an order being given. But senior intelligence officials revealed that the original 45-minutes claim referred to the length of time it might have taken the Iraqis to fuel and fire a Scud missile or rocket launcher. The original intelligence said nothing about whether Iraq possessed the chemical or biological weapons to use in these weapons. The government had turned a purely hypothetical danger into an immediate and deadly threat.

In 2011, it was claimed that the Libyan government was planning a massacre in Benghazi, exactly the kind of action that Gaddafi knew could trigger Western ‘intervention’. Investigative journalist Gareth Porter commented:

‘When the Obama administration began its effort to overthrow Gaddafi, it did not call publicly for regime change and instead asserted that it was merely seeking to avert mass killings that administration officials had suggested might approach genocidal levels. But the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which had been given the lead role in assessing the situation in Libya, found no evidence to support such fears and concluded that it was based on nothing more than “speculative arguments”.’

In 2013, the Syrian government was said to have launched a chemical weapons attack in Ghouta, Damascus, just as UN chemical weapons experts were visiting the city. It was claimed that Assad had ordered the crossing of Obama’s very clear ‘red line’ for ‘intervention’ – a war that would have destroyed the Syrian government and quite possibly resulted in Assad’s violent death. Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported on the Ghouta attack:

‘The quick announcement that Bashar al-Assad did it is simply not true.’

Western dissidents are subject to continuous smears but also full-on propaganda blitzes of this kind.

In 2012, after WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange requested asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, the corporate media rose up as one to denounce him as a vile ‘narcissist’ and buffoon. Always ‘controversial’, journalists now presented Assange as a fully-fledged hate figure.

In 2013, a single comment in an interview caused large numbers of journalists across the ‘spectrum’ toconclude that Russell Brand – then promoting a vocal form of anti-corporate dissent – was a ‘vicious sexist’, ‘narcissist’ and ‘idiot’. The intensity of the attacks on him, which are ongoing, eventually resulted in Brand withdrawing from the public eye.

It is hardly in doubt that Assange, Brand and others are being targeted by state-corporate propagandists because they are challenging state-corporate power. How else can we explain the fact that criticism of the many hundreds of journalists and MPs who have repeatedly agitated and voted for wars that have wrecked whole countries is off the agenda? It is not even that criticism of Assange, Brand and co is disproportionate; there is very often no criticism at all of people who have brought death, injury and displacement to literally millions of human beings. But when Brand joked about his then girlfriend: ‘When I was asked to edit an issue of the New Statesman I said yes because it was a beautiful woman asking me’, these words were viewed as infinitely more deserving of vicious attack right across the media ‘spectrum’ than political actions destroying whole countries.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has also, of course, been subject to a relentless, almost surreal, year-long propaganda campaign. As we will see in Part 2, this has most recently taken the form of accusations that ‘Labour now seems to be a party that attracts antisemites like flies to a cesspit.’

Propaganda blitzes are fast-moving attacks intended to inflict maximum damage. State-corporate propagandists know that media attention will quickly move on from the claim of ‘dramatic new evidence’, so the durability of the claim is not a key concern. Marginalised media blogs and rare ‘mainstream’ articles may quickly expose the hype, but most corporate media will not notice and will not learn the lesson that similar claims should be received with extreme caution in future. A prime example was the campaign justifying war on Libya in 2011, which faced minimal corporate media scepticism just eight years after the obvious deception on Iraq.

2: Emotional Tone And Intensity

A crucial component of the propaganda blitz is the tone of political and corporate commentary, which is always vehement, even hysterical. High emotion is used to suggest a level of deep conviction fuelling intense moral outrage.

The rationale is clear enough: insanity aside, in ordinary life outrage of this kind is usually a sign that someone has good reason to be angry. People generally do not get extremely angry in the presence of significant doubt. So the message to the public is that there is no doubt. Thus the eruptions of moral outrage demanding that ‘something must be done’ to ‘save’ Libya and Syria from impending massacre(delivered by journalists blithely indifferent to the consequences of their earlier moral outrages, for example in Iraq). Thus the talk of ‘The fascists at the poisoned heart of Labour’ with their ‘chilling’ race hatred.

3: Manufacturing ‘Consensus’

A third component of a propaganda blitz is the appearance of informed consensus. The dramatic claim, delivered with certainty and outrage, is typically repeated right across the political and media ‘spectrum’. This cross-’spectrum’ ‘consensus’ generates the impression that ‘everyone knows’ that the propaganda claim is rooted in reality. This is why the myth of a media ‘spectrum’ is so vital.

While a demonising propaganda blitz may arise from rightist politics and media, the propaganda coup de grace with the power to end public doubt comes from the ‘left-liberal’ journalists at the Guardian, the Independent, the BBC and Channel 4. Again, the logic is clear: if even celebrity progressive journalists – people famous for their principled stands and colourful socks – join the denunciations, then there must be something to the claims. At this point, it actually becomes difficult to doubt it.

