Putin's Troll Factories

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Re: Putin's Troll Factories

Postby American Dream » Tue Aug 02, 2016 9:27 am

Here is that piece cited above:


http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk ... sian-hacks

THE REAL PARANOIA-INDUCING PURPOSE OF RUSSIAN HACKS

By Adrian Chen , JULY 27, 2016

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This week, the idea that Vladimir Putin is trying to get Donald Trump elected exploded very seriously into the mainstream.

For six months, starting in the fall of 2014, I investigated a shadowy online Russian propaganda operation called the Internet Research Agency. The agency has been widely reported in Russian media to be the brainchild of Evgeny Prigozhin, an oligarch and ally of Vladimir Putin. At the time, it employed hundreds of Russians in a nondescript office building in St. Petersburg, where they produced blog posts, comments, infographics, and viral videos that pushed the Kremlin’s narrative on both the Russian and English Internet.

The agency is what is known in Russia as a “troll farm,” a nickname given to outfits that operate armies of sock-puppet social-media accounts, in order to create the illusion of a rabid grass-roots movement. Trolling has become a key tool in a comprehensive effort by Russian authorities to rein in a previously freewheeling Internet culture, after huge anti-Putin protests in 2011 were organized largely over social media. It is used by Kremlin apparatchiks at every level of government in Russia; wherever politics are discussed online, one can expect a flood of comments from paid trolls.

When I began researching the story, I assumed that paid trolls worked by relentlessly spreading their message and thus indoctrinating Russian Internet users. But, after speaking with Russian journalists and opposition members, I quickly learned that pro-government trolling operations were not very effective at pushing a specific pro-Kremlin message—say, that the murdered opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was actually killed by his allies, in order to garner sympathy. The trolls were too obvious, too nasty, and too coördinated to maintain the illusion that these were everyday Russians. Everyone knew that the Web was crawling with trolls, and comment threads would often devolve into troll and counter-troll debates.

The real effect, the Russian activists told me, was not to brainwash readers but to overwhelm social media with a flood of fake content, seeding doubt and paranoia, and destroying the possibility of using the Internet as a democratic space. One activist recalled that a favorite tactic of the opposition was to make anti-Putin hashtags trend on Twitter. Then Kremlin trolls discovered how to make pro-Putin hashtags trend, and the symbolic nature of the action was killed. “The point is to spoil it, to create the atmosphere of hate, to make it so stinky that normal people won’t want to touch it,” the opposition activist Leonid Volkov told me.

What Volkov said stuck with me as I continued to follow the trolls. Since the article appeared, last summer, the Internet Research Agency appears to have quieted down significantly. Many of the Twitter accounts stopped posting. But some continued, and toward the end of last year I noticed something interesting: many had begun to promote right-wing news outlets, portraying themselves as conservative voters who were, increasingly, fans of Donald Trump. Exposure to even small amounts of Russian politics can induce severe bouts of paranoia and conspiracy-minded thinking, and it seemed logical to me that this new pro-Trump bent might well be an attempt by the agency to undermine the U.S. by helping to elect a racist reality-show star as our Commander-in-Chief. At the time, I found it funny. The agency was a well-funded but often hapless operation—it created a cartoon character that was a giant buttocks to spread anti-Obama propaganda, for example—and this seemed like another of its far-fetched schemes to poison the Internet.

This week, the idea that Putin is trying to get Trump elected exploded very seriously into the mainstream, after WikiLeaks published thousands of e-mails from the Democratic National Committee, believed by intelligence agencies and security researchers to have been stolen by hackers connected to the Russian government. The hack comes after weeks of increased scrutiny of Trump’s connections with Putin—what the Washington Post called a “bromance.” The narrative draws mostly on three points of confluence: a public record of mutually admiring comments between the two (Putin on Trump: “Undoubtedly a very colorful, talented person”; Trump on Putin: “He’s a strong leader”); Trump’s ambivalence toward U.S. participation in nato, which Putin has long denounced as a tool of Western aggression; and Trump and his advisers’ financial connections to Russia and its allies, especially those of his campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, who previously consulted for Viktor Yanukovych, the former Russia-backed leader of Ukraine. Most commentators are careful to limit the implications of these connections, in a just-pointing-out-the-facts manner, but, given the sheer volume and often menacing tenor of the coverage of the Trump-Putin connection, the casual reader would be forgiven for coming away with the strong suspicion that the two meet every month for strategy sessions over caviar at Putin’s Black Sea dacha. “There’s something very strange and disturbing going on here, and it should not be ignored,” Paul Krugman warned, in the Times. The D.N.C. leak, perfectly timed to disrupt the Democratic National Convention, sowing discord between supporters of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton and generally making things more difficult for Clinton, appeared to put a bow on the Trump-Putin axis of evil. Today Trump seemed to fan the speculation. At a press conference, he referred to Hillary Clinton’s use of an unauthorized e-mail server and, speaking directly to the camera, said, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the thirty thousand e-mails that are missing.”

