"Russian bots" - How An Anti-Russian Lobby Creates Fake News
The U.S. mainstream media are going nuts. They now make up and report stories based on the uncritical acceptance of an algorithm they do not want to understand and which is known to produce fake results.
See for example these three stories:
- CNN - Russian bots promote pro-gun messages after Florida school shooting
- Wired - Pro-Gun Russian Bots Flood Twitter After Parkland Shooting
- New York Times - After Florida School Shooting, Russian ‘Bot’ Army Pounced
From the last link:
SAN FRANCISCO — One hour after news broke about the school shooting in Florida last week, Twitter accounts suspected of having links to Russia released hundreds of posts taking up the gun control debate.The accounts addressed the news with the speed of a cable news network. Some adopted the hashtag #guncontrolnow. Others used #gunreformnow and #Parklandshooting. Earlier on Wednesday, before the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., many of those accounts had been focused on the investigation by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
In other words - the "Twitter accounts suspected of having links to Russia" were following the current news just as cable news networks do. When a new sensational event happened they immediately jumped onto it. But the NYT authors go to length to claim that there is some nefarious Russian scheme behind this that uses automated accounts to spread divisive issues.
Those claims are based on this propaganda project:
Last year, the Alliance for Securing Democracy, in conjunction with the German Marshall Fund, a public policy research group in Washington, created a website that tracks hundreds of Twitter accounts of human users and suspected bots that they have linked to a Russian influence campaign.
The "Alliance for Securing Democracy" is run by military lobbyists, CIA minions and neo-conservative propagandists. Its claimed task is:
... to publicly document and expose Vladimir Putin’s ongoing efforts to subvert democracy in the United States and Europe.
There is no evidence that Vladimir Putin ever made or makes such efforts.
The ASD "Hamilton 68" website shows graphics with rankings of "top items" and "trending items" allegedly used by Russian bots or influence agents. There is nothing complicate behind it. It simply tracks the tweets of 600 Twitter users and aggregates the hashtags they use. It does not say which Twitter accounts its algorithms follows. It claims that the 600 were selected by one of three criteria: 1. People who often tweet news that also appears on RT (Russia Today) and Sputnik News, two general news sites sponsored by the Russian government; 2. People who "openly profess to be pro-Russian"; 3. accounts that "appear to use automation" to boost the same themes that people in group 1 and 2 tweet about.Nowhere does the group say how many of the 600 accounts it claims to track belong to which group. Are their 10 assumed bots or 590 in the surveyed 600 accounts? And how please does one "openly profess" to be pro-Russian? We don't know and the ASD won't say.
On December 25 2017 the "Russian influence" agents or bots who - according to NYT - want to sow divisiveness and subvert democracy, wished everyone a #MerryChristmas.
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The real method the Hamilton 68 group used to select the 600 accounts it tracks is unknown. The group does not say or show how it made it up. Despite that the NYT reporters, Sheera Frenkel and Daisuke Wakabayashi, continue with the false assumptions that most or all of these accounts are automated, have something to do with Russia and are presumably nefarious:
Russian-linked bots have rallied around other divisive issues, often ones that President Trump has tweeted about. They promoted Twitter hashtags like #boycottnfl, #standforouranthem and #takeaknee after some National Football League players started kneeling during the national anthem to protest racial injustice.The automated Twitter accounts helped popularize the #releasethememo hashtag, ...
The Daily Beast reported earlier that the last claim is definitely false:
Twitter’s internal analysis has thus far found that authentic American accounts, and not Russian imposters or automated bots, are driving #ReleaseTheMemo. There are no preliminary indications that the Twitter activity either driving the hashtag or engaging with it is either predominantly Russian.
The same is presumably true for the other hashtags.
The Dutch IT expert and blogger Marcel van den Berg was wondering how Dutch keywords and hashtags showed up on the Hamilton 68 "Russian bots" dashboard. He found (Dutch, English auto translation) that the dashboard is a total fraud:
In recent weeks, I have been keeping a close eye on Hamilton 68. Every time a Dutch hashtag was shown on the website, I made a screenshot. Then I noted what was playing at that moment and I watched the Tweets with this hashtag. Again I could not find any Tweet that seemed to be from a Russian troll.In all cases, the hash tags that Hamilton 68 reported were trending topics in the Netherlands. In all cases there was much to do around the subject of the hashtag in the Netherlands. Many people were angry or shared their opinion on the subject on Twitter. And even if there were a few tweets with Russian connections between them, the effect is zero. Because they do not stand out among the many other, authentic Tweets.
Van den Berg lists a dozen examples he analyzed in depth.
The anti-Russian Bellingcat group around couch blogger Eliot Higgins is sponsored by the NATO propaganda shop Atlantic Council. It sniffs through open source stuff to blame Russia or Syria wherever possible. Bellingcat was recently a victim of the "Russian bots" - or rather of the ASD website. On February 10 the hashtag #bellingcat trended to rank 2 of the dashboard.
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Bellingcat was thus, according to the Hamilton 68 claims, under assault by hordes of nefarious Russian government sponsored bots.
The Bellingcat folks looked into the issue and found that only six people on Twitter, none of them an automated account, had used the #bellingcat hashtag in the last 48 hours. Some of the six may have opinions that may be "pro-Russian", but as Higgins himself says:
[I]n my opinion, it's extremely unlikely the people listed are Russian agents
The pro-NATO propaganda shop Bellingcat thus debunked the pro-NATO propaganda shop Alliance for Securing Democracy.
The fraudsters who created the Hamilton 68 crap seem to have filled their database with rather normal people from all over the world who's opinions they personally dislike. Those then are the "Russian bots" who spread "Russian influence" and divisiveness.
Moreover - what is the value of its information when six normal people out of millions of active Twitter users can push a hashtag with a handful of tweets to the top of the dashboard?
But the U.S. media writes long gushing stories about the dashboard and how it somehow shows automated Russian propaganda. They go to length to explain that this shows "Russian influence" and a "Russian" attempt to sow "divisiveness" into people's minds.
This is nuts.
Last August, when the Hamilton 68 project was first released, the Nation was the only site critical of it. It predicted:
The import of GMF's project is clear: Reporting on anything that might put the US in a bad light is now tantamount to spreading Russian propaganda.
It is now even worse than that. The top ranking of the #merrychristmas hashtag shows that the algorithm does not even care about good or bad news. The tracked twitter accounts are normal people.
The whole project is just a means to push fake stories about alleged "Russian influence" into U.S. media. Whenever some issue creeps up on its dashboard that somehow fits its false "Russian bots" and "divisiveness" narrative the Alliance for Securing Democracy contacts the media to spread its poison. The U.S. media, - CNN, Wired, the New York Times - are by now obviously devoid of thinking journalists and fact checkers. They simple re-package the venom and spread it to the public.
How long will it take until people die from it?
Posted by b on February 20, 2018 at 20:15 UTC | Permalink
next page »"to publicly document and expose Vladimir Putin’s ongoing efforts to subvert democracy in the United States and Europe."
That's pretty rich, coming from a country and from people who actually genuinely, and in proven ways, have subverted democracy in Europe since the late 1940s - Italy being one of the clearest cases.
Posted by: Clueless Joe | Feb 20 2018 20:45 utc | 2
For the life of me I cannot figure why Americans want a war/conflict with Russia. I can't believe it has to do with the economy. There's got to be a far better nefarious reason. Even during the real cold war we tried to avoid conflict. Absolute insanity.
