Russian “Infoblini“, I like that!

<End editorial>

By Paul Goble

2016/05/20 • ANALYSIS & OPINION, RUSSIA

Last Friday, Vladimir Putin not only made an amazing admission of what he and his regime have been doing in the information sphere but also introduced an aphorism that is likely to survive him just as Viktor Chernomyrdin’s phrase “we wanted better but it turned out just like always” has outlived him, Izrail Zaidman says.

In his message on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the All-Russian State Television Company, the Moscow commentator notes, Putin praised its staff for breaking “the information monopoly” that he said “certain of our opponents” have had in the world’s media.

The success of Russian television in that regard, the Kremlin leader continued, has prompted Western outlets to denounce everything pro-Moscow Russian media do as propaganda. But in a related statement at the branch of Russian television in Sochi, Zaidman says, Putin unwittingly admitted that such Western charges are true.

“What I especially want to note is the following,” the Russian president said. “First, your news tapes. They undoubtedly enjoy the great trust and interest of the people, above all because they are true, full of content and interesting. I imagine how difficult it is to do that – to work constantly and cook up these information blinis on the stove.”

On this point, the Moscow commentator says, Putin “was absolutely right.” Cooking up the news on a constant basis and “without leaving the stove “is not so simple.” But from his perspective, it has “a colossal advantage” compared to traditional journalism: “one can cook up any ‘information.’”

Others have done this on occasion in the past, Zaidman continues, “but only under Putin has it achieved its real breadth and aphoristic definition.”

“In dull democratic countries,” he says, “one has to search for, collect and sometimes unearthing information … but what you will find and how it will turn out for you is something you can’t know in advance. But in authoritarian regimes, as [Putin] has explained to us, information is cooked like blinis” by those which by inertia are still called “journalists.”

In such systems, “there are no surprises; everything is prepared to order.” That has been obvious since the start of the Russian aggression in Ukraine, Zaidman argues, with Russian “journalists” constantly putting out stories that had no basis in reality but were intended to mislead.

But Putin’s words last Friday raise a question: why has he suddenly decided to be so open? “Is it a sign of repentance?” Unlikely given his style. Or “perhaps it is the first sign of senility?” – but he is still relatively young. “Most probably,” the commentator suggests, “it is simply bravado,” the actions of “someone without any moral constraints.”

Anyone who has doubts that Putin has made an important admission, however, need only consult the story as carried by RBC. But one thing is obvious, Zaidman concludes, Putin has now introduced two new terms into the Russian language –“infoblini’ and “Putin’s infoblini” – that are likely to outlive him.

Source: http://euromaidanpress.com/2016/05/20/putin-admits-russian-media-cooking-the-news-zaidman-says/

Sat May 21, 2016

An Australian law firm has filed a compensation claim against Russia and President Vladimir Putin in the European Court of Human Rights on behalf of families of victims of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17, shot down in 2014, media reported.

The jetliner crashed in Ukraine in pro-Russian rebel-held territory on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 people on board, including 28 Australians.

The aircraft, which was en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was shot down by a Russian-made surface-to-air missile, the Dutch Safety Board concluded in its final report late last year.

Fighting was raging in eastern Ukraine between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian government forces when the aircraft was downed and many Western experts and governments blamed the rebels.

Australia’s Fairfax media reported on Saturday that 33 next of kin were of victims named in an application by Sydney law firm LHD Lawyers, representing people from Australia, New Zealand and Malaysia.

Reuters could not immediately reach LHD Lawyers for comment.

The application was filed on May 9 and names the Russian Federation and Putin as respondents and seeks $10 million in compensation per passenger, the report said.

The Dutch Safety Board, which was not empowered to address questions of responsibility, did not point the finger at any group or party for launching the missile.

(Reporting by Jarni Blakkarly; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-australia-mh-idUSKCN0YC06P

Russian web sites are eagerly disseminating a story about the Veneto regional council voting to recognize the Ukrainian Crimean peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014 as part of the Russian Federation and to lift EU sanctions imposed against Russia.

The Russian newspaper Izvestia initially published this story and was soon followed by other Russian publications such as Gazeta.ru,Vzglyad, TVC, Life.ru, RBK, Lenta.ru and others.

None of these sites mention the fact that the Veneto regional council has no authority over Italy’s foreign policy and the resolution on Crimea is not binding. Russian blogger Anton Nossik explains that Veneto’s regional council is not a parliament and has limited capacity in terms of political influence. “Even if we call this council a parliament, it has no right to make foreign policy decisions and is busy with municipal issues” writes Nossik.

Italy’s conservative daily newspaper Secolo d’italia writes that the resolution, even if approved “is simply advisory in nature”. Even Stefano Valdegamberi, the resolution’s Christian Democratic author, who recently returned from an economic forum held in Yalta, admits that the regional council’s vote has no binding power and merely reflects the regional council’s desire, however the resolution “ has value because Venice is suffering greatly from the effects of the European policy” of sanctions.

Valdegamberi frequently travels to Crimea and to Russia. In 2013 he introduced a bill calling for a referendum on Veneto’s independence, which the Veneto regional Council passed in 2014. Italy’s Constitution Court however,  ruled that this decision was contrary to the country’s Constitution.

Source: http://www.stopfake.org/en/fake-veneto-regional-council-considers-crimea-part-of-russia/

May 21, 2016, 08:00 am

By Derya Taskin

As Russia’s sphere of influence continues to grow in the Middle East and Europe, and the global fight against ISIS continues, no relationship has become more important for the safety and security in the world than the relationship between the United States and Turkey.

Vladimir Putin is on a mission to restore Russia as a great world power, as demonstrated by Russia’s recent military steps. Whether it has been Russia’s actions in Georgia, Crimea, Eastern Ukraine, Syria or Armenia, Putin’s aggression and his growing sphere of influence needs to be stopped before it’s too late.

Turkey, a key member of NATO, has its own problems with Russia. It is confronted by a Russian military build-up across its border with a strengthening Russian-Armenia alliance, and is simultaneously being squeezed by Russia’s military actions in Syria, across its southern border.
What will Putin do next? Will he try to dismember NATO and force the US out of Europe? Will he continue to push the envelope due to a lack of action from the United States and its allies?

With the future of the Middle East and Europe evolving on a daily basis, Turkish-U.S. relations are critical to regional security and the management of regional crises. The conflicts in Syria and Iraq have become salient issues of international security. Armenia—which hosts two Russian bases—is being drawn farther into Russia’s sphere of influence, hindering chances of reconciliation between the neighboring countries. The relationship with Turkey may be the most critical relationship we have with any ally in the 21st century.

Often forgotten is that Turkey has long been an important U.S. ally in the region on matters ranging from counterterrorism to NATO operations. In fact, since 2011 Turkey and the U.S. have co-chaired the Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF) to help combat the rise of extremism. More recently, Turkey has stood out as one of the few players in the region welcoming hundreds of thousands of refugees since the Syrian Civil War erupted — providing relief for people of all races, religions, and ethnicities.

In addition, Turkey’s membership in NATO is crucial for the alliance’s military power in the region. Turkey has volunteered to be one of the key nations in what is the spearhead of the alliance’s force, the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force. The force, ready for deployment at very short notice, is the heart of NATO’s strategic vision of confronting threats. Turkish armed forces’ elite special operations units have been proven to be critical in the force with their expertise in low intensity conflicts and their key role in the NATO response structure,

By helping head off possible threats from Russia, and confronting militants to its south, Turkey’s military is a vital element of NATO defenses and another reason why the United States and Turkey need to work even more closely than ever before to defeat ISIS and terrorism in the 21st century. There is no partner that the United States can have that is more important than Turkey.

Derya Taskin is president of the Turkish Institute for Progress.

Source: http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/280499-russias-sphere-of-influence-needs-to-be-stopped

All credit for the following belongs to “anonymous”, who does not want to be named.  I found this too good not to share.

Interesting that the Russians produce these effects then howl about conspiracies against them. Causality is absent in the “Russian World”, all is permitted for Russia as it is special and damn everybody else.

Russia, of course, is rabid about the proposed Intermarium concept, which is not at all new.

The concept of these countries blocking Russia is what they deserve. Expect the Russian propaganda and active measures machine to start cranking out mostly and wholly fabricated anti-Intermarium articles.  Russia has only two choices it seems. A deluge of words or war.

The thought that most of these countries used to be Soviet states can be smeared onto Russia’s face.  If ever presented that anything that ever touched Russia now hates it is a helluva qualifier.

…and Russia. If you don’t start behaving it is only going to get worse for you. Yes, you will be surrounded by countries that detest and do not trust you.

RU: “Why do they hate us so?”

I know.

</End editorial>

The Intermarium Debate

By Anonymous

The idea of the “Intermarium”, a trade corridor and political-military alliance linking the Baltic to the Black Sea was devised by Polish strategists early in the 20th century as a means of isolating Tsarist Russia, but this was hobbled by the Soviet conquest of Ukraine after WW1. This idea is now generating serious traction in Poland, Ukraine and the Baltic states. The motives are clearly in part economic, but the big driver is clearly military/strategic, and is almost certainly a consequence of Russia’s revanchism, and the weak if not anaemic response by NATO, itself driven by isolationism (and to some extent political corruption) in Germany.