Yet, like most things having to do with Russia, the connection between Trump and Putin is far from straightforward. For every piece of damning evidence there is compelling counter-evidence. (The indispensable blog Russia Without BS has a good critical rundown of the most common claims.) Trump has said nice things about Russia, but he has also said that Americans should shoot down Russian planes if they get too close to U.S. ships. Trump’s supposedly deep financial ties to Russia seem, at the moment, a bit underwhelming for someone who has been trying to build in the country since 1987, and suggest a lack of Kremlin connections, as Julia Ioffe details in Foreign Policy. It is undoubtedly true that Putin would prefer Trump’s foreign-policy views to Clinton’s, but this is likely as much about a deep-seated loathing of Clinton, dating to her criticism of Russia’s fraud-ridden legislative elections in 2011, as it is about love for Trump. The hack itself may seem like a precision-guided act of information warfare, but given how easily it was pinned on Russia it very well may backfire, much like the Kremlin’s other meddlings abroad. Mark Galeotti, a professor of global affairs at New York University, argues that it will saddle Trump with the label of Putin stooge, perhaps even helping Clinton win the election.

I’m not too upset that Trump has been labelled an agent of the Kremlin. It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. But the zeal with which many have seized on a foreign explanation for a domestic problem sets a worrying precedent for how any future event or movement that challenges our understanding may be processed, in a time when malevolent actors, foreign or domestic, can influence perceptions more easily than ever, and we can all see it unfold in real time. Russia’s use of propaganda, dirty tricks, leaks, and hacks in foreign affairs works a lot like a troll farm on a larger scale. The aim is to promote an atmosphere of uncertainty and paranoia, heightening divisions among its adversaries. “Having realized it is unlikely to make any real or lasting friends, Moscow has instead turned its efforts into paralyzing and demoralizing its enemies,” Galeotti writes. This effort is ideologically blind: Russia supports extreme right-wing nationalist parties in France and Germany, while in the U.S. the state-run news outlet Russia Today is better known for highlighting the causes of the far left (Occupy Wall Street, the drone war, government surveillance). When I was investigating the Internet Research Agency, one of the trolls’ favorite topics to promote was the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, over the shooting of Michael Brown. Today the agency has moved on to Trump. And yet one can see a future where political protests against police brutality or income inequality are discredited by opponents, because of superficial connections to Russia. This is especially easy to imagine under President Trump.
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Re: Putin's Troll Factories

Postby American Dream » Tue Aug 09, 2016 4:11 pm

http://antifascistnews.net/2015/12/21/r ... mentators/

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RACISTS TODAY: WHY IS RUSSIA TODAY USING WHITE NATIONALIST COMMENTATORS?

DECEMBER 21, 2015T

The news cycle has had another spike around the clickbaiting Trump campaign now that Vladamir Putin has thrown some tacit support around the racist billionaire. This is not surprising given Russia’s use of racialist internal politics and support of nationalists in Eastern Europe, but this also stokes tensions between Trump and the GOP as the Republican perception of Russia tends to be as though it was still the Cold War. This gave a lot of relevance to Russia Today, the essentially westernized cable news channel that is so popular in U.S. social media circles for its commentary, debates, and somewhat sensationalized news coverage.

As the Putin endorsement story coalesced, RT thought it would be a good idea to bring on Richard Spencer, the founder of Alternative Right and the Radix Journal. Spencer has been on RT as a commentator, and not a subject, a large number of times, usually talking about U.S. foreign policy. What they fail to mention is that Spencer is a leading white nationalist and has become the intellectual center of the “alt right” neo-fascist movement in America.

Speaking to RT, he joked about American audiences and their “shrill” ideological battles, but then “lays it down” for the RT audience.

This is another thing where the American media doesn’t really understand Putin. Because Putin is not a shrill ideologue like they are. Putin will speak diplomatically, will speak carefully and they just don’t get that. I think what Putin is saying when he says that Trump might deepen relations is that Trump is not going to treat Russia as an enemy. Remember, Mitt Romney who wasn’t even the craziest of the conservative bunch said that our number one geopolitical adversary is Russia. That is ridiculous. Anyone who would say that is not looking at the world as it is; they are looking at the world through some 1980’s Cold War rosy glasses. Trump, I think, would really deepen the relations in a sense he wouldn’t treat Russia as the Soviet Union or as Nazi Germany or some rogue state. He would treat Russia realistically as a state that has its interests, that has interests that might align with the US in certain situations and I think he would treat that where conflicts would be Trump would make a deal. He would deal with Russia as a real, legitimate actor of a legitimate state. So, in that sense, I truly do hope Trump gets elected. I think the world would be a more peaceful place with this bombastic man in power.