Posted by: ken | Feb 20 2018 20:46 utc | 3
The cleverest trick used in propaganda against a specific country is to accuse it of what the accuser itself is doing.
Posted by: xor | Feb 20 2018 21:11 utc | 5
How much time might the "Alliance for Securing Democracy" spend on uncovering voter suppression and purges, dis-enfrancisement of felons, the closing of polling places, restrictions of early voting, the influence of billionaires, gerrymandering and so on?
Posted by: Bart Hansen | Feb 20 2018 21:14 utc | 6
Gee, what could go wrong formulating policy founded upon a series of Big Lies? Kim Dotcom says he has important info the FBI refuses to hear. At the Munich Security Conference, neocon Nicholas Burns, former US Ambassador to NATO, details my assertion's factual basis that current policy is being formed on a series of Big Lies: "Will NATO strengthen itself to contain Russian power in Eastern Europe giving what Russian[sic] has done illegally in Crimea, in the Donbass, and in Georgia?" [Bolded text are the Big Lies.]
Clearly, this entire psyop was premeditated and its design was hastily done contemporaneously with Russia's Syria intervention. NSA/CIA/FBI knew of HRC's security breeches and rightly assumed their contents would find their way into the election, so the general plan was ready to go prior to WikiLeaks publications. b has uncovered much, and I hope he's planning to publish a book about the entire affair.
Posted by: karlof1 | Feb 20 2018 21:30 utc | 7
How long will it take until people die from it
as long as it takes to flog a dead horse
Posted by: john | Feb 20 2018 21:34 utc | 8
Ken @ 4: There doesn't necessarily need to be One Major Reason for going to war. There may be several reasons all feeding and reinforcing one another and creating a psychological climate in which Going To War is seen as the only solution and is inevitable. The reasons are not just economic and political but cultural and historical.
In some countries allied with the US, the politicians in power are the ideological descendants of those who collaborated with Nazi Germany - so in a sense they are committed to "correcting" what they see as wrong. In the case of current Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, he is the grandson of a former prime minister who once served in General Tojo's World War II cabinet.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2012/12/26/national/formed-in-childhood-roots-of-abes-conservatism-go-deep/#.WoyZCG9uaUk
That's why pinning down the reason for wanting a war against Russia is so difficult.
Posted by: Jen | Feb 20 2018 21:54 utc | 9
The whole piece is just hilarious and I laughed out loud all time while reading it.
https://consortiumnews.com/2018/02/16/nyts-really-weird-russiagate-story/
Since the FBI never inspected the DNC’s computers first-hand, the only evidence comes from an Irvine, California, cyber-security firm known as CrowdStrike whose chief technical officer, Dmitri Alperovitch, a well-known Putin-phobe, is a fellow at the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank that is also vehemently anti-Russian as well as a close Hillary Clinton ally.Thus, Putin-basher Clinton hired Putin-basher Alperovitch to investigate an alleged electronic heist, and to absolutely no one’s surprise, his company concluded that guilty party was … Vladimir Putin. Amazing! Since then, a small army of internet critics has chipped away at CrowdStrike for praising the hackers as among the best in the business yet declaring in the same breath that they gave themselves away by uploading a document in the name of “Felix Edmundovich,” i.e. Felix E. Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Soviet secret police.
As noted cyber-security expert Jeffrey Carr observed with regard to Russia’s two main intelligence agencies: “Raise your hand if you think that a GRU or FSB officer would add Iron Felix’s name to the metadata of a stolen document before he released it to the world while pretending to be a Romanian hacker. Someone clearly had a wicked sense of humor.”
Posted by: Partisan | Feb 20 2018 22:06 utc | 10
thanks b!
muddy waters.. paid for propaganda.... look at all the russian bots, lol...
cold war 2 / mccarthyism 2 is in effect... the historic parallels are marked. thank you neo cons!
it's working... the ordinary person in the usa can't be this stupid can they?
when does ww3 kick in? is that really what these idiots want? or is it just to prolong the huge defense budget?
Posted by: james | Feb 20 2018 22:17 utc | 11
This is about conditioning voters in Europe and the United States for a long war with Russia and China. In other words, a return to the 1950s. It is not working and becoming increasingly hysterical because societies are not nearly as cohesive as they once were, and the mainstream political parties, while better funded and more top-down organized, are basically hollow. The collapse is coming. Four years or ten, take your pick.
Posted by: Mike Maloney | Feb 20 2018 22:24 utc | 12
@4 "For the life of me I cannot figure why Americans want a war/conflict with Russia."
Most Americans probably don't. Just the chosen few with the deepest fall-out shelters. The idea is to keep piling the pressure on to countries like Iran and Russia in the hope that their populations will rise up and demand the freedoms that we enjoy in the West....things like uncensored wardrobe malfunctions and transgender washrooms.
Posted by: dh | Feb 20 2018 22:32 utc | 13
"Most Americans probably don't."
not true.
let's imagine that we have the pyramid of evilness, by which we measure bestiality of one regime and its constituency. my firm belief is that us would be on the top of that pyramid. Only dilemma would be between Zionist entity and the US.
“How could the masses be made to desire their own repression?” was the question Wilhelm Reich famously asked in the wake of the Reichstagsbrandverordnung (Reichstag Fire Decree, February 28, 1933), which suspended the civil rights protections afforded by the Weimar Republic’s democratic constitution.Hitler had been appointed chancellor on January 30, 1933 and Reich was trying to grapple with the fact that the German people had apparently chosen the authoritarian politics promoted by National Socialism against their own political interests. Ever since, the question of fascism, or rather the question of why might people vote for their own oppression, has never ceased to haunt political philosophy.2 With Trump openly campaigning for less democracy in America—and with the continued electoral success of far-right antiliberal movements across Europe—this question has again become a pressing one.
An American people is in perfect harmony with its regime.
Posted by: Partisan | Feb 20 2018 23:02 utc | 14
Remember the "USS MAINE"!
Media have long agitated for War in US History. Nothing sells newspapers
like a good ole war!
Demonizing is a way to achieve it. What is sure is that this is a one way street.
Once over the cliff, there is no turning back.
How do you tell people that, at the flick of your magic switch, Putin is in fact
a swell guy and wonderful human being? Once love is gone who goes back
to the filthy, abhorrent and estranged spouse?
Surely the US establishment is playing with fire thinking they will successfully
ride out any conflict and come out on top secure in their newly reestablished
hegemony on the smoldering ruins of Humanity.
Make no mistake, we are all on the road to hell. Better enjoy todays peace as
tomorrow word will be filled with the sweet music of cemeteries.
"Freedom of speech"...
re 16
correction:
Make no mistake, we are all on the road to hell. Better enjoy todays peace as
tomorrow's world will be filled with the sweet music of cemeteries.
@15 "An American people is in perfect harmony with its regime."
I'm not so sure. I think there are many Americans who deeply distrust their government. But of course they don't want to appear unpatriotic. There are also many who are apathetic and many simply don't know how to change things.
Posted by: dh | Feb 20 2018 23:14 utc | 17
It's horrible I know to quote a Nazi, but Goring had this right:
Göring: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.
Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.
Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
Posted by: SteveK9 | Feb 20 2018 23:35 utc | 18
American media has graduated from simply repeating the lies of "unnamed government sources" to repeating the lies of any organization unofficially blessed by the powers that be. The skills required to repeat the text verbatim serve them well in both cases. Skepticism is only reserved to anyone who tries to introduce logic or facts into the equation--such as when Jill Stein was interviewed on MSNBC recently. How dare Ms. Stein try to bring FACTS into the discussion!
