The Propaganda War

[jone]

Steamer speaks very good English.  He just isn't too sharp in the joke department.

[Steamer]

Did you mean naive?

 

[Steamer]

Steamer speaks very good English.  He just isn't too sharp in the joke department.

I'll work on that.

[lordtiberius]

Steamer speaks very good English.  He just isn't too sharp in the joke department.

No.  Just lazy.

[mendeleyev]

Classic example of how propaganda leads to the desired conclusion. Here is something making the rounds on social media.

This Russian gal is holding a sign (below) that says: USA! Hands off Kievan Rus. Birthplace of freedom, with Putin of course.

Were you to ask, she'd likely tell you that the USA is the only power "meddling" in Ukraine, and that Putin is trying to rescue Russia's Ukrainian "brothers."

The audacity of using "Kievan Rus" is a not so subtle indicator that she, like many others, are believing the Kremlin line that Kiev, and thus Ukraine, is still a part of a greater Russia. Therefore, the Ukrainian people have no right to determine their own destiny without the consent of their bigger brother.

[AkMike]

Just look at the stories at the Russian state news and you'll easily see just what propaganda is all about.
 Take a bit of truth, twist it 180 degrees then falsify everything else.

 Look at the current news headlines there.

http://english.pravda.ru/

[JayH]

Onlythe tip of the iceberg of Kremlin disinformation--better known as Kremlin lies !
size=14pt]Russian journalists have published a complete list of pro-Kremlin trolls in St. Petersburg[/size]

Russian journalists declassified "troll lair" in St. Petersburg that the office in three shifts "hang to deceive" users online publishing pro-government posts and comments. The publication writes  , "Novaya Gazeta" , if earlier political persecution, including the web, simply prevented the opposition to live, but now it has become a real physical threat. Read more: In Stec told Kremlin creates the Russian army of bots on the Internet Journalists managed to read the "temniki" for St. Petersburg trolls and get a list of more than five hundred "network fighters." It is known that almost all bloggers living in St. Petersburg, set up their accounts in 2013. They periodically diluted 'economic positions "their version of political events.
Більше читайте тут: http://tsn.ua/svit/rosiyski-zhurnalisti-opublikuvali-povniy-spisok-prokremlivskih-troliv-u-peterburzi-414513.html

[fathertime]

I happened to be browsing about the internet and I found this article.  Apparently two surveys were taken in Crimea.   One was done by a couple professors from the USA, and the other was done by a firm in Germany.  Both surveys found that between 84-85% of the people in Crimea are happy Russia has annexed them. 


Here is the link, so you be the judge.


http://news.yahoo.com/putins-grab-crimea-still-rankles-west-crimeans-164453982.html


Fathertime!   

[Boethius]

First, no one is going to be honest, given the climate there.  Second, I do believe a majority had a preference for reunification with Russia, however, it is the manner in which it was achieved that was objectionable, and the theft of property that occurred in the process.


Civilized countries (Canada, the UK) have referendums that don't involve invasions, guns, prefilled ballots, or non residents voting.

[AkMike]

Those polls were probably taken while the residents were under gunpoint just like the elections.

[Boethius]

I think the polls would find a majority wanted to join Russia, even were they fully unbiased and without any threat.

[lordtiberius]

The UN Human Rights Commission estimates over a million refugees from the occupied lands.  We know from Katrina, that the poor, old and infirm cannot leave.  Most conscripts reporting for duty do not come form west or central Ukraine but the south and east.  Also some pro-Russian Crimeans express buyer's remorse with Putin.

[Boethius]

Interesting article on the Kremlin trolls -
http://news.nationalpost.com/2015/03/11/leonid-bershidsky-russia-is-hacking-your-social-media-news-feed/

[Muzh]

By the time we left four years later, in 2009, my hope for Russia had been further diminished by the murders of several journalists, including Anna Politkovskaya, an outspoken Putin critic, and by the beating of a friend’s husband, who had founded a group dedicated to government transparency. Back in the West, I watched, this time with horror, as oligarchy and gangsterism took hold.


The Sunday morning after Boris Nemtsov’s murder, I stood at my stove in Madrid cooking blini, thin pancakes that I make almost every weekend to connect my daughter with her Russian heritage. Yet now they have become more than a reminder of times long gone. They make me think of the future. “Russia will always be a dictatorship,” my grandfather had told me. I fear now that he might have been right.

Satan's Bible

[JayH]

Another story on the TROLL factory -  there is a link to the story in Russian !

The Trolls Who Came In From The Cold
ST. PETERSBURG -- Last May, Tatiana N decided she wanted a higher salary than the average journalist can expect.

After responding to an advertisement in the popular HeadHunter job-search website, she became a Kremlin-paid Internet troll. Tatiana -- who, like others interviewed for this story, asked that her last name not be used -- worked out of a 2,500-square-meter warehouse in the suburbs of St. Petersburg.

The job paid 40,000 rubles a month, significantly more than the 25,000-30,000 most journalists make. But it came, she said, "with pain."

Tatiana joined a round-the-clock operation in which an army of trolls disseminated pro-Kremlin and anti-Western talking points on blogs and in the comments sections of news websites in Russia and abroad.


http://www.rferl.org/content/russia-trolls-headquarters-media-internet-insider-account/26904157.html

[Boethius]

Good article on Russia's long term plan to dismantle Ukraine -

Many who look at Moscow’s propaganda efforts consider only their current state and fail to see the ways in which the Kremlin has cultivated certain ideas over a very long period, laying the groundwork for what it may only expect to be able to achieve in the long term.