There does not appear to be much public discussion on this in the West. Russian commentators, frothing at the mouth, claim it is supported by the UK, viewed ambivalently by the French, and opposed by Germany.

Whether formal bilateral or multilateral treaties or other instruments are signed, what this debate shows is a distinct bloc within the EU/NATO camp i.e. Baltics-Poland-Ukraine. Whether viewed from a military or economic payoff perspective, there are strong motivational imperatives for the Scandinavians, including Finland, and the East Balkans, i.e. Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey to join this bandwagon. It also provides an enticement for Belarus to exit the Russian camp.

Good or bad for NATO and EU? Any Intermarium group will become a defacto voting bloc in the EU and NATO that will be implacably opposed to any weak dealings with Russia. It will unite and divide both the EU and NATO, in the sense that it forms a faultline between the isolationist Germans, and the dithering Romance nations, when it comes to dealing with Russia. On the balance, it appears to be a good thing for both NATO and the EU, by balancing politically the naive and dithering Western European nations on Russia issues.

Should the US support or hinder the Poland-Ukraine Intermarium, and its expansion? Again, on the balance, as it strengthens EU/NATO nations opposed to Russian meddling in Europe, as compared to nations with corrupted/penetrated political elites, and various naive or dubious agendas, it should be vigorously supported by the US.

The sad reality is that most Western European nations are no longer robust members of NATO, as demonstrated by dithering and weak-kneed behaviour over the last 2.5 years, and the Pew polls. They are preoccupied with short term domestic agendas, including Islamist terrorism that is not an existential threat to them as nation states, but a political existential threat for incumbent governments.

Ultimately, the outlook for Russia in coming decades is that of an economic, political, and social basketcase, with a poor near term outlook for anything other than whacky ultra-nationalism and authoritarian goverment, and destructive militarism within the reach of whatever budget is available. Russia’s problems stem from a broken political culture, as we can see broken since Ivan III. Europe needs a revised and rebalanced security architecture, period.

The game for NATO and the US now is leverage the political energy the Russians unleashed in the “Intermarium states” to put momentum into that rebalancing.

Intermarium – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Andreas Umland | How to Fill Ukraine’s Security Vacuum
Ukraine faces a mounting challenge from the East while suffering from a fundamental security vacuum. The country is not embedded in international organizations able to help Kyiv secure the Ukrainian state’s territorial integrity and political sovereignty. What other options than the distant prospect of NATO membership does Ukraine have to fill this vacuum today? The only feasible solution with at least some chance of being realized is to revive an old Polish plan known as Intermarium—a union of the lands between the seas. The original early-twentieth-century idea of Intermarium envisaged a federation or confederation of the states between the Baltic and Black Seas. Today, the plan would imply an entente cordiale or mutual-aid pact among the countries in this region that perceive Moscow as a threat to their national sovereignty, economic viability, and social stability. Such an alliance should unambiguously announce to the Kremlin its member countries’ willingness to actively and multifariously assist each other in their hitherto bilateral conflicts with Russia.

Ukraine parliament speaker supports establishment of Baltic-Black Sea Union – read on – uatoday.tvUkraine TodayIntermarium Alliance – Will the idea become reality? : UNIAN newsHot discussions have erupted on social networks around the century-old idea put forward by Jozef Pilsudski, president of Poland at the time, of establishing the Intermarium Confederation. Modern media have fitted the idea into the current information context, citing the new Polish president. UNIAN has gathered expert opinions on the prospects of such project.Rada Speaker supports establishment of Baltic-Black Sea Union : UNIAN newsChairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Andriy Parubiy supports the establishment of the Baltic-Black Sea Union, he said in an interview with the Parliament&rsquo;s official TV Channel Rada.Parubiy supports invigoration of cooperation within Baltic Black Sea UnionChairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Andriy Parubiy supports invigoration of cooperation in the framework of the Baltic Black Sea Union with participation of Poland and Georgia.Jamestown Foundation Blog: New Polish President Makes Baltic–Black Sea Alliance a Centerpiece of His Foreign PolicyWarsaw pivots to the Black Sea

It is common knowledge that more than two decades ago the European continent was mainly divided between two rival geopolitical blocs – the “Western” (the EU and the North Atlantic), and the “Eastern” (dominated militarily and economically by the Soviet Union). This Eastern Bloc occupied a geographical space spreading from the flatlands of the Great East European Plain along the Baltic coast in the north to the Black Sea shores in the south. After the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in 1989 and the Soviet Union in 1991, it took about a decade for the geopolitical texture of Eastern Europe to be completely realigned. The very concept of Eastern Europe seems to have disintegrated and then reinterpreted, in often overlapping terms like Central Europe, Central-Eastern Europe, South-Eastern Europe, the Balkans, post-Soviet space, etc.
Could a Baltic-Black Sea Alliance Be Taking Shape?

Staunton, November 5 – Most politicians and analysts in both Moscow and the West are so used to considering the countries in between Russia and Western Europe only along an east-west axis that they fail to pay much attention to the efforts of some of these countries to promote a north-south axis – or dismiss such moves as the work of Washington or Moscow. Many Russians see any conversations about such a north-south alliance as nothing more than an effort by Poland to recover its former greatness or Washington to push Russia even further away from Europe. And many in the West, typically dismissive of “the countries in between” as actors in their own right, also routinely cast doubt on its potential.

Intermarium’ and Ukraine: Collective Security Outside NATO – SOVEREIGN UKRAINEThe Ukrainian crisis continues to languish on the back pages of major newspapers in the West and beyond, not only because of the Syrian war and refugee crisis, but because active hostilities in Ukraine have experienced a lull over the past several months. Reports of shooting and death in Ukraine among both Ukrainian government forces…China, Russia and the EU’s intermarium bloc

China’s geopolitics of trade passageways, expected to revive the ancient Silk Road arteries across the Eurasian continent, is producing the first collateral effect. The potential integration of Beijing’s “Belt and Road” initiative with a regional infrastructure scheme in Central and Eastern Europe is contributing to altering the balance of power in Euro-Russian dynamics.
From Estonia to Azerbaijan: American Strategy After Ukraine | StratforWashington will maintain a balance of power in Central and Eastern Europe by creating an alliance structure.Russia’s Biggest Threat Is The Promethean Strategy: Can Putin keep the Intermarium in check? | The Millennium ReportPrometheism – Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaIntermarium | Columbia | East Central European CenterWho Is Building the Intermarium?Intermarium: Київ, Warszawa, Vilnius. Трансформації в країнах Східної Європи – YouTubeНадзвичайний і Повноважний Посол Литви в Україні (2006-2009 рр.) Альґірдас Кумжа. Головний редактор Gazeta Wyborcza Адам Міхнік.

Let’s review.

Deploy missile shield to Romania.  Check.

Deploy tanks to the Russian border. Check.

While Russia buzzes the USS Donald Cook, does barrel rolls over RC-135s, and talks of Russia still having nukes, the US responds quietly but speaks volumes.

Russia already invaded and seized Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Georgia.

RU: “Why does everybody hate us so?”

I know.

</end editorial>

CARLO ANGERER

VAZIANI, Georgia — An American M1A2 Abrams tank fired at distant targets as it sped through the green hills of a military base that until 2001 was controlled by Russian troops.

The symbolic deployment of the Army’s largest weapon system to this former Soviet republic was part of Exercise Noble Partner which has involved hundreds of American, British and Georgian troops and runs through Thursday.

Designed to bring the Georgian military closer to NATO, the drill comes at a time of growing tension between the Western alliance and the Kremlin.

The Vaziani Training Area where the drills took place is just 45 miles from the Russian border — and the joint exercises infuriated Moscow.

“We regard this ongoing ‘exploration’ of Georgia’s territory by NATO forces as a provocative step aimed at escalating the military and political situation in the South Caucasus,” the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.

It’s not the first time Georgia has caused friction between the White House and the Kremlin. Following several wars, the two breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia had their independence formally recognized by Russia. The U.S. still sees them as belonging to its ally Georgia.

In 2008, Russian and Georgian forces fought over South Ossetia. The conflict ended with a cease-fire agreement, but Russian troops continue to be stationed there.

Russia, meanwhile, has continued to pester its military rivals.

On Tuesday, Britain’s Air Force scrambled fighter jets for the second time in a week to investigate unidentified aircraft near Estonia’s airspace. The Baltic country is a NATO member and a former Soviet republic that has been a constant source of friction between Moscow and the West. In both cases, the aircraft turned out to be Russian.

And last month, Russian war planes buzzed a U.S. destroyer in the Baltic Sea. A U.S. defense official described the maneuvers were “unsafe” and “unprofessional” — citing them as among the “most aggressive” acts by the Russians in some time.

U.S. military officials at this week’s exercise declined to comment on Russia’s recent actions, but Col. Jeffrey Dickerson told NBC News the war games would bring Georgia closer to NATO.

While not a member of that alliance, Georgia is is already a contributing partner in Afghanistan. Officials said the drills will allow the country to contribute to NATO’s expanded quick-reaction force.

