Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let there be snark.

Militantly superior in their own minds…

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

What fresh hell is this?

Everybody saw this coming.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Infrastructure week. at last.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

It might be fine, or it might be a clusterfuck.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

I’m going back to the respite thread.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Just a few bad apples.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

It’s been a really long fucking year.

This fight is for everything.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

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The Wilderness of Mirrors & The Guardian’s Scoop Regarding Putin’s & Russia’s Planning To Make Trump President: It Is Almost Certainly Disinformation & Agitprop, But It May Still Be True

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Several of you asked in comments yesterday morning what I thought about The Guardian‘s big scoop based on purported leaked Kremlin documents from January 2016 that supposedly reveal the formal planning by Putin and his intelligence and nat-sec leadership to make Trump president. As I was typing this up last night, Cheryl was doing her post and we agreed that I’d just finish drafting mine and save it for later as we are in almost complete agreement about The Guardian‘s reporting.

Since it’s now later, I figured I’d freshen it a wee bit and hit publish. Everything up to the Updated on 16 July at 2:00 PM EDT was written yesterday.

My initial response as a comment yesterday was:

This is certainly disinformation agitprop, in that what leaked is accurate in its contents, but not the real thing. Which allows Putin to both finally take credit for the op he’s been running informally since 2014 and formally since 2016 and also further that operations objectives of sowing socio-political discord in the US.

To clarify and be more specific, this is almost certainly disinformation and agitprop. While it is also most likely accurate in the contents in terms of the underlying facts of 2016 – as in Putin did have a preference for Trump and was utilizing his resources to elevate his candidacy and his chances – there is no way that this leaked Kremlin document is legitimately documenting whatever planning was going on in 2016.

The reporting in The Guardian Luke Harding, Julian Borger, and Dan Sabbagh is interesting, but… The report that the document:

“No 32-04 \ vd” – is classified as secret.

I have a lot of trouble believing that it wasn’t classified, according to the classification that the Kremlin uses, at the equivalent of what we would refer to as a fully compartmented classification at the highest level of classification.

Another issue I have is they don’t post the entire document, only two screen grabs extracts. Nor do they indicate the chain of transmission to them. They sort of intimate or suggest they got it from a western intelligence source, but the way they write the article, it could also be inferred it came from a Kremlin source.

One thing that is clear, is that if a western intelligence agency, one of our Five Eyes partners or one of our other intelligence partners, has had this for a while, they certainly did not share it with the US prior to, at least, late 2019. As both Matt Tait aka Pwn All The Things and Marcy Wheeler note.

I would also like to know which, if any, other major news organizations were offered this and refused to run it because they couldn’t vet it to their satisfaction.

Finally, Ivan Tchakev, who is the economics editor at RBC and writes as an expert at Riddle, is asserting that language errors indicate this is most certainly a forgery.

Since I don’t speak Russian other than the names of some foods, some place names, several curses, and the names of hockey players and some authors, composers, and dancers, I asked our own in house Russian language and Russian studies subject matter expert about Tchakev’s analysis and got this reply:

I don’t think you can really draw conclusions based on a linguistic analysis. Bureaucratic language is terrible everywhere, including in Russia.

Based on the language, it kind of looks fake to me but I could not swear to that in court! I’m not all that familiar with these kinds of documents. I just get a whiff of somebody playacting.

So hopefully everything is now clear as mud!

Updated at 2:00 PM EDT on 16 July 2021:

Marcy Wheeler makes the excellent, and if you’ve been following along as Cheryl and I have covered this stuff here and as Wheeler and others have covered it on their sites and feeds, obvious point that Putin’s active measures and low intensity political warfare operation precedes January 2016.

Click across and read the whole thread.

As we’ve discussed here numerous times, we can actually see the disinformation and agitprop operation begin in the spring of 2014. It was at this point in May of 2014 that the first story intended to dirty up potential presidential candidates was placed in Russian state news RIA Novosti. That disinformation and agitprop drop was targeted at President Biden, Ambassador Kerry, and Vice President Cheney by targeting their children as engaged in unethical and potentially illegal activities in Ukraine and other places. All three of them were being touted in 2014 as potential presidential candidates for 2016, though none of them ultimately ran.