He has gone on RT and discussed the conflict in Ukraine, calling this a “new Cold war” in a battle between Moscow and Washington. His idea that this is a “proxy war” is not an uncommon one, yet his interest in this comes from the nationalist militias that have formed in Ukraine over anti-EU tension.

Spencer, who leads the white nationalist “think tank,” The National Policy Institute, the “race realist” publishing house, Washington Summit Publishers, and the all-racist culture journal, Radix, is not someone who would normally be considered to be a commentator. Generally, these are experts in a particular field, at least those with moderate views that are not tainted by very extreme bigotries. Spencer holds none of this expertship, and instead is someone that, in the U.S. has been the subject of “point and sputter” stories, to use Spencer’s own reference to coverage by Rachel Maddow. Spencer is someone who believes in forming a white Ethnostate, that black and Latino people have innately lower IQs than whites, and that we need to restore a fascist empire with European “spiritual” qualities. This is not the voice of a general policy commentator, so why is RT employing him as such?

This is certainly not the first time the RT has brought on co-hosts with this type of reputation. In the past they have also hosted national anarchist Keith Preston, who joins Spencer on the “alt right” sharing his weird synthesis of anarchism with far-right libertarianism, nationalism, and bizarre ideas about tribal identity. RT has hosted one of the leaders of the race realist and “human biodiversity” movement, which is primarily the idea that people of color in the global south are intellectually inferior and prone to criminal behavior. Jared Taylor, the founder of the New Century Foundation and American Renaissance, has come on multiple times, often given complete platforms to debate his ideas about diversity and racial inequality. Founder of the White Student Union and the Traditionalist Youth Network, Matthew Heimbach, has also gone on RT for a softball interview where he was able to prove he was just “not racist.”
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Re: Putin's Troll Factories

Postby American Dream » Wed Aug 10, 2016 5:23 pm

Why Some Leftists Are Defending Donald Trump’s Ties to Russia

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We have questions. Donald Trump has no answers.

What is the relationship between Trump and Russia? That Russia is pulling for Trump is at this point beyond any dispute. The Kremlin’s English-language propaganda channel RT and Russia’s army of Twitter trolls, as well as Russia’s internal propaganda, have all thrown themselves behind the Republican candidate. A series of reports (here, here, and here) have shown that Russia backed the operation to hack the DNC. Adrien Chen, who reported last summer on Russia’s army of internet trolls that spreads disinformation abroad, noted in December that the trolls he was tracking had begun posing as pro-Trump conservatives.

It is the other half of the equation that is more opaque. Putin is helping Trump, but what exactly is Trump giving him in return? As Foer notes, Trump’s habit of refusing to pay back people who loan him money means regular American banks won’t lend him money anymore, making him dependent on unusual sources of financing. He has cultivated deep personal and financial ties with Russia — and to do major business with Russia, unlike a reasonably free economy, is to do business with its ruling claque. Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, helped orchestrate Putin’s intervention in Ukraine. His Russia adviser Carter Page has deep ties to Russia and owns stock in Gazprom, the state-controlled firm that is a major source of the Kremlin’s financial and economic power. Michael Flynn, another Trump adviser, appears regularly on RT and refused to answer questions about whether he is paid to do so. Trump and Putin have exchanged lavish compliments.


http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/20 ... ussia.html
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Re: Putin's Troll Factories

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Aug 10, 2016 6:16 pm

^^^^^

:P

AD tell Nordic how much I love Puttie :)

Did you know that a whole lot of pretend Bernie Bros love Putin too?.....Yea they really do
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Putin's Troll Factories

Postby American Dream » Fri Aug 12, 2016 12:55 pm

Russia Hacks the World

John Feffer, July 27, 2016

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The Chinese government asserts outrageous claims to the entire South China Sea, cracks down on domestic political dissent, and twists arms in Tibet and Xinjiang. But you won’t find many American commentators — left, right, or center — who try to justify this behavior. Similarly, there are only a few nostalgic revolutionaries who bend over backwards to explain away the defects of Cuban socialism or Venezuelan Chavismo.

But Russia is in a category all its own when it comes to defenders in the United States. Vladimir Putin, a right-wing, homophobic nationalist, has attracted support from the usual like-minded crazies, such as Lyndon LaRouche and Franklin Graham. More unusually, an ideologically diverse and highly credentialed group of Americans has leapt to Putin’s defense, including former DIA head Michael Flynn, former U.S. ambassador to Russia Jim Matlock, and Russia specialist Stephen F. Cohen.

