Disinformation

Some things are unknowable. Some things I just don’t know yet. Today I’m writing about something I don’t yet know enough about, but the news is getting on my nerves, so I just want to respond and be done with it.

This cartoon is a good start:

cartoon by Ted Rall

A friend reposted someone’s Facebook post, trying to inform all of us, because he read the entire 29-page report concerning the indictment of 12 Russians, which is a worthy goal. James Dunlap made his post public and shareable, but I do not know him or how reliable he is. That said, here’s part of his intro:

There is no way you can read the actual indictment and not conclude that 1) there WAS a RUSSIAN conspiracy, 2) that the scope of that conspiracy was GARGANTUAN, 3) that it was organized BY THE RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT [i.e., there's no way Putin didn't know about this], 4) That people connected to the Trump campaign [and, shockingly, other U.S. Gov't officials] WERE INVOLVED, and 5) this is just the beginning.

He goes through most of the Articles 1-79, skipping a few and combining some together. Much of the summary is probably accurate. And not surprising. The detail might be interesting and surprising to someone who wasn’t alive during the Cold War (I don’t know whether Dunlap was), but I’ve spent my life assuming Russia spies. And when the leader of their country formerly led the KGB, their spy organization, I think it’s a safe assumption that they still spy. And maybe they particularly spy on the United States.

cover image from here

I read a book back in 2014 called Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion, and Promoting Terrorism, by Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, with Ronald J. Rychlak. Paceda was, at the time (maybe still) the highest-ranking defector ever from a hostile intelligence service. He claims that intelligence collection is secondary—or maybe tertiary—on the list of purposes for then-Soviet Bloc intelligence services. More accurately, they were about “framing,” which means,

rewriting history and manipulating records, documents, etc., to bring that about. To what end this dezinformatsiya? Oh, little matters like using press leaks to destroy the reputation of a national or religious leader, engendering the spread of anti-Semitism, building up resentment against the United States or Israel in the Arab world.

As Yuri Andropov put it, “[Dezinformatsiya is] like cocaine. If you sniff once or twice, it may not change your life. If you use it every day though, it will make you and addict—a different man.” In other words, if you’re believing the disinformation, and relying on news sources that fall for it, your perceptions of our country and our reality will change you. 

The book is full of examples, worth reading. One little sample. Do you remember, back in the Clinton presidency years, he referred to memories of black churches being burned?

No church burning had occurred in Arkansas during Clinton’s childhood, in spite of his “vivid and painful” memories, and the National Council of Churches was accused of fabricating “a great church-fire hoax.”[i]

His memory was false. He didn’t remember; he fell for stories planted by Soviet disinformation, and pictured them in his mind, so that he believed he’d seen them. The Soviets had planted that storyline, to create the idea that there was rampant racism in America. It worked. A few years afterward a survey of Canadian teenagers showed over 40 percent believed the United States was “evil,”[ii] and 57 of Greeks believed the US was no more democratic than Iraq.[iii]

Why do the Russians do it? According to Pacepa, it has to do with a contrast in ideologies:

The Communists had something between no ideology and a dysfunctional one. We have one that almost all Americans would sign on to: democracy, the rule of law, and America as, in Lincoln’s words, the “last, best hope of earth.” For most of us we also have our religion, generally Christianity or Judaism. This brought out for the Soviet Bloc, and brings out for our current enemies, a carefully targeted attack, or framing…

I highlighted this quote in the book:

The truth is, the Western media are quite easily manipulated, for they often craft their stories from press releases and tend, on the whole, to be indiscriminate about the nature and reliability of their sources.

So, when you hear something denigrating the United States, the first reaction ought to be questioning: What’s the original source? What is their evidence? Are their conclusions merited? How does the news source feel about the story and its conclusions? Is there a possibility that the story is false?