Such people thus miss opportunities to identify Moscow’s plans and to counter such propaganda before it can inflict the most harm, according to Vyacheslav Gusarov, a specialist on Russian disinformation at the Kyiv Center for Military-Political Research.

The notion that Ukraine might dissolve into several states has been around for a long time, but Russian information operations intended to lay the ground work for that are of more recent origin. The “first serious” example of promoting discussion of this issue came in 2004 during the Ukrainian presidential vote.

http://www.interpretermag.com/moscow-has-promoted-ukraines-dismemberment-since-2004-kyiv-disinformation-specialist-says/

[fathertime]

I twas snooping about the internet tis morning and found this piece.  Russia is pointing out that they have more right to Crimea then the UK does The Falklands....of course Argentina agrees with them on that one. 


http://news.yahoo.com/russia-more-crimea-uk-falklands-says-moscow-200418915.html
Russia has 'more right' to Crimea than UK to Falklands, says Moscow


Moscow (AFP) - Russia has more claim to Crimea than Britain has to the Falkland Islands, a senior Russian lawmaker insisted Sunday as London again denounced Moscow's "illegal annexation" of the peninsula.......


Fathertime!   

[Boethius]

What a stupid argument.  Mind you, I don't expect much from the former commie nomenklatura who are now the "respected lawmakers" of Russia and yes, Ukraine.
 
They were killers and pigs before the collapse, and they haven't changed much since the collapse of the USSR.
 
 

[Steamer]

Dang, Forbes published an objective and impartial article on the subject matter.











One Year After Russia Annexed Crimea, Locals Prefer Moscow To Kiev

Poll after poll proves U.S. and Europe wrong on Crimea's annexation by Russia last March.

FORBES.COM|BY KENNETH RAPOZA

[mendeleyev]

This is all part of a drama playing out in the Federation Council (Senate), and the Duma has been asked to do some of the advance legwork in propaganda. Last month the presidential administration instructed the Council to lay the groundwork for a declaration that Khrushchev "illegally" assigned Crimea to the Ukrainian Soviet.

Why they bother to attempt to prove their claim over a year after the annexation, is beyond me. First, Khrushchev did not act without authority and consent. He was no Stalin or Brezhnev, and could not have done such a move without the support of his Politburo and the okay by his Supreme Soviet. Had his act been illegal, successors after him could have easily "corrected" the move--they did not.

Then there is the issue of the post Soviet era. Had Russia then felt ownership of Crimea still belonged to them, they had numerous opportunities to present their case, but did not. The breakup of the CCCP left Russia weak, and today Russian will moan and groan and froth at the mouth in attempts to excuse their non-action then as a result of all the chaos. Bullshit. Ukraine was even weaker at the time.

The signing of the Budapest agreement was another opportunity for Russia to make a claim. Ukraine was desperate for funds that came as a result of giving up nukes and would have agreed to just about anything at the time. Russia could have made an offer, and structured some sort of long-term settlement in exchange. Russia remained silent.

The signing of long-term leases for Crimean bases/ports was another opportunity to bring up the matter. In fact, from a legal perspective, any rational person might understand that the agreement to paying those leases was a legal precedent for Russia's acknowledgment of legitimate Ukrainian ownership.

Truth: Russia's so-called possession of Crimea lasted only 171 years after it defeated the Crimean Khanate and made Crimea a conquest. Based on time of possession, the Ottoman descendant states and the Greeks have more claim to Crimea than does Russia.

[Boethius]

Dang, Forbes published an objective and impartial article on the subject matter.




One Year After Russia Annexed Crimea, Locals Prefer Moscow To Kiev

Poll after poll proves U.S. and Europe wrong on Crimea's annexation by Russia last March.

FORBES.COM|BY KENNETH RAPOZA

Irrelevant.  The issue is not what Crimeans want.  It is that the region was seized by force.  Businesses belonging to locals have been nationalized overnight.
 
Had a real referendum been held, similar to the referendums in Quebec and Scotland, with a devolution conducted in accordance with a rule of law, the world would have accepted Crimea joining Russia.  Russia has behaved as a thug in this matter, and in its invasion of Ukraine via the FSB and proxies.  It has proven the rule of law means nothing to it.  We knew this was the case within the country, but it has also proven to be the case internationally.

[Gator]

Irrelevant.  The issue is not what Crimeans want.  It is that the region was seized by force.  Businesses belonging to locals have been nationalized overnight.
 
Had a real referendum been held, similar to the referendums in Quebec and Scotland, with a devolution conducted in accordance with a rule of law, the world would have accepted Crimea joining Russia.  Russia has behaved as a thug in this matter, and in its invasion of Ukraine via the FSB and proxies.  It has proven the rule of law means nothing to it.  We knew this was the case within the country, but it has also proven to be the case internationally.

[Belvis]

Irrelevant.  The issue is not what Crimeans want.  It is that the region was seized by force. 

I knew that  laws are above all for a honourable lawer, people is just a subject for law application. However Crimeans did not agree on that proposition. May be because they have not large enough mob  of  lawers there.

[Ranetka]

Brutal force lol. Not a single shot was fired . It was a brutal referendum and thuggish celebrations. How dare Krimeans to join Russia.

[Steamer]

Irrelevant.  The issue is not what Crimeans want.  It is that the region was seized by force.

Apparently the Crimeans disagree and the only thing keeping Ukraine from implementing a final solution to Crimeans and their notions of self determination is the Russian military.