 |
StrategyTalk.org
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
Cheryl
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
Posts: 3932
Location: USA
|
 Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2008 1:21 pm Post subject: The Varieties of Misinformation |
 |
|
I'm starting a new thread so as not to gum up this thread.
First, the backstory.
| I wrote: | | The Russians have always been the masters of misinformation. |
To which Parvati responded,
| Quote: | Sorry Cheryl but can't agree with you there, think the national-loyalties factor may have been airbrushing your memory? It's the US that is the world's No.1 spook-PR n' political disinfo-marketing capital just as it's the world's lobbyist-PR n' business disinfo-marketing front-runner, it has an absolutely unrivalled reputation - from WW2 onwards the US disinfo record beats the Russian disinfo record by around 10 to 0.1: US disinfo industry's previous major coups include Gulf of Tonkin, pre-bombing "genocide" in Kosovo etc etc, latest coups range from virtual-realitizing of Saddam's non-existent WMDs to virtual-realitizing of Iran's non-existent nukes.... |
To which I responded,
| Quote: | Parvati, it couldn't be that your prejudices and preferences have anything to do with your declarations of dis/misinformation?
I'll stick with my evaluation, even allowing for the examples you cite, not all of which are technically dis/misinformation. |
And then Parvati came back with
| Quote: | Cheryl, just for curiosity's sake - which of the 4 first-to-mind examples (Tonkin incident, pre-bombing claims of "genocide" in Kosovo, pre-invasion claims of Saddam "building nukes" etc and ditto by US hawk-factions against Iran) of the US's long-long record of use of misinformation - and in particular, misinformation-as-justification-for-war - that I cited do you object to? And which are the equiv-level cases of Russian mis/disinfo you have in mind? Not saying there aren't any, btw - and as I luv reading geopolitical skulduggery stories once they're safely far-far-back in the past I'd be genuinely interested in learning more about Russian use of similar techniques... even willing to do my own internet research if you'll tip me off with the keywords.
P.S. just thought of one equiv-level Russian pre-attack BS-blast .. the Soviet version of the crushing of the Hungarian revolt in 1956 - there must be others? |
Now, I will say that some might claim that I am the worst person in the world to be making this argument; my blog partners constantly correct me on the uses of the words misinformation and disinformation. And they have dealt professionally with such things. So let's start with a definition, which, IIRC, is what they have been trying to beat into my head. Maybe by working this through I can get the definitions straight myself.
| Quote: | Disinformation refers to false or misleading information that is deliberately spread by a government, organized political group, an individual or other entity. The issue of intent is key; if they intent it to spread false or misleading information, it is disinformation.
Misinformation refers to false or misleading information that is spread unintentionally. If one unwittingly spreads false or misleading information, that is misinformation. Of course, many times it is impossible to ascertain intentions, so it may not be clear whether false information represents disinformation or misinformation.
Misinformation can be further subdivided into:
* Media Mistakes which happen frequently given the pressure of deadlines and imperfect knowledge
* Urban Legends -- untrue stories that are widely believed because they speak to a widespread fear, hope, or other emotion
* Conspiracy Theories -- Belief that powerful, evil hidden forces are secretly manipulating the course of world events and history.
Some examples may make the definitions clearer.
Disinformation: The USSR's disinformation campaign on AIDS is the classic example. The Soviet intellegence and security service, the KGB, has a special service, Service A, for spreading false information. For example, soon after AIDS was recognized as a new disease, Service A concocted the story that the AIDS virus had been developed as a biological weapon by the Pentagon at Fort Detrick, Maryland, and was used in experiments on prisoners, which was allegedly why it initially appeared in New York, described as the largest big city near Fort Detrick. Several major U.S. cities are actually much closer to Fort Detrick than New York, including Washington, D.C., Balitmore, and Philadelphia, but few non-Americans realize that.
On March 17, 1992, Yevgeny Primakov, who was then head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, a successor of the KGB, admitted that "the articles exposing U.S. scientists 'crafty' plot against mankind [in allegedly manufacturing AIDS] were fabricated in KGB offices," as reported in the March 19, 1992 issue of the Russian newspaper Izvestiya. The Soviets knew the allegations were false, but spread them as part of their policy of spreading vicious lies about the United States. This is disinformation.
