IS RUSSIA AN EVIL EMPIRE YES OR NO

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.

Moving back to my Mum's I think... just about. (xxxp)

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.

If I understood it correctly, the problem wasn't that breitbart and fox news got unverified, but that they often relied on unverified sources, so a lot of right wing news got attacked. The fake news verifier would go after obvious fake news factories without a shred of journalistic, which in and of itself should be uncontroversial - google is attacking them as well, by refusing to run ads on these sites - but the whole right wing news sphere has begun relying on them. And btw FB should be the curator because it's their feed and it's their problem. They want their site to function as a news and discussion forum, and the stream of fake news is giving FB a bad rep.

Come on, though, FB has always been a sewer. I have no idea how we got to the point where people rely on it for news.

I'm guessing Cornwall, Tom. D? :)

If I understood it correctly, the problem wasn't that breitbart and fox news got unverified, but that they often relied on unverified sources, so a lot of right wing news got attacked. The fake news verifier would go after obvious fake news factories without a shred of journalistic, which in and of itself should be uncontroversial - google is attacking them as well, by refusing to run ads on these sites - but the whole right wing news sphere has begun relying on them. And btw FB should be the curator because it's their feed and it's their problem. They want their site to function as a news and discussion forum, and the stream of fake news is giving FB a bad rep.

You still need some entity to verify. I wouldn't want FB to be the verifier, wouldn't want an international panel as verifier. So WP gets verified and fake news sites don't? *tumbleweed* Being unverified will become a badge against "msm"/"elite" as fast as you can say Yiannopolous. It doesn't solve the underlying problem. It only gives FB an excuse to "prove" they are doing what they can.

And no, FB's feed isn't "theirs". It is the users', or should be. You know, I deleted my FB account for privacy concerns and Farmville overload in 2008. Back then it was simple: you see the things your friends post. That is how it should be. If a friend would post batshit insane stuff he'd be called out on it. I had to rejoin FB for business purposes in 2015 and boy, the trickery, the tinkering, the "you might like this" stuff is in your face all the time! I do not see posts from friends sometimes because of the fucking algorithm. FB is monstrous. And it's their own fault. I wouldn't trust a penny with them, let alone further tinkering/curating/verifying/upgrading/downgrading stuff. It's become a bullshit machine.

Xp well yeah.

no idea how legit this is: https://www.kyivpost.com/ukraine-politics/kremlin-prepares-large-scale-provocation-ukraine-belarus.html

@Reuters
JUST IN: Kremlin says nearly all communication channels between U.S. and Russia are frozen: RIA

@ggreenwald
Do Democrats regard this as a good or a bad development?

greenwald is braindead

i'm just callin' you Howard Dean from now on

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/811613450426286080

believing the intercept is funded by russia gives greenwald more credit than he deserves. i don't think he's a subversive agent. i think he's a moron, and if my opinion of you wasn't already as low as an opinion could possibly be your enjoyment of his dumbass twitter snark would lower it even further. he's like dennis perrin with a following. you're like dennis perrin but w/out even a solitary morbius to appreciate you.

thanks!

https://twitter.com/DennisThePerrin/status/810499040437817345

What's the point of this nuke nonsense we don't all have enough already?

Obviously it's a bad development but Kremlin shit stirring is barely news at this point in the year

"all our communication channels with the US are frozen!" lol climate change amirite

It's just so dumb that we are still doing this nuke proliferation dumbassery surely there are more up to date ways to saber rattle?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uM01v_vVnbg

Surely a hardmanning Putin is like catnip to Trump, he'll want to top it.

yeah he already did http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/22/us/politics/trump-says-us-should-expand-its-nuclear-capability.html?_r=0

well idk top it but obv they're both enjoying themselves very much

I assume that the Putin comments on upgrading the nuclear arsenal to ensure that it's future-proofed against missile defence systems is partly because Israel has just announced that it's selling Iron Dome to Azerbaijan and Czechia. Whether they'll actually bother to do it, given that all three countries are friendly atm and only one has nuclear weapons, i don't know.

The Iron Dome afaik has no capability to stop nuclear weapons - it's a C-RAM system for things like rockets and mortars. There are other systems in testing for more sophisticated ballistic weapons like the Arrow or David's Sling.

That might still bother Putin especially if he wants to keep the option open of using less sophisticated equipment in an engagement (esp if he's conducting an action through proxies) but developing his nuclear arsenal would have nothing to do with the Iron Dome sale itself.