IS RUSSIA AN EVIL EMPIRE YES OR NO

after how many rapes did you stop liking Bill Clinton, Fred?

In all honesty I never particularly liked Bill Clinton... It was, like, an example, maaaaan.

How is the university system in Russia run (mostly)?

If you want 5 in the top 100 (in the very near term) shouldn't the focus be on faculty recruitment and retention first? I suppose student retention and career opportunities are in parallel, not competing priorities, though.

Russians probably get more higher education than anyone outside of Germany - iirc over 50% of people have degrees and there's a strong bias towards either traditional five / six year diplomas or three-year undergraduate degrees topped up with MAs. There's a huge number of universities, so quality varies, but they tend to be good and the best state institutions are of a very high international standard. When they figure in the international rankings it will usually be for hard sciences, engineering, maths and comp sci, though, rather than overall quality.

Partly due to the way in which the rankings are compiled, there's a perception that you're at a disadvantage if post-grad courses aren't taught in English (research citations contribute significantly and it's much harder to get cited if you are publishing in Russian) so there's a push to deliver more programmes in English - which, in theory, will also make courses more attractive to foreign research students.

Academics tend to be fairly badly paid in an international context - which is why there are so many Russians teaching in the US - but i think they're trying to look at retention at the top institutions at the same time. I'd be surprised if they get more than two (Lomonosov is hovering just outside already) but the target is pretty arbitrary. It's really just an excuse to get universities to internationalise and to avoid a research brain drain.

XP Some Russian universities are trying to recruit international faculty to boost their research portfolios. I almost ended up going to one, since the academic job market is so difficult!

I hope my really verbose coworker who immigrated from russia is in the office sometime soon so I can wind him up with a couple questions and hear some long-form ranting

I was kind of a dick a couple years ago because apparently he has a brother doing some russian armed services stint and kept asking "So you're suuuuure he's not in Ukraine?"

Ideal Christmas gift

Nick Butler, ex of BP, with an unusually honest statement on where a lot of the international / business community would like to go next:

https://s16.postimg.org/ipa45ldlx/Russia.jpg

Rigging the 1996 election was good. Disbursing most of Russia's state assets to organised crime in return for that assistance was good. Democracy is problematic. Let the 'businessmen' rule by fiat.

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/CvRQhPHWcAAH8aM.jpg:small

Someone was reading that at work today.

The Spectator getting in on the act as well - A+ use of vaguely Asiatic facial features:

http://cdn.spectator.co.uk/content/uploads/2016/10/cover_spec_22-oct_issues.jpg

How's The Economist triangulate on this whole thing?

I was talking to a friend who, after reading a few articles, introduced to me the idea that Russia's actions in Syria might actually be partially to encourage the emigration of refugees to Europe to destabilize support for those governments and I'm not sure what to think of that

Oh that theory has been doing the rounds for a while.

I probably had heard it but it never really sunk in.

i've heard that theory before too. seems more likely that his involvement really is about russia's military assets but that might be a little side bonus

damn, forgot to ask my russian-american coworker about this when he was in the office this week

I reject any theory that requires the Russian state to have a good understanding of second- or third-order effects, because they don't.

uh

https://s15.postimg.org/a3kpv035n/russianembassy_homophobic_gaybear.png

The Paul Robeson style US renaissance man and friend of Putin, Steven Seagal has been given Russian citizenship, the Kremlin says.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVezEEMXsqo

Moscow Times pointed out it was just in time to get his $80 pension.

Jeff Monson, the odd MMA fighter, got citizenship recently too.

Top marks for O'Neal for the headline and overall jokes in the bit:

http://www.avclub.com/article/russia-takes-responsibility-hacks-granting-steven--245331

"Russia takes responsibility for hacks by granting Steven Seagal citizenship"

Image used for illustration purposes... Is this the most redundant sentence ever?

They started adding it to all their images when someone pointed out that one of their pictures of ISIS tanks came from Metal Gear Solid, iirc.

Damn, DIRNSA

http://theslot.jezebel.com/nsa-head-openly-accuses-russia-of-using-wikileaks-to-ge-1789051302

I can't wait to see what Greenwald has to say about this

Sad lol that this bothers absolutely 0% of the GOP

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/17/world/europe/russia-withdraws-from-international-criminal-court-calling-it-one-sided.html?_r=0

http://www.theweek.co.uk/europe/61498/russia-funds-french-national-front-is-moscow-sowing-european-unrest

It would be great if Russia was funding the FN as it would be a clear breach of French law and could probably get them barred from fighting the next election or bankrupted. Unfortunately it's not true - they took a loan from a Czech bank owned by a Czech-Russian businessman in 2014 and have been paying it back at standard commercial rates. They said last year that they were hoping to get a loan from another Russian bank for around €27m as they'd run out of money but this doesn't appear to have been successful. They seem to be trying to hit up banks in the UAE now.

idk why this canard has been repeated in the press for two years and nobody other than TASS and Sputnik seems to have bothered reporting that Marion Le Pen is currently in Moscow meeting with low-level Russian politicians. I'm not sure it would have been mentioned at all if she hadn't met the cuet Crimean prosecutor, Natalia Poklonskaya, inadvertent darling of anime Nazis everywhere, to confirm that the FN doesn't believe sanctions should be maintained.

It follows on from Marion claiming to have received positive overtures from Steve Bannon and Marine doing a BBC interview last week. I assume that she wasn't in the country just for that and probably met with UKIP, if not the government, in secret.

Anyway, Julia Ioffe has just done a better-than-average piece about Russia beyond the big cities for National Geographic I don't agree with all of it but it's pretty good and has some great photos.