If Russia is connected in any direct or peripheral way (and maybe even if you can’t find that connection), chances are it’s disinformation. If you believe it, and it changes you to be less loyal to the freest nation in the history of the world, you’re letting the enemies of freedom win.

So, back to the Mueller report. The Russians are involved; is there anything surprising? Only that people in America are so surprised by it.

And there’s a particular part, among all the actual documents leaked to and disseminated by Wikileaks, concerning the Hillary campaign and the DNC colluding to defraud Bernie voters (all caps are his):

Article 44: The GRU, posing as "Guccifer 2.0" wrote to a person who was in regular contact with SENIOR MEMBERS OF THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN. (The indictment includes direct quotes of their online conversation, and this is CLEARLY referring to Roger Stone).

We learn in Article 1, by the way, that GRU means multiple intelligence units set up by the Russian government, two of which were specifically tasked with using hacking skills to acquire and release stolen documents via hacking. Anyway, about those all caps. The total connection—because, if there were more, Dunlap, as well as the report, would have said so—was that some disinformation spy wrote (emails?), not to SENIOR MEMBERS OF THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN, but to some unnamed person who knew those guys.

Here’s Article 44 in total:

The Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, also communicated with U.S. persons about the release of stolen documents. On or about August 15, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, wrote to a person who was in regular contact with senior members of the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump, “thank u for writing back… do u find anyt[h]ing interesting in the docs i posted?” On or about August 17, 2016, the Conspirators added, “please tell me if i can help u anyhow... it would be a great pleasure to me.” On or about September 9, 2016, the Conspirators, again posing as Guccifer 2.0, referred to a stolen DCCC document posted online and asked the person, “what do u think of the info on the turnout model for the democrats entire presidential campaign.” The person responded, “[p]retty standard.”

Maybe a timing reminder is useful here, from a quick Wikipedia search. I’ve highlighted the dates:

The 2016 Democratic National Committee email leak is a collection of Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails stolen by suspected Russian intelligence agency hackers and subsequently published (leaked) by DCLeaks in June and July 2016 and by WikiLeaks on July 22, 2016, during the 2016 Democratic National Convention. This collection included 19,252 emails and 8,034 attachments from the DNC, the governing body of the United States' Democratic Party. The leak includes emails from seven key DNC staff members, and date from January 2015 to May 2016. The leaked contents, which suggested the party's leadership had worked to sabotage Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign, prompted the resignation of DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz before the Democratic National Convention. After the convention, DNC CEO Amy Dacey, CFO Brad Marshall, and Communications Director Luis Miranda also resigned in the wake of the controversy.

So, a month or two after the information became public, this Russian spy contacted someone outside Trump’s campaign but familiar with campaign team members, and asked whether the documents were interesting. And then, a month later, the spy asked about turnout data, which, in the only response we see was “pretty standard.”

And that’s the only tangent that connects in any distant way with the campaign, let alone Donald Trump himself.

But the media buzz about the story makes it sound like Trump, during the campaign, colluded with Russia and committed treason—for possibly knowing people who might have been aware of information that got stolen and had already been released by Wikileaks—that no one denies is actual information concerning Clinton campaign and DNC corruption.

So, spelling this out, slowly, the Russians interfered in the election by revealing things that are true about corruption of Hillary and the DNC. And therefore Trump shouldn’t be president. Hmm.

I expect we’ll also learn that there were Russian attempts—but none successful—at hacking software related to voting machines. I’ve been following voting machine security pretty carefully here in Texas—where True the Vote started. So I’m not much worried here, as long as people follow the law. There are many protections against such attempts. I don’t know about other states. But the fact remains that, with all the investigations, there is no evidence that a single vote was changed by Russians, let alone the outcome of any election. The same cannot be said for Democrats, or obviously Hillary during the Democratic primary.