Media Mistakes: On December 6, 2001, the leading French newspaper Le Monde published an article stating that Hamid Karzai, who later became the head of Afghanistan's provisional government and then president of Afghanistan, had "acted, for awhile, as a consultant for the American oil company Unocal, at the time it was considering building a pipeline in Afghanistan." This statement is not true. Unocal spokesman Barry Lane stated that an exhaustive search of all the company's records made it clear that Mr. Karzai was "never a consultant, never an employee" of Unocal. This initial mistake by Le Monde has been repeated numerous times by other publications and websites, spreading the misinformation.
Urban Legend: One classic urban legend is the so-called "baby parts" myth. The false allegation is that Americans or others are kidnapping or adopting children from Latin America or other regions to use in organ transplants. This totally untrue story started as a word-of-mouth rumor, broke into the media in 1987 in Guatemala, and has circulated widely ever since. Media accounts giving credence to this false allegation won the most prestigious journalism prizes in France in 1995 and in Spain in 1996. The origins of this rumor and its spread in the world media are examined in the United States Information Agency report, The Child Organ Trafficking Rumor: a Modern "Urban Legend," which was submitted to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography in December 1994.
The "baby parts" myth was spurned by advances in organ transplantation that made organ theft seem more plausible to some. Other advances in technology have led to similar urban legends. When microwave ovens were first introduced, apprehensions about possible health effects of this new technology gave rise to the story about people who tried to dry their wet cat or dog in the microwave, only to have it explode. Urban legends give a narrative, story form to widespread hopes and fears, which is why they are widely believed. For example, in the wake of the September 11 attacks, an urban legend arose that someone had survived the World Trade Center collapse by "surfing" a piece of concrete down from the 80th floor to the ground. No such event occurred, but this false report circulated, reflecting the hope that some of the people trapped high in the towers could have miraculously survived their collapse.
Conspiracy Theories: Conspiracy theories are similar to urban legends, but center around the idea that powerful, evil hidden forces are secretly manipulating the course of world events and history and that nothing is as it seems. The book 9/11: The Big Lie by French author Thierry Meyssan (published as L'Effroyable Imposture ("The Horrifying Fraud") in French) is an example of conspiracy thinking. Meyssan suggests that no plane hit the Pentagon on September 11 and that, instead, a cabal of conspirators within the U.S. government attacked the Pentagon with a cruise missile with a deplated uranium warhead in order to manufacture an excuse for greater defense spending and war against the Taliban. Meyssan did not interview or credit the eyewitnesses to the September 11 events, who reported seeing a plane strike the Pentagon, and he offers no explanation for what happened to American Airlines flight #77 and its 64 passengers and crew, but inconvenient facts such as these are regularly ignored or dismissed by conspiracy theories in favor of extraordinarily complex and convoluted conspiracies, for which there is no evidence, merely uninformed speculation. Nevertheless, by blaming powerful alleged villains, conspiracy theories find a wide audience for whom suspicions are much more powerful in forming beliefs than logic, reason, or facts. |
As the definition notes, because intention is a part of identifying disinformation, some of your examples may or may not be disinformation, although they are misinformation by the definition, which includes many possibilities. I believe that it is disinformation that you are most concerned about, that which is intended to cause damage to the other side's case. And, you see, I started out by using the word misinformation, although I'm not sure that that makes my contention inaccurate. I was intending something closer to disinformation, however.
In support of my contention, I offer up The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, now known to be a complete fabrication by Russian sources, designed to undermine Jews. Disinformation if ever such existed. At the time The Protocols were being written, Americans hadn't even come to the question of whether gentlemen read each other's mail. So the Russians have been at it much longer. And does anyone believe that that document is their only attempt at disinformation? 
_________________
...And when we laugh, we're indestructible.
