10-07-2016, 10:50 PM
*** 8-Oct-16 World View -- Reader comments and questions on Syria, Russia, and Russian trolls
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
****
**** Russian Trolls
****
![[Image: g161007b.gif]](http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com/ww2010/g161007b.gif)
Russian trolls - Bruce Plante (Tulsa World, 11-Jun-2015)
There have been a number of questions and comments about my
recent articles on Russia's involvement in Syria.
> [indent]<QUOTE>TheLastPlainsman: "It appears, Mr. Xenakis, that you
> are still the target of Soviet, err, I mean, Russian, trolls. At
> least there aren't any China ones. Today, anyway."<END QUOTE>[/indent]
Yes, Russia has hired hundreds of trolls to harass people like me.
At one point last year, I was being attacked and harassed by three
Russian trolls at the same time.
In a sense, the whole policy has backfired. Every journalist by now
has become aware that they'll be attacked by Russian trolls if they
write anything critical of Russia. So the result is that any person
who actually believes what he's saying in defense of Bashar al-Assad
or Vladimir Putin is automatically assumed to be a paid Russian troll.
The Russians brought this on themselves.
> [indent]<QUOTE>Mickey Wasp: "It is clear from this completely
> fraudulent article he has penned that Mr. X is not above composing
> lies in order to further the nefarious agenda of the Zionist
> criminal enterprise known as Israel and Warmongers of Congress and
> the CIA.
>
> Anyone who can write a line such as "After years promising to help
> end the violence in Syria, Russian and Syrian warplanes have been
> indiscriminately attacking civilian neighborhoods and hospitals
> with barrel bombs, chemical weapons (chlorine gas), phosphorous
> bombs, cluster bombs and bunker bombs. It does not take rocket
> science to see that Russia and Syria have no intention of ending
> the violence." is not fit to call themselves a journalist or
> researcher or columnist, instead they should be labelled as a
> disgusting black propagandist and seen as working for those who
> created the conflict in Syria."<END QUOTE>[/indent]
All of these things that I listed -- attacking civilian neighborhoods
and hospitals with barrel bombs, chemical weapons (chlorine gas),
phosphorous bombs, cluster bombs and bunker bombs -- have been widely
reported in mainstream media and by government organizations in
America, Europe, the Mideast and the United Nations. The only people
saying that it's all made up are Russian and Syrian officials, as well
as the army of paid Russian trolls.
Related Articles
****
**** Popularity of Bashar al-Assad
****
> [indent]<QUOTE>Scotster brightmoth: "Amid the demonization of the
> Syrian government and leadership and the skillful use of social
> media by anti-government activists. Influenced by both mainstream
> and this alternative media, most people in the West do not know
> that Bashar al-Assad remains popular with many Syrians. Nor do
> they realize that Assad won an election two years
> ago."<END QUOTE>[/indent]
What the heck does that have to do with anything? Bashar al-Assad is
being charged with genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
What does it matter whether he won an election? Adolf Hitler won
elections. Mao Zedong, Pol Pot and Josef Stalin were all very
popular.
There's a very important point here. It's the popularity of genocidal
leaders that makes the genocidal acts possible. An unpopular leader
could never get away with trying to exterminate an entire religious or
ethnic group, as Bashar al-Assad is trying to exterminate the Sunni
Muslims. A genocidal leader has to be popular to get away with his
depraved acts. So when you talk about al-Assad's popularity, my
response is that of course he's popular, and has to be to get away
with committing genocide.
Related Articles
****
**** Russian shootdown of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17
****
> [indent]<QUOTE>Mickey Wasp: "We are experiencing the same
> demonization of Syria’s al-Assad and Russia’s Putin that we
> witnessed before those other two wars on Saddam and Gaddafi. Every
> possible allegation is made against them, often based on dubious
> and deceitful “evidence,” but it goes unchallenged because to
> question the propaganda opens a person to charges of being an
> “apologist” or “stooge” or if they post on Xenakis articles, a
> Russia troll."<END QUOTE>[/indent]
If it quacks like a duck, then it must be a duck. You claim that
you're a Texas redneck, but you quack like a Russian troll.
There was a good example this last week of how Russian trolls work. A
Dutch-led team announced the findings of a major investigation proving
that Russians in eastern Ukraine in July 2014 shot down Malaysia
Airlines Flight MH17 passenger plane with a Russian Buk 9M38 missile
that was transported by a Volvo truck from Russia, and then
transported back to Russia after it had been used to shoot down the
plane.
There are literally thousands of pieces of evidence, including
intercepted phone calls, photos, analyzed and authenticated, videos,
forensic examinations, witness statements, satellite images, and radar
data. The amount of evidence is overwhelming.