Let me attempt a Trump translation. I don’t mean to support him when he’s unsupportable. But the other day, in his response to this report, during his summit with Putin, he acted as if he didn’t believe the intelligence sources. As usual, I think he could have said things clearer and better. But I believe he’s not responding to the actual report and what it says—which he probably hadn’t yet read in detail. He had already, multiple times, supported and stated his belief in the investigation’s findings. What he was responding to was the media frenzy that equates “Russia attempted to meddle with our elections,” which is an “of course” statement not worthy of frenzy, to “Russia colluded with Trump and overturned our election, and therefore Trump’s presidency is illegitimate.”

Meme posted by Conservatives Today

I don’t know what outcome Russia wanted, among multiple outcomes: help Hillary win, but seem illegitimate; help Trump win, but seem illegitimate; create doubt in the American electoral system; create cynicism about America in general. Maybe try everything and enjoy whatever chaos or negativity fell out. Mission accomplished—without needing to fraudulently change a single vote.

What I’m wondering is, why can someone like Dunlap read that whole report and see—enough to use all caps—a Trump connection that is beyond tenuous. Does he totally miss the actual corruption of the Hillary campaign and the DNC? Is he unaware of the many pro-Russian connections of the Obama administration and the Clintons? Is he assuming that leaking their actual documents is disinformation but reporters in a frenzy about Trump is not? Why?

Let’s assume our enemies act like enemies, have acted that way in the past, and are likely to continue to act like enemies. Certainly include North Korea on that list. They’re also into hacking; South Korea—just the general business on the street—has more internet security than many large US corporations, because they face North Korean hacking attacks so regularly. 

Of course we should keep doing all we can to stop these spies and hackers. But we’re vulnerable. Not just to the hacking, but to the disinformation planted by our enemies, which is gleefully pushed as truth by our "easily manipulated" media. The more rabid your hatred of any person or party, the more susceptible you are to disinformation.

Truth is hard to find these days, but the search is still worth it.

---

[i] Scott Swett, “Fanning Imaginary Flames: A Look Back at the Great Church Fire Propaganda Campaign,” American Thinker, June 11, 2011.

[ii] Arthur Weinreb, “Poll: Over 40% of Canadian teens thin America is ‘evil’,” Canada Free Press, June 30, 2004.

[iii] “Grecian Formula for Anti-Americanism,” Wall Street Journal, February 7, 2003 (Internet edition).

Spreading Civilization

I define civilization differently from—well, differently from practically everyone, although there are many who intuitively know my definition. But I thought it might be a good time, near the beginning of a year, to spell out the goal of civilization in writing.

There are reasons this occurs to me now. I’ve come across a couple of false definitions I’d like to dispel. We refer to the Greeks as a civilization—and they spread by conquering. The Romans as well. But it wasn’t the conquering that made them civilized; it was culture. They had the written word. They had learned scholars who taught in schools. They wrote down what they learned, and passed it on to the next generation. They gathered truth, knowledge, and innovation from the peoples they conquered. And it was a mark of civilization that they granted citizenship to many of the conquered peoples.

They also had a lot of failings as civilizations—which is part of the story of their downfalls. There was a time when seeking truth was important, and the family bond was important. But promiscuity was a mark of decay, and as it spread, so did the disintegration of the family, and along with that the way to perpetuate the civilization. It also spread disease.

A civilization is not an ethnicity. And it is not an empire. It cannot be brought about by conquest.

Glenn Beck's Russian strategy map
from here

This week on Glenn Beck's television program, he’s been showing the historical and current trends in Russia, with the possibility that Putin and others are trying to rebuild the Russian empire—believing, and hoping the world will believe, that the Russian ethnicity is the ultimate civilization, and everywhere this culture has ever been should succumb to it again—and beyond, if the world’s nations know what’s good for them. There’s even some head nodding toward religious superiority, although actually living according to the prescribed orthodoxy is not particularly common. (There are plenty of signs it’s a people in decay.)

