Putin is one of us, says Russia’s radical right

Democracy Digest from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED): Russia’s radical right-wing nationalists view Vladimir Putin as one of their own, according to research by the SOVA Analytic Center, a grantee of the National Endowment for Democracy. The prolific Paul Goble reports that: Many members of Russia’s radical and often violent extreme nationalist right believe that Vladimir Putin, unlike his predecessor Boris Yeltsin or successor Dmitry

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Putin is one of us, says Russia’s radical right

Internet Divides Russia Deeply and in More than One Way – Window on Eurasia

Paul Goble

Vienna, June 26 – Despite reports about the expansion of Internet use in Russia, more than half of that country’s urban residents over age 12 have never gone online, and more than a third have never used a computer, global figures which set Russia apart from Western countries but ones that conceal deep divisions within the Russian Federation in the electronic world.

Those are just some of the findings offered in a 144-page report released this week that was prepared by the Public Opinion Foundation on the basis of interviews with 34,000 people in 1920 cities and towns of the Russian Federation. The report itself is available at bd.fom.ru/pdf/int0309.pdf; for a summary, see lenta.ru/articles/2009/06/25/report/.

The Lenta.ru commentary suggested that when variations among various educational and regional groups in Western countries are reported, the Western press speaks “digital divides.” But these divides are so much deeper in Russia, the news agency says, that it is better to refer to them as a digital “gulf” or “abyss.”

Not only have 54 percent of Russia’s urban residents over 12 never gone online, but ten percent of this group say they have never heard of the Internet. Moreover, of those who are not going online now, a third of the population says that it has “neither the desire, nor the possibility” to do so. And only eight percent of those not online say they plan to be this year.

Equally striking are two other general findings: Thirty-six percent of the sample said they had never used a computer, but in contrast to the situation only a few years ago, those who do go online are more likely to do it at home rather than at work, something that reflects greater connectivity and probably affects how Russians use this medium.

While the survey found Internet use to be relatively high in Moscow and St. Petersburg, in the other parts of the country, the Public Opinion Foundation study found that penetration of this technology was relatively low, averaging only 11 percent or significantly less, although in this area too there were some interesting divides as well.

Perhaps the most intriguing is that more than a quarter – 28 percent – of those who go online in the Southern Federal District – which includes the North Caucasus — do so via their mobile telephones, a reflection of the shortage of landlines in that region but a pattern that makes the Internet potentially more important as a means of connecting people opposed to the regime.

Moreover, this finding is a classical example of the way in which those who participate in this and other technical worlds may skip a stage, going directly from snail mail to cell phones rather than through all the stages that the countries which pioneered the current communications revolution have gone through.

Another intriguing example of such a leap from one level of communications technology to a much more advanced one came this week with the announcement of a launch of an Internet TV service for the Finno-Ugric peoples, groups historically poorly served by native language television in the past. (www.raipon.info/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=131:-lr&catid=1:2009-03-11-15-49-27).

Half – 46 to 53 percent – of those who do use the Internet use it for e-mail and social networking, but what struck the researchers at the Public Opinion Foundation as important is that 53 percent of those going online said they did not express their own opinions, and 52 percent did they did not listen to the opinions of others expressed in Internet forums.

And in a finding that also divides Russians from many other peoples around the world, only 25 percent of Russians said that their lives would be significantly changed if they no longer had access to the World Wide Web, and nearly as large a share said that their lives would not be affected at all if they could no longer go online.

Such experiences and attitudes suggest that Russians are not as passionately affected by or committed to the Internet as many have assumed on the basis of uncritical extrapolations from American or West European experience where the Internet has been integrated into and plays a far larger role in the life and work of a larger part of the population.

And these Russian patterns also suggest both that Moscow would face far less opposition if they move, as the parliament of Kazakhstan did this week, to seriously restrict access to the web and that outsiders should not view the Internet as being as important a transforming force or influential player as all too many now do.