But the Russian trolls have been out in force saying that all the
photos are photoshopped, and all the evidence was faked. And the
Washington Post reports that numerous reporters have been targeted by
Russian government hackers. I've been targeted many times by both
Russian and Chinese hackers. That's the game these Russian trolls
play.
So when this Russian troll says that "every possible allegation is
made against [al-Assad and Putin], often based on dubious and
deceitful 'evidence,'" he's just being a good troll and saying the
same things over and over despite overwhelming evidence. He should
get an extra pay bonus from his trollmaster for being such a good
troll.
Here's another point worth making. I believe the truth of everything
that I write. I've written about 4,000 articles on my web site since
2003, and every word is based on extensive research and reporting. I
have an archive of some 85,000 articles that I've copied and pasted,
and I add a dozen or so articles to the archive every day. I have to
be sure of every fact, because if I make a mistake, then I know that
people will pound on me for it.
But that's not true of the Russian trolls. They know very well that
Russians shot down the MH17 plane. They know very well that Bashar
al-Assad is committing genocide. They know very well that Vladimir
Putin is guilty of war crimes. But they're paid to lie, and they sell
their souls every day to defend the greatest genocidal monsters of the
21st century so far.
Guardian (London) and Washington Post
Related Articles
****
**** The future of the Mideast
****
> [indent]<QUOTE>Jasmine16: "President Assad wants to kill all Sunni
> Muslims? Come on. His wife is a Sunni. Many of his ministers and
> military officers are Sunnis. Many of his armed force officers are
> Sunnis. The majority of Syrian population prefer to live in
> government controlled areas. Even CIA and Qatar study reveal that
> 70% of Syrians-most of whom are (moderate) Sunnis, support him,
> while 20% are neutral, and only 10 % are against him. How on earth
> could the writer claims that the president wants " ... to massacre
> ... all Sunni Muslim civilians ...."?"<END QUOTE>[/indent]
There is an extremely bloody historic fault line between Shia/
Alawites (like Bashar al-Assad) and Sunnis. It's pretty clear that
al-Assad wants to kill a large segment of Syria's civilian population,
possibly millions of people, on the other side of that historic fault
line, but there's a problem of how to characterize those people --
what name should we give that group? Al-Assad just calls them all
"terrorists," but obviously children in a school or women and children
in a marketplace slaughtered by an al-Assad airstrike are not
"terrorists" in any meaningful sense. So in view of the historic
hatred between Alawites and Sunnis, I use the characterization "Sunni
Muslims" as the most convenient way to describe the portion of the
population that al-Assad wants to exterminate. It's possible that
there's some kind of ethnic descriptor that could be used to make the
characterization more precise, but I'm not aware of one.
> [indent]<QUOTE>TheLastConservative: "'In other words, it’s just more
> bizarre garbage coming out of the mouths of Russian officials.'
> Which is a lot like #*&$ coming out of the State Department isn't
> it? There are no good guys in this situation. We are obviously
> too incompetent and should get out of it. We've messed up enough
> as it is."<END QUOTE>[/indent]
A lot of people feel that way. But a lot more people feel that
America has a moral obligation to be policeman of the world, so it's
unlikely that we'll get out of the situation.
> [indent]<QUOTE>TheLastPlainsman: "So now that confuses me- what is
> your prediction then with a US/Russia conflict but then us still
> being allied in the next world war? Is there any kind of timeline
> to consider?"<END QUOTE>[/indent]
Russia's historic enemies are the Turks, the Mongols, and particularly
the Crimean Tatars. Russia has absolutely no reason to start a war
with the West, as many people fear.
As I've been writing for many years, from the point of view of
Generational Dynamics, Russia will be our ally in the coming Clash of
Civilizations world war. Those who think that this is impossible
should recall that the Soviet Union was our bitter enemy before and
after World War II, but was our ally during World War II. Something
like that will happen again. This prediction should make the Russian
trolls very happy.
Related Articles
KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Russia, trolls, Syria,
Bashar al-Assad, Vladimir Putin
Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Contribute to Generational Dynamics via PayPal
John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
- Russian Trolls
- Popularity of Bashar al-Assad
- Russian shootdown of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17
- The future of the Mideast
****
**** Russian Trolls
****
Russian trolls - Bruce Plante (Tulsa World, 11-Jun-2015)
There have been a number of questions and comments about my
recent articles on Russia's involvement in Syria.
> [indent]<QUOTE>TheLastPlainsman: "It appears, Mr. Xenakis, that you
> are still the target of Soviet, err, I mean, Russian, trolls. At
> least there aren't any China ones. Today, anyway."<END QUOTE>[/indent]
Yes, Russia has hired hundreds of trolls to harass people like me.
At one point last year, I was being attacked and harassed by three
Russian trolls at the same time.
In a sense, the whole policy has backfired. Every journalist by now
has become aware that they'll be attacked by Russian trolls if they
write anything critical of Russia. So the result is that any person
who actually believes what he's saying in defense of Bashar al-Assad
or Vladimir Putin is automatically assumed to be a paid Russian troll.
