Radio War Nerd, EP #51—"The Spike" & Reagan's "Russian Disinformation" Panic
"Red Scare!", Russian Disinformation Panic & "The Spike"
First — Chelsea pressure cooker bombing + suspect Ahmad Khan Rahami (show recorded Sept 19 morning) . . . US-backed Syrian FSA rebels chase US Special Forces out of Al-Rai . . . US-UK bombs Syrian Army, helping Islamic State . . . Michael Weiss' atrocious writing, paranoid Abbas conspiracy theory . . .
At 1:02:30 — The US Russia panic, "Red Scare" according to CNN, reminds of early Reagan era Cold War panic about Russian plot to use disinformation to paralyze and dominate the West . . . The history of Robert Moss, a CIA propagandist who wrote The Spike and popularized the same "Russian disinformation war" conspiracy that's back in vogue today . . .
Total time: 2:57:08
Comments (30)
They found the Chelsea bomber so fast because they already knew him.
Profile of American jihadist ? Some mentally ill moron the FBI has given the idea to and funded. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGG97dDfZ7E" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGG97dDfZ7E</a>
The part of Chelsea the bombs were placed is "Chelsea" in name only. The gay clubs etc. are not on 23rd and 27th is a total backwater of a street .
23rd and 6th is where the PATH train from NJ lets out on Manhattan. There should be pictures every step of the way of his trip
Benny Hill is da bomb!
I loved the Benny Hill music! Don't listen to the haters
i gotta say i found it funny and didnt see anything wrong with it.
I'm not a fan of the accent music . The benny hill music. You guys aren't a cheesy local morning radio show. I come for the excellent insight and engaging content - don't sell yourselves short!
I'm with Ronald on the music, it adds nothing, it's a needless distraction
Kungliga krigsvetenskapsakademien is the "Royal academy of war sciences", a nonstate organization set up with royal funding in the late 18th century that has been pushing hard for rearmament lately, mostly with more or less made up stories about the creeping Russian threat.
Translated a relevant passage: The Gotland domino theory was formulated in 2011 by members of Kungliga Krigsvetenskapsakademien, studying what Nato and EU declarations of solidarity would mean if Russia attacked the Baltic states, and was published in the book Till bröders hjälp. Among the authors: Karlis Neretnieks, colonel Bo Hugemark (the man with the mushroom cloud) and Jan Leijonhielm, the man who talked about George Orwell at Utrikespolitiska institutet and declared that Russia was “unpredictable”. The conclusions were formulated at least five years ago, long before the war in Ukraine, and have since been repeated in every available forum. Always with some new pretext. When different American thinktanks reach the same conclusion it’s presented as big news, but their studies are all based on material from the involved countries. - And it’s easy to see where they get their Swedish information from, says Hirdman. And then the Americans are cited! The whole thing is circular reasoning.
For any Swedish listeners who haven't seen it there was a decent longform article recently about the groups pushing the russian scare here, in particular conservative pundits and exmilitary types pushing for increased military funding and NATO membership at <a href="http://magasinetfilter.se/feature/trollfabriken/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://magasinetfilter.se/feature/trollfabriken/</a>
Michael Weiss' stuff reads like a really low rent version of the Hush-Hush articles from James Ellroy's novels.
only was is trump
Michael Weiss "our man in Dumbistan". You really know they hate the guy, when they can't be bothered to come up with more clever insults :)
Read Weiss. He doesn't deserve any better in my opinion.
<a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/post-mortem/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/post-mortem/</a>
great episode. btw gary? still squeamish about an afghanistan episode? :p . ive told a lot about you to my fellow afghans they keep asking me if you have an afghanistan episode. when i say no, they all just nod and one guy gave me a blank clint eastwood 'we're abandoned...even the nerds of wars look away as if we're in some natural state" he'd spit on the ground if the afghans were spit on the ground type.
We definitely will! Should've done it by now, but we're working at it.