The Jade Helm conspiracy theory of 2015, intended to stir up discontent among Texas against both the Obama administration and US Special Operations Forces, was also part of Russia’s active measures campaign. It was tied to Russia’s promotion of the Texas secessionist movement during President Obama’s second term, as well as support for a variety of American neo-NAZI and white supremacist groups. The plot to infiltrate and influence the National Rifle Association actually begins even father back. Torshin attended his first NRA national convention in 2012 and by 2014 he had Maria Butina in place and active in the US. Similarly, Russia has targeted the National Prayer Breakfast for years as a line of entry into the Republican Party and conservative organizations. Russia has also targeted a number of American evangelical groups. One of the key players in this is Jay Sekulow, who just happened to be Trump’s personal attorney for the Mueller investigation and both impeachments. This much coincidence takes a lot of work. The idea that suddenly, in January 2016, Putin convenes the equivalent of a National Security Council Principal’s meeting to plan and coordinate efforts in his active measures and low intensity political war against the US just doesn’t line up.

As I wrote yesterday, what I want to know now is where the document came from, which, if any of our ally’s intelligence services had it and provided it to The Guardian‘s reporting team. Or, if it wasn’t provided, what’s the chain of transmission in it leaking to them. And I want to see the whole document, with the appropriate redactions that would be necessary to protect anyone who leaked it out. Without all of that, this is interesting. It rings true. But it is clearly disinformation and agitprop intended to further wreak havoc on American society and politics.

Open thread!

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Caution On The Guardian Scoop

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The Guardian today has a document that may be from the uppermost reaches of the Russian government and purports to describe a meeting of Vladimir Putin’s security council in closed session.

The meeting was on January 22, 2016, and in it, Putin gave instructions to his spy agencies to support Donald Trump’s run for the presidency of the US.

Caution is due to these claims. The Guardian article itself is cautious, although it notes that Guardian reporters have validated the document to a limited degree. A meeting of the security council took place on that day. Experts have looked at the document and find it not obviously fraudulent.

There is a brief psychological assessment of Trump, who is described as an “impulsive, mentally unstable and unbalanced individual who suffers from an inferiority complex”.

There is also apparent confirmation that the Kremlin possesses kompromat, or potentially compromising material, on the future president, collected – the document says – from Trump’s earlier “non-official visits to Russian Federation territory”.

The paper refers to “certain events” that happened during Trump’s trips to Moscow. Security council members are invited to find details in appendix five, at paragraph five, the document states. It is unclear what the appendix contains.

“It is acutely necessary to use all possible force to facilitate his [Trump’s] election to the post of US president,” the paper says.

This document fits quite snugly into a narrative about Russian interference in the 2016 election. That could mean that, whether or not the material in it is true, it is part of a Russian disinformation operation.

Others on Twitter are urging caution.

That last thread doesn’t necessarily prove it’s a forgery. People mess up their writing in all languages.

There’s nothing definitive about the authenticity of the documents or whether they’re fakes. The Guardian might make more information available about how they got them, which could point to disinformation motives.

I suspect this one never will be fully clear by itself. It will be another case of people believing what they want to.

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Saturday Evening Open Thread: Everything Old Is New Again

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Back in the early 1970s, when Trekkie volunteers were putting together our first conventions, it was widely known that William Shatner (a) would show up almost anywhere for a sufficiently large fee, but (b) would be sufficiently demanding and prickly that his prestige value just might *not* be worth it. (In his defense, he had already put in years as a struggling actor, and we nerds weren’t always the easiest to work with, either.)