Thus, in 2002, it was declared ’a given’ by the Guardian that Iraq still retained WMD that might be a threat, despite the fact that both claims were easily refutable.

In 2007, George Monbiot wrote in the Guardian: ‘I believe that Iran is trying to acquire the bomb.’ In October 2011, Monbiot wrote of Nato’s war on Libya: ‘I feel the right thing has been happening for all the wrong reasons.’ At a crucial time in August 2013, Monbiot affirmed: ‘Strong evidence that Assad used CWs [chemical weapons] on civilians.’ He subsequently wrote in the Guardian of the Assad government’s ‘long series of hideous crimes, including the use of chemical weapons’.

News of the killings of Syrian ministers in a bomb explosion were greeted by the Guardian’s Owen Jones with: ‘Adios, Assad (I hope).’ Jones tweeted that ‘this is a popular uprising, not arriving on the back of Western cruise missiles, tanks and bullets’. As was clear then and is indisputable now, Jones was wrong – the West, directly and via regional allies, has played a massive role in the violence. As if reading from the Nato playbook, Jones added:

‘I’m promoting the overthrow of illegitimate and brutal dictatorships by their own people to establish democracies.’

This is why the mythology of the ‘liberal-left’ Guardian and Independent with their handful of noisy, tub-thumping progressives is so important and why we work so hard to challenge it. It is why expressions of progressive support for the Guardian – with occasional articles appearing by Noam Chomsky and others, and with Russell Brand, for example becoming a ‘Guardian partner’ – are so important.

The public is not for one moment fooled by a hard-right consensus. Agreement must appear to have been reached among ‘all right-thinking people’, including the ‘lefties’ at the Guardian.

4: Demonising Dissent

To challenge a propaganda blitz is to risk becoming a target of the blitz. Dissidents can be smeared as ‘useful idiots’, ‘apologists’, ‘genocide deniers’. Anyone who even questioned the campaigns targeting Julian Assange and Russell Brand risked being labelled a ‘sexist’, a ‘misogynist’ and, in the case of Assange, a ‘rape apologist’. Even as this media alert was being written, Oliver Kamm of The Times once again tweeted that Media Lens has ‘long espoused genocide denial, misogyny & xenophobia’.

In fact we have been accused of supporting, or apologising for, everyone from Stalin to Milosevic, from the Iranian Ayatollahs to the North Korean dictatorship, Assad, Gaddafi, Saddam and so on. It seems we are so deranged that we support completely contradictory political and religious movements and beliefs, even enemies who despise each other. This may be a function of our swivel-eyed hatred of the West, or perhaps because we are challenging state-corporate media bias.

When moral outrage is directed at people challenging a propaganda blitz, reputations can be easily and irreparably damaged. The public can be left with a vague sense that the target is ‘dodgy’, almost morally unhygienic. The smear can last for the rest of a person’s career and life.

5: Timing and Strange Coincidences

The ‘dramatic new evidence’ fuelling a propaganda blitz often seems to surface at the worst possible time for the establishment target. On one level, this might seem absurdly coincidental – why, time after time, would the Official Enemy do the one thing most likely to trigger invasion, bombing, electoral disaster, and so on, at exactly the wrong time?

But remember, we are talking about ‘bad guys’ who, as everyone knows, are famously perverse. It is part of the Dr. Evil mind-set to strut provocatively and laugh in the face of disaster. Idiotic, blindly self-destructive behaviour is what being a ‘bad guy’ is all about. So the implausibly perfect timing may actually help persuade the public to think: ‘This guy really is a nutcase. He’s absolutely asking for it!’ Much ‘journalism’ covering Official Enemies is about suggesting they are comically, in fact cartoonishly, foolish in exactly this way.

We have no doubt that, with sufficient resources, media analysts could easily prove that propaganda blitzes consistently arise with impeccable timing just ahead of key votes at the UN, in parliament and in elections.

In November 2002, before the UN vote on Resolution 1441, which ‘set the clock ticking’ for war, the Blair regime began issuing almost daily warnings of imminent terror threats against UK ferries, the Underground, and major public events. In 2003, Blair actually surrounded Heathrow airport with tanks – an action said to be in response to increased terrorist ‘chatter’ warning of a ‘missile threat’, of which nothing more was subsequently heard. Even the Guardian editors expressed scepticism about this sudden flood of ‘threats’:

‘It cannot be ruled out that Mr Blair may have political reasons for talking up the sense of unease, in order to help make the case for a war against Iraq that is only backed by one voter in three.’ (Leading article, ‘Gloom in Guildhall,’ The Guardian, November 12, 2002)

John Pilger cited a former intelligence officer who described the government’s terror warnings as ‘a softening up process’ ahead of the Iraq war and ‘a lying game on a huge scale’. (Pilger, ‘Lies, damned lies and government terror warnings,’ Daily Mirror, December 3, 2002) In fact, Blair was perpetrating a form of psychological terrorism on his own people.