Joy Harjo |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
parvati_roma
Joined: 30 Mar 2004
Posts: 8432
Location: Italy
|
| Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2008 1:46 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: | | I believe that it is disinformation that you are most concerned about, that which is intended to cause damage to the other side's case. And, you see, I started out by using the word misinformation, although I'm not sure that that makes my contention inaccurate. I was intending something closer to disinformation, however. |
OK cheryl point taken - but except in purely-covert stuff addressed by one intel agency to another (intox) to eff-up their force-estimate antennae or whatever, a successful disinfo project in the non-totalitarian world involves planting the disinfo so it gets picked up by politicians/media/whatever-whoever (can add bloggers and intel forums these days...) and spread all over the globe by 'em more or less in "good faith" - at which point "disinformation" has morphed into "misinformation".
For instance, sez-who the "Karzai worked for Unocal" story - classified as a "media mistake" - wasn't deliberate disinfo planted by a French intel source (as payback for US Frog-bashing)?
Btw, the Gulf War I warmup story (Kuwaiti-babies-thrown-from-incubators) is a classic example of how disinfo is planted so that it will morph into misinfo.
And as I'm concerned with politics both international and national-factional, the reason why my use of the terms gets so floaty is that "misinformation" in the international-politics sphere is almost invariably the end-form of "disinformation".
Here's a bad metaphor that kinda-vividly illustrates what I mean: disinfo=snake's-egg deposited in media hencoop  misinfo=alarmed media-chickens cackling and squawking... 
-----
Re Protocols of the Elders of Zion
| Quote: | | I offer up The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, now known to be a complete fabrication by Russian sources, designed to undermine Jews. |
- long and lurid history, helluva-complicated: seems it's actually of French origin (anti-Jesuit!) later picked up and recycled by a reactionary German novelist as anti-Jewish anti-Freemasonry fantasy-hokum then rewritten as "non-fiction" by Russian journalists at the behest of Czarist secret service factions n' used at various times by assorted other anti-semitic Russian "players" for a range of pampleteering/rabble-rousing/oblique intrigue purposes, last pre-Hitler use was by "White Russians" against (largely Jewish-origin) Bolsheviks:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protocols_of_the_Elders_of_Zion#Origins_and_content
A fascinating story in its horrific lil' way - guess whether it should be called misinfo or disinfo depends on whether those who wrote it up and disseminated it (journalists and spooks) believed there really was a jewish+freemasons conspiracy?
_________________
“Against barbarity, poetry can resist only by confirming its attachment to human fragility like a blade of grass growing on a wall while armies march by.” Mahmoud Darwish
Last edited by parvati_roma on Sun Feb 10, 2008 10:20 pm; edited 11 times in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
FC Mellon
Joined: 15 Apr 2002
Posts: 4493
Location: SoCal
|
| Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2008 2:01 pm Post subject: words by any other meaning is still just words |
|
|
sidenote:
Politics never has a hiatus for hyperbole when it comes to meaning(s)(s)
p.s. One's extreme is another's dream when it comes to attaching meaning...or is that attacking meaning(s)(s)?
_________________
elitism--humanity's greatest enemy and greatest regret... |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
parvati_roma
Joined: 30 Mar 2004
Posts: 8432
Location: Italy
|
| Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2008 2:56 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: | | At the time The Protocols were being written, Americans hadn't even come to the question of whether gentlemen read each other's mail. |
Cheryl, what I said was that the US was the unrivalled master of disinfo - post-WW2 - here's my actual phrase:
| parvati_roma wrote: | | It's the US that is the world's No.1 spook-PR n' political disinfo-marketing capital just as it's the world's lobbyist-PR n' business disinfo-marketing front-runner, it has an absolutely unrivalled reputation - from WW2 onwards |
Reason being that pre-WW2 the US wasn't such a big "international player" so had less reason at govt./semi-govt. level to churn the stuff out for internal+external consumption. But I have no doubt that given all the US's pre-WW2 religious and ethnic tensions and squabbles, Americans were busily producing "disinfo" just-like-everyone-else, at least for internal consumption (noting that the Russians' use of the Protocols was partly for pogrom-incitement, partly for internal-political intrigue-n'-pressure purposes), even "at the time the Protocols were being written", which means early 20th cent. in its Russian version. Amongst other things the US protestant fundies-zone had - still has! - a helluva-strong line of lovingly cultivated anti-catholic conspiracy theories going back to at least the 18th cent.: "Black Pope" theories, anyone?