Posted by: WorldBLee | Feb 20 2018 23:36 utc | 19
In that The Narrative is tightly controlled in the corporate media, not matter how strong the proofs or arguments about the falsity of these propaganda campaigns are, little or no circulation of those proofs or arguments wlll reach the general public.
Posted by: chet380 | Feb 20 2018 23:41 utc | 20
Thanks Jen. It still makes no sense. As a veteran of the Vietnam fiasco, I was pretty much government oriented until McNamara outed the whole thing whining about haw sorry he was. 59,000 dead and he's sorry. They were able to hide the Gulf of Tonkin BS until then. After that I researched the reasons for each war/conflict the USA started and could find no logical reasons except hunger for power. But the little sandbox wars won't destroy the world like a major war/conflict with Russia and it goes nuclear. Almost every politician, and major news organizations are pushing for a war/conflict with Russia. This is insanity as no one will win a war like this and I am sure they know that,,, but they keep the war drums beating anyhow. It simply doesn't make sense. But Thanks again.
Same for dh, #14. Things are soooo stupid, your joking may be closer to the truth than you know. :-)
Posted by: ken | Feb 20 2018 23:59 utc | 23
@SteveK9 #19
Thank you for the post. I will save it and use it liberally, with proper attributions. When one challenges the tribe on places like Twitter, it is hard to tell who is a real idiot and who is a bot. How do you know? Maybe that the bots go away fairly quickly and the idiots hang around to argue ad infinitum.
Posted by: Skip | Feb 20 2018 23:59 utc | 24
The thing that bothers me, is the fact that the MICGlobalists dont care what we think or how poor their deceptions are. The public perception that "russia did it!!" continues to rise. I wonder what the public acceptance level needs to be for them to execute a MAJOR false flag event. They seem to think they are still on target, and its just a short matter or time...
They are going to do this when the perception management is complete...
We really do not need another one of their disasters
regards
OY
Posted by: oldenyoung | Feb 21 2018 0:06 utc | 25
The bully pushes and pushes until stopped by the first serious push back. The dynamic of the west and the neocon/Zionists at the core is essentially that of the bully. Nations like Venezuela and the Philippines have started to push back, and I hope and feel fairly confident that they will both survive the rage of the US. In some part, they have begun to show the actual powerlessness of the bully.
But the really killer nations - Russia and China - are holding their water as they strengthen their force. I believe that one very serious push back from either of them in the right circumstances will stop the bully. And yet, as they bide their time, we see a curious phenomenon wherein the US is destroying itself from the inside.
It's as if all of the forces that exist to control the country - the lockstep media, the fully rigged markets, the hysterical military, the bought legislature and the crooked courts - are all acting far more strongly than should be necessary. The entire system is over-reacting, over-reaching, over-boiling. And in the course of this, the US is actually shedding power, and at an amazing rate. But not from the action of Russia but from its non-action, the empty space that that allows the bully's dynamic to over-reach, all the way to complete failure.
Is it possible that deep in the security states of Russia and China there's even a study and a model for this? Is the collapse of the US actually being gamed by Russia and China - and through the totally counter-intuitive action of non-action?
Just a thought.
Posted by: Grieved | Feb 21 2018 0:37 utc | 26
>>>> xor | Feb 20, 2018 4:11:10 PM | 6
The cleverest trick used in propaganda against a specific country is to accuse it of what the accuser itself is doing.
I've always put it down to the Washington Establishment having a severe case of psychological projection.
Posted by: Ghost Ship | Feb 21 2018 0:51 utc | 27
Hey b,
Just wanted to let you know that Joe Lauria mentioned your blog and the article you wrote on the indictment of the 13 Russians. He was on Loud and Clear (Sputnik Radio, Washington DC) today and brought you up at the start of the program.
Glad to see you get some recognition for all the great work you’ve been doing :)
Posted by: WG | Feb 21 2018 0:52 utc | 28
Meanwhile, back in 2010:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/11/when-campaigns-manipulate-social-media/66351/
Posted by: Mike | Feb 21 2018 0:53 utc | 29
Ken @ 24: The warmongering is not intended to make any sense - not many people are trained in critical thinking and logic, and even when they are, they can be swamped by their own emotions or other people's emotions. Propaganda is intended to appeal to people's emotions and fears. You can try reading works by Edward Bernays - "Crystallizing Public Opinion" (1923) and "Propaganda" (1928) - to see how he uses his uncle Sigmund Freud's theories of the mind to create strategies for manipulating public opinion.
https://archive.org/details/EdwardL.BernaysPropaganda
Bernays' books influenced Nazi and Soviet propaganda and Bernays himself was hired by the US government to justify in the public mind the 1954 US invasion of Guatemala.
You may be aware that Rupert Murdoch, head of News Corporation which owns the Wall Street Journal, FOX News and 20th Century Fox studios, is also on the Board of Directors of Genie Energy which owns a subsidiary firm that was granted a licence by an Israeli court to explore and drill for oil and natural gas in Syria's (and Israeli-occupied) Golan Heights.
Posted by: Jen | Feb 21 2018 0:53 utc | 30
The national media speaks as one -with one consistent melody day after day. Who is the conductor?
When will one representative of the mainstream media sing solo? There must be a Ray McGovern somewhere among the flock.
Posted by: simjam | Feb 21 2018 0:59 utc | 31
Grieved | Feb 20, 2018 7:37:47 PM | 27
Many of my thoughts as well.
The U.S.'s greatest fault is its tacit misunderstanding of just what russia is in fact.
They utterly fail to understand the Russian character; forged over 800 years culminating with the defeat of Nazi Germany, absorbing horrific losses; the U.S. fails to understand the effect upon the then Soviets, become todays Russians.
Even the god's have abandoned the west...
Posted by: V. Arnold | Feb 21 2018 1:05 utc | 32
@4 "For the life of me I cannot figure why Americans want a war/conflict with Russia."
Ever since US Crude Oil peaked its production in 1970, the US has known that at some point the oil majors would have their profitability damaged, "assets" downgraded, and borrowing capacity destroyed. At this point their shares would become worthless and they would become bankrupt. The contagion from this would spread to transport businesses, plastics manufacture, herbicides and pesticide production and a total collapse of Industrial Civilisation.
In anticipation of increasing Crude Oil imports, Nixon stopped the convertibility of Dollars into Gold, thus making the Dollar entirely fiat, allowing them to print as much of the currency as they needed.
They also began a system of obscuring oil production data, involving the DoE's EIA and the OECD's IEA, by inventing an ever-increasing category of Undiscovered Oilfields in their predictions, and combining Crude Oil and Condensate (from gas fields) into one category (C+C) as if they were the same thing. As well the support of the ethanol-from-corn industry began, even though it was uneconomic. The Global Warming problem had to be debunked, despite its sound scientific basis. Energy-intensive manufacturing work was off-shored to cheap labour+energy countries, and Just-in-Time delivery systems were honed.
In 2004 the price of Crude Oil rose from $28 /barrel up to $143 /b in mid-2008. This demonstrated that there is a limit to how much business can pay for oil (around $100 /b). Fracking became marginally economic at these prices, but the frackers never made a profit as over-production meant prices fell to about $60 /b. The Government encourages this destructive industry despite the fact it doesn't make any money, because the alternative is the end of Industrial Civilisation.