Lo and behold, almost fifty years later, a new generation discovers that… some things don’t change. Except, of course, that the publicity around Mr. Shatner’s latest gig has already been all RT could hope and more. Shows what a difference professionalism makes…

show full post on front page

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Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Summit to Talk About

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Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Summit to Talk About

(John Deering via GoComics.com)

… In the visual record of Biden’s interactions with his G-7 counterparts in Cornwall and the leaders of the NATO alliance in Brussels, during his official arrival in Geneva in advance of a meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin, Biden telegraphed ease — even though none of the problems he must contend with are easy. In his public gestures and expressions, Biden painted a portrait of civility, good humor and control as he stood alongside America’s friends.

There’s diplomacy in the details, in the aesthetic grace notes. And in the empty spaces.

For his meeting with Putin on Wednesday, his administration has made it plain that there will be no side-by-side news conference. No mutual answering of questions. During their conversation, there will be no meal. No bread will be broken, but presumably there will, at least, be water.

So much has changed in the vividly fraught relationship between America and its allies and its stubbornly credulous relationship with Russia these past four years. When Macron first met then-President Donald Trump, their long handshake might well have set a record. It was akin to an arm-wrestling match, as each man’s knuckles turned white and their jaws clenched. Their subsequent encounters included handshakes that were tests of endurance and brute strength, with at least one instance of the American yanking on the Frenchman’s hand as if he were prepared to wrestle him to the mat.

But after an administration whose public stance was defined by anger and chest-thumping — and the actual shoving of other world leaders — Biden’s every “hello” is a course correction for the historical record. He and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg engaged in a shoulder-clasping tête-à-tête in Brussels while visiting the memorial to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The president arrived in Geneva and returned the Swiss gesture of placing one’s hand over one’s heart in a warm and fuzzy welcome. And as some countries begin to see signs of a dissipating pandemic, the diplomatic handshake — so maligned, so germy and yet so deeply ingrained — has made a comeback, but without the palpable animosity of the Trump years…

The visuals don’t tell the full story of policies and negotiations. But they do tell us something about the intent, and the tone — about the way in which one wants to be seen. Biden’s walk across the international stage has been both considered and considerate.

He wrapped his allies in an embrace. And he promised not to give bread and comfort to his adversaries.

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The Biden-Putin Summit

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What can we expect from the summit meeting between Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin?

Nothing.

That is the expectation that Biden is setting. There will be no grand pronouncements, no reset, maybe not even a perfunctory statement of agreement on a minor point. That is part of the reason that Biden plans to hold a press conference by himself. The other part, of course, is in contrast with Donald Trump’s disastrous showing at Helsinki.

But the meeting is necessary and important. Russia is a major country, with a nuclear arsenal equivalent to America’s. Russia is adjacent to our allies in Europe and supplies energy to many of them. It has a long land border across which untoward things can happen. Those are reason enough for the leaders to meet.

The meeting is important because tensions between the two countries have increased during the 21st century. The United States has pulled out of treaties that stabilized the relationship rather than try to resolve problems. Russia has acted as an international spoiler. Both sides need to show reliability in their actions. That can only be done through meetings.

Many issues might be discussed – the situation with those treaties and how to go forward, the situation in Ukraine, American sanctions on Russia, Russia’s attacks on dissidents inside and outside Russia, the situation in Syria, America’s return to the Iran nuclear agreement, relations with China, the uses of the Arctic, and more. Both men have their own lists of priorities. It’s likely that their aides have exchanged those lists and are working to pare them down to fit in the time available.

Those aides have also been gaming out something like a SWOT analysis – Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats. I’ll do a bit of that here. Obviously, I’m coming at it from an Americentric viewpoint.

The real strength internationally today is in dealing with the pandemic. The pandemic hinders economies and military strength. Biden understands this and has made controlling the pandemic his first priority, with some success. In contrast, Russia is going into another wave of disease. Its people are more reluctant than Americans to be vaccinated, and its vaccine may be less effective than others. Brazil and Slovakia have raised questions about quality control in its manufacture.

Russia’s willingness to take risks to upend other countries’ expectations in terms of invading its neighbors and willingness to kill individuals seen as dissidents both inside and outside Russia is a strength. It keeps opponents off guard and makes the most of capabilities that are weaker than others’.