Likewise, atrocity claims from Syria clearly peaked as the US drew closer to war in the summer of 2013. After Obama chose not to bomb, it was extraordinary to see the BBC’s daily front page atrocity claims suddenly dry up.

In 2012, the pro-Assad ‘shabiha’ militia became globally infamous when they were blamed for the May 2012 Houla massacre in Syria. In September 2014, Lexis found that in the preceding three years, the ‘shabiha’ had been mentioned in 933 UK national newspaper articles. But in the twelve months from September 2013 to September 2014 – a time when Western crosshairs shifted away from Assad towards Islamic State – there were just 28 mentions of ‘shabiha’ (Media Lens search, September 15, 2014). In the last year, Nexis finds just 12 articles mentioning the terms ‘Syria’ and ‘shabiha’ in the entire UK national press.

Similarly, in Part 2, we will see how a propaganda blitz targeting Jeremy Corbyn coincided perfectly to damage his chances ahead of local elections in the UK.

In combination, the ‘dramatic new evidence’, moral outrage and apparently wide consensus, generate several important impacts.

Most people have little idea about the status of WMD in Iraq, about Gaddafi’s intentions and actions in Libya, or what Corbyn thinks about anti-semitism. Given this uncertainty, it is hardly surprising that the public is impressed by an explosion of moral outrage from so many political and media ‘experts’.

Expressions of intense hatred targeting ‘bad guys’ and their ‘apologists’ persuade members of the public to keep their heads down. They know that even declaring mild scepticism, even requesting clarification, can cause the giant state-corporate Finger of Blame to be cranked around in their direction. Perhaps they, too, will be declared ‘supporters of tyranny’, ‘apologists for genocide denial’, ‘sexists’ and ‘racists’. The possibility of denunciation is highly intimidating and potentially disastrous for anyone dependent on corporate employment or sponsorship. Corporations, notably advertisers, hate to be linked to any kind of unsavoury ‘controversy’. It is notable how ‘celebrities’ with potentially wide public outreach very often stay silent.

It is easy to imagine that people will often prefer to decide that the issue is not that important to them, that they don’t know that much about it – not enough to risk getting into trouble. And, as discussed, they naturally imagine that professional journalists have access to a wealth of information and expertise – best to just keep quiet. This is the powerful and disastrous chilling effect of a fast-moving propaganda blitz.

Propaganda And Climate Change

The most devastating impact, however, is on the public perception of threats.

A series of propaganda blitzes have taught the public to associate an alarming situation with a unified eruption of concern and outrage right across party politics and media. This is a problem because genuine threats that do not trigger a propaganda blitz naturally appear to be far less urgent and threatening than they really are. And this is exactly what has happened with climate change.

Despite the endlessly and ominously tumbling records for temperature and extreme weather events – see here and here – despite increasingly urgent attempts to warn the public of a very real ‘climate emergency’, scientists are not close to being able to match the kind of alarm generated by a propaganda blitz.

These campaigns are rooted in vast power and resources defending establishment greed. They are motivated by the need to remove obstacles to power and profit, to control natural resources, to justify bloated arms budgets (‘socialism for the rich’). Naturally, then, a propaganda blitz is not triggered by a threat requiring action that will harm these same elite interests.

As the state-corporate response to climate change makes very clear, propaganda blitzes are not really about averting ‘threats’. It is tragicomic indeed to see high state officials and corporate media commentators endlessly emphasising ‘security concerns’ while doing little or nothing to address the truly existential threat of climate change. It is simply the wrong kind of threat requiring the wrong kind of action!

The result is that the climate emergency is felt by the public to be a medium-sized, manageable problem surrounded by uncertainty. A YouGov survey in January found that the ‘British public is far more concerned about the threat posed by population growth than it is about climate change.’ The case for dramatic new evidence has been made, but the emotional intensity, consensus and denunciation of climate denier ‘dissidents’ – for once, all justifiable – are lacking.

This is an awesome price to pay for corporate domination of politics and media. It seems the ultimate victims of propaganda will be the propagandists themselves and the public deceived by them.

In Part 2, we will see how a recent propaganda blitz aimed at Corbyn fits the pattern outlined above.

You really can’t make this stuff up.

Another embarrassment for Russia, where porn is an embarrassing secret.

Mr. Putin this appears to be yet another Russian embarrassment. Not even your KGB could make another country look this bad.

Kremlin spin: “…the images were actually taken to highlight domestic violence issues”. *cough bulls*t*

</end editorial>

Russia’s Eurovision entry has seen his participation in the annual singing competition overshadowed by a porn scandal after naked photos of him surfaced online over the weekend.

Sergey Lazarev, 33, who was favourite to win leading up to the contest, performed his song ‘You Are The Only One’ over the weekend and came in at third place.

However, at the same time there, was some controversy surrounding the performer as naked photos surfaced of the singer. In a picture published by The Sun, Lazarev can be seen sat naked on a bed and holding a saw to a woman’s face, while she is handcuffed to a radiator.

