18 Sunday Sep 2016
Tags
Posted to YouTube by Channel 4 News, September 18, 2016.
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/05/01/russias-disinformation-history-elements/
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/02/syria-assad-vs-the-terrorists-how-isis-defends-assad/
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/08/04/ftac-medieval-vs-modern-one-more-time/
https://www.hrw.org/news/2011/06/01/syria-crimes-against-humanity-daraa – 6/1/2011
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05 Monday Sep 2016
In the unruly and frequently unpredictable way of the web, Jakub Janda’s “Czech intelligence alarmed by Russian ‘threat'” (Sept. 2) showed up on the desktop unaccompanied by other recent or breaking “influence news” and was simply passed along by BackChannels.
Not thirty minutes later (and published just six hours ago):
U.S. intelligence officials described the covert influence campaign here as “ambitious” and said it is also designed to counter U.S. leadership and influence in international affairs.
Related in The Washington Post: “Russia’s anti-American fever goes beyond the Soviet era’s” (Michael Birnbaum, March 8, 2015).
Related in Defense One: http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2016/07/how-putin-weaponized-wikileaks-influence-election-american-president/130163/ (Patrick Tucker, July 24, 2016).
With even a little looking into “Russian influence operations”, one finds gems.
Here’s one from France:
The French Coordination Council of Compatriots is a subsidiary of the International Council of Russian Compatriots established in October 2003, the Putin equivalent of the Ausland Organization (AO) created by the Nazi Party in 1931 in order to mobilize the German diasporas to serve the Reich. This network now relies on the “Russian world” (Russkiy mir), an organization founded in 2007, which signed a collaboration agreement with the Orthodox Church in November 2009.[2] The first Forum of Russian Compatriots was held in France in September 2011 at the Russian Embassy. At the 3rd Forum organized in October 2013, French citizens of Russian origin were explicitly invited by the attending representatives of the Russian authorities to become vectors of the Kremlin’s policy in France.[3] In France the role of the Moscow Patriarchate in the seduction of the conservative right should not be underestimated. Since 2000 the Moscow Patriarchate has been taking over Russian Orthodox parishes formerly in the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, reportedly with the occasional help of the Russian special services.
http://www.statecraft.org.uk/research/russian-party-france (Francoise Thom, June 15, 2016). The Thom’s article is rich with information on Moscow’s infiltration of France’s cultural and political machinery.
From UK Scotland comes an account of “framing”, a technique that takes a given reality but sets out to cast the same in a disparaging manner:
It was a moment in which the people of Scotland were vulnerable, says independence campaigner Douglas Daniel, who was present at the vote count and wrote about it for the political website Wings Over Scotland.
At the time, he says, he knew nothing about the ROIIP team.
“It wasn’t until the articles speaking about ‘Russia’ and saying the process was flawed [appeared] that I became aware of their existence,” says Daniel.
Sure enough, by the end of the day after the vote, the ROIIP delegation’s damning verdict was all over the British and Russian press.
The vote in Scotland “[did] not conform to generally accepted international principles of referendums,” said Borisov, the delegation’s head.
https://www.occrp.org/en/investigations/5368-brexit-how-russian-influence-undermines-public-trust-in-referendums – June 20, 2016 by Iggy Ostanin and Eleanor Rose for the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, which is supported by “grants by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), the United States Department of State, the Swiss Confederation, the Open Society Foundations (OSF), Google Ideas and the Knight Foundation, i.e., Moscow’s opposition, including George Soros, whose own organization may have taken on some life of its own through staffers now associated with Black Lives Matter and other “western critics” (to put it very mildly).
In the above cited quotation and article, the “ROIIP” was Russia’s “election monitoring” organization that ended up predictably devising and promoting criticism certain to cause dissension in the Scottish electorate.
Again (if you’re a BackChannels regular, you seen this point made many times), the purpose of the spin appears to be that of sowing discord and conflict in Moscow’s target states.
The point was writ large with the January 2016 announcement of a Congressionally-backed mission to review of clandestine Russian funding of European parties over the last decade:
A dossier of “Russian influence activity” seen by The Sunday Telegraph identified Russian influence operations running in France, the Netherlands, Hungary as well as Austria and the Czech Republic, which has been identified by Russian agents as an entry-point into the Schengen free movement zone.
The US intelligence review will examine whether Russian security services are funding parties and charities with the intent of “undermining political cohesion”, fostering agitation against the Nato missile defence programme and undermining attempts to find alternatives to Russian energy.