Eventually though, there must come a time when there is not enough oil to power all the cars and trucks, bulldozers, farm tractors, airplanes and ships, as well as manufacture all the wind turbines and solar panels and electric vehicles, as well as the upgraded transmission grid. At that point, the game will be up, and it will be time for WW3. So we need to line up some really big enemies, and develop lots of reasons to hate them.
Thus you see the demonisation of Russia, China, Iran and Venezuela for reasons that don't make sense from a normal perspective.
I watched bbc news this am in the hope that I would get to see the most awful creature at the 2018 olympics cry her croc tears (long story - a speed skater who cuts off the opposition but has been found out so now when she swoops in front of the others they either skate over her leading to tearful whines from perp about having been 'pushed', or gets disqualified for barging. Last night she got disqualified so as part of my study on whether types like this believe their own bullshit I thought I'd tune in but didn't get that far into the beebs lies)
The bulk of the bulletin was devoted to a 'lets hate Russia' session which featured a quisling who works for the russian arm of BBC (prolly just like cold war days staffed exclusively by MI6/SIS types). This chap, using almost unintelligible english, claimed he had proof at least 50 Russian Mercenaries (question - why are amerikan guns for hire called contractors [remember the Fallujah massacre of 100,000 civilians because amerikan contractors were stupid] yet Russian contractors are called mercenaries by the media?) had been killed in Syria last week. The bloke had evidence of one contractor's death not 50 - the proof was a letter from the Russian government to the guy's mother telling her he didn't qualify for any honours because he wasn't in the Russian military.
The quisling (likely a Ukranian I would say) went on to rabbit about the bloke having also fought in Donbass under contract - to which the 'interviewer (don't ya love it when media 'interview' their own journos - a sure sign that a snippet of toxic nonsense is being delivered) led about how the deceitful Russians had claimed the only Russians fighting in Donbass were contractors - yeah well this bloke was a contractor surely that proves the Russians were telling the truth.
It's not what these propagandists say; they adopt a tone and the audience is meant to hate based on that even when the facts as stated conflict with the media outlet's point of view. Remember the childhood trick of saying "bad dog" ter yer mutt in loving tones - the dog comes to ya tail wagging & licks yer hand. This is that.
The next item was more Syria lies - white helmets footage (altho the beeb is now mostly giving them an alternative name to dodge the facts about white helmets) of bandaged children with flour tipped on their heads.
The evil Syrians and Russians are bombarding Gouta - nary a word about the continuous artillery barrage Gouta has subjected the citizens of Damascus to for the past 4 years, or that the Syrians have repeatedly offered truces and safe passage for civilians. Any injured children need to ask their parents why they weren't allowed to take advantage of the frequent offers of transport out. Maybe the parents are worried 'the resistance' will do its usual and blow up the busloads of children after luring them over with candy.
Anyway I switched off after that so never did learn if little miss cheat had a cry.
Posted by: Debsisdead | Feb 21 2018 1:53 utc | 34
Reposting from TRNN:
http://therealnews.com/t2/story:21178:Why-is-a-Russian-Troll-Farm-Being-Compared-to-911%3F
Posted by: ben | Feb 21 2018 2:17 utc | 35
Thank you for reporting on this. The people behind the so-called Alliance for Securing Democracy need to be exposed for the warmongering frauds that they are. Regardless of what one thinks of him, Trump was correct when he said that NATO is obsolete.
Posted by: integer | Feb 21 2018 2:23 utc | 36
@ Partisan 15
An American people is in perfect harmony with its regime.
Then explain these poll results....
President Trump Job Approval Approve 46, Disapprove 53
Direction of Country Right Direction 40, Wrong Track 55
Congressional Job Approval Approve 10, Disapprove 73
here
Posted by: Don Bacon | Feb 21 2018 2:57 utc | 37
The American Security State needs enemies to exist, otherwise there's no need for the "security" which translates into big bucks for the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Media Complex. They can't agree on the ranking of the enemies: North Korea is a threat to the world! Iran is....! Russia is...! China is....! But the threats are there, and they are pure evil (TPTB contend).
So the whole scenario makes perfect sense from that standpoint.
Posted by: Don Bacon | Feb 21 2018 3:12 utc | 38
The news stories become far easier to understand if you replace the word "Russia" with the word "truth".
Posted by: Petri Krohn | Feb 21 2018 3:17 utc | 39
re Felix E. Dzerzhinsky: Ukrainian fascists have a particular hatred of Felix because he was both a Bolshevik and a Pole.
I hate to do this but I just posted this elsewhere, at Off Guardian, where the Guardian is back into its highest gears promoting war.
"The wardrums are beating in a way not heard since 1914-there is no reason for war except the best reason of all: an imperial ruling class sees its grip slipping and will chance everything rather than endure the humiliation of adjusting to reality.
"China is in the position that the US was in 1914-it can prevent the war or wait until the combatants are too exhausted to defend their paltry gains.
Given the realities of nuclear warfare-which seem not to have sunk in among the Americans, perhaps because they mistake a bubble for a bomb shelter- the wise option is to prevent war by publicly warning against it. In the hope that brought face to face with reality the masses will besiege their governments, as we can easily do, and prevent war.'
See also
http://www.greanvillepost.com/2018/02/20/the-coming-wars-to-end-all-wars/
Posted by: bevin | Feb 21 2018 4:45 utc | 41
Debsisdead | Feb 20, 2018 8:53:42 PM | 35
I have no idea who you are talking about; care to say?
Posted by: V. Arnold | Feb 21 2018 5:32 utc | 42
Great analysis! Can’t imagine how you continue to put out quality work day after day! Your question at the close speaks to stakes involved in this.
@ 10 - 4
Resources boils down to money.
Of course.
I don't think any power would lose from tapping a source of resource.
Posted by: foo | Feb 21 2018 6:53 utc | 44
Sad but definitely correct. The first casualty of war is the truth. It's dead in the USA and allies. Therefore, they're at war with Russia and China. If Russia is down, China will be dealt with.
The horrible thing with the US attitude is that you do a white thing, you're attacking them and if you do a black thing, you're attacking them too. This attitude is building hostility against Russia. It's like programming a pet to be afraid of something. The western people are being programmed into hating Russia, dehumanizing her people, cutting every tie with Russia and transforming any information from Russia into life threatening propaganda. A war for our hearts is running. The US population is being coerced into believing that war against Russia is a vital necessity.
It will be a war of choice from the US "elites". Clinton announced it and the population chosed Trump for that reason.
You're wondering why they're doing it. I suppose that their narrative is losing its grip on the western populations. They're also conscious of it. If they lose it, they'll have to face very angry mobs and face the void of their lives. Everything they did was either useless or poisonous. It means to be in a very bad spot. They're are therefore under an existential threat.
Russia proved time and again that it's possible to get out of their narrative. Remember their situation when Eltsin was reelected with the western help. The Chicago boys were telling the Russian authorities how to run the economy and they made out of the word democrat a synonym of thief. They were in the narrative and the result was a disaster. Then, they woke up and started to clean the house. I remember the "hero" of democracy whose name was "Khodorovsky (?)". In the west he was a freedom fighter and in Russia he stole something like Rosneft. This guy and others of the same sort were described in the west as heroes, pionniers and so on. They were put back into submission to the law. The western silence about their stealings, lies and cheating is still deafening me. It was the first Russian crime. The second one was to survive the first batch of sanctions against them (I forgot the reason of the sanctions). They not only survived they thrived. It was against the western leading economic ideology. A third crime was to push back Saakachvili and his troops with success. The fourth was to put back into order the Tchechen. Russia was back into the world politics and history. They were not following the script written for them in Washington and Brussels. They were having a political system putting limits to the big companies. And, worst of it, it works.