It has been claimed that these pictures have resurfaced from a past in fetish porn. The Kremlin have dismissed the claims, saying that the images were actually taken to highlight domestic violence issues.

However, several other nude photos have reportedly appeared on gay porn sites in recent days.

According to The Sun, Moscow found out about the nude photos last month, before attempting to wipe every trace of them from the internet ahead of the competition.

Sergey became a popular figure during his time in Stockholm, managing to achieve the rare feat for a Russian act of not being booed by the audience during Saturday’s live final.

He had previously responded to questions about Russia’s gay rights record by insisting that there was indeed “gay life” in the country, and that LGBT fans would be welcome should the country ever host the competition.

This year’s Eurovision Song Contest was won by Ukrainian entry Jamala, with her song ‘1944’, about her great-grandmother’s persecution as a Crimean Tartar by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.

The win has attracted controversy for its political undertones, despite that fact that overtly political songs are banned in the competition. Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014 and, has been repeatedly accused of encouraging the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine.

Source: http://attitude.co.uk/russias-eurovision-entry-sergey-has-a-secret-porn-past/

Russia is alarmed by the US Missile Defense Shield being installed in Europe. U.S. launches long-awaited European missile defense shield. 

Call me naive but I just couldn’t understand why Russia feared this so much. To me, a defensive missile shield neutralized any offensive launch of missiles by Iran or Russia, guaranteeing peace.  I guess I just did not understand the bizarro world of Russian alternate reality, leading to Russian paranoia.

In this article, “The Third World War: the key to the start” (in Russia), Russia actually posits that the European missile defense shield contains an offensive nature. Yes, you read that correctly. Russia says short and medium range nuclear missiles will be launched from these supposedly defensive positions.

Excuse me, Russia, but have you gone daft?  The US still has ICBMs. The US has submarines. The US has nuclear warheads in cruise missiles. The US has nuclear bombs.

Why would the US put nuclear missiles in cruise missile and rocket-assisted artillery range of Russia?  This is the lie that Russia tells its people.

What Russia really fears is that their offensive nuclear weapons, first strike capability against Europe are negated. Stifled, stopped, stuffed.  Therefore, Russia lies to the world.

No more surprise attacks, Valery Vasilevich.

</end>

Written by 
Jessikka Aro

Open Access Article

First Online: 10 May 2016

DOI: 10.1007/s12290-016-0395-5

Abstract

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime has taken control of the traditional media in Russia: TV, radio and newspapers. As Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu has stated, the Kremlin sees the mass media as a ‘weapon’. Now Russia’s leadership is trying to take control of social media too, and for this massive operation a new information warfare tool has been mobilised—an army of fake social media Putin-fans, known as ‘trolls’. My investigation has discovered that coordinated social media propaganda writers are twisting and manipulating the public debate in Finland, too. Trolls and bots distribute vast amounts of false information in various languages, and target individual citizens for aggressive operations. Aggressive trolls have created a feeling of fear among some of my interviewees, causing them to stop making Russia-related comments online. Trolling has had a serious impact on freedom of speech, even outside Russia. Thus, it should be viewed as a national security threat that needs to be addressed accordingly. The question is: how should the Kremlin’s trolls and disinformation be countered?

Continued at http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12290-016-0395-5

I owe you, gentle readers, a full-blown book review on “Propaganda and Counter-terrorism: Strategies for Global Change” by Dr. Emma Briant.  The book is so good it deserves a very detailed review, and that still wouldn’t do it justice. It honestly is that good.

Simply put, this is the single best book I have ever encountered about propaganda and information operations, bar none.

Dr. Briant shared with me that it took ten years to write the book, and it shows. Her attention to detail is mind-boggling at times. If I had a question about almost anything about information operations or propaganda, she answers it.  I worked in the field for almost 20 years and she does an excellent job explaining things that I hadn’t fully understood.  She gives honest, sometimes almost painful descriptions of how and why Information Operations work in both the US and the UK.

I lost sleep reading this book, it truly is that fascinating. Dr. Briant’s perspective is not only fresh, it is very well informed. I read late into the night for weeks, I almost wore out a few of the pages rereading and cross-referencing things.

The only complaint I have about the book is a combination of two things:  her inclusion of what constitutes propaganda is broader than mine, and, second, her assertion that the United States does propaganda, late in the book.  My discomposure was so intense at one point that I took a few days off to sort through my feelings and thoughts.  The US does not “do” propaganda, I have verified that on multiple occasions.  Perhaps there is a perception that the US does propaganda, but there is no official propaganda program. In some parts of the government, it is even illegal.

The book was published on December 4, 2014, and I read an advance copy. My consternation regarding the two semi-trivial facts, above, are what prevented me from writing a review previously. I think the book is simply fascinating, tremendously helpful for anyone wanting to know about Information Operations in both the US and the UK, and provides unsurpassed insider information on how the military and some parts of the government work.  For me, reading through the book was like attending a party of old friends.  If you’ve worked in IO, PD, or in SC, you should know the names, what they do, and what they are doing now.  Amazingly, a few of the things that were off the books or were treated with a wink, wink, or a nudge, are covered.