Russia’s role as a supplier of natural gas to Europe is a strength in dealing with Europe, to be used as leverage against the formal alliances of NATO and the EU. Both of those alliances are strengths, emphasized during Biden’s visits these two weeks.

Both countries have weaknesses in their domestic political situations. America has a major political party that is sympathetic to and influenced by Russian organizations. Russia’s poor economic situation and repression of dissidents have led to demonstrations, which repression may damp down. Putin is not grooming a successor, which is not a problem now but will become one at some point. America’s last president contines to try to undermine the succession.

The summit itself is an opportunity for Putin personally. He wants Russia to be seen as an equal to America, and a summit provides favorable optics. But that doesn’t improve Russia’s economy or pandemic status. And Russia is an equal in nuclear destructive power.

The opportunity for both is to feel the other out, understand him better, try out approaches. The personal relationship is far from the whole thing, but it’s not unimportant.

The biggest policy opportunity is likely to be in the area of the now defunct nuclear treaties. Both sides understand that nuclear war or accident is the greatest danger facing them. Additionally, both sides are looking at very expensive plans for modernizing their nuclear forces. In the economic crunch of the pandemic, sizing those plans down would be significant. Communication of actions that might look like war is important. Bringing China into discussions of limiting numbers of nuclear weapons is worth thinking about. The most that might be achieved in this meeting would be agreement to hold working meetings on these topics.

Biden will bring up Ukraine, and Putin will bring up sanctions. The most that will be mentioned of these subjects in any communiqué will be that they were discussed. Maybe some positive words can be ginned up about the Arctic.  It is possible that there will not be a joint communiqué.

Threats to a chummy outcome with roses and unicorns are pretty much everything about the relationship, which is why Biden is damping down expectations, and Putin isn’t saying much either.

In the leadup to the summit, both sides are making gestures of strength and perhaps signaling ways forward. They are predictable and not very significant.

One that I find significant is that NATO made a statement that it will not deploy new land-based missiles to Europe. It wasn’t planning to, but Russia has deployed potentially nuclear cruise missiles in the area. It was these missiles that were the proximate cause of the American withdrawal from the INF Treaty. Russia says it is willing to come back to an INF-style treaty in Europe, but it will be a long way. The activity around this issue suggests it will be discussed, although the best we can expect is the formation of a working group.

Biden will have his own interpreter and note-taker with him. He may also have Jake Sullivan or Antony Blinken along. Putin will have a similar complement of his people. The summit will take place, and we will move along to the next thing.

Cross-posted at Nuclear Diner

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Our Media Is Not Learning, In Fact They Seem Incapable of Doing So: This Is Why You Don’t Give Putin An Unearned Meeting

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Six years! Six years and these idiots have learned nothing!

The stupid, it burns!!!!

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian of authoritarianism and fascism, has the right take:

You don’t give Putin an unearned meeting, especially when he’s going out of his way to rub Biden’s nose in the reality that he is not going to change his behavior unless he is made to do so, because doing so normalizes him. It allows him to set the information narrative, to shape it, to use America’s own explicit enumerated right to a freedom of the press, a right he doesn’t believe in and does not recognize within Russia, to push his own misinformation, disinformation, and agitprop. The only real question at this point is how many more bad acts is Putin or his surrogates going to undertake in as public a manner possible between now and his meeting with President Biden to demonstrate that he really could care less what President Biden or the US wants.

The meeting between President Biden and Putin is news. The events leading up to it, what happens at it, what occurs as a result of it, are news. Because all of that is news, it creates an opportunity for Putin to manipulate American news, American journalists, and through them, the American people. And the price of this is normalization of Putin. Of allowing him to present himself as a legitimate leader of a world power, rather than a thuggish former apparatchik who has impoverished and immiserated his people by turning Russia into an organized criminal enterprise running behind the facade of an illiberal, managed democracy.

This is the hard hitting “journalism” that we’re going to be getting as a result of NBC’s inability to learn anything from the past six years.

