Category Archives: Russia

Russian Disinformation – A Glance at Personality and Ways

30 Tuesday Aug 2016

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Philology, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia

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“I don’t know if these people are acting on orders from Russia, but they are clearly what Lenin called ‘useful idiots,’” said Mika Pettersson, the editor of Finland’s national news agency and an organizer of the editors’ open letter. “They are playing into Putin’s pocket. Nationalist movements in Finland and other European countries want to destabilize the European Union and NATO, and this goes straight into Putin’s narrative.”

Higgins, Andrew.  “Effort to Expose Russia’s ‘Troll Army’ Draws Vicious Retaliation.”  The New York Times, May 30, 2016.

Imagine a person described as follows and excessive in each dimension:

arrogant
conceited
contemptuous
controlling
disingenuous
divisive
egotistical
fearful and suspicious
hubristic
judgmental
lacking in empathy
magical in thinking
narcissistic
possessed of fascist tendencies
suspicious
vulgar

Clone that person, place the clones in power, and call the assembly a state: how would such a state choose to “play” with others — or mess with them?

Consider the weapons —

ad hominem attack
agitation
anti-Semitic cant
assumptive “everyone knows” arguments
bold accusation lacking proof
confusion
defamation
deflection of attention (away from the speaker)
deflection of criticism (of the speaker’s thought)
false presentation (political theater)
framing
libel
misdirection
obfuscation
omission
sloganeering / parroting
questionable basis

“Bold Accusation Lacking Proof” – Reflection in the Mirror

On BackChannels, “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation“: what the aggressor has in mind for the victim he projects to the victim.

It plays this way (excerpted from the above cited article by Higgins):

Mr. Backman, who also represents the Donetsk People’s Republic, the breakaway state set up with Russian support in eastern Ukraine, denied targeting Ms. Aro as part of any “information war.” Rather, he insisted that Russia was itself the victim of a campaign of disinformation and distortion conducted by the West.

BackChannels first approached the topic of Russian disinformation through a compilation  in “Russia’s Disinformation History — Elements” (May 1, 2016).

Highly recommended reading: Pacepa, Ion Mihai and Rychlak, Ronald J.  Disinformation.  Washington, D.C.: WND Books, 2013.

From the Soviet model for casting aspersions, a note from the Holocaust Encyclopedia on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Related: an excerpt from Walter Laqueur in the virtual pages of this blog: “Excerpt – 1920s – The Spread of Hate – Russia -> Germany | An Excerpt from Laqueur”.

From Ukraine: http://www.russialies.com/russias-top-220-lies-international-edition/

Also in The New York Times (published two days ago):

STOCKHOLM — With a vigorous national debate underway on whether Sweden should enter a military partnership with NATO, officials in Stockholm suddenly encountered an unsettling problem: a flood of distorted and outright false information on social media, confusing public perceptions of the issue.

The claims were alarming: If Sweden, a non-NATO member, signed the deal, the alliance would stockpile secret nuclear weapons on Swedish soil; NATO could attack Russia from Sweden without government approval; NATO soldiers, immune from prosecution, could rape Swedish women without fear of criminal charges.

They were all false . . . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/29/world/europe/russia-sweden-disinformation.html – 8/29/2016

Miscellaneous Fast Links Related to Russian Disinformation

https://news.vice.com/article/european-union-prepares-myth-busters-team-to-combat-russian-disinformation – 4/15/2015

http://warontherocks.com/2016/03/russian-hybrid-warfare-and-other-dark-arts/ – 3/11/2016

http://www.jamestown.org/single/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=42745#.V8WDVdQrJlZ – 8/18/2014

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/vladimir-putin-russia-news-media_us_56215944e4b0bce34700b1df – 10/24/2015

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/04/how-the-media-became-putins-most-powerful-weapon/391062/ – 4/21/2015

http://hungarianspectrum.org/2016/08/27/russian-disinformation-in-the-pro-government-hungarian-media/ – 8/27/2016

http://www.stratcomcoe.org/next-phase-russian-information-warfare-keir-giles – (PDF) May 2016.

http://www.fiia.fi/en/publication/588/fog_of_falsehood/ – 5/10/2016:

This report analyses Russian propaganda and disinformation – here collectively called strategic deception – concerning the conflict in Ukraine. The strategic deception is not exclusively a Russian term, but it does capture what we think is an essential feature of the current Russian foreign and security policy. It is driven by attempts to put the adversary into a defensive posture and off balance, and thus, to create conditions for surprise.