Here's a hair-raising recent example of the meme:
http://www.thewatcherfiles.com/blackpope.htm
I'm sure those who know more US history than I do could quote some pre-20th cent. examples of US-origin disinfo?
_________________
“Against barbarity, poetry can resist only by confirming its attachment to human fragility like a blade of grass growing on a wall while armies march by.” Mahmoud Darwish |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Cheryl
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
Posts: 3932
Location: USA
|
| Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2008 3:31 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Ah, but my contention, in the context of that earlier thread, was that the Russians have long been the masters of disinformation. I was perhaps not clear about that in a couple of respects, so I clarify my contention here and now.
Russian Patriot, who can be relied upon to provide the Russian side of any story, gave us a couple of links. His link seems to rely on a Russian source, or somebody with information from a Russian source.
| JLK then wrote: | | While this specific story has not been verified (yet), I think it is quite likely that Russian intelligence has at least some dirt on McCain from his time as a POW that could be used to blackmail him. It may or may not be something this extreme, but there is probably something. |
Misinformation is the more general term, which includes disinformation. If disinformation is planted and disseminated, it remains disinformation. That is how it is intended to work. Useful idiots repeat it and give it a veneer of credibility.
Wiki's history of The Protocols supports my contention. Whatever its origin, and I'm not convinced Wiki has it right, it was refined and used as disinformation by Czarist Russia. The fog around its origins is typical of disinformation campaigns for the reasons I've just given. If it were presented whole by any government with animus against the Jews, it would hardly be believable. That is the point of disseminating disinformation through innocuous-seeming channels.
The important intention is whether it was intended to smear the Jews, and I think there can be little question of that?
I think your metaphor is about right.
To go back to what I said, I find counters of "but someone else is worse" to be off the point. Within the United States, we have Republicans constantly claiming that Bill Clinton did whatever worse than George Bush (although Bush has recently reached depths of egregiousness that can no longer be claimed for Clinton, or else the Republicans are as tired of that argument as I am). In the earlier thread, we had claims presented from Russian sources. I noted that Russians have been masters of disinformation, implying that perhaps the claims should be taken with a grain of salt. That has nothing to do with a global competition for excellence in disinformation, before or after WWII.
_________________
...And when we laugh, we're indestructible.
Joy Harjo |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
parvati_roma
Joined: 30 Mar 2004
Posts: 8432
Location: Italy
|
| Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2008 3:32 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Ah... here are some more terms to illuminate what we're discussing here, set in the wider category of propaganda:
| Quote: | Propaganda can be classified according to the source and nature of the message. White propaganda generally comes from an openly identified source, and is characterized by gentler methods of persuasion, such as standard public relations techniques and one-sided presentation of an argument. Black propaganda is identified as being from one source, but is in fact from another. This is most commonly to disguise the true origins of the propaganda, be it from an enemy country or from an organization with a negative public image. Grey propaganda is propaganda without any identifiable source or author.
In scale, these different types of propaganda can also be defined by the potential of true and correct information to compete with the propaganda. For example, opposition to white propaganda is often readily found and may slightly discredit the propaganda source. Opposition to grey propaganda, when revealed (often by an inside source), may create some level of public outcry. Opposition to black propaganda is often unavailable and may be dangerous to reveal, because public cognizance of black propaganda tactics and sources would undermine or backfire the very campaign the black propagandist supported. |
Also noting:
| Quote: | | Propaganda may be administered in insidious ways. For instance, disparaging disinformation about the history of certain groups or foreign countries may be encouraged or tolerated in the educational system. Since few people actually double-check what they learn at school, such disinformation will be repeated by journalists as well as parents, thus reinforcing the idea that the disinformation item is really a "well-known fact", even though no one repeating the myth is able to point to an authoritative source. The disinformation is then recycled in the media and in the educational system, without the need for direct governmental intervention on the media. Such permeating propaganda may be used for political goals: by giving citizens a false impression of the quality or policies of their country, they may be incited to reject certain proposals or certain remarks or ignore the experience of others. |
In the cold-war years, I'd say both the US and the USSR were heavily engaged in this kind of propaganda - the USSR version was notorious - what I've called "Soviet Reality" - but the US version was/is fairly heavy-handed too.