Glenn Beck’s 3-part series was the second recent exposure I had to Russian ancient history. I also became acquainted with a YouTube channel of history and social commentary called Caspian Report. Among others, I watched a video on the ancient-to-modern boundaries of the Russian empire, called “Understanding the Russian Mindset,” which offers some rationale behind the overreach into Ukraine. One thing Russia did was plant Russian ethnic people within any territories it conquered. Then it seems to have the claim that all these territories belong to ethnic Russia, and the people there have a claim to their Russian heritage. So the disintegration of the USSR was, to them, simply a tragic but temporary fragmentation. And they want it back.

In case there’s any doubt, let me just state that Putin is not a person to turn to if you want greater freedom, prosperity, andcivilization.

Another, very different, story I was told—probably a conspiracy theory—claims that throughout US history, dating earlier and continuously, a shadow group of elites have arranged leadership—in Europe and the US—in order to keep alive Western, or European, culture, with its enlightened ideas. One evidence is that all US presidents can trace their genealogy back to a particular historical figure, the Plantagenet family, which ruled England for several hundred years beginning with Henry II in 1154.

From Ancestry.org Facebook page December 27, 2014

The thing with genealogy, though, is that, the further you go, the more branches. Ancestry.org had a graphic recently showing that, if you go back ten generations (about 300 years or so), you’ve got over 4,000 grandparents—and that’s not counting aunts, uncles, and cousins that could show up as branches on the family tree. If you come from the other direction, the numbers get astronomical in a relatively few generations as well. And the odds are very high that some descendants marry other descendants. Especially when you’re looking at a general gene pool from a limited area, such as northern Europe, for example.

Think about how many people you know in the US who can trace ancestry back to the Mayflower, or the founding fathers. There are organizations, such as Daughters of the American Revolution, who associate because of the shared ancestry. There are chapters in every part of the country.

In other words, it isn’t surprising that all our American presidents (who all have white European ancestry, including Obama) can trace their lines to a particular ancestor back a thousand years ago. It probably wouldn’t even be surprising to find that most can trace their lines to the founding fathers, less than 10 generations back. So it doesn’t mean there’s some shadow group arranging who gets power in the US.

However, there is a tendency for people who associate together to intermarry, to support one another, and to continue connecting. Rich and powerful people tend to hang out with other rich and powerful people. So it might look like some conspiracy. And for all I know there may be people who actually do conspire.

If there were some shadowy force, and their goal was to preserve Western culture, going about it by controlling who gets to be their puppet leader is the wrong way.

You don’t get civilization by gaining power over others. You get civilization by having more individual people live the principles of civilization, and then share those common practices with a growing number around them.

Start with families. Grow to communities, eventually cities—although it’s hard to find a whole city that is civilized. And you can grow beyond to states/provinces and nations. But only by having the prevailing belief system chosen by a critical mass of the people align with civilized behavior.

Here’s a review from, The Spherical Model, of what civilization looks like:

In Civilization families typically remain intact, and children are raised in loving homes, with caring parents who guide their education and training, dedicating somewhere between 18 and 25 years for that child to reach adulthood, and who then remain interested in their children’s success for the rest of their lives.

Civilized people live peaceably among their neighbors, helping rather than taking advantage of one another, abiding by laws enacted to protect property and safety—with honesty and honor. Civilized people live in peace with other civilized people; countries and cultures coexist in appreciation, without fear.

There is a thriving free-enterprise economy. Poverty is meaningless; even though there will always be a lowest earning 10% defined as poor, in a civilized society these lowest earners have comfortable shelter and adequate food and clothing—and there’s the possibility of rising, or at least for future generations to rise.

Creativity abounds; enlightening arts and literature exceed expectations. Architecture and infrastructure improve; innovation and invention are the rule.

People feel free to choose their work, their home, their family practices, their friendships and associations. And they generally self-restrain before they infringe on the rights and freedoms of others. Where there are questions about those limits, laws are in place to help clarify boundaries of civilized behavior. When someone willingly infringes on the rights or safety of another, the law functions to protect that victim as well as society from further uncivilized behavior from the offender.