For someone like Matlock to stick up for Putin reflects a thorough disenchantment with Washington’s Russia policy. During the Clinton era, the United States resurrected a containment strategy toward the country when a more cooperative arrangement was both possible and feasible. As one of the first people to document what I called “containment lite,” I am angry as well. But this anger has not blinded me to Putin’s obvious defects.

Other authoritarian symps are more persuaded by the “hegemonic counterforce.” During the Cold War, some anti-imperialists supported the Soviet Union not for ideological reasons but because it was the only geopolitical force strong enough to prevent the United States from running roughshod across the globe. For those today who believe that the United States alone is responsible for all the world’s evils, any country that stands up to the global bully deserves a measure of support.

In this regard, Putin’s brutality is a plus. He has no qualms about adopting the very worst traits of U.S. foreign policy and adding some nefarious innovations of his own.

Russian Foreign Policy

Russian involvement in the politics of other countries doesn’t stop with its recent efforts to tilt the U.S. election away from the woman Putin thinks tried to dislodge him from power back in 2011. Investigations into Russian interference in France, Bulgaria, and Hungary are ongoing. The Kremlin has specifically supported efforts to undermine the cohesion of the European Union, which puts Putin in the company of various far-right Euroskeptic parties like Golden Dawn in Greece, the National Front in France, and Jobbik in Hungary.

Political hacking is only the tip of the tundra. There’s also:

Targeted assassinations: While the United States conducts drone strikes to take out its foreign opponents, the Putin team employs different methods against its domestic foes. Two former KGB agents slipped polonium into the tea of Alexander Litvinenko, a renegade intelligence officer, leading to his painful death by poisoning. Prison guards beat to death Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who stood up to massive Russian tax fraud.

Other critics who have died under mysterious circumstances include opposition politicians Boris Nemtsov and Sergei Yushenkov and journalists Anna Politkovskaya and Paul Klebnikov. Russian officials have routinely pointed to other culprits, particularly Chechens.

Moreover, it has been devilishly difficult to trace culpability to Putin himself. Suffice it to say that standing up to Putinism is a very dangerous occupation.

Cross-border incursions: Russia has long claimed a kind of Monroe Doctrine approach to its “near abroad” — particularly those areas with large numbers of Russian speakers. The Russian government has supported breakaway attempts by such communities in Moldova and Georgia. The case of Ukraine, however, is much more significant because Russian troops have helped to annex part of Ukrainian territory (Crimea) and worked with separatists in the Donbas region to carve off another hunk of the country.

Even if, as critics argue, the United States helped orchestrate a coup in Kiev to oust Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and fascists then took over the government, Russian actions would be suspect (Ukraine, after all, did not declare war on Russia or attack the country). In fact, however, Yanukovych was dislodged by a popular uprising and not a coup, U.S. involvement in this uprising was minimal, and fascists have had only marginal influence on the Ukrainian government (and even less today).

Sure, the country is corrupt, and Ukrainian oligarchs enjoy a great deal of power. But that’s no justification for invasion, any more than leftist orientation justified the Bay of Pigs operation or U.S. efforts to oust the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

Aerial bombing campaigns: The United States has pioneered the post-Cold War use of aerial bombing to achieve military and political goals on the ground. Russia was relatively new to this game when it started its own bombing campaign in Syria to back the Bashar al-Assad regime and weaken its armed opponents.

Not surprisingly, the Russian campaign has led to the same kind of “collateral damage” as U.S. air strikes. In six months of strikes on such targets as schools, hospitals, and markets, Russian bombers killed as many as 2,000 civilians in Syria in the first six months of the campaign. Despite a pledge to draw down its air strikes, Russian bombing continues, most recently leading to dozens of civilian deaths in the campaign to retake Aleppo.

Expanded military capabilities: Russian military spending has jumped considerably since 2011, when Putin introduced a $700 billion modernization program. The Russian military budget remains a far cry from the Pentagon’s annual allocation — roughly a tenth. Moreover, falling oil prices and sanctions over Ukraine have constrained Russian spending, leading to a 5 percent cut in 2016.

Still, Russia has tried to keep up in asymmetric ways — upgrading its nuclear arsenal and investing in cyberwarfare. Meanwhile, Russia is second only to the United States in its arms sales, and the wars in Ukraine and Syria will boost those exports even more.

Colder War

Still, the view from Moscow can’t be very reassuring for the Putin team.

NATO has expanded to the very borders of the country. At the most recent summit in Warsaw in July, NATO members agreed to bulk up on the eastern flank with four multinational battalions. The United States will send 1,000 soldiers to Poland, while the UK, Canada, and Germany will send troops to the Baltic countries. The Anakonda 2016 military exercises — which involved 31,000 troops, half of them Americans — no doubt ruffled feathers in the Kremlin. So too did the activation of an anti-missile system in Romania in May (with something similar to go one line in Poland in 2020).