Window on Eurasia: Moscow Using Soviet-Era Tactic to Penetrate, Control Opposition Groups

 FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog, February 12, 2009, San Francisco – Vienna, February 11 – Pro-Kremlin groups are regularly inserting into the ranks of opposition groups spies who “just like in old times” are writing denunciations and generally informing their control officers about what is going on, according to a detailed article in this week’s “New Times” magazine.
In an article entitled “The Seksots of the 21st Century,” Ilya Barabanov and Yekaterina Savina say that “the lexicon of the times of the all-powerful KGB” – including terms like “seksot [secret co-worker],” ” agent,” and “observer” – is once again becoming part of political discourse in Russia. More in Dr. Paul Goble’s Window on Eurasia

Window on Eurasia: Russian Extremists Threaten to Kill Journalists, Lawyers and Rights Activists

 FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog, February 12, 2009, San Francisco – Vienna, February 12 – An anonymous Russian extremist has sent an email to a Russian human rights monitor saying that his people have decided it will attract more attention to their cause if they kill journalists, lawyers and human rights activists than continuing to murder “Daghestani or Armenian students.”

Galina Kozhevnikova, the deputy director of the SOVA Human Rights Center, said that after receiving this threat, which appears to have been timed to coincide with her organization’s release yesterday of a report on radical nationalism in Russia, she had turned to law enforcement officials and asked them to investigate. More in Dr. Paul Goble’s Window on Eurasia 

Thinking About The Unthinkable

 FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog  The Federalist Commentary, January 6, 2009, San Francisco – This commentary by The Federalist, one of our regular contributors with inside knowledge of US government bureaucracy, is designed to open a discussion on the Free Media Online Blog about the proper role for US public diplomacy and international broadcasting in dealing with terrorism and threats to free media in Russia and other countries.  The Federalist argues that the current US public diplomacy effort based on the mixture of outdated Cold War models and Web 2.0 marketing schemes cannot be successful in responding to the new realities of the post-9/11 world.  The commentator points out that the tactics of Islamist extremists are consistent and predictable and that they will continue to represent a serious threat.  We would like to hear from others whether the US should build its public diplomacy strategy in response to this kind of threat assessment and whether a new approach to foreign policy by the Obama Administration will open up new opportunities for improving America’s image abroad. We invite your comments, which you may post directly on the blog or email them to: contact@freemediaonline.org.  We welcome full-length articles from outside contributors.

Thinking About The Unthinkable

by The Federalist

If you think about the above phrase coined by the late nuclear war theorist, Herman Kahn, you might find it  both unusually appropriate and alarming when applied to US public diplomacy.

There is a fundamental flaw in the current US thinking about this subject.  We seem to believe that the strategies of the Cold War can be updated to successfully deal with our current adversaries.  Such thinking is wrong and, if it continues, it can have fatal consequences for our future.

In facing Islamic extremism, we are not dealing with a “war of ideas”  typical of the Cold War. Neither are we going to impress our adversaries with “Public Diplomacy 2.0.”

The “war of ideas” terminology aptly described the competition between two economic and political systems, capitalism and communism.  Both were products of Western thought and resulted in a public diplomacy strategy that was successful during the Cold War but is not likely to work against Islamist extremists.

“Public Diplomacy 2.0” describes an approach to public diplomacy that seemingly is more focused on a technological medium (and being social gadflies) and less focused on the underlying issues.

Neither term accurately describes the current world environment.  We are faced not with a war of ideas but a war of beliefs — the worst kind of conflict.  The war of beliefs deals in terms of finality and absolutes.

Americans have become too wrapped around the babble of our own point of view.  We are not listening to our adversaries.  This is a serious lapse that, if not corrected, could prove more disastrous than some of our already well-publicized public diplomacy flops.

Our public diplomacy apparatus still believes we are dealing with a competition between two ideologies.  The current Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, James K. Glassman, even talks in analogies of Coca-Cola versus Pepsi.  In doing so, Mr. Glassman makes a good case that he should be replaced.

Al-Qaeda, radical fundamentalists, jihadists and terrorists often use the same technological tools as we do.  However, their message is entirely different from what Mr. Glassman’s analogy seems to suggest.

If one listens carefully to the message of these groups, it’s clear that they do not talk using the terminology of “Coke versus Pepsi.”  Their language is one of annihilation and total war against those they see as a threat to their way of life and their interests.  Americans and other Westerners are seen as nonbelievers or infidels.  We are portrayed as being driven by vice, greed and corruption.  These groups are determined to destroy the Western way of life by any means possible and available.  Generally speaking, they are not interested in talking with us or engaging in a polite discussion over our differences.

