The Propaganda War

[BdHvA]

Are you aware of Russia in American's backyard, her near abroad?

The actual border between Russia and America is about 2 and half miles. The Russian is militarized, The American side is home to fisherman and there families.

[Photo Guy]

Russia does not own Ukraine, no matter how paranoid Russia is about Ukraine becoming a threatening 'NATOland'. Moscow's ideas and goals are killing thousands.

[Photo Guy]

Every dog is valiant at his own door.

Don't trouble trouble until trouble troubles you.

Actually, I thank God that France helped us win our Revolutionary War against Britain. Now, a weak Ukraine should be helped with their revolution.

[Photo Guy]

From a nuke safety perspective, Ukraine is safer than even Russia. Ukraine lacks the large populations of restless (and sometimes for good reason) Islamic regions, and Nazi-nationalist groups. Both those are in far greater numbers in Russia.

On an organized crime and corruption threat, Ukraine is slowly gaining distance from Russia on this as well. In Ukraine you still have both, but there is now a growing will of the people to stop corruption, whereas in Russia it is not only ingrained, but it is official economic doctrine.

Besides the physical war, I agree that there are huge differences in political and cultural goals. Russia seems to be oblivious about their own problem with corruption, while Ukraine has an anti-corruption department. Ukraine appears to be championing a more democratic system, while Russia stifles democracy. These are two huge differences. I think Putin should be continually confronted with these ideological differences.

[ML]

. . .   If the US had any backbone, they would have responded and honored their commitment.

It has been shown several times here already that USA has no obligation under the terms of the Budapest Memorandum to help Ukraine in the current situation.

USA only agreed to not cause Ukraine trouble and to seek UN action if Ukraine were attacked by nuclear weapons.

I heartily agree and wish that the USA would help Ukraine more . . . but it is fruitless to keep falsely stating that the Budapest Memorandum requires us to do so in the current situation.

Yes, clearly Russia is violating their part of the agreement, but that is not surprising given the general character of Russian people.

Attached is the Budapest Memorandum.

[John of Hesperia]

1945 part of Czechoslovakia was taken by the Soviet Union
1945 part of Poland was taken by the Soviet Union
1944 part of Finland was taken by the Soviet Union
1945 part of Japan was taken by the Soviet Union
1945 part of Germany was taken by the Soviet Union
1940 Latvia was taken by the Soviet Union
1940 Lithuania was taken by the Soviet Union
1940 Estonia was taken by the Soviet Union
1940 Moldova  was taken by the Soviet Union
1920 Mongolia was taken  by the Soviet Union
2008 part of Georgia was taken by Russia
2014 part of Ukraine was taken by Russia

Can you point to me the area around Russia and show me a single square centimeter taken by that horrible all-conquering enemy of yours “America”???  No, you can’t, and of course almost every single one of the countries listed above is now a member of a military alliance with the United States.  Who do you think THESE countries are afraid of, and why do you think they joined such an alliance? 

Is Russia upset because it fears America will try to “conquer its territory”, or is Russia upset because these alliances interfere with Russia’s future territorial expansion ambitions?

You have absolutely right sir.  It is my fervent hope that the USA will begin, after Our Big A$$ Mistake America, is at last rectified, and this country will again become the leader of the free world, which includes most of the once-occupied countries you list. 
None can expect to survive without some serious assistance, both mutual and foreign.  That means America.  Weakened as we are by edict from our current "leader" we still have a few lights burning on in the "shining city on a hill."

[fathertime]

Larissa,

1945 part of Czechoslovakia was taken by the Soviet Union
1945 part of Poland was taken by the Soviet Union
1944 part of Finland was taken by the Soviet Union
1945 part of Japan was taken by the Soviet Union
1945 part of Germany was taken by the Soviet Union
1940 Latvia was taken by the Soviet Union
1940 Lithuania was taken by the Soviet Union
1940 Estonia was taken by the Soviet Union
1940 Moldova  was taken by the Soviet Union
1920 Mongolia was taken  by the Soviet Union
2008 part of Georgia was taken by Russia
2014 part of Ukraine was taken by Russia

Can you point to me the area around Russia and show me a single square centimeter taken by that horrible all-conquering enemy of yours “America”???  No, you can’t, and of course almost every single one of the countries listed above is now a member of a military alliance with the United States.  Who do you think THESE countries are afraid of, and why do you think they joined such an alliance? 