Russia hasn’t simply watched these developments. It has moved troops into its western regions and is preparing to put nuclear-capable missiles in Kaliningrad by 2019. The nuclear weapons of both countries, meanwhile, remain on hair-trigger alert. Neither side has made any commitments to future arms control measures, including de-alerting of nukes.

This buildup of forces and tension in Central Europe is somewhat mitigated by U.S.-Russian cooperation elsewhere in the world. Both countries were involved in negotiating the nuclear deal with Iran. Both countries have negotiated an albeit fragile and frequently violated ceasefire in Ukraine. Secretary of State John Kerry unveiled a recent plan to increase the coordination of intelligence and air strikes in Syria, which hasn’t been particularly popular among European allies. This nascent coordination in fighting terrorism has prompted some Russian experts to speculate about expanding cooperation to other issues.

The speculation isn’t just taking place in Moscow. In his last months in office, President Obama might try a “reset lite” with Russia. As reported in The Washington Post, the administration is considering a number of landmark moves before it leaves office, including a pledge of “no first use” of nuclear weapons, supporting a UN Security Council resolution on a comprehensive nuclear test ban, a scaling back of the nearly trillion-dollar nuclear modernization plan, and an offer to Moscow to extend New START limits for another five years.

The next U.S. president must go beyond arms control and negotiate a new Central European initiative with the countries of the region, Russia, and the European Union. The initiative would combine energy security with demilitarization and provide stability funds so that countries like Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia can substitute economic growth for civil conflict.

So, there is potential to deescalate the emerging cold war. The trick of it is to persuade European allies to go along. And the wild card is the U.S. presidential elections.

American Oligarch

Donald Trump is well on his way to securing the endorsements of right-wing populists the world over. Noted Dutch Islamophobe Geert Wilders and Brexit engineer Nigel Farage both showed up at the Republican national convention. Hungary’s Viktor Orban has endorsed the Donald, confident that he “is the best for Europe and for Hungary.”

And then there’s Vladimir Putin. Donald Trump is “a really brilliant and talented person, without any doubt,” Putin told the press. “It’s not our job to judge his qualities, that’s a job for American voters, but he’s the absolute leader in the presidential race.”

For his part, Trump has shown Putin some love as well. He has promised to sit down and negotiate a deal with the Russian leader. He has been lukewarm on the NATO commitment to defend members that have been attacked. And the American oligarch has considerable ties to his Russian counterparts. According to The Washington Post:

Since the 1980s, Trump and his family members have made numerous trips to Moscow in search of business opportunities, and they have relied on Russian investors to buy their properties around the world.

“Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” Trump’s son, Donald Jr., told a real estate conference in 2008, according to an account posted on the website of eTurboNews, a trade publication. “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”


For those who see Trump as a vehicle for an even greater rapprochement with Russia if he gets elected, I caution skepticism. Trump negotiates hard bargains with potential business partners, forcing them to accept weak terms or face expensive lawsuits. Vladimir Putin is not a construction company, a real estate agent, or a would-be entrepreneur. He will not likely accede to Trump’s uninformed bullying.

If Putin stands up to the American behemoth as he has done in the past, but this time one presided over by Donald Trump, the new president will not likely take the slight in stride. “When people wrong you, go after those people, because it is a good feeling and because other people will see you doing it,” he wrote in The Art of the Deal. “I love getting even.”

This time around, Trump won’t just have lawsuits to throw at the recalcitrant. He’ll have nuclear weapons at his disposal.

So, to return to the triple challenge, deescalating U.S.-Russian tensions is not enough. Nor is simply countering Russia’s hacking of geopolitics to gain asymmetric advantages. Even defeating Trump is not sufficient. When it comes to the United States and Russia, it will require a package deal.

In 1975, the United States, the Soviet Union, and the countries of Europe negotiated a grand compromise on sovereignty, human rights, arms control, and educational exchanges. The Helsinki Accords proved that compromise was possible even during the Cold War.

We desperately need a Helsinki Accords of the 21st century.


More at: http://fpif.org/russia-hacks-world/
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Re: Putin's Troll Factories

Postby Searcher08 » Fri Aug 12, 2016 1:11 pm

AlicetheKurious » Sun Oct 18, 2015 4:57 pm wrote:
Searcher08 » Sun Oct 18, 2015 5:56 pm wrote:John Feffer is a fully-paid up (or more accurately fully PAID) member of the Soros Open Society Foundations neo-liberal ecosystem. Kinda of like analysis-free State Department talking points for an Anderson Cooper audience who want to have the "More Info" button pressed for them.


Who would have guessed? One can almost smell the desperation.