_________________
“Against barbarity, poetry can resist only by confirming its attachment to human fragility like a blade of grass growing on a wall while armies march by.” Mahmoud Darwish |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
parvati_roma
Joined: 30 Mar 2004
Posts: 8432
Location: Italy
|
| Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2008 4:25 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: | | In the earlier thread, we had claims presented from Russian sources. I noted that Russians have been masters of disinformation, implying that perhaps the claims should be taken with a grain of salt. |
Cheryl, my guess is that the "claims presented from Russian sources" are probably just malicious speculation-chatter posts being passed around internet forums both US and non-US, based essentially on US-origin anti-McCain material from POW/MIA feud days present on the US web (Semple's "Manchurian Candidate" insinuations) with the addition of a speculative update based on massive recent European political-feud uses of Russian intel-material both real and fake (Scaramella et al).
Here's the motherlode for that kind of speculation-slur against McCain:
http://www.usvetdsp.com/manchuan.htm -
| Quote: | (...) the Senate Select Committee has never followed up on the explosive testimony of former KGB Maj. Gen. Oleg Kalugin, who testified, under oath, that the KGB interrogated U.S. POWs in Vietnam.
Kalugin stated that one of the POWs worked on by the KGB was a "high-ranking naval officer," who, according to Kalugin, agreed to work with the Soviets upon his repatriation to the United States and has frequently appeared on U.S. television. |
The anti-McCain article containing it dates back to 1992, hostility to McCain in such quarters never died and has now been revived with-a-vengeance - at a guess, especially amongst Huckerbee supporters since McCain's bid for the presidency?
So no reason to think JLK's insinuation is newly-crafted Russian disinfo, also because what he perhaps doesn't know is that the alleged "guy with the info" - former KGB agent Oleg Kalugin - "turned" way back, is now a US citizen, has been living in the USA for decades - and detests Putin.
_________________
“Against barbarity, poetry can resist only by confirming its attachment to human fragility like a blade of grass growing on a wall while armies march by.” Mahmoud Darwish |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Cheryl
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
Posts: 3932
Location: USA
|
| Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2008 4:47 pm Post subject: |
|
|
As I said on that other thread, I won't try to sort out the various slanders against McCain. And the fact that any of this is on the internet could just be that the disinformation is working.
_________________
...And when we laugh, we're indestructible.
Joy Harjo |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
parvati_roma
Joined: 30 Mar 2004
Posts: 8432
Location: Italy
|
| Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2008 5:03 pm Post subject: |
|
|
You mean those anti-McCain vets who've been gunning for McCain for the last 15-16 years are really ... Soviet sleeper-agents working for Hillary??? 
....
Apologies Cheryl, only fooling of course but couldn't resist it - see where applying "cui bono" logic to russkis-under-the-bed theorising can lead you??
_________________
“Against barbarity, poetry can resist only by confirming its attachment to human fragility like a blade of grass growing on a wall while armies march by.” Mahmoud Darwish |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Cheryl
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
Posts: 3932
Location: USA
|
| Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2008 5:53 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Parvati, the point of disinformation is to disguise itself and its origins so that it becomes more credible.
Russian Patriot, a well-known purveyor of the Russian pov, gives us some information about something that the Russians supposedly have on John McCain. This is too obvious for my tastes in disinformation; my plan would have been more subtle. The information is found on a US rightwing site. The US right wing is not known for scrupulosity in vetting sources, truthfulness, or the laws of libel and slander. They just want to smear their enemies, who are everywhere. Might they have picked up some tidbit from who-knows-where?
And we indeed see that former Trotskyites find the US right wing a comfortable home.
Now what does all that tell us? Not to be too credulous about everything we read on the internets. Which was my original point. The heavy Russian overlay on that particular piece of ---information brought to mind the excellence of Russian skills in this particular field.