Is Russia upset because it fears America will try to “conquer its territory”, or is Russia upset because these alliances interfere with Russia’s future territorial expansion ambitions?

Hi Krimster,


My impression was that the Soviets helped liberate the Mongolians from the 'white armies' which included aid from the USA among others. 


Fathertime!   

[krimster2]

Fathertime,
  By "helped liberate" you mean "incorportated into their territory"?  Then yes....

[Boethius]

Why the Russia will not climbs to the US? Why is the US all time climbs in Russia?So strange.Very interesting.

I think you meant interfering or meddling, not climbing.

[2tallbill]

I think you meant interfering or meddling, not climbing.

Also none of the interfering or meddling was actually done in Russia, it was allegedly
done in only in countries that Russia wants to control or in Russia's sphere of influence.

Mean while Russia is not even remotely guiltless in doing exactly the same things.


From The Business insider
Linette Lopez


This week, Russia Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is visiting Cuba, Nicaragua, Colombia, and Guatemala. According to reports, rumors are flying that Russia plans to sell fighter jets to Nicaragua's Sandinista government after helping them set up a topographic center. In Cuba, Lavrov and his counterpart reportedly discussed US aggression against regional ally Venezuela.

Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela and Putin


"Last year and again this year, a Russian intelligence ship docked in Havana multiple times while conducting operations in the Gulf of Mexico and along the east coast of the United States," Tovo told members of the Senate Armed Services committee.

"Russia has courted Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua to gain access to air bases and ports for resupply of Russian naval assets and strategic bombers operating in the Western Hemisphere. Russian media also announced Russia would begin sending long-range strategic bombers to patrol the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico, in an effort to 'monitor foreign powers’ military activities and maritime communications.'"

read the entire story here
http://www.businessinsider.com/its-time-to-start-worrying-about-what-russias-been-up-to-in-latin-america-2015-3

[Boethius]

Mean while Russia is not even remotely guiltless in doing exactly the same things.

It was even more so in the Soviet period.

[krimster2]

yur sons are off marchin to war keepin step with an off-tune band
the streets are all empty except for an old rusted paper stand
the headlines in bold are clear to read “china all set to buy Ukraine”
“will soon be exportin half her grain"
so hey rooskie load the shell into the pooshka
and let er rip at some poor babooshka
they ain’t got nothin to eat anyway
at least that’s what most of ‘em say

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/10332007/China-to-rent-five-per-cent-of-Ukraine.html

[Darth_Budda]

Hi Krimster,


My impression was that the Soviets helped liberate the Mongolians from the 'white armies' which included aid from the USA among others. 


Fathertime!

The russian Revolution is a interesting event from a historical perspective...

many areas of the former Russian Empire had " Red " sections of the population. that fought for their country to be included in the SU..

Such as Ukraine and Finland...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiev_Bolshevik_Uprising

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_Civil_War

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolian_Revolution_of_1921

[Boethius]

The Bolsheviks never had popular support in Ukraine.  That is why the civil war there was exceptionally brutal and lasted to about 1922.

The Red Army fighting in Ukraine was comprised primarily of Red Guards from Russia.  When invading, the Bolsheviks were fairly well coordinated, and had Bolshevik agitators stage protests in the cities.  Keep in mind, the cities were generally made up of non Ukrainian populations, and that in no city did the Bolsheviks have popular support. 

There were numerous Ukrainian partisan movements fighting the Red Army.  However, they were all independent, and that lack of cohesion is probably why the Red Army was able to take Ukraine.

[Boethius]

This is for Larissa, who doesn't believe Russians were behind the civil war in Ukraine.  Notice how all these "Russian nationalists" have love for trappings of the West (as emphasized below) -

There was a time when the arrival of Alexander Borodai and his posse of camouflaged gunmen could clear out a restaurant in just minutes.
But that was in Donetsk, Ukraine, in 2014, where Borodai was prime minister of a ­pro-Russian separatist government. Now, he is back in his native Moscow and, as he tells it, back to his old day job as a public relations consultant.

"When you are not on television, people start to forget what you look like,” he said, sinking into a cream-colored sofa in a tony Moscow restaurant for an interview. “And thank God for that. It was hard to go out on the street at first.” . . .