“That is the first time we’ve been able to bring M1s into Georgia and to continue to enhance that interoperability,” said Dickerson, who is co-director Noble Partner. “A lot of effort has to go into moving large organizations and thus far we’ve been successful.”

The equipment was shipped across the Black Sea and transported by rail to the military training area.

For the Georgian military, the exercise has become a source of prestige.

“We are proud to have them here and it’s a unique opportunity to train with these advanced troops and this advanced equipment,” Lt. Col. Beka Ambroladze said.

He added that Noble Partner was strategically important for Georgia’s military — which in two decades has turned from a creaking, Soviet-style force into a modern outfit that can work directly with NATO.

That change is personified in Georgian soldiers like 2nd Lt. Levan Lanchava, who spent four years in the U.S. and graduated from New York’s West Point military academy.

“It gives me the ability to come back here and introduce some of the ideas, whether it’s military tactics or general officers’ culture,” he said.

WASHINGTON, May 19. /TASS/. Marie Yovanovitch, a career member of the Foreign Service, has been announced as nominee for Ambassador to Ukraine, the White House announced on Wednesday on behalf of the US president.

President Barack Obama announced his intent to nominate Geoffrey Pyatt, who currently serves as US Ambassador to Ukraine, to the post of Ambassador to Greece, it said.

“Marie L. Yovanovitch, a career member of the Foreign Service, class of Minister-Counselor, currently serves as Dean of the School of Language Studies at the Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute, a position she has held since 2014,” the White House said.

From 2008 to 2011 she was US Ambassador to Armenia, and also served as US Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan from 2005 to 2008. Marie Yovanovitch worked in Ukraine in 2001-2004 as Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in Kiev.

Source: http://tass.ru/en/world/876626

By Natalie Nougayrède

Friday 18 March 2016 15.35 EDT

Through his writings, Russia’s foreign minister tells us what the president really wants – a historic realignment in his favour

While European leaders believe they are edging towards a solution to the refugee crisis after securing a deal with Turkey, another power watches closely from afar: Russia.

A tweet from its foreign ministry spokeswoman said much this week. “The migration crisis has been caused by irresponsible attempts to spread western-type democracy to the Middle East,” was the message from Maria Zakharova, hours before EU leaders were set to convene in Brussels. It didn’t just reflect Moscow’s well-known resistance to anything that smacks of western-driven regime change – it was also meant as a rebuke.

Russia has been accused of “weaponising” the refugee crisis as a way of destabilising Europe – a claim recently reinforced by Nato’s top commander in Europe. That assertion may well be disputed. What is beyond doubt is the continuing need to know what Russia is thinking, and what goals it might pursue as it watches the EU confront multiple crises.
EU strikes deal with Turkey to send back refugees

To get a glimpse into Vladimir Putin’s mind, it’s worth reading the recent writings of his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov. In a long article published this month by the Moscow-based magazine Russia in Global Affairs– translated here into English – Lavrov spells it out with clarity. What Russia wants is nothing short of fundamental change: a formal, treaty-based say on Europe’s political and security architecture. Until Russia gets that, goes the message, there will be no stability on the continent. The key sentence in the article is this: “During the last two centuries, any attempt to unite Europe without Russia and against it has inevitably led to grim tragedies.”

Lavrov is not a free thinker able to operate independently of his boss, Putin. He is a technocrat – post-Soviet Russia’s longest serving foreign minister (he has held the job since 2004). He plays the diplomatic instrument to a tune set solely by the president. It’s true western officials say Lavrov was privately incensed in 2014 by Putin’s sudden decision to annex Crimea – a move that flew in the face of Russia’s traditional claims of wanting to uphold “international law” – but he stuck to the official script. It is no coincidence that Lavrov’s article ran just as Russia was playing for high stakes in Syria, and the Europeans were scrambling for a policy on migrants.

To say that Putin has “weaponised” the refugee crisis hands him too much control over events, for Russia didn’t start the crisis. But it has capitalised on a situation that has deepened Europe’s weaknesses and divisions. And the crisis has boosted the far-right European movements that Russia supports.

Nato’s commander is right to point out that Russia, alongside its protege, Bashar al-Assad, has “exacerbated” the refugee crisis. The actions of its bomber planes over Syria, especially in the Aleppo region, have pushed thousands more desperate families towards the Turkish border. But it should be remembered that the day the migrant crisis first seared itself into the public consciousness was not in 2015 but on 3 October 2013, when hundreds drowned off the island of Lampedusa. That was long before Russia launched its military intervention in Syria.

‘Lavrov seems to draw a comparison between Putin and Peter the Great, who relied on ‘tough domestic measures and resolute, successful foreign policy’ to make Russia a key European player.’ Photograph: Alexander Shcherbak/TASS
Nevertheless, it’s fascinating to see how Lavrov references European history to bolster his claim that without Russia’s cooperation the continent can only be exposed to chaos. He points to Catherine the Great (whose chancellor once proudly said: “Not a single cannon in Europe can be fired without our consent”), the Napoleonic wars and the Crimean conflict of 1853-56. He presents a sweeping, paranoid version of history, in which “western” Europeans have, throughout the ages, conspired to victimise and humiliate Russia.

Lavrov seems to draw a comparison between Putin and Peter the Great, who relied on “tough domestic measures and resolute, successful foreign policy” to make Russia a key European player “in little over two decades”. He repeats Moscow’s mantras about the cold war not being lost by Russia but ending with the “unlucky chain of events” that led to the dissolution of the USSR. EU and Nato enlargement, he writes, were not about “smaller European countries” going from “subjugation to freedom”, but about simply changing “leadership”. The result: today, these countries “can’t take any significant decision without the green light from Washington or Brussels”. In this wild mix, EU institutions are equated to no less than Soviet totalitarianism.

But the centrepiece of Lavrov’s argument is that, after 1991, “we should have created a new foundation for European security”, and now is the time to do so – if the “systemic problems” that have arisen between Russia and the west are to be overcome. This is not a new Russian message, but Moscow is keen to insert it into current European debates. Last month, Dmitry Medvedev made that clear while attending the Munich security conference. Russia’s prime minister may have made headlines with his talk of a new “cold war” or the dangers of a “third global tragedy” – but just as significantly, he bluntly called for a revision of the “architecture of Euro-Atlantic security”.

From the Stalinist-style gothic skyscraper of his ministry in Moscow, Lavrov has laid out the long game
This year is one that arguably offers Russia an unprecedented window of opportunity to push that demand. The refugee crisis threatens key EU institutions, a referendum looms on the UK’s relationship to Europe, the Franco-German couple is in dire straits, Angela Merkel is politically weakened, Ukraine is unstable, populist movements are spreading throughout the continent, the Balkans are experiencing new tensions, and the US is busy with an election campaign imbued with isolationism.

No doubt, Russia itself is not as strong as it would like to be. Its economy is in recession and sanctions are biting. But from the Stalinist-style gothic skyscraper of his ministry in Moscow, Lavrov has laid out the long game.

There has been much discussion about Putin’s policies in Syria. Many judge that Russia has tried to emerge as a power on a parity with the US, even outmanouevring it. And there’s a rationale to that. For by rekindling a US-Russia duality reminiscent of the cold war – or at least the pretence of it – Putin calculates that the ultimate geopolitical prize will come not in the Middle East but in Europe. That is where Russia’s historical obsessions truly lie. Reacting to that reality may well be the next struggle for the continent.

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/18/putin-long-game-omens-europe-russia

You are protected against revealing passwords under the Fifth Amendment’s right against self-incrimination, but your biometrics are not.

By Will Yakowicz
Staff writer, Inc.

http://www.inc.com/will-yakowicz/why-biometrics-are-bad-for-your-constitutional-rights.html?platform=hootsuite

Biometrics might be cool and convenient, but the technology could potentially undermine your legal rights under the Fifth Amendment, which prohibits the government from compelling a witness to testify against herself.

A court or police officer could legally compel you to press your finger onto your smartphone to unlock it, but if your phone is locked with a passcode, no one can legally compel you to open it, says William J. Cook, an attorney and partner at law firm Reed Smith in Chicago, who specializes in information technology, privacy, and data security. Cook explains that the difference between a password and a biometric identifier is great under the law–you have a right not to reveal the contents of your mind, which includes things like a password, but your fingerprints are a part of who you are and you expose them to the public every day. This is why when a person gets arrested, he or she must consent to fingerprinted while retaining the right to remain silent. Thoughts are protected, biometric identifiers (fingerprints, face, hair) are not.

Ever since Apple introduced Touch ID in 2013, privacy law experts have been sounding  the alarm about the way biometrics can whittle away at your right against self-incrimination.

“The Fifth Amendment protects individuals against saying anything, testimony or statements, that could incriminate them,” says Paul Bond, who is also a partner at Reed Smith. “While it protects information, it does not shield physical things in the world available for production. Making the key to your information a physical key or biometric identifier is putting it in the realm of police power to produce.”

The unlocking of smartphones and computers has become a legal niche, but this niche will soon grow to become a big part of many cases, Cook says. The FBI uses search warrants based on probable cause (the Fourth Amendment) to compel companies like Apple to unlock the phones belonging to alleged criminals to find evidence of crimes, but authorities are also gaining access to devices that use biometric identification systems, like Apple’s Touch ID, by obtaining search warrants to force people to press a finger onto a mobile phone, Cook says.