A shortfall of the book might be that it does not adequately stress the lack of a strategic information/communications process or strategy at the national level.  There is one quote by me in the book where I refer to Ben Rhodes as a…  well, you’ll just have to read the book to find out, then crucify me.

The really good news is that the book is now available in paperback, according to Dr. Briant.   Anyone reading this blog would benefit from reading this book.  Maybe someone in an important position will read this book, see the light, and finally get off their lazy…

Bottom line, this book is top-notch.

Or in Dr. Briant’s own words, “brill”.  Translating that to English I am saying her book is brilliant.  Yes, I’m poking her in jest. She is also a very nice person.

ps. This is no reflection on Dr. Briant, but there is no mention of Information Warfare, no contrast, and no comparison with IO at any level. Her book did not set out to do that and shouldn’t. That is a completely separate topic.  I do not want to diminish this excellent text in any way, shape or form, but if you want to learn about IW, don’t expect it here.

May 17, 2016

By Maxim Trudolyubov

@russiafiles

Living in Russia and being involved in politics (or just writing about it or worrying about it) creates an odd sense of time. Political time in Russia moves at a carefully measured pace. It creeps along, rather than passing. New legislation, new rules, new prices, new problems for businesses, media, or NGOs come piecemeal—never too much in one go.

Last week, top editors of the RBC media group owned by the tycoon Mikhail Prokhorov had to leave their posts, apparently for political reasons. About two years ago, a group of professional and inspired journalists headed by Elizaveta Osetinskaya (former editor-in-chief of Forbes Russia and, previously, Vedomosti), were invited to run the RBC website, newspaper, and television channel. After a few months of intensive tinkering, the website and the paper turned into a daily must-read for anyone following Russian news and opinion.

RBC media were the only ones, apart from Vedomosti and a handful of smaller outlets, following the news as it happened, without yielding to pressure from the Kremlin or private vested interests. RBC publications also created an agenda of their own by pursuing the subjects that were guaranteed to touch a nerve with Russia’s political elite. Investigative pieces that are widely rumored to have incited Putin’s personal wrath, included a report about the president’s daughter running publicly funded projects at Moscow State University; an investigation into personal holdings of the president’s son-in-law; an article about the funding of the All-Russia People’s Front, Putin’s quasi political party and a quasi-watchdog; and the revelations of the Panama Papers. None of this kind of journalism will appear on the RBC pages anymore.

Rumors of the Kremlin putting strain on the owner and pushing him to sell the media holdings (or even other assets) have persisted for quite a while. Still, the collapse of editorial independence came as an unpleasant surprise. The RBC management asked Maxim Solyus, the editor-in-chief of RBC Daily to leave. Osetinskaya and another top editor responsible for the website, Roman Badanin, left in solidarity.

The Russian authorities have been repeating this familiar act with methodical regularity. They push for a sale or for a change of top editors or, most often, for both. By now, almost every Russian journalist who works on the shrinking, independent side of the country’s media has first-hand memory of at least one magazine, newspaper, or website changing hands and its newsroom leaving en masse.

The Kremlin never admits that politics are behind the changes. It is always presented as a voluntary transaction between two consenting private firms or state-owned companies. Officials, including Putin himself, will always tell you that there are thousands of media outlets in Russia, including at least 2,000 that are subsidized by the government. In a bizarre gesture about ten years ago, the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov gave then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice compact CDs containing recordings of some Russian TV programs. This was meant to prove the existence of independent reporting.

By now, almost every Russian journalist who works on the shrinking, independent side of the country’s media has first-hand memory of at least one magazine, newspaper, or website changing hands and its newsroom leaving en masse.

Despite these halfhearted attempts to draw a curtain over this process, the creeping crackdown on media in Russia has been ongoing for at least 15 years. Major television channels were dealt with during Putin’s first term in power, but the piecemeal destruction and degradation of media continues to this day. What remains of a formerly vibrant scene are a number of outlets, which I won’t recount by name, because the boundaries of freedom often go through newsrooms. There are independent journalists working in a partly-free media space, and there are first-rate experts who are able to publish their work in state-owned, state-run, or state-influenced media (99 percent of the country’s media would fall into at least one of these categories).

Even when all independent platforms have disappeared, public conversation will continue on social networks, in cafes, parks, living rooms, and kitchens. I am not writing this to complain about the state of independent media in Russia. It is too late and too boring to do so, since the general trend became obvious years ago. I’m writing to point out that Kremlin politicians know how to bide their time and pursue a long-term strategy, while sending distracting or misleading signals to the Russian public and foreign countries. This is very much relevant to Putin’s foreign policy too.