Parvati, your exaggerations of my position resemble the readiness of other posters to call the rest of us socialists. I'm not claiming that Russian agents are everywhere, just that if you're smart, you can put information in circulation that never shows its source. That's called disinformation. But of course you know this already, if you've read the three hundred times or so I've said this today.
_________________
...And when we laugh, we're indestructible.
Joy Harjo |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
parvati_roma
Joined: 30 Mar 2004
Posts: 8432
Location: Italy
|
| Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2008 7:02 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Cheryl wrote: | | Russian Patriot, a well-known purveyor of the Russian pov, gives us some information about something that the Russians supposedly have on John McCain. This is too obvious for my tastes in disinformation; my plan would have been more subtle |
| Cheryl wrote: | | I'm not claiming that Russian agents are everywhere, just that if you're smart, you can put information in circulation that never shows its source. That's called disinformation. |
At this point, I'd say it's time to stop relying on memory/expectations/phobias and check back over the original thread to see what the actual sources of RP's "purveying of the Russian pov" happen to be?
So:
Russian Patriot opens the thread - entitled "how the Clintons will undo McCain" - with 2 links, both to American sites.
First is to the very well-known US-right site Worldnet Daily - main "info" purveyed consists of the following totally-unsupported statements:
| Quote: | (...)That John McCain is clinically nuts is scary enough. What worries a small group of GOP senators and congressmen even more is a deep and dark skeletal secret in McCain's glorified past to which they are privy, and which the Clintons will use to blackmail him.
They have been having discussions with a Russian whom we'll call "T" for translator. T's father was the Soviet military intelligence officer who ran the "Hanoi Hilton" prison holding captured Americans during the Vietnam War. One of those prisoners was John McCain.
The GRU - Glavnoje Razvedyvatel'noje Upravlenije or main intelligence directorate of the Soviet (now Russian) Armed Forces - operated the entire North Vietnamese prison system holding American prisoners of war. GRU officers, all of whom were Russians, oversaw the interrogation of every American POW.
The interrogations themselves were conducted by Vietnamese who spoke some English. (...) After each interrogation session, which could often include torturing the prisoners at the direction of the GRU officers, the Vietnamese interrogator would write a report of the session in Vietnamese.
These reports had to be translated into Russian. T, a bright teenager living in the GRU compound in Hanoi, had become fluent in Vietnamese, and ended up translating many of the reports and interrogators' notes.
(etc etc etc with by-now-familiar slimy US extreme-right anti-McCain allegations I won't soil my typing-fingers by repeating)
The notes and reports written in Vietnamese were sent to Moscow, where T was a now a college student, for T's translation into Russian, then placed into GRU archives. That's where they stayed until 1991. Late that year, as the Soviet Union was collapsing, the CIA and the GRU made a deal for a document swap.
All of what it involved, T doesn't know. What T's father, by now retired but still with substantial contacts within the GRU, did learn (and thus T learned) was that the swap included all of T's translations.
In other words, the CIA has in its possession the notes and reports of John McCain's interrogators at the Hanoi Hilton (...) |
They then proceed to say that this is equiv. to its being in the Clintons' hands as Bill Clinton - again according to them - is a CIA agent and the CIA is run by "lefties!"...
| Quote: | (...) The small group of senators and congressmen who have been briefed by T have been unable to confirm with the CIA any details of its document swap with the GRU beyond an admission that such a swap "may have happened." They are very nervous about pursuing the matter any further.
The Clintons are not nervous. They are utterly ruthless, and have buddies at Langley all too happy to help them.
It has been noted many times here in To The Point that while most folks think the CIA is a right-wing outfit, it is not. The CIA has been dominated by left-wing hyper-liberals for years. |
After a few more out-of-thin-air mudslinging slurs against the Clintons - including one saying that Hillary has a Muslim female paramour who's a Saudi secret agent, no less - we come to this:
| Quote: | | I would not in any circumstances vote for John McCain, not if either Hillary or Obama were the alternative. Evil is safer than crazy. Leftie amateur inexperience is safer than crazy |
Author of the article is a certain Jack Wheeler, of whom the WND blurb says:
| Quote: | Jack Wheeler is editor of ToThePointNews. He served in six conflicts against communist guerrillas, sky-dived at the North Pole, discovered three unknown tribes and holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Southern California, where he lectured on Aristotelian ethics.
