Ukraine (closed; covers till August 2014)

[OUTLAW 09]

Didn't you just post this piece suggesting that in some quarters at least there's a perception that Putin's popularity is sliding?



Putin is increasingly between a rock and a hard place: nationalists will still give him credit for taking Crimea, but in politics you're only as good as your last show, and if he doesn't act in the Ukraine he will be accused of abandoning his proxies (an accusation with which Americans will feel some sympathy). If he does move, the oligarchs and the licit and illicit business community will accuse him of risking damage to both the Russian economy and to their individual economies. In short, he's moving into a situation where different sides of his support base have widely divergent interests and demands. Not a comfortable place to be.



Color revolutions specifically threaten governments where the populace does not feel that it has the ability to change the government, typically dictatorships and pseudo-dictatorships. Where the populace has confidence in the electoral system, they may take to the streets when they see lousy government, but they generally won't directly try to overthrow the government, because they know that in due time they can overthrow it legally with a lot less risk and trouble. I think you'll find that the key determinant that pushes public unrest to the color revolution level is less public perception of bad governance than the public's confidence in existing mechanisms for changing governance. Democratic governments need to be worried about being voted out if they don't deliver good governance, but they face much less threat from color revolutions than countries that are either non-democratic or where the public has little or no confidence in the nominally democratic mechanisms.



I suppose that's why they don't bother publishing RT in English, or hiring stooges to pack the comments sections of English-language publications...

Propaganda is advertising by another name. As with any type of advertising, the measure of success is not the structure of your campaign or the number of people it reaches. The only relevant measure of success is sales of the product. The Russian propaganda campaign is extensive and the structure of it is fairly sophisticated. The content remains extremely crude, and structure without content gets you nowhere. The question remains... who is being convinced, and where? That question can only be answered with actual evidence... market research as it were. Anecdotal evidence doesn't count.

Dayuhan--thanks for finally agreeing even if you take 2000 words to agree and a couple of roundabout thought processes. You need to shorten the thoughts.

You really do need to understand the use of propaganda---we use classify it --white, grey and black and believe me the white sometimes actually appears to be the truth. Doubt seriously if you have ever worked in a section that drove propaganda---it would open you eyes and make you even question articles that you quoted in the past.

Really go back and dig out the chart I posted here in this thread about the extent and depth of their info war and then tell me it is not and or was not grabbing.

Then come back with comments focused on the extent of that chart and the campaign it outlines and then ask yourself can I even trust the materials I myself find good?

And Dayuhan---finally write something that you yourself put together---cutting and pasting is now a great research tool- if you like Microsoft--and it is if one likes to debate. Debating wastes time and effort these days as it in the end tends to go nowhere.