Recently in Los Angeles, a federal judge signed a warrant to allow the FBI to force a 29-year-old woman to press her finger on an iPhone cops had seized from her boyfriend’s home, an alleged gang member, the Los Angeles Times reported last week. This marked the first time a suspect had been forced to unlock an iPhone via Touch ID in a federal case.

More criminal investigations will involve accessing personal devices like smartphones, and biometric authentication technology is spreading to more devices. As even more employees download work-related information and data onto their personal phones, these three factors are conspiring to make company data a potential casualty of biometric technology’s legal protection problem, Bond says.

“If all it takes is a fingerprint swipe by an employee, at that point the control of the information is out of the hands of the company,” Bond says.

Published on: May 10, 2016

Source: http://www.inc.com/will-yakowicz/why-biometrics-are-bad-for-your-constitutional-rights.html?platform=hootsuite

May 23, 2016 – 12:00 pm

Continued at http://www.rferl.org/content/the-morning-vertical-may-23-2016/27751896.html

Chinese and Russian propaganda seen as threat to US national security and democracy

By Joshua Philipp, Epoch Times | May 20, 2016

A man dressed like a U.S. soldier appeared in a video in September 2015, where he lined up the sights on a Russian-made Saiga 401K rifle and fired three shots into a copy of the Quran.

The video was widely circulated in Russia’s Muslim communities, where it sparked anger against the United States and its troops. It played on deeper anti-American sentiments, similar to when Florida pastor Terry Jones burned a Quran in 2011, leading to riots in Afghanistan, which killed 11 people.

But this latest video was a fake. Its source, according to a BBC investigation, was none other than Russia’s own disinformation office, the Agency for Internet Studies, also called the “troll farm.”

Similar fake stories aimed at smearing the image of the United States have been recently traced to the Agency for Internet Studies. The New York Times Magazine found in June 2015 that the office was also responsible for other fake stories, including one that claimed a Louisiana chemical company was leaking toxic fumes and another that claimed there was an Ebola outbreak in Atlanta.

Information operations like this are becoming common tools of foreign governments. For them, news has become a weapon, and they’re using it to prop up their regimes and to attack their enemies.

The United States may soon start fighting back with a new initiative to counter disinformation.

On May 16, a bipartisan bill called the Countering Information Warfare Act of 2016 was introduced to the Senate, sponsored by Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and co-sponsored by Sen. Christopher Murphy (D-Conn.). It has been read twice and referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations.

It states plainly that foreign governments including Russia and China “use disinformation and other propaganda tools to undermine the national security objectives of the United States and key allies and partners.”

Sen. Portman emphasized the importance of the bill on May 12 at the Atlantic Council, stating: “China spends billions annually on its foreign propaganda efforts, while RT, Russia’s state-funded, 24-7 international news channel reportedly spends $400 million annually just on its Washington Bureau alone.”

The damage caused by disinformation cannot be understated, and the propaganda tactic is a serious threat to democracy, according to Ronald J. Rychlak, a law professor at The University of Mississippi School of Law.

Disinformation is a particularly devious form of propaganda.

Rychlak co-wrote the book “Disinformation” with Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest-ranking Soviet bloc intelligence official who ever defected to the West. The two detailed many of the false narratives spread by the Soviets, which today are taken as basic knowledge.

“We are a society that’s based upon free information, upon people trusting the information they receive and making wise decisions,” and this system is undermined when foreign governments intentionally spread false information to deceive people, Rychlak said, in a phone interview.

“It’s important for people to become aware of this, and in some way we fight back, because you can corrupt an entire system from seemingly within by providing information like that,” he said.

A Strategy of Deception

Disinformation is a particularly devious form of propaganda. One method is to manufacture news stories, often with a grain of truth, but with a false conclusion. The other method is to stage events, such as the fake video of the soldier shooting the Quran, and then spread a video or report of the fake event among the targeted population.

The tactic doesn’t end at the creation of a false story, however. As opposed to conventional propaganda, which is usually spread by state mouthpieces, a key goal of disinformation is to cause foreign experts and news outlets to spread the disinformation on the state’s behalf.

From there, the false stories start to take on a life of their own. As soon as a news outlet or expert picks up the disinformation, the state that created it can then use the false report as a source. It may then have a government official come out to publicly condemn the targeted country, citing the false news report, which incites other news outlets to also pick up the story.

After public sentiment gets riled up, foreign leaders are forced to respond. And with each report and statement, the false source of the disinformation gets buried deeper and deeper. The end goal is to make the false reports be viewed as common knowledge.

Rychlak said that when it reaches this point, disinformation “becomes part of our culture, part of the assumed knowledge, and this is why disinformation has been such an effective tool for our enemies.”

The Chinese regime has used this tactic to justify many of its human rights abuses.

On Jan. 23, 2001, five people in China set themselves on fire on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. The Chinese regime’s state-run news outlets claimed the individuals were practitioners of Falun Gong. The incident was used by Chinese authorities to validate their persecution of the practice, which had started two years earlier, but which had little public support until that time.

The incident was quickly debunked as being staged by Chinese authorities. The Washington Post looked into two of the individuals and reported in February 2001 that nobody had ever seen them practicing Falun Gong. An award-winning video program, “False Fire,” also found numerous holes in the report—including a part in the video where a Chinese police officer can be seen killing one of the alleged victims with a blow to the back of her head.

The sheer volume of spies that have been deployed … It’s never been seen in the history of the world.
— Michel Juneau-Katsura, former chief, Asia-Pacific bureau, Canadian Security Intelligence Service

Despite the fact that the “self immolation” was debunked, even today some news outlets still cite the incident and repeat the Chinese regime’s disinformation, which according to the Falun Dafa Information Center was used by Chinese authorities “as a pretext to sanction the systematic use of violence and extrajudicial imprisonment against Falun Gong practitioners, leading to a surge in deaths due to torture and abuse in custody.”

The Chinese regime has also used disinformation heavily in its operations to undermine the United States and its global influence. The Diplomat reported in December 2015 that the Chinese Communist Party has several systems for these operations, including a guiding policy under its “Three Warfares” doctrine of legal warfare, psychological warfare, and media warfare, military operations for “soft power” carried out by its General Political Department, and operations by spies under its Second Department.

The Three Warfares strategy creates a perception of legitimacy for the Chinese regime’s land-grab in the South China Sea and other military operations, while trying to discredit military initiatives of other nations.

According to the think tank Project 2049 Institute, the bill’s focus on countering Chinese propaganda would be a first for the United States. It says: “The Pentagon has been aware of China’s expanding information warfare capabilities for over a decade, yet currently no single U.S. government organization takes on the role of developing a whole-of-government strategy to combat the threat of information warfare.”

The bill states that Russia, on the other hand, has been increasingly using disinformation to pursue “political, economic, and military objectives in Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, the Balkans, and throughout Central and Eastern Europe.”

The new bill to counter information warfare is aimed particularly at disinformation campaigns that threaten the national security of the United States and its allies, but it would also aim to “protect and promote a free, healthy, and independent press in countries vulnerable to foreign disinformation.”

The War of Words
If the bill is passed, it would create a new office under the State Department tasked with identifying foreign disinformation and publicly exposing it.

According to William Triplett, however, who is a veteran of the Reagan White House and the American Intelligence Community, the bill may have a difficult time reaching that stage.

The problem, Triplett said, is that anything aimed at exposing Chinese disinformation, in particular, is going to ruffle the feathers of the numerous organizations that receive money from China—whether it be news organizations that run paid inserts of Chinese propaganda (such as the New York Times and Washington Post running inserts of China Daily, the Chinese regime’s main English-language propaganda outlet), businesses with financial interests in China, or paid agents of the Chinese regime working in various parts of U.S. society.

Triplett said he sees the bill as something important, but noted it would likely need more muscle behind it to break through the resistance.

While Rychlak also agreed that efforts to counter disinformation are important, he also expressed some concerns. The problem for him isn’t whether the bill can be passed, however, but instead the types of problems it may face afterward.

He said that if the U.S. government were to create an organization assigned to identify and expose foreign disinformation, that organization “will be the first thing our enemies will try to take hold of.”

Rychlak said it would also be risky, since it would establish an office with authority to say which information is true, and which is not.

He added, however, that “If we are to be a republic that rests on the idea of an informed populace making decisions, we need to have at some level the ability to see through, and that’s something most individuals don’t have the resources and ability to do.”

Within 180 days of being passed, the bill would establish a Center for Information Analysis and Response, through coordination with the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Director of National Intelligence, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, and other departments and agencies.

The new center would then be tasked with collecting and analyzing information warfare efforts of foreign governments, and finding ways to work the information into a national strategy. It would have $20 million to hand out in grants to get help in this work from journalists, NGOs, private companies, and academics.

It would also aim to identify the systems leveraged by other nations in their disinformation campaigns—including front groups under think tanks, political parties, and NGOs, and extending to their use of spies assigned to “influence targeted populations and governments.”