The Washington Post called Wheeler a "right-wing Indiana Jones." He is widely credited with inspiring the "Reagan Doctrine," which called for U.S. support of freedom fighters. |
Sounds very like a US-right version of Italy's ineffable Mario Scaramella? 
....
Second link in RP's post is far tamer, it's to an article in American Conservative by Justin Raimondo (faik he's a libertarian journalist/blogger, also writes on antiwar.com) who's arguing - with zero-zilch more-or-less-weird mudslinging "sensational revelations" apparently plucked out of thin air unlike that WND guy, just perfectly normal political-type reasoning - that McCain is essentially a former "realist" who's morphed into a warmonger, on the basis - far as I can see - of a standard-issue journalistic reconstruction of his career and sayings based on archives/internet research and direct quotes?
------------------------
So there are your/RP's "Russian sources", Cheryl... 
I'd say let's lay the blame where it belongs: on the US far-right's appetite for delirious out-of-thin-air mudslinging - my bet being the English-speaking zone of the Russian internet stumbled onto this US far-right mudslinging stuff and started passing it around... for laughs?
_________________
“Against barbarity, poetry can resist only by confirming its attachment to human fragility like a blade of grass growing on a wall while armies march by.” Mahmoud Darwish |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
parvati_roma
Joined: 30 Mar 2004
Posts: 8432
Location: Italy
|
| Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2008 8:01 pm Post subject: |
|
|
P.S. Just found this on the WND piece by that Wheeler guy - it's been given the prize for "wingnuttiest blog post of all time". ...
Wheeler's recent precedents:
| Quote: | | ... Jack Wheeler (the self-styled “Indiana Jones of the Right,” who we last encountered a month ago accusing Barack Obama of supporting Radical Islam and of being responsible for the violence in Kenya), |
Nuff said?
Also found a refutation of Wheeler's allegations by former POW James H. Warner now doing the rounds of the US-right forums, published in FrontPageMag:
| Quote: | Recently, I have seen several allegations that condemn Senator John McCain for his behavior as a prisoner of war. I believe that these allegations are false. I am in a better position than the Senator’s accusers to know the truth since I was a prisoner with him, having been captured a little over a month before him. I have contacted hundreds of my comrades on our e-mail list and not one of them can confirm anything that has been alleged against McCain.
(..)
We have no evidence that Sen. McCain received special treatment. Since he was as thin as the rest of us, if he did, it was not in the form of decent food. It is alleged that he was taken into Hanoi and put up in a hotel with prostitutes. This is an improvement on the allegation spread during the 2000 campaign that he was given a Vietnamese woman to live with him in his cell, an allegation that led me to ask why, if he was my friend, didn’t he ask if she had a sister? Even when he was in solitary confinement, he was constantly in contact with others. Further, we always knew about movements within the camps, because the Communists simply were not competent at preventing us from gaining intelligence. Men who were in the camps with him agree that they are not aware of a single night that he spent out of his cell. (...) In the spring of 1971, I personally witnessed evidence of John McCain’s loyalty.... (etc etc) |
_________________
“Against barbarity, poetry can resist only by confirming its attachment to human fragility like a blade of grass growing on a wall while armies march by.” Mahmoud Darwish |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
johnwilkins
Joined: 15 Apr 2002
Posts: 4862
Location: West Coast
|
| Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2008 8:39 pm Post subject: |
|
|
I don't have any first hand experience with the Soviet internal ops, but friends of mine say it was common. Even things like natural disasters weren't reported. A friend of mine noted that during a train trip he was on, the soldiers made people close all curtains on rail cars when traveling through an area devastated by earthquake, because the official line was that there was no serious damage. As you know, Pravda translates to truth... and it's history is basically to tell lies.
