http://anton-shekhovtsov.blogspot.be...coalition.htmlQuote:
26 January 2015
Greek left-wing SYRIZA forms a coalition with the pro-Kremlin far right
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http://anton-shekhovtsov.blogspot.be...coalition.htmlQuote:
26 January 2015
Greek left-wing SYRIZA forms a coalition with the pro-Kremlin far right
The Greek population is among the most Russian-friendly in the EU and the useful idiots or foreign observers in the Crimea and the Donbas were from the extreme European left and right. The current Greek coalition, made by parties with extreme elements from the respective ends of the spectrum, should find relative rare common ground over that aspect of foreign policy.
Possibly a bargaining chip for the far more important rounds with the EU on austerity, but who knows?
Both Greek parties have close ties to Dugin and Russia/Russians have over
31B USDs in Cyprus banks---one of the largest money washing capitals in the West. One of their Greek banks that went under and lost all Russian accounts was in total ownership (hidden) of Russian oligarchs.
American anti-Semite & frmr KKK leader David Duke photographed together w/ Aleksandr #Dugin (right)
v @A_SHEKH0VTS0V
pic.twitter.com/eZTZE4Xk9U
How Putin Is Infiltrating European Politics
http://uk.businessinsider.com/putin-...europe-2014-12 … pic.twitter.com/z3Msjp7iFq
Hackers Leak Messages 'Between Kremlin and France’s Front National'
BY LUCY DRAPER 4/3/15 AT 5:15 PM
The exchanges are between ‘Timur Prokopenko,’ who the hackers identify as a Kremlin official and Kostya, a man they describe as a “Russian connection” who has access to Le Pen.
http://www.newsweek.com/hackers-clai...ational-319442
Kostya seems to be this man http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Rykov
Timur Prokopenko is deputy head of depatment of interior affairs in Presidential administration.
From left.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/0...0N30DG20150412Quote:
Reuters) - German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier dismissed on Sunday calls from the radical Left party to invite Russian President Vladimir Putin to this year's summit of the Group of Seven industrial powers.
The leaders of G7 nations held a summit without Putin last year in protest against Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region. With little sign of bloodshed in eastern Ukraine ending despite a ceasefire deal agreed in Minsk two months ago, the exclusion has continued.
Gregor Gysi, parliamentary leader of the Left party that includes some former East German communists, has argued that Russia was needed to help solve international crises and the G7 should therefore once again be expanded into the G8.
Anton Shekhovtsov's comment.
http://anton-shekhovtsov.blogspot.be...on-visits.htmlQuote:
19 February 2015
German Die Linke delegation visits right-wing terrorists in Eastern Ukraine
53 pagesQuote:
"I am Eurasian" - The Kremlin connections of the Hungarian far-right
In-depth analysis
14/04/15
There have been many signs of Kremlin’s increasing efforts to influence both decision-makers and the general public in the EU and member states. One of the political tools to exert such influence is through coopting certain far-right (and far-left) parties and organizations within the European Union. Russian influence of this kind is considered a major threat for European integration. In order to present the modus operandi of Kremlin in exerting influence, Political Capital launches a series of publications focusing on certain member states (Hungary, Slovakia, Greece and France) as well as the EU institutions. The first part of the series, which has been recently published, analyzes the pro-Kremlin stance of the Hungarian far-right, and particularly Jobbik.
Even though the Hungarian far-right and Jobbik, a major actor of the far-right scene, position themselves as representatives of Hungarian national interests, they have become uncritical and unconditional servant of the current Russian regime’s interests. This phenomenon cannot be explained by reasons connected to domestic politics: supporters of the West outnumber the adherents of Russia both among the general public and Jobbik’s voter base.
European far-right organizations serving Russian state interests fill three major functions:
1. social and political destabilization at the member state, community and transatlantic levels alike;
2. provision of external legitimization of the Russian regime (e.g., through ideological support and observation of elections);
3. provision of information and spread of disinformation (i.e., transmit Russian propaganda to EU member states and gather intelligence).
http://www.riskandforecast.com/post/...right_817.html
Good comment from Anton Shekovtshov about Kremlin and Le Pen connection!
