29 Thursday Jun 2017
Tags
21st Century Feudalism, 21st Century Neo-Feudalism, Atlantic Council, disinformation, Framing, information warfare, KGB methods, Moscow, Russia, Soviet / post-Soviet politics
How Putin’s Moscow and its information warfare work.
Related on BackChannels: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/23/moscows-rules-a-module/
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06 Monday Feb 2017
Tags
contemporary totalitarianism, ethical humanism, Far Left, Far Left Politics, independent education, KGB methods, liberal humanist politics, political research, political science, politics, Soviet Era politics
Moscow –
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/23/moscows-rules-a-module/
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/09/syria-assad-isil-background/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_and_the_Soviet_Union
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/10/03/palestinian-kgb/
KGB-style “Active Measures” often target new generations who have little intellectual defense or means for recognizing hip propaganda.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Peace_Council
In the Soviet Era, many “peace movement” organizations distanced themselves from the Communist Party (Soviet) as they witness the brutality of political repression in the several of the Soviet satellite states whose politics had brought them around to liberation from the Soviet system.
Today’s ultra-nationalist and neo-imperial Moscow have made comprehension of the Kremlin a little more difficult. In Orwellian _Animal Farm_ fashion, the banner of the state has switched to “State Capitalism” and the FSB/KGB, Putin, and the Oligarchs appear to be having a helluva good time! 🙂
Still, with Moscow’s earlier KGB engineering of Yasser Arafat and the PLO more and more known beyond the wonky circles of “Kremlin watchers”, the model for elite kleptocracy driven by Moscow, which is deeply invested in medieval political absolutism and totalitarian control, has been coming into popular view.
Who destroyed Syria by barrel bombing, chemical attacks, relentless and sadistic assaults (http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/22/world/meast/syria-snipers-pregnant-women/) on noncombatants?
Moscow’s behavior has not been limited to middle east conflicts. Here’s a borrowing from Ukraine’s history of Russian oppression:
The absence of conscience and empathy in leadership needs protesting worldwide.
The old politics in which the apparent “liberator” turns out the oppressor — and gets away with a lot of loot for doing it — needs a complete historic reexamination and overhaul.
Take a lesson from the Somali experience with the Soviet government in the Ogaden:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03pk9c1
While BackChannels delivers the light version of history — much of what is needed is online — it wonders how to further wean from the Soviet Era experience the many remaining Left-Far Left organizations struggling to update their missions in the long shadow cast by the dissolving of the Soviet Union a little more than 25 years ago.
From the outset, BackChannels has invested itself in liberal humanist politics — look to the left of this copy and down the sidebar: the values promoted by this nonpartisan blog seem to the editor to place the humanity of humanity first and foremost in political thought and to be congruent with the advice suggested in the above invention From the Awesome Conversation: “The absence of conscience and empathy in leadership needs protesting worldwide.”
If you know how and when the Soviet KGB groomed Yasser Arafat for his role as leader of The Palestinians — Jordanian refugees in 1948 — can you still swallow the intellectual poison that has been the “alternative narrative” of the same?
Think about it.
Think about the tens to hundreds of millions of dollars amassed by Arafat and Abbas (both of whom have had KGB histories) while the Palestinians have been showcased for sympathy?
Apply the same to Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Mashaal, both of them billionaires.
What if the newest of Far Left fist-raising acolytes had the choice between parroting the claims and narratives programmed within his new social climate and that of independently questing and reading for the truth, would he do choose to balance the former with the latter?
We’re going to find out.
Not only are online resources for research extraordinary today, but obtaining books relevant to the study of history and history and revolution, culture and cultural anthropology and psychology, and so on has never been less expensive!
For a quick pick-up on the previous century’s Cold War and related history, BackChannels recommends all of the volumes listed in “The Russian Section” of its library.
For insight into Soviet-style manipulation, BackChannels has a post listing works by KGB defector Ion Mihai Pacepa: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/28/a-short-page-referencing-works-by-or-associated-with-ion-mihai-pacepa/
Where the adventurous and social rewards associated with “The Movement” — there are so many of them! — prove rewarding, may the reader of this blog consider also the responsibility of being himself an autonomous, independent, informed, and critically reasoning actor in his own political life.
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11 Wednesday Jan 2017
Tags
disinformation, FSB, information warfare, KGB, KGB methods, Kompromat, political dirty tricks, Putin, scandal, Trump, Trump's Russian Phantoms
A spokesman for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, on Wednesday denied Russia has collected compromising information on Trump and dismissed news reports as a “complete fabrication and utter nonsense”. Dmitry Peskov insisted that the Kremlin “does not engage in collecting compromising material”.