The Soviets brought that to a whole new level. In the U.S., that type of coverage is just the opposite. Even a little rain storm is chalked up to a huge monsoon. "This house was damaged; will your's be next? Stay tuned!"
Probably the most flagrant example of U.S. use of propaganda was preceding the Spanish-American War, which was nothing more than a U.S. land grab. The U.S. manufactured the explosion of the Maine as though it had been subject to a mine or torpedo.
_________________
"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
parvati_roma
Joined: 30 Mar 2004
Posts: 8432
Location: Italy
|
| Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2008 8:53 pm Post subject: |
|
|
ah... re the origins of the infamous "Protocols", the Wiki tallies with what I'd read elsewhere some years back - far as I can recall, in some perfectly reputable Italian or French historical-research study on the murkier fringes of far-right "reactionary" politics - antisemitism, anti-Freemasonry polemics and assorted forms of esoteric tomfoolery (the book was probably about the origins of the "Thule Society" that Hitler got involved with?) in late 19th-cent./early 20th cent. Europe. Can't remember its title, but Holocaust-history-org fully confirms the Wiki version, complete with sources.
_________________
“Against barbarity, poetry can resist only by confirming its attachment to human fragility like a blade of grass growing on a wall while armies march by.” Mahmoud Darwish |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Cheryl
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
Posts: 3932
Location: USA
|
| Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2008 9:05 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Parvati, I am not arguing that it is a fact that the information originates in Russia. But you are not refuting that it originates in Russia, either.
I'm mainly arguing for careful analysis.
| parvati_roma wrote: | | At this point, I'd say it's time to stop relying on memory/expectations/phobias and check back over the original thread to see what the actual sources of RP's "purveying of the Russian pov" happen to be? |
For the three-hundredth-and-first time, the immediate sources are not necessarily the original sources. And we are to take no note of track records, especially when you bring up the political views and track record of the WND author? We can ignore those too, right?
And there is a Russian connection there. As I said, none of this is terribly subtle for good disinformation, but what the heck.
| Quote: | They have been having discussions with a Russian whom we'll call "T" for translator. T's father was the Soviet military intelligence officer who ran the "Hanoi Hilton" prison holding captured Americans during the Vietnam War. One of those prisoners was John McCain.
The GRU - Glavnoje Razvedyvatel'noje Upravlenije or main intelligence directorate of the Soviet (now Russian) Armed Forces - operated the entire North Vietnamese prison system holding American prisoners of war. GRU officers, all of whom were Russians, oversaw the interrogation of every American POW. und so weiter, as one of our members is wont to say. |
And this is what the claims in that article are based on. Now, as Parvati points out, who knows what the WND's sources are. But, as I've pointed out, that could leave the way open for, er, just about anything. Including pulling it straight out of the air.
Once again, the logic or sense of the article is irrelevant to its ultimate source. We have seen that logic and sense are not necessarily at the top of the political smear agenda.
| Parvati wrote: | | Sounds very like a US-right version of Italy's ineffable Mario Scaramella? |
| Parvati wrote: | | So there are your/RP's "Russian sources", Cheryl... |
So you are saying that disinformation cannot possibly reach the US right wing?
| Parvati wrote: | | I'd say let's lay the blame where it belongs: on the US far-right's appetite for delirious out-of-thin-air mudslinging - my bet being the English-speaking zone of the Russian internet stumbled onto this US far-right mudslinging stuff and started passing it around... for laughs? |
Certainly possible. But, as I noted on another thread today, just because you can develop one explantion, doesn't mean you've eliminated others.
Once again: I was merely pointing out that we have a dubious local source linking to other dubious sources, with a commonality in some sort of Russianness. And observing that Russians have a history of passing the disinformation around.
Do I think that this means that there is a major Russian campaign to discredit John McCain? Did I say that anywhere? But some folks just like to keep in practice, and scurrilous rumors about those vying for the leadership of another country is certainly something one might think about if one wanted to add a tiny weight to the negative side of the balance.
Or it could be nothing at all. As I said earlier, don't believe everything you read on the internets.
_________________
...And when we laugh, we're indestructible.
Joy Harjo |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
You cannot attach files in this forum
You cannot download files in this forum
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