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2016/12/putin-generation-russia-soviet-union/

what is it about the russian weltanschauung that makes an apartment furnished with ikea furniture so vexing?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/russian-propaganda-effort-helped-spread-fake-news-during-election-experts-say/2016/11/24/793903b6-8a40-4ca9-b712-716af66098fe_story.html?utm_campaign=digest&utm_medium=email&utm_source=app

cbb to go through this in much detail but it's worth noting that the sites the anonymous 'propaganda' monitor lists as being responsible for the spread of 'fake news' include Counterpunch, Zerohedge, Naked Capitalism, Black Agenda Report, Truthout and, rather wonderfully, The Vigilant Citizen.

Why?

Because an anonymous and accountable website and the RAND Corporation are not necessarily a reliable guide to whether left-leaning outlets are disseminating 'Russian propaganda'.

The article more or less takes on trust their definition of 'fake news', where that 'fake news' becomes 'propaganda' and where that propaganda originates. It's entirely probable that Russian troll factories were actively pushing stupid stories but whether they are any more influential than a bunch of Macedonian teenagers or domestic idiots like the guy boasting of millions of Facebook shares on pro Trump nonsense is unclear.

I don't think the point is whether or not it's more influential than Macedonian teenagers, and, really, if we're being honest the most influential fake-news-padders are still Fox News, Limbaugh, et al, and the focus on Eastern Europe are obscuring the fact that Western media is in a breakdown all of it's own making. But the meddling by Russia in this election is pretty obvious at this point, and the vulnerability of Western media to it kinda incredible. From old people by the millions taking in fake news on social media, to left wing activists spending the final months poring over hacked emails to find fodder for their personal attacks on people slightly more centrist than themselves, the whole US, and probably western, media system is broken all over.

The focus on Eastern Europe isn't just a distraction from the bigger problem, it gives an opportunity to maliciously lump everything from leftist critiques of the Democrats to Alex Jones to a guy who, bless him, genuinely seems to believe Beyonce is an illuminati high priestess as seditious and anti-American when they could barely be anything other than American.

I am sympathetic to the problem of fake news but who gets to decide what counts as fake is of critical importance when we are looking at Facebook, etc, effectively being asked to censor content.

Um, no? What's American about using stolen emails to embarrass/harass people you disagree with like Lee Fang from the Intercept did?

Facebook isn't just being asked to censor content. Many people would more like them to verify what is obviously fake, but it runs into problems because so much of right wing media is fake anyway.

Lee Fang, Russian proxy or simply a malicious foreign influence...you be the judge!

There is a paper thin line between censorship and arbitrary verification of what is 'obviously fake'. The Prop Or Not web plug in being boosted in the WP article shows how it can potentially be abused. Idk what the solution is other than better education.

Lee Fang is just an asshole. But what's specifically American about that?

And no, the line between censorship and a verification system is in no way paper thin, that's a really weird thing to say.

Lee Fang is an American working for an American outlet in an aggressively undeferential way that is pretty unusual outside of US social media fuelled journalism at the moment. Whether or not he oversteps the mark at times is beside the point.

Facebook determining what / who can be verified as true and what gets pulled or branded as officially fake is a minefield. 'Clinton had three months to live!' is obviously fake. 'Trump has secret email server to the Kremlin!' was also pretty transparently fake at the time but would presumably be verified as true?

It would be verified because it came from a real news source, yeah. Slate was vouching for it, and they should have taken a hit for publishing that - and frankly, many other stories. Fox news stories would would be verified as well. But the fake news scourge doesn't come from those places - though historically, they are the ancestors - but from clickbait fake news factories, who would be the ones hit by a verification procedure. It's not a process that would eliminate falsehoods from the public sphere, it would just throttle an industry that does real damage.

Again it comes back to the question of what is a legitimate news source though - which is why it matters when you have the WP promoting a service that seeks to make that distinction for you on partisan grounds. A Twitter style verification service has issues but isn't particularly dangerous. Extending the definition of fake news that needs to be countered to, to use an example given in the article, explanations of the 2008 conflict with Georgia that present it as more complicated than naked Russian aggression clearly is.

To be honest, beefing up libel laws would probably do more good but I can't see anyone being up for it, other than Trump.

The verification process that was done by facebook employees but not implicated was automated. Like, do you think we're talking about hiring Ayn Rand devotees to sit around and decide what's a real news source?

That's not really what is being discussed by Zuckerberg afaict - it won't be an automated service, it will be stronger community policing and working with trusted third parties primarily. Snopes, for example, is a trusted third party. The WP positioning RAND and Prop Or Not as legitimate arbiters in this sector and bringing disagreement on the interpretation of facts into the discussion of 'fake news' is actively dangerous if anyone takes it seriously.

The proposals he is discussing are generally OK but it is positioning Facebook as closer to a curatorial service than it ever has been and the way that is implemented does need to be properly scrutinised.

Fred I think proposing a verification system as simplistic and subjective as you are doing will only make things worse. Easy for you to say Slate and WP are "obviously" trusted sources, but is Fox? Is Breitbart? You may not think so but lots of other people do. A curation squeeze on those won't solve a thing. Are you proposing FB should deliver a be all and end all 'verifier of the verified? Because hoo boy.... As SV said, FB is the worst curator and they should stay far away from that.

Meanwhile there's this little nugget from yesterday: These maps show how Russia has Europe spooked

https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/files/2016/11/russianmissiles-1122-4-855x1024.jpg

Spain it will be.

Kaliningrad is a curious little WW2 remnant. I have read loads of history from that period but am embarrassed to say I didn't know shit about it until clicking on a different link to this yesterday. Probably one for that things you didn't learn thread...

I almost got deported from there once! Not for anything interesting though.