Everybody in the west who can read and listen would have noticed that they are making it.
More, with RT and Sputnik giving info outside the allowed ones or asking annoying questions (western journalists lost that habit with their new formation in the schools of journalism - remember the revolution in their education was criticised and I missed why - very curious to discover why), they were exposing weaknesses of the western narrative. On the other side their narrative became so poor and so limited that any regular reader would feel bored reading the same things time and again and being asked to pay for it at a time his salary was decreased in the name of competitivity. The threat to their narrative was ready. They had to fight it.
It's becoming a crime to think outside their marks. It's becoming a crime to read outside their marks. I don't even talk about any act outside their marks. Now, it's going to be a crime of treason to them in war time.
I do feel sadness because many will die from their fear of losing their grip on our minds. I do feel sadness because they have lost and are in denial about it. I do feel sadness because those death aren't necessary. I do feel sadness because those people can't face the consequences of their actions. They don't have the necessary spine. Their lives were useless and even toxic. They could start repairing or mitigating their damages but it would need a very different worldview, a complete conversion to another meaning of life outside the immediate and maximal profit.
Posted by: DidierF | Feb 21 2018 7:03 utc | 45
DidierF | Feb 21, 2018 2:03:08 AM | 46
You have aptly described the most dangerous country on this planet.
That country must not be appeased, at any cost, because it would surely end us forever...
Posted by: V. Arnold | Feb 21 2018 7:13 utc | 46
V Arnold @ 43: She's talking about Elise Christie, the British speed skater who crashed out and got disqualified in both the 1,000-metre and 1,500-metre heats.
Posted by: Jen | Feb 21 2018 7:24 utc | 47
I wonder if this is true: STUNNING: Mueller Patched Together Much of His Indictment from 2015 Radio Free Europe Article I wouldn't be surprised if it is true. It would give the entire story a whole new touch. I wanted to write a new smell, but it would be rather stink.
Posted by: Fran | Feb 21 2018 7:53 utc | 48
Jen | Feb 21, 2018 2:24:41 AM | 48
Thanks Jen. No idea who she is; but then, I haven't been watching the faux olympics.
Sounds quite the brat...
Posted by: V. Arnold | Feb 21 2018 8:00 utc | 49
https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2016/12/russia-malware-ip-hack/
Conclusion regarding IP address data
What we’re seeing in this IP data is a wide range of countries and hosting providers. 15% of the IP addresses are Tor exit nodes. These exit nodes are used by anyone who wants to be anonymous online, including malicious actors.
Overall Conclusion
The IP addresses that DHS provided may have been used for an attack by a state actor like Russia. But they don’t appear to provide any association with Russia. They are probably used by a wide range of other malicious actors, especially the 15% of IP addresses that are Tor exit nodes.
The malware sample is old, widely used and appears to be Ukrainian. It has no apparent relationship with Russian intelligence and it would be an indicator of compromise for any website.
Posted by: Partisan | Feb 21 2018 8:38 utc | 50
Partisan @15: "With Trump openly campaigning for less democracy in America—and with the continued electoral success of far-right antiliberal movements across Europe—this question has again become a pressing one."
The above is entirely backwards. The bottom 2/3rds is frustrated by the LACK of democracy in the US and that's a major reason many voted against the (in fact anti-democratic) elite's desired candidate, Hillary.
70% of the voting age public was dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with both candidates, and 40% of Americans didn't vote, so that means whichever of Clinton/Trump won, she/he would win with approval of only 10% of the electorate. That's the best example possible of our anti-democratic reality (it's not a worry or a threat, it's already here).
In the case of both Europe and the US, many people are generally very dissatisfied with the anti-democratic response by the elite to 'the will of the people' that there be much less immigration into countries with high unemployment and 'race to the bottom' labor conditions. That's nearly the entire basis of what the corporate media calls 'the move right'... When in fact restricting immigration is a pro-labor and therefore 'left' policy ... Except in the confused and deliberately stupid political discourse the elite media pushes so hard.
Posted by: fairleft | Feb 21 2018 10:28 utc | 51
Some years ago, I noticed the American media and politicians were sort of going soft (actually mushy) in the brain department, but I was told not to be so judgemental. As the months went by, I saw more and more people saying "they have gone nuts". So, it turns out I am not alone after all.
That madness comes from having no behavioural limits, no references outside of your own opinion but groupthink, and manipulating the language to suit your ambitions (the Orwellism of the US media has been repeatedly pointed at). Simply put, you don't know anymore what's what outside of the narrative your group pushes, you go nuts. The manipulators ends up caught in their lies. All the more when they makes money out of it, which would be the case of all those think tanks and media.
One could argue that they are not going mad, that they know full well they are lying, but I beg to differ: they don't see anymore how ridiculous or how dumb or smart their arguments are. That would be congruent with a real loss of touch with reality. One wonders what they see when they look at themselves in a mirror, a garden variety propagandist or a fearless anti-Putin crusader?
Another example of the narrative gone mad: they are sending CNN journos to meet pro-Trump folks who "have been influenced by Russian trolls on social media".
https://twitter.com/yashalevine/status/966177091875168256
Posted by: Lea | Feb 21 2018 11:16 utc | 52
"The above is entirely backwards."
Well, it is not...if you are believer in "democracy".
Honestly, the story of democracy (by capitalist/liberal class) is a grand BS, to be modest. The only thing what was truthful, paradoxically, is who is "lesser evil" of two. Or the Bigger one in unrestrained capitalism, savage and monopoly, predatory and a fascists one.
One way or other result is the same, it is: Barbarism.
Posted by: Partisan | Feb 21 2018 11:20 utc | 53
When "trending on Twitter" became a news item in and of itself, I began to despair for the future of reporting, political discourse and ultimately, democracy in America. Twitter and FB are at best a source of information for news reporting, but not a source of news in themselves.
We made ourselves vulnerable to any and every sort of pernicious manipulation and in the end, we just about deserve everything we get.
Posted by: ralphieboy | Feb 21 2018 11:27 utc | 54
War or the threat of war is needed to distract attention from rapidly devolving societal bonds and immense economic inequality.
Posted by: WJ | Feb 21 2018 11:38 utc | 55
there is something illogical in your comment.
but one should never forget:
The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships.Karl Marx
Posted by: Partisan | Feb 21 2018 11:41 utc | 56
Elijah Magnier has another good article out, Magnier
He takes up what is going on in Afrin with the Syrian Army now poised to move in.
This seems to be another sound move by Russia to expose and dislodge the US.
This is a problem of the US not having a coherent policy except to destroy Syria for the US' own benefit.
This sees the US forming illegitimate alliances with whoever will serve this purpose at the time such as ISIS, Al-qaeda, and the Kurds.
The Kurd alliance enraged Erdogan enough to invade Afrin. Russia allowed this partly to punish the Kurds for allying with the US and pointing out to them that the US would not have their backs. The Kurds would be better off to be part of Syria rather than independent. When the Kurds realize this, Russian and Syria will get Turkey to back off.
The US is also being exposed as protecting ISIS along the Iraq border and also likely in Yarmouk camp as well as Al-qaeda in East Ghouta.