In the material quoted, the URL goes directly to The Guardian article in which both denials appeared.
Well, here’s a still recent header that contradicts the point: “Foes of Russia Say Child Pornography Is Planted to Ruin Them” (The New York Times, December 9, 2016).
“The whole affair is Kafkaesque,” Mr. Bukovsky said in an interview. “You not only have to prove you are not guilty but that you are innocent.” He insisted that he was the victim of a new and particularly noxious form of an old K.G.B. dirty trick known as kompromat, the fabrication and planting of compromising or illegal material.
Old-style kompromat featured doctored photographs, planted drugs, grainy videos of liaisons with prostitutes hired by the K.G.B., and a wide range of other primitive entrapment techniques.
In Reference, the RAND article, “Beyond the Headlines: RAND’s Christopher Paul Discusses the Russian ‘Firehose of Falsehood'”, December 13, 2017, contains a summary of KGB/(FSB) methods in Russia’s massive perversion of information intended to scramble reasoning and politically divide and diminish political coherence in the EU and NATO states.
Incidentally, BackChannel’s sources have suggested the Kremlin employs more than 800,000 Russians in its Information Warfare capacity. What that may mean for those invested in integrity and truth-telling worldwide, and whether for business, government, or personal conscience, is that Russia maintains a veritable army of professed liars whose paid mission is to confuse, disinform, and disrupt the processes of reason itself in each mind across hundreds of millions of souls.
For near corroboration of the above-cited figure, BackChannels directs the reader to Owen Matthews article in Politico: “Vladimir Putin resurrects the KGB” (September 28, 2016).
In the world in which the latest Trump scandal is unfolding, there appears both a natural limit to what the public may know with certainty and a stranger-than-fiction aspect that fairly begs credulity. Nonetheless: as regards President Elect Trump, the American electorate certainly heard the ” . . . grab them by the pussy” comment released as an information grenade only weeks before the general election, and it has by now accumulated awareness of the President’s character in business in ways possibly unsurpassed in history. If ever an American President were examined like an organism, this one has been diced, sliced, smeared, and laid out on the slide bed of the highest resolution political microscope ever imagined.
The multiple images of damage — offhand remarks; a relationship with the world’s foremost political consultant to dictatorships (Paul Manafort); family relationships that go back to the Soviet Era and include fluency in Russian — then too, the family is immensely gifted with multilingual talent; possible Russian real estate interests as a matter of “business empire” deeply invested in real estate development — may continue to accumulate even though the truth remains sketchy — or held close by governments plunged into a different kind of war.
Trump’s “Russian Phantoms” — Manafort, Manafort-Kilimnik (relationship), Millian and any related business that has or may come to light — have already dogged the incoming Administration, and more may come to light as the Inauguration approaches.
Searches applied while developing this post: “KGB, Kompromat”; “Russian Influence Operations”; “Trump, Compromised”; “Trump, Russian Fluency”; “Trump Family, Russian Fluency”.
Bilingual Kidspot. “President Donald Trump and his Multilingual Family.” November 9, 2016.
“The ultimate goal of Kremlin hostile influence and disinformation operations is to weaken its opponents’ will to resist,” Jakub Janda, deputy director of nonpartisan think tank European Values, explained in an email from Prague. “Simply to manipulate the West, its politicians and its societies to stop resisting invasions of the Russian Federation to foreign countries.
In Europe, the East StratCom Task Force issues a “Disinformation Review” every week, giving a round-up of pro-Kremlin disinformation in Europe and beyond.
In its most lurid allegation, the report alleges that Trump defiled a hotel suite in which the Obamas had stayed during a Moscow visit. Trump allegedly brought prostitutes to the Ritz Carlton suite, bugged by the FSB, the KGB’s successor. There, Trump allegedly ordered the prostitutes to perform “golden showers” in front of him.
“The whole affair is Kafkaesque,” Mr. Bukovsky said in an interview. “You not only have to prove you are not guilty but that you are innocent.” He insisted that he was the victim of a new and particularly noxious form of an old K.G.B. dirty trick known as kompromat, the fabrication and planting of compromising or illegal material.
Old-style kompromat featured doctored photographs, planted drugs, grainy videos of liaisons with prostitutes hired by the K.G.B., and a wide range of other primitive entrapment techniques.
Matthews, Owen. “Vladimir Putin resurrects the KGB.” Politico, September 28, 2016.
RAND Corporation. “Information Operations” & “Beyond the Headlines: RAND’s Christopher Paul Discusses the Russian ‘Firehose of Falsehood'”, December 13, 2017.
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