But this, this sounded like a threat:

But Russians will only feel the true consequences of Putin’s actions when the next wave of retaliatory bombings strikes Russia itself. The Moscow subway was hit by two suicide bombers in 2010 and the Moscow airport was targeted in 2011. Just this week, the Russian government has reportedly thwarted another attack on public transportation, allegedly organized this time by the Islamic State. Here, then, is where Putin’s chess-playing skills reveal themselves to be sub-par. He is throwing his pieces into battle without protecting his flanks. The Russian public should brace itself for blowback.


Thank goodness the Russians know EXACTLY whom they're dealing with, who's behind them, and all their little tricks. And I guarantee they've done their homework.

But all the focus on Russia is causing Mr. Feffer to miss the obvious: Russia did make a huge difference with all the air power. But just as important is the effective coordination on the ground between the Syrian Army, the Iraqi Army, and Hezbullah, as well as the central command center that joins all three with Iran. And that's just the countries we know about (I can think of at least two other countries covertly coordinating with the others, that are never mentioned). What we're seeing in Syria is the birth of a genuine, nationalist, anti-terror coalition, a partnership based on shared LEGITIMATE strategic objectives, unlike those fake coalitions with vassals and mercenaries that the US uses to mask its wars of aggression. Despite Mr. Feffer's whistling in the dark, the rather spectacular results speak for themselves.
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Re: Putin's Troll Factories

Postby American Dream » Sat Aug 13, 2016 7:57 am

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160 ... -out.shtml

Putin's Internet Trolls Mercilessly Smear Finnish Reporter Simply For Pointing Them Out

from the disinformation-nation dept

We've noted numerous times now that a cornerstone of the Putin regime has been the use of internet trolls to flood the internet with propaganda. These armies of paid sockpuppets get paid 40,000 to 50,000 rubles ($800 to $1,000) a month to create proxied, viable fake personas -- specifically tasked with pumping the internet full of toxic disinformation 24 hours a day. The practice was recently exposed by journalist, activist and mother Lyuda Savchuk, who spent three months employed as such a troll -- before successfully suing the Russian government for a single ruble on principle.

Criticize this practice as a writer anywhere on the internet and you'll pretty quickly find yourself the target of anonymous attacks in the comment section -- or significantly worse. Finnish journalist Jessikka Aro recently found this out the hard way after profiling Putin's online propaganda efforts in a series of reports for Finland's state broadcaster Yle Kioski. Since the reports, Aro has found herself under attack by an ocean of internet pugilists that have filled the internet with claims Aro is everything from a professional drug dealer to a paid NATO stooge:

["In response to her reporting, pro-Russian activists in Helsinki organized a protest outside the headquarters of Yle, accusing it of being a troll factory itself. Only a handful of people showed up. At the same time, Ms. Aro has been peppered with abusive emails, vilified as a drug dealer on social media sites and mocked as a delusional bimbo in a music video posted on YouTube. “There are so many layers of fakery you get lost,” said Ms. Aro, who was awarded the Finnish Grand Prize for Journalism in March.

...She (also) received a call late at night on her cellphone from a number in Ukraine. Nobody spoke, and all she could hear was gunfire. This was followed by text and email messages denouncing her as a “NATO whore” and a message purporting to come from her father — who died 20 years ago — saying he was “watching her.”


Finland is an EU member but has contemplated joining NATO -- talks about which accelerated after Russia's not-so-subtle invasion of the Ukraine. Russia, in turn, has started leaning heavily on its online disinformation puppets to try and turn public sentiment against such a move. Part of the effectiveness of Putin's paid trolls is that it's impossible to differentiate them from the usual wash of vitriol and idiocy that coats online interactions on any given day. As such, it's not entirely unlike trying to have a fist fight with a running stream, reflected in the Finnish media's confusion on how to tackle the problem outside of things like "open letters":

"The false claim that Ms. Aro was a drug dealer triggered an unusual open letter signed by more than 20 Finnish editors infuriated by what they denounced as the “poisoning of public debate” with “insults, defamation and outright lies.” The Finnish police began an investigation into the website for harassment and hate speech.

“I don’t know if these people are acting on orders from Russia, but they are clearly what Lenin called ‘useful idiots,’” said Mika Pettersson, the editor of Finland’s national news agency and an organizer of the editors’ open letter. “They are playing into Putin’s pocket. Nationalist movements in Finland and other European countries want to destabilize the European Union and NATO, and this goes straight into Putin’s narrative.”


The European Union doesn't appear to be particularly prepared for this new world of online information warfare either, and has embraced arguably outdated concepts like "the truth" or by cataloging the most egregious claims in a weekly report dubbed the "Disinformation Review." And while disinformation and propaganda is certainly nothing new (especially here in the west), it's clear that Putin has taken online information warfare to an entirely new level. One the international community isn't quite ready for -- and is certain to respond to with no limit of bad ideas and even worse laws over time.