When it comes to launching a war, the jihadists have done the math, both on a tactical and strategic level. In responding, we need to reflect on the events of September 11, 2001.  We seem to have forgotten but should remind ourselves that a small number of operatives commandeered four commercial airliners and used them to attack three known sites and a probable fourth.  Three of the four aircraft reached their targets.  Of the three targets, two were completely destroyed and the third damaged.  In each case,  there was a substantial loss of life.  Billions of dollars have been spent in the aftermath of the attacks, both domestically and abroad, to improve defenses against further attacks and presumably to take the fight directly to the terrorists.

Still, the jihadists have done the math…use the smallest number of operatives to inflict the maximum amount of damage, destruction and loss of life. They are likely to use the same tactics again.

Part of the billions of dollars spent has been to upgrade US military and intelligence capabilities to deal with the threat.  Our defense and intelligence agencies point with some pride to the increased level of security we have enjoyed up to this moment.  However, as any analyst knows, understanding the jihadists’ math and developing effective countermeasures is the key to achieving victory or suffering another serious, catastrophic attack.  It is a constantly evolving set of circumstances, until the core threat and its offshoots are completely eliminated.  It requires constant vigilance.

On the tactical level, the concept of  using the smallest number of operatives to inflict the maximum amount of damage is being acted out over and over again.  Witness the recent terrorist attack in Mumbai, India.  A small group of operatives attacked a soft target and inflicted the maximum amount of death and destruction proportionate to their numbers.

Witness also the more recent rocket attacks by Hamas against Israel.  This is another form of the same tactical process.  The Israeli response and the attendant casualties among the Palestinian civilian population are seen as validation of the jihadists’ belief that nothing short of annihilation of the enemy will resolve the situation.

On the strategic level, the jihadists have not deviated from their purpose to bring about the total destruction of the United States.  Destruction of civil society is an acceptable part of this strategy.  The vision that the jihadists have of the United States is not unlike the recently released video game, “Fallout 3.”  This is the America the jihadists want to see.  Acquiring the technology and a deliverable weapon to accomplish this goal is high on the jihadists’ list of priorities.

Seen in this light, the threat from Iran becomes much more real.  It is not merely high-handed volatile rhetoric coming from the Iranian leadership.  That leadership believes in and embraces the jihadists’ strategic concept of annihilation.

We have difficulty in being able to rationally understand this level of rage toward the United States, Israel or other Western societies.  However, we need to see and understand what factors into the jihadists’ calculations as they act upon their sense of rage.  These extremists profess to be Islamists.  Islam is the largest world religion.  Knowing this, the jihadists have drawn the conclusion that, even if they precipitate Armageddon, there is a high likelihood that the group most likely to survive are people who identify with these religious beliefs.  The condition of a post-Apocalyptic world is not a matter of great concern.  The only thing that matters is winning at all costs.

In the United States, most people live in relative comfort.  Many who identify with the religion of Islam comprise some of the poorest of the global poor.  We have a lot to lose.  From the jihadists’ perspective, there is little left to lose in this life.  This is a very appealing message to those whose lives are filled with desperation and who see themselves as exploited by and victims of Western affluence.  The jihadists do not hesitate to draw on examples of over a thousand years of history to point out examples of Western acts against their theology and people.  The jihadists’ philosophy makes heroes out of all those who sacrifice their lives in achieving victory.  Victory is its own reward.

We need to take this threat very seriously.  Up to this point, certain aspects of US public diplomacy, such as “Public Diplomacy 2.0,” have demonstrated that the threat is not being taken seriously.  We have tailored a public diplomacy strategy that seems more like a media advertising campaign during a major sporting event.

In overview, the incoming Obama administration needs to consider several issues:

First, we need to be realistic as to the nature of this threat and its intended outcomes.  This means paying close attention to the message of the jihadists and taking it literally.

Second, the primary objective of US public diplomacy is to deprive jihadists and international terrorism of its most important resource: human capital.  The task is daunting.  The jihadists promise restoring the power of Islam as a global political, social and cultural force to be reckoned with.  The jihadists promise removing the oppressors of downtrodden Muslim people around the world.  The jihadists reinforce this message with action.  Seven years after the attacks of September 11, 2001 the architect of these attacks, Osama bin Laden, remains at-large.  This increases the power of the jihadist message.  If all we have to offer in our public diplomacy effort is the status quo or trite techno-babble, the advantage will remain with the radical fundamentalists.

Third, we need to speak boldly with the international community, our allies, neighbors and those warily watching world events from the sidelines.  We need to appeal to a sense of common purpose to defeat those who intend to bring about the destruction of civilization as we know it.