Related (possibly): Bertrand, Natasha. “America’s top spy just hinted at how much leverage Russia truly has over Washington.” Business Insider, Military & Defense, July 29, 2016.
http://www.fpri.org/article/2015/10/russian-propaganda-disinformation-and-estonias-experience/ – 10/4/2015
http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/russians-estonia-twenty-years-after – 7-8/2014 (Backgrounder involving Russophone relationships in Russia’s “near abroad”):
As I remember it, the first signs of danger started appearing close to ten years ago, when, after the breakup of the Soviet Union, many people in Russia and in former Soviet republics started expressing their discontent about the poor economic situation, social inequality, and political chaos. The post-Soviet emphasis on developing democracy gradually started to fade, replaced with other concerns, above all a critical attitude toward the United States and the West in general, which was considered to be responsible for the decline of Russia. The message of the Russian powers had changed, and everything from television and large-scale events to daily interactions and personal attitudes reflected this. The Soviet Union and its World War II victory became more hallowed; red flags, red stars, and portraits of Lenin and Stalin reappeared. So too did the glorification of the Russian Empire. Drivers in Ida-Viru County, for example, decorated their cars with the orange-and-black Ribbon of St. George, a symbol of military valor in czarist Russia. In an attempt to show pride in their Russian heritage by supporting both czarist and Soviet imperialism, these patriots seemed to forget that the Bolsheviks oppressed recipients of the Order of St. George and executed many of them.
Works by energy consultant Agnia Grigas always prove enlightening as regards Russian influence and policy in its foreign relations.
Ten days ago, yet another far-right party supporting Russia gained a foothold in an EU country, this time Slovakia. People’s Party, Our Slovakia won 8% of the vote in national elections, joining a burgeoning club including Hungary’s Jobbik, Greece’s Golden Dawn and Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France.
The far-right parties, which often stem from neo-Nazi groups and sport crypto-fascist insignia, are the most visible layer of the pro-Russia camp in Europe. With Europe engulfed in a migrant crisis sparked by the war in Syria, their anti-immigrant and anti-EU rhetoric is in hot demand across the continent, particularly in the east. Party leaders are frequent guests in Moscow, and many of them are closely linked to Russia’s own reactionary networks. Together, they are nudging the political mainstream toward radical nationalism, which these days often comes hand in hand with pro-Russian sentiment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_influence_operations_in_Estonia
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05 Monday Sep 2016
Tags
counter-intelligence, Czech Republic, disinformation, information control, information warfare, intelligence, political influence, Russia
“Intelligence officers under diplomatic cover were active also at the embassies of other states; however, the number of Russian intelligence officials was much higher. Unlike intelligence officials of partner states, Russian (and some other) intelligence officers did not declare their status to the BIS”, it added.“Such clandestine behaviour, concealing the affiliation to an intelligence service, clearly signals activities threatening the security and other interests of the Czech Republic”.
Read more at Czech intelligence alarmed by Russian ‘threat’, EUObserver, September 2, 2016.
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03 Wednesday Aug 2016
Tags
Cold War, disinformation, foreign affairs, information space, information warfare, politics, post-Soviet, public perception, Russia, Soviet
(In addition to having been a brutal dictatorship — one that stooped so low as to rob children of food to fund the building of palaces — and state sponsor of terrorism, Hussein’s Iraq had related to the Soviet through the Baath Party and Pan-Arab Nationalism. The dissolving of the Soviet — a murderous system of Party patronage and privilege — may have set up client states for regime change in some form. The Cold War label is well known but 25 years after is was over, it may be regarded as ancient history on campus when in fact it continues to resonate in foreign affairs. Recommended reading for any who may wish to catch up with the near past: https://www.amazon.com/Cold-War-New-History/dp/0143038273.
I feel strongly that citizens of open democracies should be familiar with how the Soviet worked to disinform “the masses” and abuse, manipulate, meddle, misguide, and, in a sense, master others, including Muslims, in the Party’s ambition to impose its will on the world. https://conflict-backchannels.com/library/russian-section/ & a contemporary analysis of one facet of Russian manipulation and control in “information space” — http://cimsec.org/cutting-fog-reflexive-control-russian-stratcom-ukraine/20156
Because international affairs are complex in their history and political science and because popular media, from early broadsheets and flyers to this day’s immense array of online information, reduced the image of issues — like “regime change in Iraq” — the on-campus and public perceptions of many conflicts have been crude compared with the knowledge of nonpartisan academics and professional analysts in government and research. I try with Back-Channels, my blog, to bridge that gap while continuing to educate myself in these areas.