Quote:
Russia and Front National: Following the Money
A new leak of the text messages originating from a hacked smartphone of a high-ranking officer of Russia’s Presidential Administration sheds further light on the relations between the Russian authorities and their far right allies in France.
No. 167 Russia, Europe and the Far Right
Author(s): Marlene Laruelle, Pter Krek, Lrnt Győri, Attila Juhsz, Giovanni Savino
http://www.css.ethz.ch/publications/...Digest_167.pdfQuote:
This edition considers the relationship between the Putin regime and Far-Right political parties in Europe. Firstly, Marlene Laruelle examines the overarching picture of Russias bedfellowing policy towards the European Far-Right, noting that these new relationships provide the Putin regime with multiple channels for influence within certain European countries. Secondly, Pter Krek, Lrnt Győri and Attila Juhsz assess the linkages between Putins Russia and Hungarian right-wing political parties, whereby one such party, Jobbik, is now working to promote Moscows policies and interests in both Hungary and the European parliament. Thirdly, Giovanni Savino outlines how the recent shift within far-right political parties in Italy towards pro-Russian positions is due to the image of the Kremlin as a bastion of traditional values, conservative policies and anti-US forces.
This is part of their strategy, they are engaged in a new ideological battle with the U.S., but instead of communism versus democracy and freedom, it is neo-conservatism versus liberalism. The following document provides a good description of how they are waging this effort. Your post indicates it is working, at least at some level.
http://www.osw.waw.pl/sites/default/...on_warfare.pdf
An interesting description of Russian information warfare at the following link.Quote:
In opposition to the ideology of liberalism, it promotes “a neo-conservative post-liberal power (…) struggling for a just multi-polar world, which defends tradition, conservative values and true liberty.” The “Russian Eurasian civilisation” is set at contrast to the “Atlantic civilisation led by the USA” which allegedly intends to disassemble Russian statehood and gain global hegemony. The internal crisis in Ukraine followed by the need to annex Crimea have been presented in the context of the rivalry between these two civilisations.
http://www.theguardian.com/news/2015...ion-psychology
Continuity and changeQuote:
I had always imagined the phrase “information war” to refer to some sort of geopolitical debate, with Russian propagandists on one side and western propagandists on the other, both trying to convince everyone in the middle that their side was right. But the encyclopedia suggested something more expansive: information war was less about methods of persuasion and more about “influencing social relations” and “control over the sources of strategic reserves”. Invisible weapons acting like radiation to override biological responses and seize strategic reserves? The text seemed more like garbled science fiction than a guide for students and civil servants.
Much more at the link. Bottom line is NATO's alleged military superiority can be easily and cheaply subverted with information warfare. We're concerned with little green men, when we should be concerned with the information domain. If we can dominate the information domain, we can easily eliminate the little green men.Quote:
Where once the KGB would have spent months, or years, carefully planting well-made forgeries through covert agents in the west, the new dezinformatsiya is cheap, crass and quick: created in a few seconds and thrown online. The aim seems less to establish alternative truths than to spread confusion about the status of truth. In a similar vein, the aim of the professional pro-Putin online trolls who haunt website comment sections is to make any constructive conversation impossible. As Shaun Walker recently reported in this newspaper, at one “troll factory” in St Petersburg, employees are paid about £500 a month to pose as regular internet users defending Putin, posting insulting pictures of foreign leaders, and spreading conspiracy theories – for instance, that Ukrainian protestors on the Maidan were fed tea laced with drugs, which led them to overthrow the (pro-Moscow) government.
Seems to be best find of the year. Paul W. Blackstock "The Strategy of Subversion. Manipulating the Politics of Other Nations" 1964. Chapter 2 " The Theory of Covert Political Operations" sub-section "Subversion." How Hitler manipulated French politics.