Fourth, we need to get the Russians back to being fully on board with this effort.  Rather than allow themselves to be distracted by armed or verbal conflict with its neighbors, the Russian leadership faces a much more genuine threat to Russia’s interests.  The United States needs to speak directly to the Russian leadership and to the Russian people through our international broadcasting assets.  It is a serious mistake to be dismissive of the Russian people, their history and their sacrifices…a mistake compounded by the termination of direct Russian radio broadcasts by the Voice of America.  This fatal decision was implemented by the Broadcasting Board of Governors in 2008.

Fifth, we need a thorough rehabilitation of our public diplomacy effort in the Arab and Muslim world.  Current projects such as Radio Sawa and alHurra television are not getting the job done.

Finally, “Public Diplomacy 2.0” should be relegated to the category of fantasy fiction…in much the same way as “Dow 36,000” ( a book co-authored by James K. Glassman).

The Federalist 2008

Hard-Pressed Moscow Opposition Leaders Ask U.S. Not to Cut Russian-Language Broadcasts

 Window on Eurasia, Vienna, October 4 –- Three leading figures of the Russian opposition are calling on Washington to reverse its decision to reduce Radio Liberty’s Russian-language broadcasts next year, lest Russian citizens, at a time when Moscow has established “practically complete control” over domestic radio and television lose a vital source of “objective information.”

State Department, the foreign affairs committees and the Helsinki Commission of the Congress, and presidential candidates John McCain and Barak Obama, the three – Vladimir Bukovsky, Vladimir Kara-Murza and Boris Nemtsov – say that reducing such broadcasts from abroad would make their struggle for freedom that much more difficult.

(The Voice of America ended Russian-language radio broadcasting earlier this summer not only as part of a general cost-cutting effort but because the affiliates in Russia on which its programming was broadcast increasingly refused, under pressure from the Russian government, to carry VOA programs.)

As a result of the actions of Vladimir Putin, they point out, “the citizens of Russia no longer have access to objective information. Opposition leaders are not allowed on the air.” And last month, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin put pressure on Ekho Moskvy, “the last major [domestic] means of mass information.” (www.sobkorr.ru/news/48E5BE1112B25.html).

“It is difficult to understand,” they write, “why, in this situation, the Broadcasting Board of Governors [BBG] is taking a decision about reducing Russian language broadcasting of Radio Liberty, which is rare voice of independent thought for hundreds of thousands of radio listeners” in the Russian Federation and neighboring countries.

And they dismiss as “illogical” the BBG’s explanation that it will use the resources now being devoted to radio broadcasting for the station’s Russian-language website. “Government censorship in Russia,” they note, “affects mostly television and radio,” while “the Internet is independent.” Moreover, they noted, most Russians do not have access to the Internet.

Commenting on this letter, Sobkorr.ru commentator Yuri Gladysh writes that “the names alone” of the authors – “a legendary dissent of Soviet times, a successful governor and vice premier who almost became president, and a young journalist and politician” – “speak for themselves.”

Even the most inexperienced political analyst, he continues, “would draw the same conclusion: things are bad in a country when such people are forced to seek support abroad” and to appeal in the case of that country “not to the current leadership but rather to candidates for the highest positions.”
But Gladysh says he found something else about all this “curious” as well. Many Russian nationalists routinely claim that the US spends “enormous sums” to carry out an information war against Russia. But in fact, Washington’s decision here suggests that in the U.S., as “in any normal country,” “the need to save the money of taxpayers” takes precedence.

In his view, the Sobkorr.ru analyst continues, “this fact better than all the words [of the nationalists] says that a desire ‘to harm Russia’ at a minimum is not among the priorities of American policy, if indeed, it exists at all.” But the nationalists are likely to complain about this American decision anyway, as an indication that the U.S. does not take Russia seriously enough!

However that may be, the appeal of Bukovsky, Nemtsov and Kara-Murza is important for what it says about the direction in which Russia under Putin and Dmitry Medvedev is now moving and, especially regrettably, about the role some in the West are currently playing in that regard.