Posted by: financial matters | Feb 21 2018 12:44 utc | 57
Dan @ 4
It is partially tied direct to the economy of the warmongers as trillions of dollars of new cold war slop is laying on the ground awaiting the MICC hogs. American hegemony is primarily about stealing the natural resources of helpless countries. Now in control of all the weak ones, it is time to move to the really big prize: The massive resources of Russia. They (US and their European Lackeys) thought this was a slam dunk when Yeltsin, in his drunken stupors, was literally giving Russia to invading capitalist. Enter Putin, stopped the looting .........connect the dots.
Media and its politicians have lost it completely,
and if you criticize them, well then of course you are a... "russian bot".
Unfortunately 90% of westerners buy this western msm inluence propaganda campaign, WW3 with Russia will come easy.
Posted by: Anon | Feb 21 2018 13:08 utc | 59
News”Meet The Cabal That Are Framing Domestic American Activism As “Russian Influence” and “Fake News”
https://disobedientmedia.com/2018/01/meet-the-cabal-that-are-framing-domestic-american-activism-as-russian-influence-and-fake-news/
At risk of being censored and/or convicted of Thought Crime - it is *remarkable* how very highly disproportionate the number of Jewish Zionists is who are in the media and in Congress and in ThinkTankistan and shouting about Russian meddling, ‘aggression,’ and the like.
It’s too bad it is forbidden to examine this phenomena as one part of the matrix of power and lies leading the US into conflict with Russia, no?
I don’t think Bill Kristol and David Frum and Jeff Goldberg are either honest nor primarily concerned with American national security, nor the lives of MENA civilians. I think they care only about using American blood and treasure to facilitate Israeli lebensraum, however bloody and expensive.
Trump survives only if he dances for the Deep State *and* Likud.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/12/us-caught-faking-it-in-syria/
Posted by: Florin | Feb 21 2018 14:00 utc | 60
Watching the USA these days is like watching a loved one with progressive dementia. I've reached the stage where I think the sooner it's over the better for everyone.
Posted by: Guy Thornton | Feb 21 2018 14:10 utc | 61
Off topic...but of interest to many here at MoA....The snipers that executed the Maidan massacre in Kiev have come forward and have made sworn testimony///
I have not verified any of this story...so, use your own best judgement
Regards
OY
Ps sounds like Sputnik it trying to chase this down and get it verified...
Posted by: oldenyoung | Feb 21 2018 14:17 utc | 62
Chris Hedges has an article on the similar situation in Germany almost 100 years ago.
"In 1923 the radical socialist and feminist Clara Zetkin gave a report at the Communist International about the emergence of a political movement called fascism. ...." https://www.truthdig.com/articles/how-we-fight-fascism/
Posted by: ex-SA | Feb 21 2018 14:17 utc | 63
Interesting, too, that the Dark State appears to be sending out talking points this week to the effect that the alleged hacking of the DNC is an "act of war." IfI'm not mistaken, the US recently revised war policy to include cyber attacks, whether they actually happened or not, as being the same as a kinetic attack. Looks to me like we are seeing the beginning of a long-term pysop/PR campaign to build support for a "preemptive" strike against Russia and China that would, presumably, include nukes.
Posted by: JC | Feb 21 2018 14:20 utc | 64
And here is the Sputnik story...
https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201802201061840515-maidan-snipers-testimony-detailed-crucial/
regards
Posted by: oldenyoung | Feb 21 2018 14:27 utc | 65
Partisan @54: The facts contradict the statement in the quote that Trump was "openly campaigning for less democracy." He wasn't. He in fact campaigned in part as a populist who would oust (or at least repeatedly ridicule) an anti-democratic elite. If you've overlooked that and believe more or less the opposite, you can't understand the 2016 election or the elite's virulently anti-democratic reaction to it.
Posted by: fairleft | Feb 21 2018 15:26 utc | 66
63
https://sputniknews.com/europe/201802151061669056-georgian-snipers-maidan-evidence
"Adding a new twist to the story about the 2014 Maidan shootings, a Sputnik correspondent has met with the purported snipers. The agency has obtained the records of interrogation of Koba Nergadze and Aleksandre Revazishvili. Both Georgian nationals, they are ready to testify in a Ukrainian court."
Posted by: Peter AU 1 | Feb 21 2018 15:41 utc | 67
NEW CENSORSHIP - HAMILTON68 DASHBOARD
From the website of Hamilton68 :: Tracking Russian influence operations on Twitter
So easy to signal this group as a fraud, I wrote an article recently …
○ G W F and McCarthyism In A Digital Age - Part 2
[G W F – German Marshall Fund]
Earlier I wrote about the following relationship: Khodorkovsky - The Interpreter - Henry Jackson Society (UK).
With Bush and the Iraq War, Dutch PM Balkenende and FM de Hoop Scheffer were seen as the poodle of the White House. In recent years PM Mark Rutte [of MH-17 crash fame] can be considered its puppy. Perhaps a parrot would suit better.
I noticed a former journalist Hubert Smeets hs partnered with some people to found a “knowledge center” Window on Russia [Raam op Rusland]. Laughable, funded by the Dutch Foreign Ministry and a Dutch-Russia cultural exchange Fund. Preposturous in its simplicity and harm for honest reporting.
US media has gone bonkers. The original claim was Russian meddling and Russian interference in the election. Then, a sort of bridging meme showed up (see also b above), undermining democracy or subverting it. This in turn then morphed into promoting divisive issues which is new (circa 2018, not before?)
Imho. US pols make it their business to create divisive issues, diviusses (neologism), to the point of inventing rubbish ones. Part of the US public embraces that sh*t as well, > tribalism and religious economics in lieu of policy politics. So such actions should be viewed as gloriously democratic, ;) - ok easy to make fun.
The emphasis on ‘divisive’ is curious, it signals that some managers are calling for ‘union’ - ‘cohesion’ - ‘group soldering’ facing the outside enemy, threat.
Russia has really become the all-purpose épouvantail scarecrow, specter of doom, etc. An awareness of the high costs of divisiveness if uncontrolled -> massive social unrest, at extreme, civil war— and that these are to be avoided, is evidenced.
Heh, or the whole storm is just fluff that distracts, occupies the pixels, airwaves, a jamboree of knee-jerk reactions irrelevant to the present World Situation, with practically no important body - faction of the PTB, Trump, the MIC, lame outsiders like the EU, etc. having any clue.
Posted by: Noirette | Feb 21 2018 16:38 utc | 69
@63/66 oldenyoung.. it would be nice to see that story get some traction... i can't see that happening, as it too clearly exposes the lies that brought us to where we are now with the ongoing demonization of russia..
Posted by: james | Feb 21 2018 17:24 utc | 70
i got a kick out of cluborlov's post from yesterday.. -
http://cluborlov.blogspot.ca/2018/02/make-russia-great-again-through.html
The accusation is a lot like accusing somebody of despoiling an outhouse by crapping in it, along with everyone else, but the outhouse in question had a sign on its door that read “No Russians!” and the 13 Russians just ignored it and crapped in it anyway.
The reason the Outhouse of American Democracy is posted “No Russians!” is because Russia is the enemy. There aren’t any compelling reasons why it should be the enemy, and treating it as such is incredibly foolish and dangerous, but that’s beside the point. Painting Russia as the enemy serves a psychological need rather than a rational one: Americans desperately need some entity onto which they can project their own faults. The US is progressing toward a fascist police state; therefore, Russia is said to be a horrible dictatorship run by Putin. The US traditionally meddles in elections around the world, including Russia; therefore, the Russians are said to meddle in US elections. The US is the most aggressive country on the planet, occupying and bombing dozens of countries; therefore, the Russians are accused of “aggression.” And so on…
Posted by: james | Feb 21 2018 18:03 utc | 71
GER 59
Interesting that President Mitterand began his autobiography with a quote from the Ancient Russian proverb ' he who controls Siberia controls the world ' . He is remembering being in a plane looking down on Russian territory as he muses so ! I stood and read that opening image carefully many years ago aware of Mitterand's prescience !