The methods utilized in contemporary Russian strategic deception are partly the same that were already used in Soviet propaganda. But where Soviet propaganda was anchored in ideological truth claims, the contemporary Russian variant can be compared to a kaleidoscope: a light piercing through it is instantly transformed into multiple versions of reality.

http://understandrussia.com/russian-soul/ – as found.

The rise of Novorossya is the most significant political development since the collapse of the USSR. It is a new politics, one that combines nationalism and socialism into a Christian, humane and just political order that has not been seen before. That it rises on the ashes of “independent Ukraine” and on Orthodox territory is no accident.

http://www.rusjournal.org/

Posted to YouTube by statewithinastate2, April 29, 2015. Lecturer: Fr. Matthew Raphael Johnson, Ph.D.  Related pages:

http://www.rusjournal.org/
http://www.tradyouth.org/the-orthodox-nationalist/

After the talk, data from the related walk — here’s a record of Russian or Syrian air power associated with the bombing of Syrian hospitals:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/22/three-syrian-hospitals-bombed-since-russian-airstrikes-began-doctors-say – 10/22/2015

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/31/wave-of-russian-air-strikes-on-syrian-hospitals-leaves-60-dead/ – 5/31/2016

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-civil-war-assad-russia-air-strikes-deaths-bombing-hospitals-idlib-maternity-clinic-babies-a7163691.html – 7/30/2016

https://www.amnesty.org/en/press-releases/2016/03/syrian-and-russian-forces-targeting-hospitals-as-a-strategy-of-war/ – 3/3/2016

Posted to YouTube by DailyMilitary.News, Feb. 16, 2016.

Addenda

The characteristics of Russian propaganda are: generating very strong emotions, aggression, and a dramatic departure from reality. Russian television stations, with very few exceptions, create a more and more complicated and unpredictable reality, ‘generate fears, bringing people to the brink of chaos and panic’. Once created, the huge stress damages the mechanism of rational thinking, people are herded into a crowd, where archaic instincts take over, triggered by the simplest of emotions’.[1]

In Russia, whoever is not with the Kremlin, whoever criticizes Putin, or even doubts the righteousness of his policies, is considered a traitor and an enemy. Against the very few who dare express minimal reservations towards official policy, a movement formed recently, with the blessing of power, the Anti-Maidan movement, with the express objective to combat any position, to wipe out the smallest trace of doubt towards Putin’s wisdom. Anti-Maidan fights against the ‘5th column’, the enemy within.[2]

Gosu, Armand and Octavian Manea.  “The Russian Psychological Warfare.”  Black Sea in Access Denial Age, September 11, 2015.

–33–

 

 

 

 

Also in Media – “Russia’s ministries and central bank test readiness for wartime operation mode”

29 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Russia, Ukraine

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A surprise combat-readiness check of the Russian Armed Forces began on August 25 and is due to finish on August 31. As part of the exercises, the southern district troops, part of the troops of the western and central districts, as well as the northern fleet, the Russian Aerospace Forces, and the high command of the Airborne Troops were put in full combat-readiness mode.

Source: Russia’s ministries and central bank test readiness for wartime operation mode – 8/29/2016.