Borodai is not the only one of Russia’s self-proclaimed volunteer fighters to reappear here. As the conflict in east Ukraine has reached a stalemate, hundreds of volunteers have returned to Russia, and the early rebel leaders, many of them native Russians, have resumed comfortable, increasingly public lives in Moscow.

Wrapped in a tight Armani Exchange T-shirt and sporting a week’s stubble, Borodai said that he has not been in Donetsk since October and that his focus now is on reviving his consulting company. Business is bad. Several international companies, which he declined to name, severed their contracts when he was subjected to sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union.  .  .

In the meantime, the gang’s all here. You could have bumped into Marat Bashirov, the former prime minister of the separatist Luhansk People’s Republic, at the Moscow Economic Forum in March, where he gave a lecture titled “Risks, sanctions, lobbying.” Bashirov, a Moscow government relations consultant once employed by the oligarch Viktor Vekselberg’s holding company, was subjected to sanctions by the European Union in July 2014 along with Borodai.

A snappy dresser, he remarked on a government airstrike on his headquarters in July last year in a dry post on Facebook: “It seems my Tom Ford suit has been killed. Now I will hold government sessions in camouflage.” .  .  .

There is also Igor Girkin, the battle commander who once bragged that if not for his attacks on police stations in April last year, there would be no war in Ukraine. He now appears at lectures with far-right nationalists and has gone spectacularly off message, accusing Russia of abandoning the separatist republics in Ukraine that it helped to create. .

Sergei Kavtaradze, an aide to Borodai in Donetsk who was once labeled “the hipster with a machine gun,” returned to Russia last year and is now finishing a film adaptation of his doctoral dissertation.Titled “MilkForMadness,” it investigates “the archetypes of war,” Kavtaradze said, and the effects of war on its participants.
“It makes people go crazy,” he said. . .

“Hopefully, it may be in some Western festivals next year,” Kavtaradze said of the film.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/former-russian-rebels-trade-war-in-ukraine-for-posh-life-in-moscow/2015/09/13/6b71f862-3b8c-11e5-b34f-4e0a1e3a3bf9_story.html

[mendeleyev]

Shocking. Well, not at all. Except for the blindness of many Russians whose primary news source is Russian television.

Actually, I thought that all those guys were just there on vacation, having driven the family tank across the border to visit relatives, with their teenagers BUK systems in tow for some target practice on migrating Malaysian ducks.

Several of these goons were also involved in the annexation of Crimea, and Abhkazia/SO/Georgia, and Moldova,  and before that Armenia. A thinking person would almost believe that somehow all these "projects" were connected to the Kremlin.

[AkMike]

A thinking person would almost believe that somehow all these "projects" were connected to the Kremlin.

Nah say it isn't so Mendy! Would the Kremlin flat out lie?? 

[Photo Guy]

Now available on Netflix
Summary of the Maidan Revolution:

http://www.netflix.com/title/80031666

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4908644/

[JayH]

Thought this was the most appropriate place for this link-- amazingly-- just like some other "news" ( like giving results of elections a week prior to poll date!!)-- hours prior to official release by the Dutch investigators-- Pravda can tell us the  findings !!!
Once again--- this is an attempt to bury the real findings in a sea of google results designed to hide and confuse the real finding links.
This report below--released at least 8 hours( maybe 12?)prior to release of the official Dutch report!!


MH 17 Report: Predictably, no evidence against Russia

Predictably the upcoming long-awaited (from July 2014 to October 2015) report on MH-17 does not present one shred of evidence incriminating the Russian Federation or President Putin. So maybe those media outlets accusing Russia and her President of the downing of the MH-17 would like to stand up and apologize?

To apologize, you need fiber, morals, substance, backbone and character. To sling accusations all you need is to be a foul-mouthed guttersnipe, all you need is looseness of morals, an absence of character and a general nastiness. To refuse to apologize after slinging the mud shows pure spinelessness, spitefulness and worthlessness.

I could end the article here because after this, what else is there to say? To those who blamed Russia, to those who aired parents of children, in mourning, asking for "President Putin" to give back their children, there is much to say. For a start, the stance in this column has been from the beginning respect for the families and loved ones of those who lost their lives in first place. In second place, respect for the families and loved ones of the victims. In third place, respect for the families and loved ones of the victims.