How do you get to this condition of civilization? Not by conquering. Not by imposing power. Not by oppressing those with less influence. Not by centrally arranging for the positive outcomes listed.

You get there by having a religious society, where people honor God and feel responsible to Him above any earthly entity, because eternity depends on choices made here.

People choose to honor God’s laws, which in simplest form are encapsulated in the Ten Commandments—honoring God, family, life, honesty, and private property.

And then, to perpetuate the civilization, family must be protected and honored as the basic unit of civilization.

Ethnicities, organizations, groups, or nations that seek to exert superiority will never produce civilization. Powerful leaders that seek to conquer do it for the sake of power. And because power mongering is a savage behavior, they produce more tyranny, more poverty, and more savagery.

So there are reasons to fear and resist those who may claim to be spreading their version of civilization. They want power; they want to tyrannize and are pleased to use oppression to do so. They’re willing to create chaos and then step in and say, “Give us power, and we’ll protect you, and all it will cost you is your freedom and prosperity and way of life.”

You can spread domination, expand boundaries through conquest. But civilization comes from free choice in the hearts and minds of good people choosing to live good lives. You spread that by living it, and sharing the example.

We could try preaching civilization. This verse is from the Book of Mormon:

And now, as the preaching of the word had a great tendency to lead the people to do that which was just—yea, it had had more powerful effect upon the minds of the people than the sword, or anything else, which had happened unto them—therefore Alma thought it was expedient that they should try the virtue of the word of God.—Alma 31:5

Cultural Death Wish

Back in early February 2012 I wrote a three-part piece on Why Civilizations Die. The short version is: Civilizations die when the culture no longer has a will to survive.

Civilization—with a capital C—is an ideal. It may be neglected, ignored, left alone. But the concept itself is eternal and undying. So when we say civilization is dying, we’re saying a particular culture, or group of people, that may have qualified as civilized relatively recently, is dying out and disappearing.

In September I mentioned some reasons for considering Russia’s Slavic culture as dying. Some of the data came from the author of a book called Implosion: The End of Russia and What It Means for America, by Ilan Berman. At that point, I was writing from information from a radio interview with the author. The book finally showed up at my local library, so I’m adding to that discussion with a few more details from the book.

Here’s a summary of the decline:

Russia is dying. Russia is undergoing a catastrophic post-Soviet societal decline due to abysmal health standards, runaway drug addiction, and an AIDS crisis that officials have termed an “epidemic.” The population of the Russian Federation is declining by close to half a million souls every year due to death and emigration. At this rate, the once-mighty Russian state could lose a quarter of its population by the middle of this century. And according to some projections, if Russia’s demographic trajectory does not change, its population could plummet to as little as fifty-two million people by 2080. It’s a phenomenon demographers have described as “the emptying of Russia”—a wholesale implosion of Russia’s human capital and a collapse of its prospects as a viable modern state (pp. 10-11).

There’s a rather short three-generation pattern for civilization demise. If you’ll recall the words of J. D. Unwin, who studied the role of monogamy in civilizations throughout world history:

If, during or just after a period of [cultural] expansion, a society modifies its sexual regulations, and a new generation is born into a less rigorous [less monogamous] tradition, its energy decreases…. If it comes into contact with a more vigorous society, it is deprived of its sovereignty, and possibly conquered in its turn…. The results should begin to emerge in the third generation.[i]

That does seem to be happening in Russia. Simultaneous with the severe demographic decline is the ethnic and religious transformation from Slavic Christian to Muslim. According to Berman, “Muslims are on track to account for a fifth of the country’s population by the end of this decade [by 2020], and a majority by mid-century (p. 11).” Compounding this demographic change is a xenophobic effort to keep the growing minority as an underclass, which pretty much guarantees separation rather than assimilation (p. 33).