The Kremlin continues always to cut a slice that is too small to cause much noise, but large enough to confirm a general, observable trend. Those facing the take-over of their media outlet, or NGO, or business, or country are always too weak to attract attention; the people involved are too few to help themselves, or prevent another slice from being cut tomorrow. The psychology of the process is probably well known to scholars and historians, but living through it is not a pleasant experience. Even the most stoic end up thinking of how not to become the next slice of salami.

By now the Kremlin has achieved many of its real goals (not stated ones): it consolidated companies responsible for all natural resources and their exports; collected major industrial assets in large state-run holdings; put banking under state control; got rid of independent media; undermined all independent action by civil society; turned all domestic politics into a manageable theater; made the Orthodox Church a mighty supporter.

Even the most stoic end up thinking of how not to become the next slice of salami.

The consolidation of resources and centralization of state power under Putin is a masterpiece of statecraft. The Hungarian communist leader Matyas Rakosi is credited with coming up with the “salami tactics” phrase. He claimed that he destroyed all non-Communist parties by “cutting them off like slices of salami.” There are virtuoso users of this technique in the Kremlin.

One of the most important secrets of Putin’s success, I believe, is his restraint and an excellent sense of timing—knowing where, when and how much to cut. There is no known term limit for Putin. The exact amount of time he is willing to spend at the top of Russian politics is the country’s best guarded secret. The salami will, of course, continue to shrink. Its only chance is to learn to regenerate and grow faster than the knife is able to strike.

The opinions expressed here are solely those of the author.

Source: https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/the-next-slice-salami

Cultural Cringe

Posted on May 18, 2016

Ilya Klishin

There’s a specific genre of Russian journalism that has no counterpart in the West – it essentially involves asking foreigners who live in Russia to give their opinions on anything and everything.

Not necessarily famous or talented individuals, just any old foreigners. Russians studiously pretend that they couldn’t care less how they’re thought of abroad, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s a collective psychological complex – call it cultural cringe.

As we all know, there are people (usually teenagers) who really do fret over what others think of them – growing up pains – people who plan every move through, in advance, while eyeing the potential reactions of those who surround them. In Russia, it’s a whole nation … Can you imagine the Americans suddenly developing an obsessive preoccupation with the opinions of some Russian emigrant from Brooklyn, about Americans as a whole, so much so that the New Yorker starts publishing his pontifications? Madness, but that’s exactly analogous to what actually does happen in Russia.

Once we take this into account, the Russian obsession with the Eurovision Song Contest becomes rather easier to understand. It’s got nothing to do with the housewife-friendly pop tunes, and everything to do with the nations-grading-each-other aspect: finally, a chance to find out what the rest of Europe REALLY thinks of Russia!

Things have got so bad that dozens of serious, geopolitically-themed articles are penned after every Eurovision in reaction to that year’s voting patterns (to say nothing of what happens on social media, with Eurovision-related posts proliferating in their hundreds of thousands).

People seem to be writing even more than usual this time round – a conspiracy theory is at play to boot. Ordinary folk voted us winners, write “patriotic” columnists, but clandestine mechanisms robbed us of our victory; well, there’s the “rotten essence of European democracy” for you. But the voting system is by no means the only Eurovision talking point in Russia – the lyrics of the winning song have generated even greater controversy.

Admittedly, these do stand out against the backdrop of meaningless, generalised blather about “love” that has always been a staple of the contest (and this year’s Russian entry is no different). The winner, for those still not in the know, was Jamala, the Ukrainian singer (of Crimean Tatar descent), who scooped the Eurovision title with a song about the deportation of the Crimean Tatars (its title, “1944,” referring to the year when the ethnic cleansing of the peninsula began). Jamala herself was born in Kyrgyzstan, which is where her father’s family was deported.

The singer declared that she’d channeled the pain of her people, and resolved to share it with the world. And it would appear that she’s succeeded: following her win, the harrowing history of the Crimean Tatars has once again been brought into the spotlight – not least in Russia. Commentators on federal channels congratulated the winner through gritted teeth before asking whether the decision could, you know, possibly be political – the question addressed to no one in particular.

Next morning, pro-regime tabloids featured editorials wondering who might have benefitted from this provocation against Russia. Stalin’s repressions and Russia itself were being equated by means of a cunning journalistic subterfuge, which would allow the tag of “national slanderer” to be slapped on anyone decrying the various iniquities of Soviet totalitarianism.

Meanwhile, pro-Kremlin bloggers really let loose – no need to hold back online. Their primary argument (a vile one, but honest in its vileness) was that the Crimean Tatars were rightfully deported on account of their collaboration with the Nazis; whence the inevitable (putinist) conclusion that the current Ukrainian government also consists of Fascists …

But here’s a question. If (almost) the entire country took such euphoric delight in the annexation of Crimea, why has a song about a difficult chapter in the history of the peninsula’s indigenous inhabitants elicited nothing but hatred and anger? Furthermore, it wasn’t all that long ago that the Mejlis (the Crimean Tatars’ representative body in Crimea) was banned, and the Tatar TV channel shut down. It’s all looking very much like a trend.

