Russian Info, Cyber and Disinformation (Catch all till 2017)

[Firn]

Just a link to the BBC article titled Russian propaganda machine 'worse than Soviet Union' .

Cultural historian and publisher Irina Prokhorova goes further - she calls it "Stalinist", reminiscent of the anti-Western hysteria which marked the grim repressive years of the late 1940s.

And what worries the liberal intelligentsia is that the aggressive tone is being directed inwards as well.

Ever since President Putin warned he would not tolerate a fifth column of national traitors in his historic speech on Crimea's annexation in March, Russia's beleaguered opposition has felt under siege.

Many of the victims of this 'Stalinist' propaganda war are indeed ethnic Russian in Russia speaking Russian and many will still pay a heavy price for Putin's war. A good deal doesn't realize it so far, drunken by Putin's propaganda poision.

The useful idiots and partly payed Putinfans in the West won't have to pay a similar price, thanks to Western law and democracy. An excellent program by the BBC does a fine job at exploring the history of the term 'useful idiot' and the idiots behind it.

The phrase 'useful idiots', supposedly Lenin’s, refers to Westerners duped into saying good things about bad regimes.

In political jargon it was used to describe Soviet sympathisers in Western countries and the attitude of the Soviet government towards them.

Useful idiots, in a broader sense, refers to Western journalists, travellers and intellectuals who gave their blessing – often with evangelistic fervour – to tyrannies and tyrants, thereby convincing politicians and public that utopias rather than Belsens thrived.

Keep in mind that some of the 'idiots' and others get of course handsomely payed by the Kremlin to spread it's propaganda like Alexander Rahr. He worked first for American institutions, perhaps the pay (and the honey) was better on the other side...

[kaur]

Novaya Gazeta shows couple fake news.

http://translate.google.com/translat...n&hl=&ie=UTF-8

[Firn]

Putins Trolle by the German Sueddeutsche is propably one of the best researched articles on that aspect of Russian cyber operations. The details of the various modi operandi based partly on internal material are interesting if expected.

Was wirkt wie das Werk eines der vielen Verwirrten, die taeglich zusammen viele Terabyte Mumpitz ins Internet absondern, ist in Wahrheit sorgfaeltig geplant, kalkuliert und strategisch platziert. Der Nutzer mit dem absichtlich irrefhrenden Namen "The American Dream" (Adresse: youtube.com/TheUSAmericanDream) wurde von russischen PR-Spezialisten der "Agentur zur Analyse des Internets" angelegt. Die Firma mit Sitz in Sankt Petersburg beschaeftigte zuletzt bis zu 600 Mitarbeiter. Ihre Hauptaufgabe: Meinungen im Internet im Sinne des Kreml zu manipulieren. Etwa eine Million Dollar lie sie sich das zuletzt kosten, pro Monat. Das belegen interne Dokumente und E-Mails leitender Mitarbeiter der Agentur, die eine Gruppe anonymer Informanten im Internet zugaenglich gemacht hat.

The planning and analysis phases seem to be pretty business-like. Overall that line of media manipulation is easily outsourced and the keyboard soldiers are cheap, quickly trained and replaceable. If one considers the miniscule budget and the great manipulation return on that investment I expect that in the future we will see much more of that stuff even if major social networks and media harden themselves considerably.

[kaur]

Russian Novaya Gazeta nr 1 guy said last week directly that this is new modi operandi for FSB. They catched some time ago 1 female journalist, who was sent to spy on them, because they are considered opposition newspaper. She told them a lot of interesting things. She was sent by by trolls' company security unit. Those units are in Russia manned by former security services guys.

Interview in Russian http://tvrain.ru/articles/lobkov_dmi...lpake_-369529/

[OUTLAW 09]

One must love the double tongued language Interfax and the Russian FM uses especially the word fascist.