Whether Iraq or Vietnam, the free publics of the open democracies — not subject to state-controlled press — should be able to “see” — interpret and perceive — the Cold War, Vietnam, and Iraq and other struggles with much, much greater accuracy. I’ve had some personal leisure and the ability to purchase used books on Amazon, and the experience has shifted my views toward the conservative center).
The passage was written as an aside within a thread focusing on America’s new Muslim war hero Humayun Khan, a casualty of the war in Iraq, and the Muslim world’s view of American intercession as an invader. Conservative Australian politician Sherry Sufi — Policy Chairman, Liberal Party of Australia — posed the question this way:
Muslims view George W Bush’s Iraq War as a foreign invasion to usurp the nation’s oil under the pretence of neutralising Saddam’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction. I’m curious about Muslims that are now hailing American soldier Humayun Khan as a hero who died in Iraq while serving American interests after his parents used his death to boost support for Hillary Clinton at the Democratic National Convention. Does this mean he wasn’t a foreign invader?
BackChannels may either keep its own counsel as regards America’s 2016 election season or take the middle of the road approach to either “he” or “she” being elected.
As a blog about conflict (culture, language, and psychology), dealing with the dissension and polarization evident in American politics seems at once both too near and too ugly for short address.
What seemed a component missing in the responses to Sufi’s question was the Cold War Era and America’s possible approach to Russia and related post-Soviet foreign policy, which would be to see the dictatorships replaced with nascent modern democracies. Although Iraq and Libya may be contested and war torn states, they are no longer established tyrannies, Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi having long made their passage into history.
At Syria, Putin made public (in a kind of gambit with Obama) the switching of course from modern democracy to a post-modern medieval system of centralized power, patronage, and privilege.
BackChannels believes Orwell would recognize Putin’s World and its encouragement of Far Right and Far Left politics — Black, Red, Brown, and Green — and, as happened elsewhere in the 1960s and beyond, promote war without end but to its own advantage in the twin promotions of fear and and power. Along those lines, BackChannels readers may wish to take note of Soviet political manipulation associated with the Ogaden War between Somalia and Ethiopia in the late 1970s. This piece published by the BBC on that war gets at the agitation developed to get the war started for Somali militia and later the Russian rescue of the Ethiopian Army with arms sales sufficient to turn back Somali gains:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03pk9c1 (April 7, 2016).
In the broad and crazy retelling of the story in Wikipedia, Russia, the Soviet, found itself backing both states in the contest for the Ogaden, but the BBC interview goes down into the details of how Somali forces were moved into action in the Ogaden at the urging of renowned Admiral Sergey Gorshkov who told Somali General Mohamed Noor Galal (still living) that he wanted the imperialists (western interests) out of the Horn of Africa.
“Grand Game” politics, Soviet style?
Are these wars a part of a dance taking place between antagonists for resources plus political control and power?
Without that BBC interview, one returns to a more general interpretation of events.
Echoing Wikipedia, the Polynational War Memorial page for “Ethiopia vs Somalia” summarizes the politics this way:
The Ogaden War was a conventional conflict between Somalia and Ethiopia in 1977 and 1978 over the Ogaden region of Ethiopia. Fighting erupted as Somalia sought to exploit a temporary shift in the regional balance of power in their favor to occupy the Ogaden region, claimed to be part of Greater Somalia. In a notable illustration of the nature of Cold War alliances, the Soviet Union switched from supplying aid to Somalia to supporting Ethiopia, which had previously been backed by the United States, prompting the U.S. to start supporting Somalia. The war ended when Somali forces retreated back across the border and a truce was declared.
For all the death and wreckage involved, who got what out of the Ogaden War?
Who profited?
BackChannels doesn’t have the answer but knows the maneuvering and manipulation repeatedly produce bloody results that don’t seem to translate into broad local, national, or regional lifestyle improvements.
In fictional language, one might write, “There was a war that changed nothing.”