As many recent commentaries on the Russian Internet have pointed out, Vladimir Putin and his regime have so restricted freedom of information and political activity that in the words of one this week, “today in Russia there is no one left who can say ‘no’ to the powers that be, to explain where they are wrong” (newsland.ru/News/Detail/id/303687/cat/42/ )

But instead of helping today’s Russians to struggle against authoritarianism as the U.S. and other Western governments did by Russian-language broadcasts in the past, these governments are now whether they realize it or not unintentionally assisting those like Putin who want to undermine the freedoms earlier Western broadcasts helped Russians to pursue.

Kremlin Can’t Pursue War Against Internet Without Hackers, Expert Says, But This Is No Consolation for Voice of America

 FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog Commentary by Ted Lipien, September 29, 2008, San Francisco – The Broadcasting Board of Governors’ decision to prevent the Voice of America from being a broadcaster in Russia has destroyed VOA’s ability to have any significant impact on the Kremlin and the Russian public opinion. With its radio broadcasts silenced by the BBG just 12 days before the Russian military forces attacked Georgia, the VOA Russian Service website is now just one of hundreds of thousands of news websites and blogs in Russia. 

This seems to be part of the BBG strategy to make VOA permanently insignificant and ineffective as a provider of political news to Russian-speaking audiences. To make sure the Voice of America does not retain any  broadcasting capabilities in the CIS countries, the BBG bureaucrats are preventing the Russian Service from producing any regularly scheduled radio or TV program even for placement on the Web. In addition to distribution over the Internet, such programs could be put  also on shortwave transmitters and on a still available AM frequency in Moscow.

The BBG executive director Jeff Trimble does not want this to happen as this would threaten the U.S.-funded broadcasting monopoly in Russia of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, his previous employer. BBG member Ted Kaufman, who was formerly Senator Biden’s chief of staff, does not want it to happen because RFE/RL is incorporated in Delaware, Senator Biden’s home state. They do not seem to care that RFE/RL’s independence and the security of its reporters have been seriously undermined by the BGG’s strategy to generate most of RFE/RL programming from the news bureau in Moscow right under the watchful eyes of the FSB, the successor to the KGB and Mr. Putin’s former employer.

I also doubt that the BBG staff is actually concerned that the Russian security services can easily block or sabotage the VOA Russian website. If they were, they would not have forced VOA to rely on a single website as its only program delivery option in Russia. Because of that, there is no reason for the Kremlin to consider the website as any kind of threat to Mr. Putin’s control over the domestic media, nor does the Kremlin consider Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty as a particular threat as long as RFE/RL in Russia remains under close observation by the FSB. The Russian security services know that most of RFE/RL reporters are Russian citizens who live in Russia with their families and can be monitored and intimidated. Broadcasting from Washington rather than Moscow and Prague, VOA could be more of a challenge to the authoritarian Russian rulers and their secret police apparatus than RFE/RL Russian broadcasts are in their current status.

How can Mr. Putin take the BBG, VOA director Dan Austin, and the remaining VOA Russian website seriously? Their message, repeated last week by the VOA director, is that Mr. Putin has won the battle. He has closed down most of VOA and RFE/RL radio affiliates and, therefore, VOA — but interestingly not RFE/RL — should get out of the radio business in Russia. The BBG and Dan Austin now realize that VOA relied too much on one program delivery strategy, i.e. the affiliate stations. But at least until July 26, VOA had several additional program delivery options in Russia: shortwave and Internet radio programs, satellite radio programs, satellite TV programs, Internet TV programs, and a website.

The BBG’s answer to the censorship and intimidation of affiliates in Russia is to have now only one program delivery option for VOA – an interactive new media website. There are already hundreds of thousands of such websites, and each one of them can be easily blocked. The VOA Russian website has nothing that makes it different from all the others, not even a regularly scheduled online radio program or a call-in show because the BBG staff will not allow it to happen. No wonder that the Kremlin is not concerned.

The Russian security services would not be able to completely stop VOA broadcasts if they were distributed using multiple delivery systems, including shortwave. The Internet is an important part of such a diversification strategy and should be used. It should not be, however, the only programming and program delivery option. As Paul Goble reports in Window on Eurasia, the Kremlin is capable of blocking and sabotaging unwanted websites with some help from willing hackers.

 Window on Eurasia, September 27, 2008, Eagles Mere, PA –The Kremlin will not be able to close down Internet sites it doesn’t like without using hackers, either those working directly for its security services or those inspired by Moscow’s propaganda campaigns, according to a leading Russian specialist on that country’s intelligence services. Read more in Dr. Paul Goble’s Window on Eurasia.