And before someone starts with the news that the Biden administration announced a huge weapons shipment to Ukraine, I’m aware. It’s been clear for several weeks to a couple of months that this was coming and it doesn’t take a genius to have estimated it would be announced before the meeting. It is a long overdue good thing that needed to happen. It isn’t going to make a damn bit of difference to Putin or change anything in his behavior. You want to change his behavior, send an armor brigade combat team to train with the Ukrainians. Announce we’re sending several Operational Detachments Alpha from 10th Special Forces Group on a Foreign Internal Defense (FIDs) mission with Ukrainian Special Operations Forces. Announce we’re sending several Civil Affairs Teams-Alpha (CAT-As) on a military support to government (MSG) mission with Ukrainian Special Operations Forces. Announce a training exercise and rotation with our Baltic allies and partners pairing the newly reconstituted V Corps and a US Army Division with our partnered forces. None of that is kinetic.

None of that is anything out of the norm for the US military. But it would get Putin’s attention because it would be a significant change in our behavior. Since Putin decided in late 2011/early 2012 that Secretary Clinton’s criticisms of Russia’s 2011 elections was actually both a personal attack on him, a political attack on him, and an act of war by the US against Russia, we have tried to 1) ignore him because he wasn’t worth the energy and we didn’t want to elevate his status, 2) tell him to knock his behavior of through channels, 3) not deter him because Mitch McConnell threatened to politicize the deterrence, 4) pander to him, as well as reward him for his low intensity war against us from JAN 2017 through JAN 2021, and 5) now give him a meeting he hasn’t earned, thereby elevating him again. And by doing so, this created the opening for him to once again exploit American news media, as well as American social media, to his own advantage.

This did not have to happen. We are at war with Russia, albeit a low intensity and largely non-kinetic war, not because we want to be, not because we actually did anything to actually attack Russia, but because Putin decided that Secretary Clinton’s mundane criticisms of problems with Russia’s 2011 elections were both personally directed at him and, therefore, an act of war by the US against Russia. After ten years it remains to be seen if the US is finally capable of recognizing this simple reality and responding appropriately. Bilateral state to state meetings with the President of the United States are for allies and partners, for heads of state we actually have a reasonable chance of influencing through the application of diplomatic power, or they are rewards for heads of state of hostile, recalcitrant, and/or bad state actors after they have changed their behavior in a positive manner. They are not business as usual.

Nothing good will come from this. Not a damn thing!

Open thread!

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Thoughts Regarding President Biden’s Upcoming Summit with Vladimir Putin

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Next week, shortly after the G7 meetings end, President Biden will meet with Vladimir Putin in Switzerland. This past week, I think it was AL, inquired whether I had some thoughts on this.

I don’t want to second guess Biden’s team. I’m not in the room and they all have, overall, more experience than I do in regard to diplomacy. On the other hand, none of them were in US Army Europe headquarters in Wiesbaden with the Commanding General and senior staff in 2014 watching the strategic environment shift as things went from Putin is being a pain in the ass to Putin is waging a low intensity war against the US, the EU, and NATO.

I am very concerned. And have been for several weeks as the summit approaches as I’ve observed Russia’s and Putin’s and Putin’s key surrogates behavior.

For instance, on 31 MAY Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov made remarks about Russia monitoring the US’s law enforcement response to the 6 JAN attack on the Capitol:

This included reporting about this inside Russia:

It is important to note that this was the language Russia was using regarding Ukraine in 2014 just before in the months before it scarfed up Crimea and invaded eastern Ukraine using the little green men. I’m not expecting a similar attempt here, at least nothing so clearly obvious, but Putin will keep funding state level secessionist movement, making overtures to Republican officials and conservative movement leaders and their organizations, and continue his active measures campaign to undermine and destabilize the US.

We now know that at least part of Lavrov’s remarks were a domestic maskirovka – a strategic diversion through the targeted use of information – as Russia was preparing to, and now has, outlawed Navalny’s opposition groups. From the AP:

MOSCOW (AP) — A Moscow court on Wednesday night outlawed the organizations founded by Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny by labeling them extremist, the latest move in a campaign to silence dissent and bar Kremlin critics from running for parliament in September.