Posted by: ashley albanese | Feb 21 2018 18:41 utc | 72
The whole thing is zionism,what that all ticks the clock.What I can say?
Posted by: dahoit | Feb 21 2018 19:04 utc | 73
It was a matter of time when the participants in the Maidan Massacre would surface … the coup d’état didn’t stop the carnage of Ukrainians nor corruption of people in power. The witness accounts were described in the hours as the events unfolded. Only the faces were not known ...
○ How the Events of Sniper Fire In Instytutska Street Unfolded
Maidan Massacre Bombshell:#Georgian snipers reportedly confess to massacring along with Lithuanian snipers both #Police and #maidan protesters in #Ukraine in Italian #documentary just broadcast by most popular #Italian #TV channel [h/t Ivan Katchanovski]
Hromadske TV
@Noirette 70
Yes, claiming that Russians are promoting polical division is silly -- the divisions were already there.
gizmodo, Jun 12, 2014:
It's Been 150 Years Since the U.S. Was This Politically Polarized
Nevertheless, now in WIRED magazine: Their [Agency] goal was to enflame “political intensity through supporting radical groups, users dissatisfied with [the] social and economic situation, and oppositional social movements.”
Posted by: Don Bacon | Feb 21 2018 23:35 utc | 76
"They Had More Information Than Us" - Sanders Blames Clinton For Not Exposing Russian Meddling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=WRnBPKFcAKo
Bernie Sanders said he on Wednesday, "felt compelled to address Russian interference during the US election. Sunday....he was not aware and believes Russian bot promoting him and went as far to said WikiLeaks published Hillary's email stolen by the Russia....."
Can you really trust that lying basted? I'm probably one of the few MoA refused to believe and trust Bernie Sanders and the fuckup Democrats.
Posted by: OJS | Feb 22 2018 1:27 utc | 77
Anti-Russia Think Tanks in US: Who Funds Them?
By Bryan MacDonald
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48755.htm
Posted by: ben | Feb 22 2018 2:24 utc | 78
Excellent article summarizing much of what B has posted and more.
"Finally, and as long was we are on the topic, here is what a real troll farm looks like. [Picture of NSA] Yet this vast suite of offices in Fort Meade, Maryland, where 20,000 SIGINT spies and technicians work for the NSA, is only the tip of the iceberg.
The US actually spends $75 billion per year---more than Russia's entire $69 billion defense budget---spying on and meddling in the politics of virtually every nation on earth. An outfit within NSA called Tailored Access Operations (TAO) has a multi-billion annual budget and does nothing put troll the global internet and does so with highly educated, highly paid professionals, not $4 per hour keyboard jockeys."
Posted by: daffyDuct | Feb 22 2018 2:46 utc | 79
OJS @78--
You're not the only one! I backed BS only because he was the better alternative to HRC despite all his numerous faults, including the politico's propensity to prevaricate, although I pushed and voted for Stein.
Posted by: karlof1 | Feb 22 2018 3:02 utc | 80
The US Air Force has out-sourced cybersecurity.
The U.S. military’s love affair with bug bounty programs continues.The second iteration of “Hack the Air Force” in December paid out $103,883 in bounties to freelance hackers for 106 vulnerabilities found over a 20-day period. The highest bounty was $12,500, the largest paid by the U.S. government to date.
The Air Force’s first bug bounty program launched in April 2017 following similar efforts like Hack the Pentagon and Hack the Army in 2016. In total, more than 3,000 vulnerabilities have been found in federal government systems since the programs began.
The bug bounty platform HackerOne, a private company, continues to handle the military’s bug bounty initiatives. Air Force CISO Peter Kim, who helped kick off and cheerlead the service’s first round last year, also played a leading role this time. . .here
Posted by: Don Bacon | Feb 22 2018 3:29 utc | 81
Great article. Great comments. I LOVE MoA! And it's great to see b getting recognition.
james wrote: “There aren’t any compelling reasons why it should be the enemy”
You know the following; I think you're just too decent a human being to understand how psychopaths operate. Russia is a huge area with enormous natural resources as well as a large, educated populace. Zbignew Brzezenski explained in his 1997 book “The Grand Chessboard” why global hegemony required taking control over Russia (and how to do it, which boils down to taking the other chess pieces off the board (Iraq/Ukraine/etc. and then pulling off a “color revolution,” coup or military conquest).
Ziggy also noted that once Russia was incorporated, China is the next, and largely last target.
Jen: NICE JOB putting together a big picture, from Bernays’ control of the masses all the way to Genie Energy. Add in Oded Yinon and PNAC and the “foreign policy blunders” that led to the present situation in MENA look like a carefully-constructed, long-game being played “by the book.”
Fairleft. Any leftist/socialist movement which is not global is doomed to failure. This has always been true, but with “offshoring” of manufacturing jobs and the internet untethering many “white collar” jobs from any given geological location(s), workers must see ourselves as a global entity rather than national or regional players - because that is certainly how the 0.01% see us (and themselves).
"Workers of the world UNITE" is more true today than a century and a half ago.
Posted by: Daniel | Feb 22 2018 5:47 utc | 82
Great article. Great comments. I LOVE MoA! And it's great to see b getting recognition.
james wrote: “There aren’t any compelling reasons why it should be the enemy”
You know the following; I think you're just too decent a human being to understand how psychopaths operate. Russia is a huge area with enormous natural resources as well as a large, educated populace. Zbignew Brzezenski explained in his 1997 book “The Grand Chessboard” why global hegemony required taking control over Russia (and how to do it, which boils down to taking the other chess pieces off the board (Iraq/Ukraine/etc. and then pulling off a “color revolution,” coup or military conquest).
Ziggy also noted that once Russia was incorporated, China is the next, and largely last target.
Jen: NICE JOB putting together a big picture, from Bernays’ control of the masses all the way to Genie Energy. Add in Oded Yinon and PNAC and the “foreign policy blunders” that led to the present situation in MENA look like a carefully-constructed, long-game being played “by the book.”
Fairleft. Any leftist/socialist movement which is not global is doomed to failure. This has always been true, but with “offshoring” of manufacturing jobs and the internet untethering many “white collar” jobs from any given geological location(s), workers must see ourselves as a global entity rather than national or regional players - because that is certainly how the 0.01% see us (and themselves).
"Workers of the world UNITE" is more true today than a century and a half ago.
Posted by: Daniel | Feb 22 2018 5:47 utc | 83
b, sorry for extending this off-topic diacussion, but a briwf response:
Daniel @83: I mentioned opposition to mass immigration only as perhaps the most obvious example where majorities in many countries feel very strongly about the issue, express that opposition democratically, but are nometheless not allowed by the global anti-democratic superstate to have the policy they want. Regardless whether it's a 'good' idea or not ...
But I also disagree with the notion that all workers of the world need to unite if we're to have any chance of defeating capital. That's defeatist and contradicts basic economics, as long as the state whose workers you fight for is of has sufficient size and weight economically, and has sufficient allies. Size matters, but you don't need to be the entire world. In any case, borderless globalization has been a catastrophe for most of the underdeveloped world's businesses and workers. People really need to look at actual economic history (not quotations based on theory not history) and figure this stuff out.