While the concept may sound far-fetched, it’s unfortunately close to reality. In June 2010, the FBI arrested 10 spies from the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, who were working to infiltrate U.S. think tanks and NGOs.

The center would work with various departments to “expose and counter” the information operations with its own “fact-based narratives that support United States allies and interests.”

Epoch Times has also exposed several Chinese spy programs designed for influence operations. Michel Juneau-Katsuya, the former Asia-Pacific bureau chief for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, told the Epoch Times in June 2015, “The sheer volume of spies that have been deployed, the sheer volume of agents of influence that have been deployed—it’s just absolutely phenomenal. It’s never been seen in the history of the world.”

Source: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/2067461-us-senate-bill-seeks-to-shine-light-on-foreign-disinformation-2/

Please excuse the Monty Python reference.  I got, perhaps, one sentence deep into this article before I realized just how whacky it is.

But, in all fairness, here is what Russia is saying about Western, especially US, propaganda. You already know I categorically deny that the US does propaganda, so much so that I’ve withheld, on at least one occasion, working on a review of a trusted colleague’s book (which was excellent, by the way. The book, not the review).  With that in mind, you know I think the assertions by this Russian author, are truly whacked. And not in a good way, either.

Actually, if you read this whole report, it is surprisingly neutral.  It gives facts, descriptions, purposes, and after you pass the title, this article is fairly objective.

Bottom line, this is a Russian report on what we are doing to counter their propaganda and disinformation.

Whacky, zany, ignant, foolish, alternative reality, Russian, but I repeat myself.

</End Editorial>

Tags: white house , united states , washington , propaganda , beijing , Ukraine , Murphy

When it rains it pours.

More bad news for Russian state-sponsored, owned, operated and controlled media. More specifically RT.

In my experience, from the past 2 1/2 years dealing most specifically with the Russia propaganda machine, inflation is normally about ten.  If Russia does x, they report 10x.

</End Editorial>

by Katie Zavadski at the Daily Beast

http://www.thedailybeast.com/contributors/katie-zavadski.html 

Leaked documents from a rival Russian news network show that RT hugely exaggerates its global viewership. Its most-watched segments are on ‘metrosexuals, bums,’ and earthquakes.A Kremlin-funded foreign propaganda venture is touted as a big success by backers, but documents provided to The Daily Beast suggest that it is woefully failing in its mission. RT, the 10-year-old network formerly known as Russia Today, appears to be misrepresenting its promulgated success at gaining a broad viewership and promoting the Kremlin’s agenda while spending as much as internationally renowned competitors. The network is also accused of exaggerating its audience and impact with its sole financier—the Russian government—and pretending that it has had a far bigger impact in the Western media sphere than it has, particularly online. Its highest-trafficked videos on YouTube, for instance, apparently pertain to “metrosexuals, bums, etc.” rather than anything political.

A Kremlin-funded foreign propaganda venture is touted as a big success by backers, but documents provided to The Daily Beast suggest that it is woefully failing in its mission. RT, the 10-year-old network formerly known as Russia Today, appears to be misrepresenting its promulgated success at gaining a broad viewership and promoting the Kremlin’s agenda while spending as much as internationally renowned competitors. The network is also accused of exaggerating its audience and impact with its sole financier—the Russian government—and pretending that it has had a far bigger impact in the Western media sphere than it has, particularly online. Its highest-trafficked videos on YouTube, for instance, apparently pertain to “metrosexuals, bums, etc.” rather than anything political.

These disclosures, aimed at undermining RT’s bold self-assessment of its market share, were actually made by employees of the now-defunct RIA Novosti, a separate and rival Russian state-funded media venture, which set out to persuade the Kremlin that it was wasting its money on a failed propaganda vehicle—money that would be better spent on the more professional RIA Novosti.

RT was a product of the TV-Novosti brand launched as an autonomous product by RIA in 2005. In late 2013, months after the documents provided to The Daily Beast were compiled, RIA Novosti was shuttered and state media was reorganized under one encompassing parent company, Rossiya Segodnya, or (somewhat confusingly given RT’s former name) Russia Today.

From 2005 to 2013, the Russian government spent 61.6 billion rubles—about $2 billion—on RT despite one of the current documents calling it “essentially an internet media company.”

The Daily Beast obtained these documents from Vasily Gatov, a former RIA Novosti employee who had a hand in their preparation. He says they were meant for top Kremlin officials. “Since RT’s earliest days, something always looked wrong to me,” Gatov said. “RT persistently pretended that it was much more important and much bigger than could be confirmed by any data. While RT’s internal reporting told their commissioner—the Russian government—that they’d managed to overcome CNN and the BBC in terms of viewership, no signs of this could be found in reliable data, audited and vetted by foreign sources. Their social media growth, reported in every public statement by RT as a ‘phenomenon,’ also looked suspicious.”

“At a certain point,” Gatov added, “such ‘irregularities’ in RT’s reporting became a part of a contest between RIA Novosti and RT. Both agencies relied heavily on state funds. Some of the research made earlier became a part of an argument around funding and policy directions with respect to Western audiences.”

Among the allegations made in the hundreds of pages of materials is that RT wrongfully described its English, Spanish, and Arabic-language broadcasts as reaching 630 million people worldwide in 2013. “In reality, that number is just the theoretical geographical scope of the audience,” one document deadpans, and the network’s only tangible success is found in several Arab countries. It claims the real audience is measured by internationally acknowledged ratings agencies, and those agencies don’t place RT anywhere near the numbers it claimed.

“Thank you for exposing the kind of corporate intrigue promoted by the former RIA management,” RT spokeswoman Anna Belkina told The Daily Beast in an email. “The claims made about RT’s operations bear no resemblance to reality.”

“Today RT has a reach of 700 million people across more than 100 countries; the reach in the U.S. is 85 million people,” she added. “In 2014 Nielsen research (commissioned by RT) found that 2.8 million people in seven major US urban areas (Washington, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Diego) watch RT weekly.”
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The RT-commissioned Nielsen report has never been released.
Gatov further claims that unlike typical high-profile news channels—which get paid “carriage fees” by cable providers for use of their content—RT pays cable providers to carry its content in their offerings. While not illegal, such arrangements typically occur with low-profile channels whose reach does not justify cable providers carrying it of their own accord. Dish Network and Time Warner Cable declined to comment on the terms of their business relationship with RT. Comcast did not return a request for comment.

RT, the documents note, is not present in Nielsen ratings for the U.S. for 2012, which it says start with channels with an audience of 18 million households. Nor does it make cable news channels rankings, meaning that, according to the documents, “the average daily viewership of RT programs in the US does not reach [30,000] people.”

“RT claims that ‘more than 100 million viewers in US cities receive the channel 24 hours a day via satellite and cable networks,’” the documents say. In reality that’s just the total population of homes where “through cable networks, one can theoretically receive RT in a package with hundreds of others of channels.”

As of 2015, RT is still largely absent from cable news rankings.

The documents say that its viewership doesn’t even amount to 0.1 percent of Europe’s television audience, except in Britain, where the 2013 viewership was put at about 120,000 people daily: “In May 2013, RT occupied 175th place out of 278 channels in Great Britain, or 5th place out of 8 cable news channels in the UK.”

However, even this metric has shrunk in the last two years. The most recent Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board ratings for U.K. television viewership put RT at 100,000 viewers a day, and 0.17 percent of the total viewing population.The RIA Novosti team also purportedly debunked RT’s claim to have 7 million viewers across six European countries by explaining the numbers were extrapolated from a phone survey asking people simply, “Have you watched RT?” without specifying whether they were regular viewers or had only happened upon the channel once or twice but never returned to it.

The RIA Novosti team also purportedly debunked RT’s claim to have 7 million viewers across six European countries by explaining the numbers were extrapolated from a phone survey asking people simply, “Have you watched RT?” without specifying whether they were regular viewers or had only happened upon the channel once or twice but never returned to it.

“In 7 years of work,” the documents state, “RT has never divulged a single, absolute figure confirmed by measurements of its audience. All the press releases put out by the channel about its viewing abroad are based on playing with relative numbers: the audience doubled, the coverage is 60% greater than its competitors, and so on. The only absolute figure on the RT site is that the television audience consists of 630 million people in 100 countries of the world. In reality, this number is only the potential geographical scope of the audience.”The RIA Novosti team also contested RT’s much-hyped online presence, especially the meaning of its outwardly circulated statistic—“chief object of pride for the channel”—that its YouTube account has had over 1 billion views. Most of the views, however, have come from videos “not pertaining to the main goals of the channel”—that is, providing a “Russian viewpoint” on global politics.

The RIA Novosti team also contested RT’s much-hyped online presence, especially the meaning of its outwardly circulated statistic—“chief object of pride for the channel”—that its YouTube account has had over 1 billion views. Most of the views, however, have come from videos “not pertaining to the main goals of the channel”—that is, providing a “Russian viewpoint” on global politics.It also seems that “soft news”—described mordantly by the RIA Novosti team as “bums, metrosexuals, etc.”—accounted for 23 million views of RT’s top 100 clips, which was far more traffic than any videos on Russian or Western politics or those featuring Vladimir Putin. Only 200,000, for example, watched Putin’s inauguration for his third term as Russia’s president; a meager 45,000 an exclusive interview he gave to RT. Putin’s most popular video? Singing “Blueberry Hill” at a charity benefit in St. Petersburg in 2010.

