Posted on 02/17/2018 1:05:03 PM PST by ransomnote
With elections coming up this year in France, Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and perhaps Italy, European intelligence services across the Continent have been sounding the alarm about Russian attempts to influence the outcome though targeted disinformation and propaganda, as they appeared to do in the U.S. presidential election.
That brand of information war can range from pushing fake news stories and conspiracy theories to fanning the flames of existing problems — all serving to undermine public confidence in governments and institutions. Elsewhere in the Baltics and former Soviet Union, Russian-linked disinformation has worked to stoke panic and force local governments into knee-jerk, counterproductive responses that have boosted Kremlin goals across the region.
But in the face of this mounting pressure, one of Russia’s neighbors has emerged unusually resistant to the wider information war waged by Moscow across Europe: Finland.
Like other countries along the Baltic Sea or in Eastern Europe, Finland has seen a notable increase in fake news stories and propaganda targeted against it that can be linked back to Russia since Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. These attacks have sought to undermine the government and often coincided with military shows of force along the Russian border.
But unlike its neighbors, Helsinki reckons it has the tools to effectively resist any information attack from its eastern neighbor. Finnish officials believe their country’s strong public education system, long history of balancing Russia, and a comprehensive government strategy allow it to deflect coordinated propaganda and disinformation.
“The best way to respond is less by correcting the information, and more about having your own positive narrative and sticking to it,” Jed Willard, director of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Center for Global Engagement at Harvard, told Foreign Policy.
(Excerpt) Read more at foreignpolicy.com ...
Now, read Hard Questions: Russian Ads Delivered to Congress
By Elliot Schrage, Facebook Vice President of Policy and Communications
Make sure to read the comment by David Caufield. I'm going to reproduce the opening, but DO read the entire thing.
According to Facebook:
So, there's nothing of significance, here. But Facebook is using the opportunity to talk about its advertising platform features and numbers, and is pacing its release of information apart to tread water and keep the company and its ads program in the news. It's presenting what are trivial non-issues but playing the presentation of them as though there's a big deal happening with ambiguous phrases like "hard questions" - which aren't even identified as to what those "hard questions" are. It's vapid.
- the ads were non-political in nature, and didn't feature or favour a political candidate
- 56% of the ads were run AFTER the 2016 US federal election
- 25% of the ads were never displayed to anyone due to Facebook's algorithms not finding them relevant to trending interests
- only 25% of the ads were geographically-targeted
- Facebook is not sure that the ads were part of an organized campaign
- Facebook is not sure that the accounts the ads were purchased with are associated with each other
- Facebook is not certain that the ads were purchased by Russians
- many of the ads were not purchased using Russia's currency
- huge numbers of actual political ads are bought and run on Facebook from all countries around the world, and that is normal and OK
- the "overwhelming majority" of ad-space purchases from Russia by Russians are normal and not suspicious in any way
This is a publicity stunt, people.
Possessing a clear understanding of the failure of previous civilizations to achieve and sustain freedom for individuals, our forefathers discovered some timeless truths about human nature, the struggle for individual liberty, the human tendency toward abuse of power, and the means for curbing that tendency through Constitutional self-government. Jefferson’s Bill For The More General Diffusion Of Knowledge For Virginia declared:
“…experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms (of government), those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate…the minds of the people…to give them knowledge of those facts, which history exhibiteth. History, by apprizing them of the past, will enable them to judge of the future…it will qualify them judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views..”
Education was not perceived by the Founders to be a mere process for teaching basic skills. It was much, much more. Education included the very process by which the people of America would understand and be able to preserve their liberty and secure their Creator-endowed rights. Understanding the nature and origin of their rights and the means of preserving them, the people would be capable of self government, for they would recognize any threats to liberty and “nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud.” (Adams)
Rise of the Russian Election Meddling narrative. I call BS on all of the claims of Russian Meddling beyond any “normal” meddling. If I were Russia, my paranoia would be justified since everyone IS actually out to get me. I think conservatives see through this ruse and actually hope that Trump works with Putin against the wishes of Deep State.
I honestly don’t care about this Russia thing. So what that they bought ads and convinced people to vote for Trump. I wouldn’t even care if they did this in 2012 and Obama won. Who cares. After seeing Romney since, I truly wouldn’t care.
It's been "rising" since DNC's e-mails appeard on Wikileaks.
-- I call BS on all of the claims of Russian Meddling beyond any "normal" meddling. --
Indeed. The whole "act" by the press and most of the government has one purpose, to overturn a valid election. It's as fake as "flat earth" and "sun rises in the west," but when the megaphone of the lying press is applied, etc.
They succeeded, but a remnant of the revolution of 1776 persists.
Nobody should doubt the Russians are actually playing catch up in this info war space.
The US and NATO set the standard decades ago.
I’m not saying the Russian state is good, or what they are doing is OK.
I’m saying it’s amateur by Western standards.
Just look at the Russia collusion narrative that has dominated US media for the last 16 months. Fusion GPS, in coordination with US Intelligence and DOJ was able to create the biggest lie in US history and get half the US population to believe it.
We undertook similar efforts in Egypt, Libya, the Balkans and Ukraine.
And it was the success of the NATO/EU/US campaign in Ukraine that finally prompted Russia to fight fire with fire.
Even this piece is reflective of western mastery of information warfare.
But so many in the US, and on this board, do not accept this contention. They believe the US media, by and large, strives for an objective truth, and that promulgation of that truth is both righteous and demanded. And that it is not driven by powerful forces in the US Intelligence agencies, with their partners in the largest, most powerful information/media enterprises in the world.
Fools.
“Even this piece is reflective of western mastery of information warfare.”
And it’s disguised as “objective truth”.
Re: Why Is Finland Able to Fend Off Putin’s Information War?
They’re all Lutherans!
Well, lapsed Lutherans, anyway.
great facts - thanks
Too many so-called conservatives see through the ruse but have decided to play along anyway because it attacks a nation they fear and advances their interventionist agenda.
Russia DID meddle in the 2016 election. In fact, the Russians have been meddling in US elections for about a century. Back in the old days, they used newpapers and pamphlets for propaganda and agitation. Then, they adapted to the technology of radio. Now they have adapted their propaganda and agitation tactics to incorporate developments in the internet and social networking. There’s really nothing really new about this ... except that, in the US, the losers — i.e., Hillary, Team Obama, the DNC and its propagandists in the US mainstream media, and various other US progressives, socialists, and communists — weaponized reports of Russian meddling against Trump.
It really is an Orwellian spectacle: Hillary got the DNC to hire a law firm to hire a political consultant to hire a foreign spy to communicate with Russian spies, agents, and officials, and then she had her lackey, Sid Vicious aka Sidney Blumenthal, to feed disinformation to the foreign spy (Steele). She loses the election and her side then complains that Trump was in collusion with Russian spies, agents and officials. DC really is an Orwellain swamp, so the assistant attorney general decides to investigate Trump rather than Hillary, even though it has been established that Hillary’s campaign knowingly contracted with and paid an unregistered foreign spy who hated Trump and was actively trying to influence the US election and used Russian-sourced, Clinton-sourced, and other fictional disinformation to discredit Trump.
Finns are almost uniformally of a single ethnicity. They are intelligent. They respect education. They respect one another. Need anything more??
Fighting Russians is Finland’s National Pastime.
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