The collapse of the Russian family is at the core of the decline:

In 1958, divorces in the USSR were virtually nonexistent—just 0.9 per one thousand citizens. By the end of the 1970s, that rate had risen slightly to 3.6 per one thousand. But Soviet-era restrictions on individual mobility, coupled with widespread economic hardship, helped keep most families together.

By contrast, the past two decades of freewheeling capitalism and post-Communist disorder have coincided with a collapse of the Russian family. According to the UN’s 2011 Demographic Yearbook, Russia now has the highest divorce rate in the world, with half of all unions ending in divorce (and 60 percent of those dissolving within the first decade.)… Nuclear families with multiple children are quickly becoming an endangered species in Russia (p. 19).

What does “freewheeling capitalism” mean, and why is that a negative thing? In Russia, corruption is rampant. There’s the kind of uncertainty you find in the Spherical Model southwestern quadrant—chaos of organized crime, economic takeover by the biggest and strongest. Freedom to enjoy the fruits of your work requires limited government that protects property rights. (See Wednesday’s post.) Russia, by contrast, has “organized corruption on a staggering scale”:

According to a February 2013 study by research group Global Financial Integrity (GFI), Russia lost more than $200 billion in illicit financial outflows stemming from crime, corruption, and tax evasion between 1994 and 2011. All told, the study estimates “the size of Russia’s underground economy—which includes, among other things, drug smuggling, arms trafficking, and human trafficking—are a massive 46% of GDP” over that period (p. 72).

On the surface, Putin’s regime is attacking this corruption, but that doesn’t reflect a systemic, internal change: “Indeed, the very foundations of Putin’s state—and, by extension, his hold on power—rely on loyalty that is secured through informal dealings and graft. Without them, the Putin government’s hold on power would quickly loosen” (p. 73).

These are not random factors; they’re all cultural factors. On the Spherical Model, we can see what leads to thriving civilization: living God’s laws, starting with the Ten Commandments—with honesty, honoring family, including honoring parents and fidelity to spouse, and valuing life standing out.

It might be that Russia is already in its death throes. But with God nothing is impossible. I don’t know how the nation can solve all of its problems (other than massive personal religious conversion). But I am certain that no authoritarian regime can do it—attempts to encourage marriage and childbearing notwithstanding (p. 24 mentions the “mother’s capital” program to encourage childbearing). Living the principles of civilization by individuals, and individual families, in large enough numbers to become a critical mass, is the only cure for the cancer.

Russia is something like a failing uncle in the European family—aging, addicted to alcohol, often non-functional, with such depression and despair that he seems unwilling to take the action necessary to prevent an early death. Only that internal willingness to change—eschewing the self-harming behaviors—can move this enfeebled uncle to get his life back. Many of us are shaking our heads and thinking, it doesn’t look likely.

One concern for us in America, upon the possibly imminent demise of this uncle (this Slavic people), is what happens to his assets (nuclear weapons material), which look like they’ll be taken over by whoever moves into his tenement (people, probably Muslim, that are gaining prominence in the region), especially if that new occupant has radical ill will?

That’s a big question. Another reason for concern about Russia’s imminent demise is as a cautionary tale for us. The US divorce rate, while not quite as high, is too high (70% remain married for life, but the near 50% divorce rate shows a high number of serial divorcers). The abortion rate here, while not as high, is too high. Our birthrate is right at replacement level of 2.1—but that depends mainly on higher birth rates among active religious people and immigrants; much of the rest of the population mirrors below-replacement rates of other decaying civilizations. Our level of corruption is lower, but is growing under this administration, which functions with a southern (on the Sphere) tyranny mentality.

We know what leads to cultural death. And we know what leads to thriving civilization. We need to consciously choose life.

---

[i] Joseph Daniel Unwin, Ph.D., “Sexual Regulations and Cultural Behavior,” address given to the Medical Section of the British Psychological Society. (Library of Congress No., HQ12.U52)