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21 Thursday Jul 2016
Posted in Also in Media
As his army blatantly annexed Crimea, Vladimir Putin went on TV and, with a smirk, told the world there were no Russian soldiers in Ukraine. He wasn’t lying so much as saying the truth doesn’t matter. And when Donald Trump makes up facts on a whim, claims that he saw thousands of Muslims in New Jersey cheering the Twin Towers coming down, or that the Mexican government purposefully sends ‘bad’ immigrants to the US, when fact-checking agencies rate 78% of his statements untrue but he still becomes a US Presidential candidate – then it appears that facts no longer matter much in the land of the free. When the Brexit campaign announces ‘Let’s give our NHS the £350 million the EU takes every week’ and, on winning the referendum, the claim is shrugged off as a ‘mistake’ by one Brexit leader while another explains it as ‘an aspiration’, then it’s clear we are living in a ‘post-fact’ or ‘post-truth’ world. Not merely a world where politicians and media lie – they have always lied – but one where they don’t care whether they tell the truth or not.
How did we get here?
Read more by Peter Pomerantsev in Granta (July 20, 2016) : Why We’re Post-Fact | Peter Pomerantsev | Granta Magazine
27 Monday Jun 2016
Tags
agitation, BDS, conservative thought, Dershowitz, disinformation, Far Left, Israel, Jewish interests, propaganda, Zionism
Dershowitz focused on largely unsuccessful efforts to promote Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel among American universities, campaigns that nonetheless helped “mis-educate a generation of future leaders.” BDS leaders admitted to wanting “to destroy Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people” contrary to rhetoric of pressuring Israel to conclude a peace settlement with Palestinians. Simultaneously the “very anti-peace” BDS movement “sends an erroneous message to the Palestinian street and the Palestinian leaders that says you don’t have to compromise…we will get you your state through extortion.”
Read more: Family Security Matters – 6/23/2016
01 Sunday May 2016
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Of BackChannels’ several inventions in political psychology, the “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation” might apply best to President Putin’s way of looking at western liberalism, developing cause to consider it threatening, and then, at last, accusing the west of possessing his own true motives as regards political control through disinformation, force, and manipulation.
For history, start with Czar Nicholas III’s “Okhrana“, the political secret police tasked with influencing and shaping the Czar’s own opposition — Ayatollah or Emperor, why not play both sides of the chessboard? The political theater is either yours or it’s not — prove it’s yours: put on a play; give the opposition its head; slip it a script; settle back and enjoy the show.
Dang if it hasn’t worked!
Of course, there’s more to the story of Russia’s romance with autocracy, state-controlled information and the perversions that are disinformation and propaganda, and secret political police. What follows on this post is an afternoon’s brief compilation of articles pertinent to the challenge posed today by Putin’s approach to throwing the wool over so many eyes, including, possibly, his own.
In general, the Russian media portrays anything going on from the point of view of Vladimir Putin. He has unlimited access to the media and they explain everything that’s going on according to his official statement. It doesn’t really matter if it’s a war in Syria or any other topic.
Russia today is the first intelligence dictatorship in history. It is a brand new form of totalitarianism, which we are not yet familiar with. Now the KGB, rechristened FSB, is openly running Russia.
Ion Pacepa in an interview with Blaze Books as reported by Benjamin Weingarten in The Blaze, February 10, 2014, citation included in reference.
BackChannels also possesses in its library a small “Russian Section” that boasts many volumes on the Russian experience in the 20th Century, on the Soviet, and on the transition from the Soviet to “Putin’s Kleptocracy”.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, its people had a unique opportunity to also cast off the country’s political police, that peculiarly Russian instrument of power created by the 16th century’s Ivan the Terrible, which had changed its name many times, from Okhrana to Cheka, to GPU, to OGPU, to NKVD, to NKGB, to MGB, to MVD, to KGB. Unfortunately, the Russian people were not yet ready — or able — to seize that opportunity.
Pacepa, Ion Mihai. “Brand-New Russia, Same Old Disinformation.” National Review, November 8, 2014.
The international community faces serious challenges arising from a new mode of information warfare, which Russia has deployed during the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in 2014-2015. This ongoing “propaganda war” is the most recent and frightening example of information warfare. It reflects the wide array of non-military tools used to exert pressure and influence the behaviour of countries. When skilfully combined, disinformation, malicious attacks on large-scale information and communication systems, psychological pressure, can be even more dangerous than traditional weapon systems, since they are extremely difficult to discover and combat.
The Kremlin’s disinformation campaign goes far beyond controlling its own media. It is aimed at nothing less than presenting a parallel version of reality and disseminating it as if it were news. The Kremlin’s goal is to make people question the value of media at all; to reject the idea of an absolute truth; and to persuade the public that “reality” is relative.