I partly disagree.
a) While the military superiority of NATO does make it arguably more attractive to employ means like information warfare even the potentially conventionally superior WP used it extensively during the Cold War. It's more about return on propaganda investment and basic opportunity costs.
b) The Russian forces were ordered to invade Crimea and SE-Ukraine by their president. The poor economic performance of Ukraine and the ressource-driven economic success of Russian plus Soviet nostalgia made the population a rather fertile ground for the Kremlin information campaigns. But in the end the decisive factor in the occupation of those regions were still the invading military forces.
Rather old-fashioned stuff with some modern means as support, at least IMHO.
https://euobserver.com/political/129071Quote:
Britain’s Ukip and France’s National Front teamed up with other anti-EU parties to vote against a Russia-critical resolution at the European Parliament on Wednesday (10 June).
The non-binding report, by centre-right Lithuanian MEP Gabrielius Landsbergis, passed anyway by 494 votes against 135 with 69 abstentions.
It raises the alarm over what it calls the emergence of a new “Nationalist International”.
It says the European Parliament is “deeply concerned at the ever more intensive contacts and co-operation, tolerated by the Russian leadership, between European populist, fascist, and extreme right-wing parties on the one hand and nationalist groups in Russia”.
It calls the Russia-backed bloc “a danger to democratic values and the rule of law in the EU”.
It also “calls on the [European] Commission to propose legislation forbidding financing of political parties in the EU by political or economic stakeholders outside the EU”.
French investigative reporters last November revealed the National Front received at least €9 million in loans from a Kremlin-linked bank.
German media and the Austrian opposition say the anti-euro AfD party in Germany and the far-right FPO party in Austria are also being financed by Russia, in allegations they deny.
The far-right Jobbik party in Hungary and the pro-Russian Latvijas Krievu savieniba party in Latvia are facing criminal probes on similar grounds.
The parties regularly speak out in favour of Russia at home and in the EU assembly.
Anton Shekovtsov comments this weekend event.
http://anton-shekhovtsov.blogspot.be...-building.htmlQuote:
Russian politicians building an international extreme right alliance
(This article originally appeared in Norwegian in Verdens Gang.)
Russia seems to be getting serious about building an international alliance of extreme right parties that would aim at undermining the liberal democratic consensus in the West. In addition to providing financial support for parties such as France’s Front National and using extreme right activists and politicians as tools of propaganda, Russia is now building what it calls the “World National-Conservative Movement” (WNCM). A number of the internal documents (passed to me by the Moscow-based "Sova Centre") provide an insight into the agenda and structure of the WNCM.
Riskandforecast series analysis about Kremlin and Front National.
http://www.politicalcapital.hu/wp-co...France_ENG.pdf
The Telegraph reports.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...ing-in-EU.htmlQuote:
American intelligence agencies are to conduct a major investigation into how the Kremlin is infiltrating political parties in Europe, it can be revealed.
James Clapper, the US Director of National Intelligence, has been instructed by the US Congress to conduct a major review into Russian clandestine funding of European parties over the last decade.
X
Officials declined to say which parties could come into the probe but it is thought likely to include far-right groups including Jobbik in Hungary, Golden Dawn in Greece, the Northern League in Italy and France’s Front National which received a 9m euro (£6.9m) loan from a Russian bank in 2014.
Frenchmen visited Donetsk.
http://khpg.org/en/index.php?id=1452639620Quote:
A delegation led by Jacques Closterman, a French politician linked with Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Front and two lawyers - Josy Jean Bousquet and Hanen Maksud – are on a visit to the so-called ‘Donetsk people’s republic’. Their aim, according to Russian and Kremlin-backed militant sources, is “to gather cases of Ukrainian war crimes against residents of Donbas for the further circulation of such information among the public of France and Europe”
During visit of Doentsk airport ruins. In concert with Russian narrative about fascists. I wonder why Russians took away collection of NATO weapons from airport.
https://www.ruptly.tv/vod/view/40680...ion-to-donetskQuote:
SOT Reporter (French): "Is what happened here Fascism?"