The Moscow City Court’s ruling, effective immediately, prevents people associated with Navalny’s Foundation for Fighting Corruption and his sprawling regional network from seeking public office. Many of Navalny’s allies had hoped to run for parliamentary seats in the Sept. 19 election.

The ruling, part of a multipronged Kremlin strategy to steamroll the opposition, sends a tough message one week before President Vladimir Putin holds a summit meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden in Geneva.

The extremism label also carries lengthy prison terms for activists who have worked with the organizations, anyone who donated to them, and even those who simply shared the groups’ materials.

In fact Lavrov’s statements and the outlawing of Navalny’s organizations were proceeded by this statement from the editor in chief of Russia Today:

This was not, however, solely for internal effect within Russia. Russia has been funding and financing, both covertly and overtly, numerous neo-nationalist and neo-fascist opposition movements and political parties within the EU in an attempt to break up the EU. It has also been funding the Texas and Californian secessionist groups in addition to spending lavishly to penetrate major conservative movement organizations and activities like the NRA and the National Prayer Breakfast. Rather, this was Putin both signaling that he would tolerate no real opposition domestically and that it doesn’t matter if President Biden thinks he’s the new sheriff in town and that liberal democracy is back, Putin will do whatever he wants because it doesn’t matter what he does, the American president, regardless of who is president, will meet with him.

A very interesting op-ed in yesterday’s Moscow Times provides some of the reasoning behind Putin’s actions:

Putin’s Russia is not simply uninterested in dialogue with Europe. The Kremlin believes that the EU does not deserve dialogue with Russia.

The only country that Moscow genuinely wants to have a dialogue with is Washington. Putin’s regime defines its place in the world through rejection of the U.S. global leadership and, simultaneously, through mimicking what it believes to be American behaviour in the international arena. Russia’s own subversive, yet often erratic, behaviour on the global stage can, to some degree, be seen as a continuous attention-grabbing stunt aimed at compelling Washington to ask Moscow for cooperation.

The most recent example of this is the unprecedented massive spring build-up of Russian troops along the Ukrainian border – a build-up that ended after U.S. President Joe Biden proposed a meeting with Putin.

With the accelerating global competition between Washington and Beijing, Moscow understands that its chances of being accepted as an equal pole in a multipolar world are dependent on Washington’s willingness to engage in dialogue with Moscow.

Putin believes, or at least acts like he believes that, Russia is still one of the two great powers left over after the end of World War II. And that the US and its allies and partners have worked for decades since the end of the Cold War to undermine this reality. Putin’s actions are all intended to get the US’s attention. To force the US to engage with it. For the American president to engage directly with Putin, which elevates Putin’s stature. This, combined with Putin’s desire to restore Russia’s near abroad and sphere of influence to that of the USSR, undergirds all of Putin’s actions within the low intensity political war he has been waging against the US for at least the past seven years.

This morning we learned that Putin is going to supply Iran with an advanced satellite system for tracking military targets. Less than a week before his summit with President Biden.

Putin is going to do what Putin is going to do. But my overall feeling is you don’t want to give Putin anything he can spin in his favor right now. Especially if he has not earned it via demonstrations of good behavior, which he hasn’t. Instead, he and his surrogates have spent the past several weeks acting out. If I had been advising on this – which I was not and highly doubt I ever will be – I would have recommended that Biden should do a tour of the region post G7, meet individually with the heads of the Baltic and Scandinavian countries, as well as Ukraine, then hold a summit with all of them first. Then either hold the meeting with Putin because he was in the neighborhood or announce that he is willing to meet with Putin at a later date provided events warrant it. That would provide much better optics for Information Operations and PSYOP. It will also begin to demonstrate that their are rewards for good behavior and punishments for bad behavior. Because until or unless Putin is punished in some way that actually negatively impacts him, he will not change his behavior.

But other than some people here, no one is asking me. So…

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