Generally speaking, how can you call yourself master of a land whose inhabitants you clearly detest? For Russia didn’t even need these people; an empty chunk of land would have suited us down to the ground. Only this isn’t even about land (something Russia possesses in greater abundance than any other country on earth). It’s about giving the finger to the West – the selfsame West whose opinions we value so much.

Source: http://www.khodorkovsky.com/cultural-cringe/?utm_source=The%20Open%20Wall&utm_campaign=a3b1aec5bd-ow48_Test15_11_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_12f97c898a-a3b1aec5bd-429379241

by Jim Kovpak on the https://nobsrussia.com website.

Life has been full of surprises lately. Yesterday I found out I was published in The Guardian. Today I learned that I am The Guardian. In fact, I am the “Western mass media.” Yeah I know, weird huh? It’s true though, at least according to the prestigious Russian news site Ridus.ru (yes,that Ridus.ru), who just today ran a story featuring yours truly bearing the headline “British Guardian accuses the Western mass media of idiocy.”

Yes, we have yet another case of one source being labeled as the “X mass media,” in this case British, but this time I happen to be the source. Well I guess it wouldn’t be the first time Russian media over-hyped some lone blogger.

In the article there are no direct quotes from the article in question. Nor are there any links to the article. Instead it says:

“Джим Ковпак в статье «Сталин, водка и ядерное оружие: как не надо писать о России» перечислил мифы, используя которые иностранные журналисты оказываются в положении полных идиотов.”

“Jim Kovpak in the article “Stalin, vodka, and nuclear weapons: How not to write about Russia,” lists myths whose use makes foreign journalists look like total idiots.”

It  then goes on to say that I wrote that Western media coverage gives the impression that Russia is full of prostitutes.

Before I tackle this I should point out that The Guardian piece is heavily edited to be more concise. The original article appeared on Russia!.

Once one sees both articles it ought to be clear that it isn’t necessarily aimed at journalists. It certainly isn’t aimed at Western Russia correspondents, many of whom I know personally and who in many cases have far more background knowledge and/or experience in Russia than the expat Putin fanboys out there. Many of those types flat out tell you they “knew nothing about Russia” prior to chasing down some girl they met on the internet or whatever.

Of course these cliches certainly can apply to people who are by definition journalists, but these types are most likely those who for whatever reason find themselves writing about Russia without actually being in the country or even visiting it. They may work for some news aggregator site, they could be some kind of travel journalist, or someone just reporting on pop culture phenomena throughout the world. I did specifically refer to expat writers, but that doesn’t necessarily mean journalists. They could be bloggers or even novelists. Also in the long version I occasionally point out that some of these cliches apply to Ukraine as well. And lastly, nowhere in either article did I “accuse the Western media of idiocy.”

It wouldn’t seem like a big deal if I didn’t just get a call earlier in the evening from the state-run NTV about an interview regarding this article. Even if I had the time and were so inclined, I’m afraid they’d be disappointed if the reason for their interest was the wholly inaccurate Ridus article.

But there’s a good lesson to be found in the unusual level of interest that the Russian media paid to this. First of all, the Guardian piece had been up for roughly a day, maybe a day and a half before I was told about the Ridus story. I got the NTV notification about two hours later. Is it not curious how the Russian media constantly paints the “mainstream Western media” as nothing more than a propaganda machine bent on waging information war on Russia, and yet the second they find something in that “mainstream media” they think they can use, the jump all over it? Also, The Guardian is pretty “mainstream,” and it is particularly hated by the Kremlin media and Putin fanboys the world over. To be fair, that no doubt is largely due to the publication’s association with intrepid super spy Luke Harding. Still, The Guardian is definitely “Western” media, so it’s a little odd that Western media would accuse Western media of idiocy, isn’t it?

The other funny aspect of this, perhaps the funniest of all, is that this long-time Kremlin media tactic of referring to “Western/American/foreign mass media” in order to back up some claim, whether it is a matter of gross distortion as with my article or misrepresenting an author’s expertise or credentials in other cases, is essentially a tacit admission that the Russian media isn’t trustworthy. See every time they do this the message is always the same, “Look! A Western says this! If they say that, it must be true!” It’s as if they know they must somehow attach themselves to Western sources because otherwise they have no credibility, or at least Western sources seem more credible to their audience, even if they too generally believe the ideas behind the story and buy into the “information war” conspiracy.

Western media doesn’t appear to operate by these rules. They don’t need to constantly throw up some Russian source and say, “Look! Even the Russians themselves support us and say what we’re writing is true!” Okay, sometimes it seems like Paul Goble is doing that, but he’s hardly “MSM.” Otherwise there is some concept of journalistic ethics and its expected that a reporter will go out and speak to sources and make every effort to confirm their stories while also striving for objectivity. If they interview opposition sources, for example, it’s because there’s a political or human interest story here and you’re supposed to let the sources speak for themselves. The idea isn’t to say “Look, even the Russians themselves admit that Putin sucks! Obama is right!”