SOT Jacques Clostermann (French): "Certainly, certainly. But it's very difficult to explain that less than 2,500 km from Paris, there are horrors such as the ones that have occurred here, among these people. It's also difficult to explain that these people fought for their freedom, and that everything that happened here was in the name of liberty for the people themselves, for the rights of the people to self-determination. This is something extraordinary."
NATO weapons in Donetsk.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO3RuLUZneg
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debat...ainst-germany/
Russia having success in hybrid war against Germany
Later proven to be a false claim, but it still served it purpose to mobilize Russian immigrants in Germany, and the far right.Quote:
Now, as the German chancellor flounders domestically because of her open-door refugee policy, she has made herself vulnerable to attack. “I’ve never seen so much glee from the Russians as during Germany’s refugee crisis,” said a diplomat in Berlin.
Quote:
Stoking outrage in Germany’s Russian-speaking community is not an end in itself, but a means to exploiting cracks in German society exposed by the refugee crisis. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who served as a KGB agent in Soviet-occupied East Germany and speaks fluent German, believes that Berlin and Moscow can form a strategic axis based on Russian natural resources and German technology. Merkel, in her insistence that Russia do more to bring peace to Ukraine, is getting in the way.
We don't need to wonder too far to see dejavu. I hope Merkel stays strong. I suspect SPD has not lost their compass.
Quote:
MITROKHIN'S INFORMATION ON the KGB's West German agents, though extensive, is not comprehensive. There is, for example, intriguing evidence in the files seen by Mitrokhin of a KGB agent in the entourage of Egon Bahr, one of Helmut Schmidt's most trusted advisers and a leading architect of Ostpolitik. (There is no suggestion that the agent was Bahr himself.) On February 5, 1981 Andropov sent Brezhnev and the CPSU Central Committee an intelligence report (no. 259-A/OV ), marked "of special importance," which recounted a telephone conversation on January 27 between Schmidt and Ronald Reagan, whose inauguration as president of the United States had taken place a week earlier, and gave details of Schmidt's subsequent discussions with Bahr and other advisers. To Schmidt's irritation, Reagan asked for a month's delay to the chancellor's visit to Washington, previously arranged for March 3, on the grounds that the President was not yet ready "for a serious discussion of foreign policy problems." Schmidt told his advisers that this was a deliberate delaying tactic by the new Reagan administration "designed to enable Washington to gain time to build up its armaments with the aim of overtaking the USSR in the military field."
The KGB source also reported complaints by Schmidt to Bahr and others that Bonn was flooded with specialists sent by Washington with the aim of halting the growth of commercial contacts between West Germany and the Soviet Union. Schmidt rightly believed that the Reagan administration was out to torpedo the negotiations between Bonn and Moscow on the construction of pipelines to bring natural gas from Siberia to the FRG, which Washington feared would make West Germany dangerously dependent on Soviet energy supplies. Moscow was doubtless delighted by Schmidt's intention to press ahead with the negotiations as quickly as possible in order to present Reagan with a fait accompli.
http://www.economist.com/news/europe...y-bear-backersQuote:
Social Democratic fingerprints are all over plans for a second Baltic pipeline, Nord Stream 2, which is to be built even though the existing one is operating at only half capacity. A deal between Russia and Germany was announced in Moscow last autumn by Sigmar Gabriel, the economics minister and the Social Democrats’ boss.
Nord Stream 2 has few friends outside Russia and the Social Democrats. Poland, Slovakia and the Baltic countries are aghast at what they see as a sinister pact to boost German business at the expense of their energy security. Russia could junk its pipelines that run through Poland and Ukraine, leaving them gas-strapped and at the mercy of powerful (and historically unfriendly) neighbours. The European Commission sees it similarly. In 2014 it blocked another pipeline project, under which Russian gas was to run through the Black Sea and central Europe. America, worried that Nord Stream 2 would deprive Ukraine of transit fees, is also opposed.