It also seems that “soft news”—described mordantly by the RIA Novosti team as “bums, metrosexuals, etc.”—accounted for 23 million views of RT’s top 100 clips, which was far more traffic than any videos on Russian or Western politics or those featuring Vladimir Putin. Only 200,000, for example, watched Putin’s inauguration for his third term as Russia’s president; a meager 45,000 an exclusive interview he gave to RT. Putin’s most popular video? Singing “Blueberry Hill” at a charity benefit in St. Petersburg in 2010.
Of the top 100 most-watched over five years, 81 percent—344 million views—went to videos of natural disasters, accidents, crime, and natural phenomenon. RT’s political news videos, featuring the content by which it seeks to shape Western opinion and thus justify its existence, accounted for a mere 1 percent of its total YouTube exposure, with fewer than 4 million views.

Also, the “etc.” after bums and metrosexuals tilts heavily in the direction of natural disasters. RT’s top-five YouTube videos include one about Japan’s 2011 earthquake and one about a “golden voiced” homeless man from Ohio whose story went viral that same year. To RT’s credit, its most popular installment on the site is about Russia: a video of a meteor explosion that stirred panic in the Urals region in 2013.

The Daily Beast’s review of the RT YouTube page shows the most-watched videos have not changed since the RIA Novosti spreadsheet was created in 2013.
Worse for a network with its ever-rising budget—nearly 12 billion rubles for 2014—is that only 13 of the top 100 videos were made with original materials. The rest were based on materials obtained from other sources, “including video purchased from Western agencies” such as Reuters or the Associated Press, or social media users.

“High view counts for RT clips are explained by the fact that the channel uploads a lot of non-original content to [YouTube], which other TV channels don’t upload because of copyright restraints,” the documents explain. “RT purchases expensive web distribution rights and puts out clips made with agency content, while world news leaders upload content largely based on their own shooting.”

RT Documentary, cited as one of the brand’s least popular YouTube channels, got an average of 200 to 300 views per video in 2013. The Daily Beast found that now, only about 100 of RT Documentary’s videos have had more than 10,000 views. Many of the most-watched are part of a graphic birthing series called “newborn Russia.”

The RIA Novosti documents also note that even much-advertised programs, such as a talk show hosted by controversial WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, seldom have high view counts on YouTube. (RT’s Assange channel videos, for instance, rarely top 100,000 views.)
Most of Belkina’s response to The Daily Beast’s specific questions focused on RT’s online presence. “Online, according to SimilarWeb, RT has greater audience than any other non-Anglo-Saxon international TV new channel. On YouTube, RT is #1 TV news network in the world with 2.7 billion views (nearly 1.5 billion of that is on its flagship English-language channel),” she wrote in an email.

“RT thrives on covering topics that make the U.S. look bad,” a flattering New York magazine profile of the network stated in 2013, the year RIA Novosti’s opposition research was commissioned. “Third-party candidates, after all, embody defiance of America’s ruling political elite. Occupy Wall Street gave us images of NYPD officers pepper-spraying peaceful protesters and roughing up members of the press.”

However, interspersed with coverage of Occupy or dark-horse Democratic candidates is RT’s more frequent fare of conspiracy theories and Kremlin-driven disinformation campaigns about how, say, the CIA invented the Ebola virus as a biological weapon or how the 9/11 attacks were an “inside job.” More recently, RT has suggested that the chemical attack in Damascus in August 2013 was “staged” by anti-government rebels, and that the Ukrainian government was guilty of “genocide” in its ongoing war with Russian-backed separatists.

Such frequent dips into the fever swamps of falsifiable nonsense have landed the network in trouble in its most successful European market. Earlier this year, Ofcom, Britain’s national media regulator, announced that it was holding its sixth inquiry into RT’s alleged violations of broadcasting standards on impartiality. (The maximum penalty for falling afoul of Ofcom is losing one’s television license, which means ceasing to broadcast in Britain.)

The network freely admits that it traffics in “alternative” explanations for internationally scrutinized events—albeit explanations that have little or no basis in fact. Nor is it a coincidence that these broadcasts are presented by polished, English-speaking presenters who look and sound as if they might have stepped off the sets of MSNBC or the BBC.
Which is precisely the point. “RT names its competitors the news channels CNN, Fox, BBC, CNBC, MSNBC, Sky and also channels funded by governments—Al Jazeera and CCTV,” one document states. “But compared to the leading news channels on the distribution network, RT does not bear comparison with the others on the sizes of the audiences claimed—the others are watched by tens of millions of people a day, and RT by tens of thousands.”

The question of whether or not the Putin government is getting value for ruble with RT is likely the RIA Novosti team’s most damning finding. A graph shows that the network’s annual costs are more than double those of Al Jazeera, which made television rankings in 32 countries when looking at both its Arabic- and English-language varieties. Another competitor, Euronews, cost $9,200,000 to RT’s $168,300,000—and made ratings in 12 countries to RT’s one. The BBC cost $222 million, and made “almost all” TV ratings considered.

— With additional reporting from Michael Weiss

Source: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/17/putin-s-propaganda-tv-lies-about-ratings.html

Do I ever trust a Russian PhD again?

</end editorial>

It’s not for oil or guns. It’s for plagiarized dissertations. And every self-respecting doctor, lawyer, and politician in the country wants one.

By Leon Neyfakh

In a satisfying twist, one of the uncredited guests in Naryshkin’s thesis—a 196-page paper titled “Foreign Investment in Russia as a Factor in Economic Development”—was an unabashedly liberal economist named Vladislav Inozemtsev. “It’s quite amusing that a prominent member of United Russia decided to turn to my article,” Inozemtsev said at the time. “It seems he found it to be of good quality.”

Of course, no one really believed that Naryshkin had read Inozemtsev’s article or that he was guilty of copying it himself. Rather, he was suspected of paying a ghostwriter to produce a thesis in his name, then bribing academic officials to secure its certification. Naryshkin probably never even read the dissertation that had earned him his degree.

In the United States, the exposure of a government official of Naryshkin’s stature as a plagiarist would likely set off a major scandal. (Imagine if Paul Ryan was found to have written an economics paper in which he had borrowed liberally from Paul Krugman.) Naryshkin’s fate hasn’t been so dire. After giving a half-hearted statement in his own defense—“I was told that some website published some information. But I trust the judgment of real scientists”—he continued doing his job as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

To be fair, nothing much had. As Naryshkin himself surely knew when the accusations against him were leveled, he is just one of more than 1,000 high-achieving, well-heeled Russians who have recently been caught plagiarizing large parts of their dissertations.

Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images

Many of the alleged fraudsters are politicians. Some are judges. Others are prosecutors, police officials, and heads of universities; one was a bureaucrat in charge of overseeing Russia’s circus industry. In the past few years alone, there have been credible allegations of dissertation plagiarism made against Russia’s minister of culture, the governor of St. Petersburg, and the head of the country’s top federal investigating authority. Just in the past month, copy-and-pasting has been discovered in the dissertations of the deputy finance minister of the Russian republic of Mordovia and a government adviser on justice who is the putative author of a thesis comparing legal principles in Russia and the West.

In all these cases, the alleged fraud was exposed by members of a volunteer organization that calls itself “Dissernet”—the “website” Naryshkin referred to so dismissively. Started in early 2013 by a handful of scientists and journalists, the group has undertaken the task of identifying and publicly shaming government functionaries, academic administrators, and members of Russia’s so-called elite who allegedly hold advanced degrees they did not earn through legitimate means. Using software that looks for sections of text that resemble previously published work, Dissernet has, to date, identified roughly 5,600 suspected plagiarists and published damning reports on about 1,300 of them. In an exposé posted earlier this year, Dissernet showed that 1 in 9 members of the Russian State Duma—the parliamentary body that Naryshkin presides over—had received their diplomas using dissertations that contained large portions of other people’s work and that had, most likely, been purchased from ghostwriters.

Andrei Rostovtsev, a physicist who co-founded Dissernet and developed its plagiarism-detection software, explained to me how the group catches its quarry. “Currently we’re doing doctors,” he said. “The machine is constantly working, and it chooses suspicious cases. So, we see from the state library that roughly 100,000 doctors have defended theses in the last 15 years. The machine chooses a paper from this digital bank, analyzes it for overlaps, and if there are too many matches, it flags it for us. Then our volunteers examine it by hand. And this process is running 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

Andrei Rostovtsev

Dissernet is best understood as a diffuse network of anonymous activists, described by one of the group’s leaders in a recent article as being motivated by a concern that Russian science “has become a breeding ground for the development of low and shameful human vices—vanity, hypocrisy, and the will to achieve professional success through dishonest methods.” Rostovtsev estimates that there are several dozen people around the world contributing to the effort on a regular basis while he and a few other core members serve as its public face.