Posted by: fairleft | Feb 22 2018 10:42 utc | 85
Daniel
Zbigniew Brzezinski's 'Grand Chessboard' is verification that highfalutin ideas conjured up by esteemed statesmen and political scientists and pasted into the social consciousness for decades on end can indeed turn out to be nothing more than so much deluded horseshit.
...and ditto for that fucking 'Yinon Plan'
Posted by: john | Feb 22 2018 11:10 utc | 87
@Don Bacon | Feb 21, 2018 10:29:06 PM | 82
To be us armed forces supplier seems to be a juicy choice.
Shareholderes have enjoyed a very good time (and profits) in the "fight for terror/Foreverwar" business.
More, outsourcing in one of the leading mantra duirng these last years, then the company which is outsourcing con better focus on its core business. You can't miss it if you are listed in waal street.
- Is the usaf going to NYSE? - ... joke
Posted by: y | Feb 22 2018 12:26 utc | 89
@fairleft 85
nations that do not have to face costs arising from environmental, health or safety legislation will almost always prevail in the world market over those that have some concern for the environment and the workers.
That is the main issue I have with globalization.
Competing on wages is one thing; that can be a great impetus to become more efficient and productive, but if we do nothing to force other countries to clean up their act, they will have no impetus to do so and we will continue to lose jobs to the international competition, no matter how efficiently we work.
Posted by: ralphieboy | Feb 22 2018 12:31 utc | 90
Msm, bellingcat and other think tanks - they push their anti russian racism too far making a large section of westerners just tired of their hysteria. Exposing their own racism and paranoia.
Posted by: test | Feb 22 2018 12:32 utc | 91
@87 John. Except what was written in the grand chessboard seems to be happening albeit with some setbacks. This does however lend credence and enables yinon even further. I red somewhere that the secret to finding out what controls us one must investigate that which is not to be spoken of or challenged. Can you think of something like that in your world?
@fairleft interesting spin on immigration, thanks.
ralphieboy@90 Agree. Its hard to compete with workers in blast furnaces wearing kimono's and sandals.
Posted by: Tannenhouser | Feb 22 2018 13:01 utc | 92
"....borderless globalization has been a catastrophe for most of the underdeveloped world's businesses and workers."
it is always annoying when I see the 'globalization" argument is used whether from the right or left.
the globalization has started by the moment when us humans begin to roaming on this planet. there are millions of examples yet somehow globalization is of recent phenomenon. Lapis Lazuli mineral used in making blue color and paint is found on clay pottery in Mesopotamia's ancient city of Ur. That city is also place where many legend originated which were taken by major religion and can be found in their holy books. See even the myth are globalizied from very early on.
Most of the people do not even know what it is, not those who are writing about it.
Globalization . . . is a program to create private corporate rights to trade, invest, lend or borrow money and buy and own property anywhere in the world without much hindrance by national governments. It would bar governments from most of the common methods of helping or protecting their national industries and employment. It is a winners’ program promoted chiefly by some business interests, governments and neoclassical economists in Europe and the United States. One of its purposes is to intensify international competition for jobs. Together with other Right policies it is likely to maintain some unemployment in the rich countries and reduce the wage rates of their lower-paid workers, and reduce the proportion of secure employment.Hugh Stretton, Economics: A New Introduction
Posted by: Partisan | Feb 22 2018 14:02 utc | 93
Tannenhouser says:
Except what was written in the grand chessboard seems to be happening albeit with some setbacks
oh really? even foolish Brzezinski finally realized that Russia and China are unconquerable.
Posted by: john | Feb 22 2018 14:19 utc | 94
John. That Brzernski came to grips with the enormity of his highfalutin plans in no way shape or form detracts from the observable and demonstrable attempts at follow through on the plan, or plans as it were in this case.
Posted by: Tannenhouser | Feb 22 2018 14:34 utc | 95
The anti-russian think tanks, msm, bellingcat etc push this too much, making them look stupid.
Posted by: test | Feb 22 2018 15:02 utc | 96
Tannenhouser
the observable and demonstrable attempts are clearly futile, and have been pretty much reduced to spasms and tantrums, largely devoid of cognizance, not to mention legality, but certainly dangerous nonetheless.
no sir ree bob, we get our multipolar world or we scavenge a dead landscape of Alamogordo glass.
Posted by: john | Feb 22 2018 15:30 utc | 97
John@96. We are on the same page then. I see it more like this. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1991370.The_Cool_War
Posted by: Tannenhouser | Feb 22 2018 16:23 utc | 98
Really enjoyed Julian Assange's explanation of Mueller's nothingburger.
Assange: "Regardless of whether IRA’s activities were audience building through pandering to communities or whether a hare-brained Russian government plan to “heighten the differences” existed, its activities are clearly strategically insignificant compared to the other forces at play."
Posted by: karlof1 | Feb 22 2018 21:18 utc | 99
Great to see the discussion on “globalization” and labor draw so many comments.
What nations refusal to enforce immigration policies favored by a majority shows is that “we, the people” do not control our governments. The study done a couple years ago showed in black and white that we in the 90% have ZERO influence on US government actions, while the wealthiest 10% get 80% of their wishes.
Working class people’s enemies are not other working class people. Whenever rich people with great power tell us our enemies are poor and powerless people, we should all know we are being lied to and manipulated in the classic “Divide and Rule” strategy that has been used by Power since the dawn of civilization.
“Globalization” is de facto reality. As long as capital can cross borders, divided groups of workers aligned with nation-states have no way to prevent their own exploitation. The people of no divided nation-state can prevent the globalists from imposing their will on them.
The Powers That Shouldn’t Be have the capital, the weapons, the media, the schools, etc. The only thing they don’t have is the numbers. We outnumber them by 99.9 to 0.1. Add in the 2% that makes up the enforcers they hire (cops, military and contractors/mercenaries) and we still outnumber them by insurmountable numbers.
And they know that, and fear us because of that. That’s why they keep us fighting amongst ourselves.
Coordinated mass strikes and boycotts could hit them where it hurts. And if we can get a substantial number of their enforcers to refuse orders to crush us, then we could take control.
Posted by: Daniel | Feb 22 2018 23:56 utc | 100
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It's all too reminiscent of Duck Soup:
Rufus T. Firefly: I'd be unworthy of the high trust that's been placed in me if I didn't do everything in my power to keep our beloved Freedonia in peace with the world. I'd be only too happy to meet with Ambassador Trentino, and offer him on behalf of my country the right hand of good fellowship. And I feel sure he will accept this gesture in the spirit of which it is offered. But suppose he doesn't. A fine thing that'll be. I hold out my hand and he refuses to accept. That'll add a lot to my prestige, won't it? Me, the head of a country, snubbed by a foreign ambassador. Who does he think he is, that he can come here, and make a sap of me in front of all my people? Think of it - I hold out my hand and that hyena refuses to accept. Why, the cheap four-flushing swine, he'll never get away with it I tell you, he'll never get away with it.
[Trentino enters]
Rufus T. Firefly: So, you refuse to shake hands with me, eh?
[slaps Trentino with his glove]
Ambassador Trentino: Mrs. Teasdale, this is the last straw. There's no turning back now! This means war!
Rufus T. Firefly: Then it's war! Then it's war! Gather the forces. Harness the horses. Then it's war!
Posted by: Lohmann | Feb 20 2018 20:32 utc | 1