Emerson, John B. “Exposing Russian Disinformation.” Atlantic Council, June 29, 2015.
If someone—some lost, ersatz-port-begotten ghost—materializing before me at that moment, had told me that, thirty years later, I would be writing about Andropov’s death in English, in America, on the week when post-Soviet Russia’s ruling class—made up, to a considerable extent, of the old K.G.B. cadre—would be celebrating the hundredth anniversary of his birth with a large exhibit dedicated to his life, at whose opening a glowing telegram from his spiritual successor, President Vladimir Putin, would be read—well, I would have known for certain that I had finally and irrevocably, once and for all, lost my mind.
Iossel, Mikhail. “The Night Andropov Died.” The New Yorker, June 17, 2014.
As a former KGB officer and head of the KGB’s successor agency, the FSB, Putin knows the value of information. His concept of the media, however, is a far cry from the First Amendment. For him, it’s a simple transactional equation: Whoever owns the media controls what it says.
“There should be patriotically minded people at the head of state information resources,” Putin told reporters at his 2013 annual news conference, “people who uphold the interests of the Russian Federation. These are state resources. That is the way it is going to be.”
Bershidsky, Leonid. “Primakov Would Have Run Russia as Putin Has.” Bloomberg View, June 26, 2015.
Deutsche Welle. “German media worries about Russian-led disinformation campaign.” February 19, 2016.
Goble, Paul. “15 Characteristics of Russian Propaganda.” Stop Fake, April 18, 2016.
Disinformation is always a conscious policy and part of a larger policy agenda. It is not simply dishonesty of this or that official in response to a particular event. It is implemented with a clear understanding that a combination of truth and falsehood is useful and effective. And it is pursued as long as it is effective, being sacrificed only when there are reasons to believe that either it is no longer necessary or it is no longer being accepted. All of those things have characterized Putin’s approach to information about Ukraine, a pattern that makes what Moscow is doing all the more disturbing.
Iossel, Mikhail. “The Night Andropov Died.” The New Yorker, June 17, 2014.
Johnson, Alan. “The Rehabilitation of Felix Dzerzhinsky.” World Affairs, October 14, 2014.
Kofman, Michael. “Russian Hybrid Warfare and Other Dark Arts.” War on the Rocks, March 11, 2016.
Pacepa, Ion Mihai. “Brand-New Russia, Same Old Disinformation.” National Review, November 8, 2014.
Stop Fake. “Russian Propaganda”. Compilation of articles.
Wikipedia. “Okhrana”. The following comes from the “Pre-1905” section of the Wikipedia entry:
While P.I. Rachkovsky, as head of the Okhrana’s Foreign Agency, had long ordered Okhrana agents to infiltrate and influence revolutionary movements abroad, Zubatov brought these tactics to a new level by creating Okhrana-controlled trade unions, the foundation of police socialism.
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Posted to YouTube March 5, 2014.
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14 Thursday Apr 2016
Posted in 21st Century Feudal, Eastern Europe, Eurasia, Europe, Regions, Russia
Tags
Posted to YouTube 6/22/2016.
Can you see the tree? The trees? The forest?
How about the blight?
Writing about Russia can be like that: Focus on a crime, follow it into more general corruption, arrive at the “mafia state”; overview energy and economics, move on to “hybrid warfare” and other aggressive military and paramilitary activities, and it dawns that there is an imperial state at work; have a glance at history, then get the nose out of the books and have a look around at present Putin & Co. relationships, disinformation, domestic information control, and global propaganda.
What may be most dangerous about Russia today is the slowly developing surround in alliance and axis accompanied by the seduction of the popular mind (in Soviet-speak, “the masses”) by way of the promotion of confusion.
For its part, this blog has pressed the idea that defending Putinism, much less spreading it, devolves to sustaining a deeply feudal-medieval worldview that in turn undergirds the power of state elites: the “New Nobility” that is the FSB; the “Vertical of Power” that is this most singular Russian President around whom other elements revolve; the Oligarchs that produce and enjoy the state’s wealth, albeit with a nod to the permit provided by their political mastermind.
From off that magnificent hub:
With numerous stolons — plant-generated surface and underground runners that propagate some of the species that use them — the Moscow hub appears to support an immense array of illicit and licit relationships.