Full disclosure before you read about it in the comment section: I'm a former opium salesman paid by the CIA to unfairly malign absolutely everybody.
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Re: Putin's Troll Factories

Postby American Dream » Thu Aug 18, 2016 10:38 am

http://countervortex.org/node/14978#comment-453612

Fascist pseudo-anti-fascism strikes again

Submitted by Bill Weinberg on Wed, 08/17/2016 - 20:05

Is the stupid fucking 'left' really so out of wack as to look at all this and see Hillary and Obama and Biden as the fascists and Assad and Seselj and Putin as anti-fascists? Are you fools really that far down the rabbit hole?

Too many we talk to bandy about the apocryphal and misunderstood Mussolini quote "fascism is corporatism" to argue that centrist Democrats are the actual fascists. They are only displaying their ignorance of what Mussolini meant by "corporatism"—a system of state control of society that "incorporated" labor unions and other mass organizations into the party-bureaucratic apparatus, having nothing to do with corporations in the business sense. We have had to point out this error again and again and again.

Worse, many go yet further and assume that the extremoid populists and nationalists are therefore anti-fascists. A phenomenon we call fascist pseudo-anti-fascism—and have similarly had to call out again and again and again.

These chickens are indeed in danger of coming home to roost. A piece on Daily Beast warns: "Beware the Hillary Clinton-Loathing, Donald Trump-Loving Useful Idiots of the Left." It is somewhat problematic, failing to recognize how the centrist Democrats are indeed part of the problem, by pushing a neoliberal agenda that breeds a backlash to be exploited by ugly populists. But it provides a spot-on critique of pseudo-left Putinphilia, and how itsmorally corrupting effects may pave the way for fascism here in the US : "Some progressives, ...captive to a crude and one-dimensional anti-Americanism, routinely talk themselves into defending the Russian gangster state. Having justified the appalling behavior of reactionaries abroad, it’s only natural they would validate one here at home."

Exactly.
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Re: Putin's Troll Factories

Postby American Dream » Thu Aug 18, 2016 5:50 pm

http://www.wsj.com/articles/putins-disi ... 1416009418

Putin’s Disinformation Matrix

The Kremlin’s English-language TV organ offers Britain its signature blend of propaganda and tinfoil-hat conspiracy theorizing.
Russian President Vladimir Putin


Image

Nov. 14, 2014

Russia Today, the Kremlin’s English-language TV organ, launched a U.K. edition earlier this month. Headquartered near Westminster, the channel will beam RT’s signature blend of propaganda and tinfoil-hat conspiracy theorizing into millions of British homes.

Welcome to Vladimir Putin’s disinformation matrix. RT is merely one part of the Kremlin’s aggressive media effort, as a new Institute of Modern Russia report shows. Other techniques include mobilizing thousands of online “trolls,” cultivating sympathetic political cranks abroad, and exploiting Western freedom of speech and the Western model of public diplomacy to advance Moscow’s illiberal aims.

Founded in 2005, RT has an estimated $300 million budget, according to Institute of Modern Russia authors Peter Pomerantsev and Michael Weiss. It broadcasts in English, Arabic and Spanish, and there are plans to expand into French and German, the authors say. “The channel can now reach 600 million people globally and 3 million hotel rooms across the world,” Messrs. Pomerantsev and Weiss write. RT says its content has received a billion views on YouTube, making it one of the video platform’s most-watched channels.

Unlike Kremlin propaganda during the Cold War, which at least strived for communist consistency, RT is ideologically promiscuous and “hybridic,” the authors say. The channel might feature a far-right Holocaust denier opining on the Middle East and the next minute invite a far-left British MP to discuss Ukraine. “Whereas the Soviets once co-opted and repurposed concepts such as ‘democracy,’ ‘human rights’ and ‘sovereignty’ to mask their opposites, the Putinists use them playfully to suggest that not even the West really believes them.” The point is rarely to persuade. It is to muddle and confuse.

The impact of such efforts in large and diverse media markets, such as the U.S. and the U.K., is questionable. In America, Britain, France and Germany, Russian propagandists must compete with dozens of other print, broadcast and digital outlets. RT segments and Web content on how former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz planned 9/11 or how the U.S. created Ebola are self-discrediting, though they will always find some credulous viewers.

Vulnerable states on Europe’s eastern periphery and in the South Caucasus are a different matter. Kremlin voices can play an outsize role there in tilting public opinion Mr. Putin’s way. By quickly framing Ukraine’s pro-democracy uprising as a “Nazi” movement, Moscow put Kiev on the defensive, forcing the Ukrainian government to expend enormous efforts to rebut that smear among ethnic-Russian citizens. As Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius said in March, “Russia Today’s propaganda machine is no less destructive than military marching in Crimea.”