Does the system of journalism always work that way? Of course not. For one thing journalism is, for most major Western outlets, a business. Thanks to the internet it has become a rather cutthroat one at that. But as I’ve said plenty of times in the past- just because one system has flaws doesn’t mean we should adopt another one that is worse. And if the Kremlin owned media wants to protest the implication that it is worse and not, as they sometimes claim, equal in terms of credibility, maybe they should stop and ask why they have to constantly invoke the “Western media” as backup for their claims.

UPDATE: They apparently really love that piece because a more accurate translation of the article was published on RT’s Russian site. So yeah, now I’v finally been published on RT. Unfortunately it would seem that RT failed to recognize my Guardianship. Have no doubt in your minds, I am The Guardian, and I shall rule this world that is rightly mine! 

Source: https://nobsrussia.com/2016/05/18/how-i-became-the-guardian/

By Henry Farrell

May 19, 2016 at 2:22 PM

Internet researchers have long known that the Chinese government manipulates content on the Internet. Not only does it engage in heavy censorship, but it also employs hundreds of thousands of people, the so-called 50 cent army, to write comments on the Internet. New research by Gary King, Jennifer Pan and Margaret Roberts (whom I’ll refer to as KPR for convenience) uses sophisticated techniques of gathering and analyzing massive amounts of data to tell us what is going on.

The fake commenters are being paid by the government

It’s hard to figure out exactly who is being paid to comment by the Chinese government  and who is not. While accusations of membership in the 50 cent army are rife on social media, these accusations are at best unreliable and at worst downright misleading. However, KPR were able to take advantage of a major leak of information to figure out what is happening. A blogger released a trove of emails from the propaganda office of a mid-sized unit of China’s local government. These emails included a little over 40,000 unambiguous examples of 50 cent army comments. KPR were able to use these comments to draw conclusions about how fake commenting works. They were also able to train a specialized machine learning algorithm to hunt down and identify similar comments on Chinese social media so that they could get a broader understanding of the ecology of government-sponsored comments in China.

One initial result is surprising. Many people think of the 50 cent army as independent contractors who are paid a small amount of money for each comment they make. If KPR are right, then this is far from the mark. The commenters identified in the leak appear to be regular government employees. The sample of emails that King, Pan and Roberts analyze suggests that they work directly for the Communist Party or for different organs of the local government, and presumably are expected to write these comments as part of their official duties.

Nearly 450 million government comments go up every year

KPR use statistical techniques to figure out how many social media comments are generated by people paid by the government. The results are startling. Government employees generate about 448 million comments every year. A little over half of these comments are made on government sites, albeit pretending to be comments made by ordinary citizens. The rest are made on commercial sites, mixed into streams with family news, dog photos and the like. The result, as KPR describe it, is that a “large proportion of government web site comments, and about one of every 178 social media posts on commercial sites, are fabricated by the government.”

To be clear, these figures depend on a certain amount of extrapolation and educated guesswork, which KPR describe in the paper. Even so, their results are plausible. They asked a random sample of the people whom their techniques identified as paid to write for the government, whether they were doing this professionally. They also asked care people whom they knew to be paid by the government, because they were identified thanks to the leak, whether or not they were paid professionals. More or less the same percentage of both groups — nearly 60 percent — admitted that they were.

Fake commenters are not paid to stir up controversy

There are many popular rumors about what government-paid commenters do. Some — especially non-Chinese commentators — think  they are paid to stir up hatred and resentment of foreign countries such as the United States. Others believe that they are paid to respond to criticism of the government with bogus argumentative talking points.

KPR’s evidence suggests that both of these are incorrect. Paid government commenters don’t seem to say many nasty things about foreigners. Nor, for that matter, do they engage in argument on the Internet. Instead, they praise and distract. They write posts that cheerlead for the government. They also try to distract the public, especially when they fear that there might be protests or other social and political activity that might be dangerous for the government. They don’t appear to care particularly when people complain about the government. Instead, they act when there is a real risk of popular upheaval. In KPR’s words:

Since disrupting discussion of grievances only limits information that is otherwise useful to the regime, the leaders have little reason to censor it, argue with it, or flood the net with opposing viewpoints. What is risky for the regime, and therefore vigorously opposed through large scale censorship and huge numbers of fabricated social media posts, is posts with collective action potential.

Henry Farrell is associate professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University. He works on a variety of topics, including trust, the politics of the Internet and international and comparative political economy.

Source: https://cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/05/19/the-chinese-government-fakes-nearly-450-million-social-media-comments-a-year-this-is-why/

The challenge of Russian information warfare is not a static situation, but a developing process. The Russian approach evolves, develops, adapts, and just like other Russian operational approaches, identifies success and reinforces it, and conversely abandons failed attempts and moves on. Those nations or organisations that think they understand Russian information warfare on the basis of current studies and are responding by preparing for currently visible threats and capabilities, are out of date and will be surprised once again by what happens next.

Access the report here (pdf available).