Here’s a nugget pulled from the illicit bin, which, of course, is the one that most bothers the west:
The leaked files suggest that Roldugin is not keeping this wealth for himself, but is funneling the money to Putin’s inner circle, the reports say. Although Putin is not mentioned in the documents, he appears to be at the center of a web of Russia’s most influential and powerful men who owe their posts and fortunes to nothing but their friendship and association with him.
“It’s possible Roldugin, who has publicly claimed not to be a businessman, is not the true beneficiary of these riches,” the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists wrote. “Instead, the evidence in the files suggests Roldugin is acting as a front man for a network of Putin loyalists — and perhaps for Putin himself” (Mirovalev, LAT, April 4, 2016).
How deep go these relationships?
How many are there?
Can you see the tree? The trees? The forest?
The blight?
The Syrian Tragedy, as BackChannels refers to that horrific process in which it appears Damascus with tacit approval from Moscow and Tehran pursued a course certain to produce “The Terrorists” by preferentially bombing more moderate Free Syrian Army forces and refraining from curbing the early development of al-Nusra and ISIL, needs no introduction: the human spillover is either encamped or migrating all over the Middle East and Europe.
Posted to YouTube April 14, 2016.
Moscow, however, has been also busy from the Baltic Sea (as depicted in the above naval incident) to the Black Sea. Crimea and Ukraine, Lithuania, and Moldova, among others moan with the impositions or threats posed by the phantom of the Soviet alive within the Russian Federation.
A note from Moldova (Timpul.md, February 11, 2015):
Given Moldova’s limited economic potential, the country struggles to maintain its defense capabilities. It only allocates 0.3% of its GDP for military purposes, which amounts to about 25 million dollars per year. Furthermore, Moldova presents limited interest to the West. Its strategic and economic importance is negligible. To make things worse, Moldova is highly dependent on Russian energy supplies, export and labor markets. Russian media control a significant share of Moldova’s informational space. Finally, Kremlin has been instrumental in using Russian speaking minorities in Moldova to advocate interest that often go against the will of the majority of the local population.
In earlier and Soviet years, Moscow was not above playing games to irk the west and possibly draw on its coffers and patience, for whom has always to pick up the pieces in the aftermath of so much meddling? The BBC recently ran an audio clip featuring Somalia’s General Mohamed Noor Galal recounting the machinations that went into setting the course for war in the region between Ethiopia and Somalia known as the Ogaden. In that misery, the Soviet enticed Somalia to invade the Ogaden and seize it from Ethiopia, and when Ethiopian forces were down on luck and firepower, it intervened to arm Ethiopia, which then recovered the Ogaden.
Somalia, however, has never recovered.
Whatever the Soviet was thinking — arms sales? Expansion of forced influence? — it sure wasn’t thinking about the lives and needs of either either Ethiopians or Somalis. In effect, in the promotion of the Ogaden War, The Bear wrapped an arm around the Somali leadership and offered to help the same acquire a fair patch of earth as redress for earlier grievance — and then with that accomplished, it did the same on the other side.
What works, unfortunately, works.
If you now see the Ogaden in history — you have seen one tree.
Nothing has changed: now as then, one may wonder at the character and mentality of the post-Soviet neo-imperial Russian leadership, the same that has treated Russia as it has other states: create chaos and danger, drown the masses in propaganda (ah, those good old Party days are here again!), and for power — and the protection of so many money making enterprises, licit and illicit — promise the super nationalist’s version of greatness, security, and stability.
Note: Putin-Erdogan — politically opposed (there’s that Shiite vs Sunni thing + NATO) but psychologically aligned (and Erdogan has the White Palace to prove it).
Anadolu Agency. “UN: No record of Russia humanitarian aid for Syria.” February 4, 2014.
Jakóbik, Wojciech. “Peter B. Doran: Atlanticism under threat.” Interview. Stop Fake, March 30, 2016.
Political Capital. “The Kremlin Connections of the Hungarian Far-Right.” Stratfor, April 20, 2015.
Rettman, Andrew. “Russian propaganda wins EU hearts and minds.” Euobserver, June 23, 2015.
Shuster, Simon. “A Failed Russia ‘Reset’ Haunts Obama in Europe.” Time, June 3, 2014.
Stop Fake: Struggle against fake information about events in Ukraine. Anti-propaganda website.
Timpul.md. “Moldova’s Security Options following Russian Aggression in Ukraine.” February 11, 2015.
Posted to YouTube January 26, 2016 (43:54).
Posted to YouTube May 9, 2014
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BackChannels 