Propaganda is closely integrated with the Kremlin’s model of ambiguous warfare, which relies on rapid action, covert troops, the creation of a digital fog of war, and inflaming ethnic and sectarian tensions. Western governments shouldn’t overreact to RT’s presence in the West. But they can take the opportunity to revamp and modernize their own public diplomacy, targeting ethnic-Russian audiences to ensure that accurate reporting stands a chance amid the blizzard of Moscow’s lies.
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Re: Putin's Troll Factories

Postby slimmouse » Thu Aug 18, 2016 5:54 pm

It would appear obivious to me that the Psycopaths have war in mind.

Anyones thoughts on that would be appreciated.
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Re: Putin's Troll Factories

Postby Searcher08 » Thu Aug 18, 2016 6:24 pm

The Wurlitzer playing by elements of the SJW wingnut brigade that Putin is seeking some sort of Imperialist Russian Empire resurgence and / or "threatening our freedoms" (a concept which is never applied to any other entity) is to be expected and is deeply aligned with both Open Society Foundations and NeoCon thinking.
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Re: Putin's Troll Factories

Postby slimmouse » Thu Aug 18, 2016 6:32 pm

Searcher08 wrote:The Wurlitzer playing by elements of the SJW wingnut brigade that Putin is seeking some sort of Imperialist Russian Empire resurgence and / or "threatening our freedoms" (a concept which is never applied to any other entity) is to be expected and is deeply aligned with both Open Society Foundations and NeoCon thinking.


They have war in their sick minds?
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Re: Putin's Troll Factories

Postby American Dream » Thu Aug 18, 2016 6:52 pm

They are all imperial forces, all represent ruling elites running power and wealth games on the working class . One side does not justify the other.
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Re: Putin's Troll Factories

Postby Searcher08 » Thu Aug 18, 2016 6:56 pm

American Dream » Thu Aug 18, 2016 10:52 pm wrote:They are all imperial forces, all represent ruling elites . One side does not justify the other.


False Equivalence.

Provide an example of where Russia has acted as an aggressor or has been creating war speech about invading / destroying other countries.
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Re: Putin's Troll Factories

Postby Searcher08 » Thu Aug 18, 2016 7:06 pm

American Dream » Thu Aug 18, 2016 2:38 pm wrote:http://countervortex.org/node/14978#comment-453612

Fascist pseudo-anti-fascism strikes again

Submitted by Bill Weinberg on Wed, 08/17/2016 - 20:05

Is the stupid fucking 'left' really so out of wack as to look at all this and see Hillary and Obama and Biden as the fascists and Assad and Seselj and Putin as anti-fascists? Are you fools really that far down the rabbit hole?

Too many we talk to bandy about the apocryphal and misunderstood Mussolini quote "fascism is corporatism" to argue that centrist Democrats are the actual fascists. They are only displaying their ignorance of what Mussolini meant by "corporatism"—a system of state control of society that "incorporated" labor unions and other mass organizations into the party-bureaucratic apparatus, having nothing to do with corporations in the business sense. We have had to point out this error again and again and again.

Worse, many go yet further and assume that the extremoid populists and nationalists are therefore anti-fascists. A phenomenon we call fascist pseudo-anti-fascism—and have similarly had to call out again and again and again.

These chickens are indeed in danger of coming home to roost. A piece on Daily Beast warns: "Beware the Hillary Clinton-Loathing, Donald Trump-Loving Useful Idiots of the Left." It is somewhat problematic, failing to recognize how the centrist Democrats are indeed part of the problem, by pushing a neoliberal agenda that breeds a backlash to be exploited by ugly populists. But it provides a spot-on critique of pseudo-left Putinphilia, and how itsmorally corrupting effects may pave the way for fascism here in the US : "Some progressives, ...captive to a crude and one-dimensional anti-Americanism, routinely talk themselves into defending the Russian gangster state. Having justified the appalling behavior of reactionaries abroad, it’s only natural they would validate one here at home."

Exactly.


Isn't Feinberg a Likudnik warhawk?

Let's edit that.
"Beware the Hillary Clinton-Loving, Donald Trump-hating Useful Idiots of the Left. It is somewhat problematic, failing to recognize how the SJWs, by pushing a neoliberal agenda that breeds a backlash to be exploited by ugly populists. But it provides a spot-on critique of pseudo-left Putinphobia, and how its morally corrupting effects may pave the way for totalitarianism here in the US : "Some progressives, ...captive to a crude and one-dimensional anti-Russianism, routinely talk themselves into defending the American gangster state. Having justified the appalling behavior of neoliberal reactionaries abroad, it’s only natural they would validate one here at home."
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