Also in Media — The objectives of operation “Euphrates Shield” | Katehon think tank. Geopolitics & Tradition

29 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Islamic Small Wars, Kurdistan, Russia, Syria, Turkey

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The composition of the Free Syrian Army is the most sensitive issue at this moment because we have been very critical about it. I think these troops are somehow controllable, but there is no guarantee for the future. Experience shows that, in the end, these kinds of groups are steered by global forces. Yet, Turkey considers these groups as moderate opponents to the regime, but we know that Syria and the countries supporting it like Russia consider these groups to be terrorist organizations. So, I believe this is the most difficult issue for Turkey to deal with in cooperation with neighboring countries and Russia. I think that in the upcoming stages of the operation in Syria, this issue will be coordinated in detail with regional countries as well as with Russia. This problem should be solved if we want to create a united front against terrorist groups and the countries supporting them.

Source: The objectives of operation “Euphrates Shield” | Katehon think tank. Geopolitics & Tradition – 8/29/2016.

FTAC – America’s Division Leans Toward Moscow

29 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Politics, Russia, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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It is an awful campaign as well as an awful politics for Americans.

Hillary Clinton – Red-Green alliance
Donald J. Trump – Brown new nationalists

Both themes go back to Moscow (but I may try to give up that obsession for a while). 🙂

Basically, we are too divided a nation, and we should really be wrestling with the sources of that division. They’re not necessarily in our lifestyles nor justified by the latest outrages appearing in the news.

We’ve been a compassionate people, a Christian-majority nation, with a secular Constitution and the courage to have come this far with much of the implementation of its ideals and sense of mission. Why the candidates and the public are whipping up so much mud — or getting into so much trouble — and spattering the same everywhere eludes answers.

Has our nation simply become bored with itself and in a mood to rumble?

Although the Obama Administration appears to be taking the pacifist tack of refusing enmity with Moscow (say, over the demise of Turkey as a NATO-spirited state and potential European Union partner), BackChannels finds it impossible to dismiss the presence of the Cold War’s “Russia v NATO” / “Moscow v Washington” contest over existence beneath the shadow of nuclear mutually assured destruction.

That argument seemed to have been settled in 1991 while functioning democracy and rule of law seemed also to have been on its way to the former Soviet communist state.

What perhaps has gotten in the way is an inherent medievalism characteristic of Russian political culture.

Flipping from the tsars to the Party to the “vertical of power” federation has changed primarily who is in charge, not produced (in the Soviet Era) any “dictatorship of the proletariat” or now in Putin’s era the distribution of power and expansion of economic development familiar to the more true democracies of the west.

One may ask what is happening to those democracies — as well as America’s — as each “Allahu Akbar attack” promotes xenophobic nationalism and post-Soviet disinformation produces legions of misdirected “old comrade network” politicos and strident (also anti-Semitic) Muslims and “Islamists” (on BackChannels, the two intertwine to become the “Red-Green Alliance” involving organizations as familiar as Black Lives Matter, Palestinian Solidarity, and International Solidarity).

This is really a “Syndicate Red Brown Green” post.

One should ask: what is Syndicate Red Brown Green doing in the United States?

How is it that whether generally aligned with the Democratic Party or the Republican, we appear — at least as portrayed through general mass media — to have become vicious toward one another?

While Russians in their majority continue on track with economic suffering (and Syrians not directly protected by Assad continue suffering Russians), “Moscow” appears to be getting “Washington” to look much like itself with breathtaking corruption associated with candidate Clinton and in Trump the now recognizable brawling, sprawling, and outsized narcissism more familiar to Moscow lackeys like Ukraine’s former president Viktor Yanukovych.

Trump, to his credit and perhaps innocence after all, has yet to rack up a record of scandals associated with a term in office, but for that odds may be even between Clinton, the consummate Washington insider, and himself, the very opposite as a Washington outsider.

Here at the beginning of this day, the heightened “Red-Green” presence in the Democratic Party and its reflection in the “Brown” resurgent populist nationalism of the Republican Party bode ill for the United States as we approach the November elections.

Reference

Breslow, Jason M. “Inequality and the Putin Economy: Inside the Numbers.”  Frontline, January 13, 2015.