<a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/real-csi/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/real-csi/</a>
Re: ignoring lesbians, here in the mission district of SF was a mural showing a hetero couple, a lesbian couple, and, briefly, a gay one too. Just the gay section was scraped and burned off the wall. Attempts to repair with a rainbow color scheme were met with further inflammatory responses. Lesbian couples (or more accurately, temporary lady bi couples existing purely for the pleasure of men) get a pass while gay dudes don't, even here in SF
Then as now, most of this stuff was never really about Russia or the USSR. For most of the people throwing this bullshit around, they are completely unable to see anything past the domestic political enemies which are a lot closer to home. This is also why you see ludicrous theories about how certain pundits and politicians are communists or part of nefarious Kremlin plots. Those people were the point all along. The people making the accusations don't give a damn about Russia, not most of the time anyway, and neither do the people reading them. Russia many as well be Candyland for all most of them know. The real meat of this ideology is always much closer to home. Destroying the political left abroad always was a proxy for destroying them at home.
I appreciate you guy's opinion on most things, but the idea that there is no evidence that the Russians were behind the DNC hack is simply not true: <a href="https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democratic-national-committee/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democratic-national-committee/</a> <a href="http://www.threatgeek.com/2016/06/dnc_update.html" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://www.threatgeek.com/2016/06/dnc_update.html</a> Now I imagine that you guys are not heavily educated in network security, but the folks who published the original report and the other security orgs who verified it (who have no monetary interest in the outcome) do. You are simply wrong on this.
The CrowdStrike post ties the hacking groups to Russian intelligence in a number of ways: 1) sophisticated operational security and tactics which places them amongst the most sophisticated state-level/hacktivist groups that CrowdStrike has observed and 2) Fancy Bear features "extensive targeting of defense ministries and other military victims has been observed, the profile of which closely mirrors the strategic interests of the Russian government." I've also seen write-ups which make mention of a metadata file made with Russian language settings. There's no reason to rule out Russian state involvement, but cybercrime is a big business in Russia (the book Fatal System Error discusses this at more length) and there are many sophisticated actors working in and out of the intelligence services. I think this distinction is important because there is as yet no firm evidence linking it to Russian security services rather than just actors in Russia. I don't think the Russian connection would have set off such conspiratorial thinking unless it was a convenient excuse for media/DNC figures. It strikes me that "hackers" functions the same way as "terrorists" for many, especially in the media: it can be used to malign your enemies and most readers/viewers are not well-versed enough in the subject to disagree. There is evidence that could link this hack to Russian state actors, but I think many who have picked this ball up and ran with it have ulterior motives for doing so.
Mark, the Benny Hill music should've been played over an audio clip of the FSA kicking the special forces out of al-Rai, not Gary talking.
In Sweden there are actually two NATO conspiracies one by russia to spread disinformation and one by the establishment / USA to spread disinformation. Atleast thats what they yell at each other. Sweden has only sort of been neutral since the end of the Napoleonic wars. Its more a policy to keep out of the affairs of the major powers for our own good. Though we have been giving favors to different sides if it benefitted us. The modern Neutrality cult is borne from our luck in missing the world wars and the social democrat 3rd way story of post war sweden. The problem is that almost our entire defence has been dismantled so we can do the US bidding in foreign countries like afghanistan. We also had a secret defence cooperation with NATO during the cold war but this was kept from the swedes by the same social democrats. Now the politicians who made us defenceless want us to join NATO and as an argument they cite that we where never really neutral. Something which didnt come out untill the mid 90s
Sounds like this could be a good topic for a future show...
When you say "Active Measures" i think of an hillariously awfull vook by Tom Clancy ghost writer Alexander Court. In it the Swedish state is secretly run by Nazis who have killed 2 million immigrants for the lulz without anyone noticing. Only a Cia agent can stop it
What is it with cold war spy novel. No matter the origin your own country is always penetrated by the kgb.
Glad to hear y'all agree w/ my #JohnBirchSocialite tag on all the current insanity coming from the corporate media. It's gotten so stupid lately it's kinda terrifying. Next time the War Nerd writes an unfair review, blame it on the Russki!