And now for the rest. My position has been from day 1 wait for the report (quite how it took one year and two and a half months to generate defies logic) and see if the report incriminates Russia, and then let the accusations fly. The fact of the matter is, as I predicted, that the report in no way incriminates Russia or its leadership but the accusations already started a long time ago.

So suppose we now demand an explanation from those who were grandstaging, using the horrific tragedy, using the victims and their grief, to paint (another) scary picture about Russia? The slanderous and libelous accusations should not go unanswered.
http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/13-10-2015/132305-mh_no_evidence-0/

[mendeleyev]

It is a crime to own and or distribute anti-Russian books or other media materials. Recently the director of Moscow's Library of Ukrainian literature was detained and the library raided. What are "anti Russian" materials? Anything that the government doesn't want you to have.

Director of the Ukrainian Literature Library in Moscow, has been detained for 48 hours and may be remanded in custody after Russia reinstated criminal proceedings against her and the library for ‘inciting hatred’ through supposedly ‘anti-Russian material’ held in the library.

http://khpg.org/en/index.php?id=1446067278

[Photo Guy]

Does this mean that the ownership and distribution of the Dutch MH-17 report is illegal in Russia?   

[mendeleyev]

At this point--absolutely.

[mendeleyev]

Odd at how those who oppose the Kremlin keeping finding themselves in legal troubles, and the target of intense propaganda. More Russians get their news from television than any other source, and inside Russia the number one news channel is the Kremlin controlled "First Channel" news network.

As to propaganda, it they wish to target someone, the quickest smear is to link the person with Jews, and America. So, perhaps it is no shock that the First Channel evidently thinks that their viewers will be swayed by this video. Supposedly, it is opposition leader Alexi Navalny (who remains under house arrest) at the US Embassy in New York dancing with Jews.

[JayH]

Interesting article that  summarises the progression of the world waking up to how effective the Russian troll factories were were in propagating Russian nonsense around the world.
Disinformation has proved an effective hybrid war tool for Russia but element of surprise is now lost as international audiences grow familiar with Kremlin infowar tactics
This is worth an update-- particularly in the context of what many have posted here and on forums in the past.


World finally wakes up to Russian infowar and begins to counter Kremlin fakes
Global audiences were totally unprepared for the information war unleashed by the Kremlin in early 2014. This resulted in a series of spectacular early successes for Russia, with an unexpectedly large number of international media outlets seemingly prepared to take Kremlin tales of fascist Ukraine’, ‘oppressed Russian-speaking Ukrainians’, and a ‘CIA-backed coup’ at face value.

http://bunews.com.ua/society/item/2015-review-world-finally-wakes-up-to-russian-infowar-and-begins-to-counter-kremlin-fakes

[mendeleyev]

FT, I just caught your comment that the Reds "liberated" Mongolia from the White Army. It depends on the definition of liberation apparently. Mongolia is a somewhat desolate land of very beautiful people, a place that I have enjoyed visiting several times. Mongolians have traditionally had to fight off neighbors who wanted to control them. To them, the "Whites" were as the Nazis were to the Finns, someone new who perhaps offered a chance to throw off a past conqueror.

The White Army helped Mongolians take back a portion of Mongolia that had been annexed by China in 1911. In 1918 the Mongolians turned back to China for assistance in fighting both the Whites and the Reds. In 1921, the Soviet Red Army defeated the White Army along with the local Chinese forces and the Mongolians, and helped establish the Communist government in Mongolia.

This was particularly important to the Reds because a sizeable portion of Siberia, historically a part of China, had wanted to rejoin Mongolia and China to be part of a semi-autonomous a pan-Mongol state under Chinese protection. The Japanese had their own designs on Mongolia at the time.

The Reds, having given up large amounts of territory to be released from the world war, worked to reclaim as much territory and influence as possible. It has always interested me that the vast majority of ethnic Russians bought into the lie that the Soviet Union wanted to forge a peaceful and friendly brotherhood of nations, which required invasions and killing of those who didn't want to be a part of their brotherhood.

Mongolia is a fine example of the Communists real intent. The puppet government, the Mongolian People's Republic, wasted no time in enslaving private landowners, destroying Mongolian temples, executing Mongolian monks, etc, all in the name of peaceful and friendly relations, of course. To the Mongolian people, that never quite fit the definition of "liberation."