This online journal is a forum for some of the more recent academic essays of Professor Matthew Raphael Johnson. Given current events in eastern Ukraine and Russia’s extraordinary rebuke to American liberal arrogance internationally, alternative and revisionist work on Russian history and politics is sorely needed. He was the first among English speaking Orthodox writers to understand Putin as a needed balance to the American empire. This postmodern imperium, headquartered in the US, is a demonic, serpentine dominion that spreads the postmodern acid of American mass-zombification to the world. It is Antichrist.

The Soviet empire was malignant, but what replaced it in the 1990s was worse. The Russia that survived Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin almost disappeared under liberalism. It was the creation of the American postmodern Imperium. It is more insidious and sophisticated than the USSR because it is not based on state power. Instead, it is based on the rule of private capital. The cosmopolitan and neurotic American capitalist seeks to “liberate the individual” so as to more easily enslave him to his passions. Then, this isolated mass-man, this crippled, malformed cipher of a human being, is offered the satisfaction of his passions for a fee.

The rise of Novorossya is the most significant political development since the collapse of the USSR. It is a new politics, one that combines nationalism and socialism into a Christian, humane and just political order that has not been seen before. That it rises on the ashes of “independent Ukraine” and on Orthodox territory is no accident.

Johnson, Matthew Raphael.  Selected Essays.  (Website).  The Russian Orthodox Medievalist.

Graham-Harrison, Emma.  “Russian airstrikes in Syria killed 2,000 civilians in six months.”  The Guardian, March 15, 2016.

Updated Reference

Persuade Me Politics.  “Donald Trump: Patriot, Savior or Tyrant?  (Part 1).  October 5, 2016.

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Books – Excerpts – Shultz lectures Gorbachev – Gaddis’s The Cold War & New Era Begun – Dawisha’s Putin’s Kleptocracy

25 Thursday Aug 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Russia

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Shultz began by lecturing Gorbachev, as early as 1985, on the impossibility of a closed society being a prosperous society: “People must be free to express themselves, move around emigrate and travel if they want to . . . Otherwise they can’t take advantage of the opportunities available.  The Soviet economy will have to be radically changed to adapt to the new era.” “You should take over the planning office here in Moscow,” Gorbachev joked, “Because you have more ideas than they have.”  In a way, this is what Shultz did.  Over the next several years, he used his trips to that city to run tutorials for Gorbachev and his advisers, even bringing pie charts to the Kremlin to Illustrate his argument that as long as it regained a command economy, the Soviet Union would fall further and further behind the rest of the developed world.

Gorbachev was surprisingly receptive.  He echoed some of Shultz’s thinking in his 1987 book, Perestroika:  “How can the economy advance,” he asked, “if it creates preferential conditions for backward enterprises and penalizes the foremost ones?”

Gaddis, John Lewis. The Cold War: A New History. P. 233.  New York: The Penguin Press, 2005.

Ah, were those not the days?

Times changed and perhaps in ways the West would not have anticipated nor intended.

Call this a bonus quote from another book listed in the “Russian Section” of this blog:

Khodorkovskiy moved to establish links with the West, but those financial circles recall that when they first met him and his team, the Russians didn’t how to use a credit card, they didn’t know how to write a check, and they didn’t have money enough to stay even in a hostel.  They were quick learners, but as Anton Surkov, an independent security expert who had previously served in Soviet military intelligence and who knew Khodorkovskiy and those like him in the late 1980s, stated, “It was impossible to work in the black market without KGB connections and without protection from the KGB.  Without them, no shadow business was possible. . . .  The creation of the oligarchs was a revolution engineered by the KGB, but then they lost control.”  As to whether Khodorkovskiy’s Bank Menatep was indeed one of the many vehicles used to launder CPSU money, as the legend goes, one of the five major initial shareholders, Mikhayl Brudno, who fled to Israel when Khodorkovskiy was arrested under Putin in 2003, simply said, “It can’t be ruled out that some companies that belonged somehow to the Communist Party were clients, but we were not able to identify them as such.”

Posted to YouTube by the Woodrow Wilson Center, October 23, 2014.

Referenced: Dawisha, Karen.  Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?  New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014.