The organization’s informal structure—it has no physical headquarters or central bank account—is essential to its survival. Serguei Parkhomenko, a prominent liberal journalist who joined Dissernet after writing extensively about its early disclosures,explained recently that “when there is no head, there is nothing to tear off.” Still, the group’s leaders have faced occasional bursts of hostility from the powerful individuals that Dissernet targets. One of the founders was accused of tax evasion earlier this year, and just last week, Parkhomenko was called in for questioning by investigators from the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Some of the intellectual theft Dissernet has identified is comic in its brazenness and absurdity. Duma member Igor Igoshin allegedly earned his economics degree byturning someone else’s paper on the Russian chocolate industry into a thesis on meat; the dissertation replaced every mention of “chocolate” with “beef,” “dark chocolate” with “home-grown beef,” and “white chocolate” with “imported beef.” All numbers, charts, and analysis were preserved in their original form. More recently, Dissernet revealed that an oncologist named Yuri Tsarapkin had handed in a medical article about breast cancer that was adapted—data and all—from someone else’s paper on stomach cancer. That paper, which was presented as a study of human subjects, turned out to have been plagiarized from yet another source: a study of cancer in dogs and rats.

While academic fraud exists all over the world, the pervasiveness of the deception in Russia is unparalleled, as is the extent to which it is tolerated. As MIT historian Loren Graham points out, even Vladimir Putin has been accused, in a 2006 investigation by the Brookings Institution, of plagiarizing parts of his Ph.D. thesis in economics. It has not had much effect on the Russian president’s career. “The fact that that had no resonance—doesn’t that sort of tell you what’s going on?” said Graham, who specializes in the history of Russian science. “If Putin can get away with it, it’s a blessing for others to do the same thing.”

Quantifying the scale of Russia’s plagiarism problem is difficult, but based on the data it has collected so far, Dissernet estimates that improper borrowing can be found in about 4 percent of all dissertations defended in the country. That doesn’t include ghostwritten work that is plagiarism-free: According to Ararat Osipian, who completed a Ph.D. on academic corruption at Vanderbilt University and is now doing field work on the subject in Ukraine, between 20 percent and 30 percent of all dissertations that have been completed at Russian universities since the fall of the Soviet Union were purchased on the black market.

This market feeds on the Russian elite’s surprisingly intense yearning for the markers of academic status. According to Parkhomenko, Russian bureaucrats, lawmakers, doctors, and businesspeople regard advanced degrees as part of the same “package of success” as expensive jewelry, fancy cars, and giant homes. “If a person has achieved this—if he could get himself this title, it is supposed to mean he is capable of something in life,” Parkhomenko said. “It means he’s worthy of respect.”

Andrei Zayakin, another Dissernet co-founder, summed it up this way: “A RussianDonald Trump would certainly have a dissertation—maybe two or three.”

The purpose of Dissernet is not merely to discredit these individuals. Its greater mission, its leaders told me, is to restore the very concept of “reputation” in Russian society.

Serguei Parkhomenko

“We want to show that reputation matters—that it means something,” said Parkhomenko. “The fake dissertations are just part of what we call the reputational catastrophe in Russia—an anti-meritocracy in which people who have the most success and who can achieve the most influence are not those who deserve it, but those who do not present themselves as who they really are.”

* * *

The prevalence of academic fraud in Russia is fueled in part by the structure of the country’s higher education system. Unlike their American counterparts, would-be academics in Russia can receive doctoral degrees without doing any substantial coursework, as long as they convince a “dissertation board” to approve their theses. These dissertation boards exist inside universities, where they are organized by discipline and staffed by faculty members; there are several thousand of them throughout the country. “If it’s a big university, they might have 10 of these boards, each one devoted to a different academic field—one for European history, one for Russian history, one for philology, one for French language, one for philosophy, and so on,” said Parkhomenko.

Over the past 25 years many of these boards have become corrupt, with faculty members and academic advisers taking bribes in exchange for rubber-stamping obviously shoddy, or stolen, work, according to Osipian, who is not a member of Dissernet. “Everyone wants to get his cut,” he said. “You bought a dissertation, fine, but you still have to pay the people on the board to let this dissertation go through. At these universities, everyone needs money—they are all overworked and underpaid.”

Corrupt dissertation boards, according to Zayakin, are the “core” of the supply chain for academic fraud, and some of them “have effectively become places where fake degrees are manufactured.” But what really makes the system hum is the thriving marketplace of dissertation-writing firms, which often masquerade as mere academic consultancies, that broker deals for buyers. For the most part, these firms do their business out in the open and are easy to find by looking up “dissertation for order” on Google or the Russian search engine Yandex. One representative outfit sports a user-friendly website featuring a picture of a smart-looking man in glasses and offering dissertations for the bargain price of 100,000 rubles (about $1,500). Your order can be ready in as little as 30 days. Customer reviews promise excellent outcomes: “Oleg” reports that the dissertation he received from the company was “perfectly done” and was approved by every expert who examined it. “I couldn’t have done it this well myself,” he avows.

Who is responsible for actually producing the text these companies supply to their clients remains something of a mystery, said Zayakin, though most likely it varies: “We have no access to the internal structure of these mills, so we don’t know who the people are who fabricate the papers,” the physicist told me. “Are they junior faculty members on the board? Are they employees at the university where the thesis board is located? Or are they employees of the front-end firm that sets it up?”

What’s certain is that the firms providing these services tend to be aggressive and entrepreneurial, seeking out potential clients in sectors of the economy where advanced degrees are common. “This industry is set up like any other industry—they don’t wait for clients to come to them, they go out and find them,” said Parkhomenko. “If there’s a person who is the owner of a clothing store, or a chain of stores, at some point he’ll get a visit from a respectable-looking gentleman who comes to his office, and says, ‘It’s time you became a doctor of economics. It’ll be good for your business.’ And he makes the pitch—he has his own marketing materials, he lays out all the options, the different prices, the discounts. It’s no different from an insurance salesman.”

The companies typically offer a range of services, said Osipian, with the median pricefor a made-to-order paper somewhere in the neighborhood of $3,000 and more elaborate packages—which can include a book-length monograph and the creation of an entire bibliography of fake journal articles—running closer to $25,000 or more. “If you’re buying the top-of-the-line services, they will themselves make a deal with the right dissertation council,” said Parkhomenko. “Ideally, you can just pay the money and forget about it, and then they’ll bring you your diploma at home.”

* * *

It didn’t used to be this way. Though it wasn’t unheard of to find Communist Party bosses with ill-gotten diplomas in the Soviet era, academic fraud was not perpetrated as brazenly, or at such an enormous scale, until the 1990s. According to Osipian, the number of dissertations defended in Russia each year jumped from about 15,000 in 1993 to 30,000 in 2005.

Andrei Zayakin

The most straightforward reason that advanced degrees are in such high demand in Russia is that they can bring tangible—that is, monetary—benefits to those who acquire them. In some sectors of the economy, only those with doctorates can be promoted to the highest ranks; in others, including medicine, an advanced degree allows a practitioner to charge more for his services. In politics, the incentives are particularly perverse: Not only do Ph.D.s allow officials who have lost their hold on power to get highly paid jobs as the heads of universities (“where the unlucky or the failed or the stupid can land,” said Zayakin), they also make it easier to profit from other forms of corruption. “Teaching work is one of the few legal spheres of work that active politicians are allowed to do,” said Parkhomenko. “A politician isn’t allowed to do business. But he can be a professor, and he can write books. That’s a great way to launder money. Where did you get this money? Well, I gave lectures. I did consulting. I’m a respected person; I have this income from my scientific teaching work.”

But the value that Russia’s elites place on academic status is not entirely economic. Osipian argues that the country’s past and the proud tradition of scholarly excellence it established during the Soviet era is key to understanding today’s demand for Ph.D.s. “In the Soviet Union, there was enormous prestige around math and science—physics, chemistry, biochemistry, biology—because there was real research being done, and the people doing it were honest and honorable,” he said. That prestige has survived, even as funding for academic work has declined under Putin and many scientists have left for jobs abroad. For those who can afford it, an advanced degree is still a tool for social advancement. According to Gregory Simons, a senior researcher at the Uppsala Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies in Sweden and the co-author of a recent article on corruption in Russian higher education, the explosion in academic fraud in Russia has been fueled by the combination of actual scholars and scientists being underpaid and of socially ambitious professionals having disposable income to spend on status symbols.

“The business developed because the system was made highly bureaucratic … and at the same time the status and pay for academics decreased significantly,” Simons said in an email. “The push and pull factors come together, especially as these new classes—lawyers, politicians and businessmen—were among the new winners in the emerging Russia, accumulating massive wealth in record time but also needing some kind of sense or perception of legitimacy.”

It makes sense that these newly minted strivers would grasp for an old-fashioned marker of accomplishment. At the same time, if everyone who can afford a Ph.D. knows the degrees are manufactured, why do they retain their value? As Loren Graham, the MIT historian, put it, “It’s kind of strange to think about these people who don’t much care that an advanced degree is falsified while at the same time believing that it adds prestige. It seems contradictory. But I’m afraid that’s how it is.”