09:14 Moscow outraged by fascist provocations against Russian embassy in Kyiv

There where no more that 300 individuals protesting the shoot down of an Ukrainian aircraft with a Russian MANPAD killing 49 so I guess protesting the killing of Ukrainian military personnel is now considered being "fascist".

But somehow "Moscow" overlooks the Russian MANPAD as well as the three T64s, and one BM21 that had it "somehow" let through the FSB "secured" Russian/Ukrainian border.

Assume "secured" as Interfax had released a formal statement attributed to Putin who gave guidance to the FSB and Russian Border Security Command to seal the border.

What is equally impressive is the lack of push back by Western media to the fake and often misleading reporting as one would think it kind of gives bad press to them when they carry fake reporting---they do not seem to mind being apparently used.

Yes we see on occasions an article by say the BBC or the German media but has anyone heard any comments in the open public by a leading western political type and or national leader ie say Merkel or Obama?

[kaur]

Monday, June 23, 2014

Window on Eurasia: In Ukraine, Putin is Carrying Out ‘Biggest Information Special Op’ in Modern Times, Eidman Says

After the Maidan, he continues, “the situation of Russian-speaking citizens” of Ukraine “did not change. “’The ‘uprising’ in the Donbas occurred not as a result of a deteriorating of the situation, but just the reverse, the situation became catastrophic as a result of this ‘uprising.’” People have done what they have done only because they were deceived and misled.

They were “consciously led to a state of mass psychosis. The irrational fear and hatred of the Russian speakers to the new Ukrainian authorities was intentionally provoked with the help of a brainwashing campaign, the dissemination of panic rumors, and the work of Russian media and political technologists.”

No one threatened Donetsk or Luhansk, least of all Kyiv, until the revolt forced the Ukrainian army to intervene. “The population [of the two oblasts] did not need a war” and it has not brought them anything but suffering. “But there are forces interested in provoking the conflict and using the population of these regions for their own selfish interests.”

These include the Putin regime which has used the crisis to boost its domestic standing, “part of the eastern Ukrainian oligarchy and political elite” who lost their positions when Yanukovich fled, and “Russian nationalists, ‘imperialists,’ ‘Cossack,’ Orthodox clericals, national socialists who form the greater part of volunteers from Russia.”

Not one of these three groups needs the residents of Donetsk or Luhansk except as tools for their own purposes, but they collectively and not the people of the two Ukrainian oblasts are fanning the fires of war. If they ceased to do so, the conflict would end. In the meantime, one can only hope that the people there and elsewhere will learn to “oppose Russian disinformation.”

http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.be/...-putin-is.html

[Firn]

Indeed, indeed.

Ukrainian Church Faces Obscure Pro-Russia Revolt in Its Own Ranks

LVIV, Ukraine — In a zealously nationalist region of Ukraine that clamors to join Europe and bubbles with suspicion toward Russia, Father Andriy, a preacher at Our Lady of Everlasting Succor church, was defiantly out of step with the mood of his flock.

The European Union, he explained after a Sunday service, is an “empire of evil” committed to defying the word of God and to spreading homosexuality and pedophilia. As for antigovernment protesters who toppled President Viktor F. Yanukovych and are praised as heroes in this western corner of Ukraine, the priest sees only “Godless deviants” and “fools” who are “in the pay of hostile foreign powers.”

Such views, espoused by a small but noisy group of fundamentalist Catholic clerics in western Ukraine, are commonplace among the clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church and its Ukrainian affiliate, whose Moscow-based patriarch is a firm ally of President Vladimir V. Putin.

It was founded by the Czech national Dohnal accused of having served as a Soviet intelligence mole called 'Tonek' and can dispose of a surprising amount of money and wealth relative to it's tiny size.

Obviously such news is an easy target for sarcasm, sadly after the Russian network of men and money in Europe has been increasingly revealed it is difficult to rule such things out.

Such an investment by the Kremlin requires relative little capital and can cause considerable confusion and outsized influence.