While Karen Dawisha’s book covers the development of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle from seemingly earliest acquaintance, BackChannels would have to re-read old and read “unreads” from the “Russian Section” of this blog’s library to note and gather together the hints of transition planning in the five to ten year span preceding the official dissolving of the Soviet Union on December 26, 1991.

–33–

Also in Media – “Russia-Iran-Turkey Alliance Could Change Energy Dynamics For Good” | OilPrice.com

23 Tuesday Aug 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, International Development, Politics, Russia, Turkey

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Turkey’s resentment towards the European Union is nothing new. Erdogan has been vocal about his negative reactions to some requirements in Turkey’s EU accession process. He is also in a position to pull the strings on much of Europe’s migrant policy, and is making good use of this position. What Turkey’s President has made even better use of is the anti-Western rhetoric and the visions of a “great-again” Turkey. The former has been instrumental in diverting public attention away from a lawsuit in Italy against his son for money laundering.

Apparently, the Greater Turkey vision cannot be realized with the EU constantly demanding things from Ankara that Ankara does not want to do, such as synchronizing its anti-terrorism policies with the EU, for example. It can, however, be realized if Turkey gets on the anti-West bandwagon driven by Russia and Iran, both survivors from Western sanctions, and both having their own regional ambitions.

Source: Russia-Iran-Turkey Alliance Could Change Energy Dynamics For Good | OilPrice.com – 8/22/2016

FTAC – A Compressed Note about “Assad OR The Terrorists”

21 Sunday Aug 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Iran, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia, Syndicate Red Brown Green, Syria

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Keep in mind that “Daesh” was incubated (manipulated into existence) by Bashar al-Assad to serve for political blackmail (“Assad OR The Terrorists”), as a goad to the west (a nice present to pack along with refugees bound for NATO states), as a foil (for Russian, Syrian, and Iranian forces), and for target practice (Russia has been showing off). https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/02/syria-assad-vs-the-terrorists-how-isis-defends-assad/

BackChannels readers are more than welcome to independently research and review each claim.

BackChannels believes that the “Syrian Conflict and Tragedy” represents a complete theater of politics and war put on display by Putin, Assad, Khamenei and with Baghdadi’s organization their most useful villain.

Moscow’s own approach to terrorism, generally speaking, may be reflected in its hosting PFLP in Moscow (Nov. 2014) and refusing to designate either Hamas or Hezbollah as terrorist organizations.  Although its state interests may differ from those of Tehran, its relationship has proven friendly enough for flying sorties into Syria from out of an Iranian base.

BackChannels way of addressing this relationship between “political absolutists”: “Different Talks – Same Walk.”

–33–

Also in Media – From 2014 – Anton Shekhovtsov’s blog: “Pro-Russian network behind the anti-Ukrainian defamation campaign”

21 Sunday Aug 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Politics, Russia, Syndicate Red Brown Green, Ukraine

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3 February 2014

Pro-Russian network behind the anti-Ukrainian defamation campaign

Read this article in German, French, Russian and Ukrainian.

There has been a huge tide of false, incorrect and bloated reports that exaggerate or overemphasize the significance of the far right in the current Euromaidan protests in Ukraine. A Moscow-based journalist Alec Luhn writes in The Nation about “the Ukrainian nationalism at the heart of ‘Euromaidan’”, a leftist Seumas Milne argues in The Guardian that “in Ukraine, fascists, oligarchs and western expansion are at the heart of the crisis”, while a self-styled “independent geopolitical analyst” Eric Draitser, in his nauseatingly misleading piece for his own Stop Imperialism (later re-published by The Centre for Research on Globalization), even goes so far as to claim that “the violence on the streets of Ukraine […] is the latest example of the rise of the most insidious form of fascism that Europe has seen since the fall of the Third Reich”.

These and many other similar articles are all written according to the same pattern, and their aim is to discredit the Euromaidan protests as the manifestations of fascism, neo-Nazism or – at the very least – right-wing extremism.

Read More at the Source: Anton Shekhovtsov’s blog: Pro-Russian network behind the anti-Ukrainian defamation campaign – 2/3/2014