* * *

The Russian government and its educational institutions have not been entirely indifferent to the country’s plague of academic fraud. In 2012, when it was discoveredthat the head of a prestigious mathematics academy in Moscow, Andrei Andrianov, had faked multiple publications—and later printed up copies of nonexistent academic journals to try to prove his innocence—the Russian Ministry of Education and Science formed a commission to study the problem. Ultimately, the government disbanded the dissertation board at the Moscow State Pedagogical University that had approved Andrianov’s degree, shut down or “froze” some 800 others around the country, and implemented anti-corruption reforms within the central government agency responsible for certifying dissertations.

Mikhail Gelfand

Those reforms have probably made it marginally harder to buy degrees, and according to the historian who led the commission, Igor Fedyukin, the state deserves credit for its efforts. But it is the activity of Dissernet, which gets regular attention in the Russian press and publishes dossiers on one or two plagiarists a day, that has pushed the issue of academic fraud into the public consciousness. “There’s a difference between an open secret and an exposed secret,” said biologist Mikhail Gelfand, another of Dissernet’s founders. “It’s one thing to say that it’s common knowledge that everyone fools around with women. It’s another to show a specific person doing so in a photograph.”

Though only a handful of officials have resigned or been fired over Dissernet’s allegations, the organization’s founders believe their work is making a difference. If nothing else, they say, Russia’s ambitious pseudo-scholars now know that the dissertations being offered to them on the black market are likely to be plagiarized and that buying them carries a certain amount of risk. Perhaps for this reason, said Zayakin, the number of dissertations being defended each year has dropped to where it was in the early ’90s, from approximately 30,000 in 2012 to 16,500 in 2014.

Scaring members of the Russian elite into being less corrupt is undoubtedly a victory. But, as Parkhomenko concedes, it is not the same as making regular people care about academic fraud or convincing them to stop thinking of it as a normal part of life. That is the ultimate goal of Dissernet, he said: “to get people to start caring.”

“A lot of people are ‘exposed’ in Russia,” Parkhomenko said, noting that Sergei Naryshkin has comfortably held onto his position in parliament and within his political party. “The Russian public says, ‘So what? So he stole. Everyone steals. In the end, why would someone be a boss, if he is not stealing?’ So reputation means nothing. The threat—we will ruin your reputation, we will tell everyone you stole—does not produce any effect.’”

If this is true—if the Russian people’s fatalism about corruption really runs so deep—how will Dissernet ever achieve its goal of “restoring the value of reputation”?

“Gradually, gradually,” said Parkhomenko. “Sometimes we do get a reaction—sometimes quite a loud and fervent one. And sometimes we are able to attach this label to people. Everyone knows, for example, that the minister of culture in Russia is a person with two stolen dissertations. It is written in Wikipedia. It comes up as the first result in Google. This is very important, to attach this label to someone, so that it drags behind him. Sooner or later it will mean something.”

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/05/the_thriving_russian_black_market_in_dissertations_and_the_crusaders_fighting.html

SouthFront is a Russian Proxy Site.

Plain, simple, and unabashedly so.

I added them onto my list of “Russian News And Russian Proxy News Sites” after a recommendation by a trusted researcher, Jessika Aro, in Finland.

I was sent a ‘Screen Capture’ and asked to check them out. I checked out what I was sent, which was a copy and paste from their “About” section, here.  Here is a slightly longer excerpt:

SouthFront: Analysis & Intelligence is a public analytical project maintained by an independent  team of experts from the four corners of the Earth focusing on international relations issues and crises and working through a number of media platforms with a special emphasis on social networks. We focus on analysis and intelligence of the ongoing crises and the biggest stories from around the world. The project provides military operations analysis, the military posture of major world powers, and other important data influencing the growth of tensions between countries and nations. We try to dig out the truth on issues which are barely covered by the states concerned and the mainstream media.

Our team is a living proof that ordinary people, volunteers equipped with the newest ideas and technologies, can do what only government and corporate linked organizations were able to do in the past.

Wikileaks proved that anyone concerned could make a great contribution to the triumph of the truth. SouthFront: Analysis & Intelligence has shown that anyone can create and disseminate accurate and timely world-changing content.

Our goals:

• Highlighting alternative points of view
• Providing independent analysis & intelligence of international events
• Breaking through the information blockade and media bias
• Promoting human justice and peaceful dialogue between the warring nations
• Preventing the escalation of conflicts that can lead to wars with the threat of the use of nuclear weapons
• Reducing the flow of media disinformation
• Building a community of constructive and progressive authors freely sharing their views and analysis with people all over the world

I like it!  That’s a nice neutral description of a news site that I’d be proud to work for.  I missed “alternative”, missed the allusion to the”information blockade”.  I should have also picked up on “media disinformation”.  Not enough coffee. Please, Bitch. In my defense, she didn’t include “Our goals” in the screen capture.

Jessika shook her head and said “no (I mentally added some words: “you dumb ass”), look at the site, read it”.

I did and had a totally different takeaway. Here are a few articles and my take:

• Russia Defense Report: Aircraft Carrier Program Glowing report of Russia’s program to improve their carrier fleet (of one)
• International Military Review – Syria, May 20, 2016 Glowing report of Russian operations in Syria
• PayPal Blocked SouthFront’s Account (Important Update) Question, who gets PayPal accounts suspended?   Questionable activities.

My spidey senses started tingling.

• EU DEATH WATCH, PART 2: “NORDIC UNION” What better way to hurt the EU than to sow divisiveness. Classic technique.
• 4 THOUSAND CRUISE MISSILES THAT ARE AIMED AT RUSSIA  Okay, I sense a trend here…
• HOW THE RUSSIAN MIG-29K SENT THE BRITISH TO THE SCRAP HEAP Ding, ding, ding!  We have a loser!

VERY pro-Russian, very anti-Western, very classic Russian proxy site. Better than most, slick, glossy, almost looks professionally done.

<—Check out this pro-Russian (the St. George’s ribbon is your first clue) website screen capture on the left. “Stop the Empire’s war on Russia” didn’t help their cause at all.  

Their Facebook page is no different. https://www.facebook.com/SouthFrontEnTwo/

Want confirmation?  Look at this logo, below, from the archives: 

Oh, God bless these people.  Russians are funny.

The Russian Ministry of Defense called in (summoned him) the US Defense Attache in Moscow to lodge a complaint for the actions of a US RC-135 flying an intelligence collection mission on May 22!  Intelligence collection, in case you don’t know, is allowed by international law in international airspace.

Curiously, I found a dozen Russian reports complaining of a US reconnaissance plane over the Sea of Japan or the South China Sea on May 22, but not a single Western report.  There are numerous reports about the week prior.  Did this even happen?

Please note their exact words “over the Sea of Japan near the state border of the Russian Federation”.  I bullcrap thee not.

Can you imagine being the defense attache in the Moscow Embassy? Knowing you’re being called onto the carpet and being used as a pawn.  I’d stand there, look at Shoygu and just imagine doing something really, really stupid the whole time he was flapping his lips. Like, don’t you have an SUV to pull the handle off of or something?

No crap.  It could not get weirder if I made it up.  I don’t know what Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Shoygu is smoking, but I’d like a hit so I can sleep better tonight.

</End Editorial>

The Ministry of Defense was called the Defence Attaché at the US Embassy because of the incident that occurred on May 22 on the Sea of Japan. It is reported by Department of Press Service and Information Ministry of Defence Russia.

“Representatives of the US Department of Defense, it was stated that the May 22, 2016 by the Russian air defense weapons was discovered reconnaissance aircraft the US Air Force RS-135, which carried out aerial reconnaissance over the Sea of Japan near the state border of the Russian Federation”, – said the agency.

 It is noted that as a result of unprofessional actions of the crew of the US spy plane, a serious danger of a collision with a passenger aircraft has been established.

 May 22 Russian air traffic controllers to change the height of the flight two European liners and thus prevented the two Incidents over the Sea of Japan. The reason for this decision was the fact that it is dangerous to close the plane, which did not respond to the signals. Presumably, it was a US spy.

 Over the past few weeks, American aircraft were made nine reconnaissance flights along the coast of the Kaliningrad region.

Source: http://tvzvezda.ru/news/vstrane_i_mire/content/201605232132-1488.htm

U.S. Cyber Command plans to outsource support for defensive and offensive maneuvers to a team of six contractors, including Booz Allen Hamilton, SAIC and CACI.

The first $82 million task order has been awarded to team member Vencore, said Robert Wade, a contracting officer at the General Services Administration, which handled the deal on behalf of CYBERCOM.

The nearly half-billion dollar project, rounded out by vendors KeyW and Secure Mission Solutions, began May 20 and is scheduled to end in 2021.

The “contracts cover a broad scope of services needed to support the U.S. Cyber Command mission,” Wade said in anaward notice.

There were 17 companies who competed to offer the government the “best value” for the work, he said.

The potentially 5-year project is scheduled to end May 19, 2021.

According to draft contracting documents, computer code capable of scuttling an adversary’s air traffic control, nuclear operations and other critical infrastructure systems was expected to be developed and deployed, with deadly effects, if necessary.

In addition to lethal cyber weapon support, the scope of the contract, as of last September, was anticipated to cover project management, information technology support and safeguarding U.S. military networks, among other things.

The final contract was issued to contenders Oct. 15, 2015, Wade said.

Source: http://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2016/05/cybercom-inks-460m-operations-support-deal-booz-saic-others/128523/