The Russians brought this on themselves.
> [indent]<QUOTE>Mickey Wasp: "It is clear from this completely
> fraudulent article he has penned that Mr. X is not above composing
> lies in order to further the nefarious agenda of the Zionist
> criminal enterprise known as Israel and Warmongers of Congress and
> the CIA.
>
> Anyone who can write a line such as "After years promising to help
> end the violence in Syria, Russian and Syrian warplanes have been
> indiscriminately attacking civilian neighborhoods and hospitals
> with barrel bombs, chemical weapons (chlorine gas), phosphorous
> bombs, cluster bombs and bunker bombs. It does not take rocket
> science to see that Russia and Syria have no intention of ending
> the violence." is not fit to call themselves a journalist or
> researcher or columnist, instead they should be labelled as a
> disgusting black propagandist and seen as working for those who
> created the conflict in Syria."<END QUOTE>[/indent]
All of these things that I listed -- attacking civilian neighborhoods
and hospitals with barrel bombs, chemical weapons (chlorine gas),
phosphorous bombs, cluster bombs and bunker bombs -- have been widely
reported in mainstream media and by government organizations in
America, Europe, the Mideast and the United Nations. The only people
saying that it's all made up are Russian and Syrian officials, as well
as the army of paid Russian trolls.
Related Articles
- BBC reporters attacked by Russian thugs after finding evidence of new Ukraine invasion (19-Sep-2014)
- Russia threatens to invade Ukraine from East and West (15-Aug-2014)
****
**** Popularity of Bashar al-Assad
****
> [indent]<QUOTE>Scotster brightmoth: "Amid the demonization of the
> Syrian government and leadership and the skillful use of social
> media by anti-government activists. Influenced by both mainstream
> and this alternative media, most people in the West do not know
> that Bashar al-Assad remains popular with many Syrians. Nor do
> they realize that Assad won an election two years
> ago."<END QUOTE>[/indent]
What the heck does that have to do with anything? Bashar al-Assad is
being charged with genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
What does it matter whether he won an election? Adolf Hitler won
elections. Mao Zedong, Pol Pot and Josef Stalin were all very
popular.
There's a very important point here. It's the popularity of genocidal
leaders that makes the genocidal acts possible. An unpopular leader
could never get away with trying to exterminate an entire religious or
ethnic group, as Bashar al-Assad is trying to exterminate the Sunni
Muslims. A genocidal leader has to be popular to get away with his
depraved acts. So when you talk about al-Assad's popularity, my
response is that of course he's popular, and has to be to get away
with committing genocide.
Related Articles
- UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura predicts total destruction of Aleppo by Christmas (07-Oct-2016)
- US, UK, UN officials accuse Syria and Russia of barbarism and war crimes (27-Sep-2016)
- From 2013: The history of how Syria's Bashar al-Assad created ISIS (07-Sep-2016)
****
**** Russian shootdown of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17
****
> [indent]<QUOTE>Mickey Wasp: "We are experiencing the same
> demonization of Syria’s al-Assad and Russia’s Putin that we
> witnessed before those other two wars on Saddam and Gaddafi. Every
> possible allegation is made against them, often based on dubious
> and deceitful “evidence,” but it goes unchallenged because to
> question the propaganda opens a person to charges of being an
> “apologist” or “stooge” or if they post on Xenakis articles, a
> Russia troll."<END QUOTE>[/indent]
If it quacks like a duck, then it must be a duck. You claim that
you're a Texas redneck, but you quack like a Russian troll.
There was a good example this last week of how Russian trolls work. A
Dutch-led team announced the findings of a major investigation proving
that Russians in eastern Ukraine in July 2014 shot down Malaysia
Airlines Flight MH17 passenger plane with a Russian Buk 9M38 missile
that was transported by a Volvo truck from Russia, and then
transported back to Russia after it had been used to shoot down the
plane.
There are literally thousands of pieces of evidence, including
intercepted phone calls, photos, analyzed and authenticated, videos,
forensic examinations, witness statements, satellite images, and radar
data. The amount of evidence is overwhelming.
But the Russian trolls have been out in force saying that all the
photos are photoshopped, and all the evidence was faked. And the
Washington Post reports that numerous reporters have been targeted by
Russian government hackers. I've been targeted many times by both
Russian and Chinese hackers. That's the game these Russian trolls
play.
So when this Russian troll says that "every possible allegation is
made against [al-Assad and Putin], often based on dubious and
deceitful 'evidence,'" he's just being a good troll and saying the
same things over and over despite overwhelming evidence. He should
get an extra pay bonus from his trollmaster for being such a good
troll.
Here's another point worth making. I believe the truth of everything
that I write. I've written about 4,000 articles on my web site since
2003, and every word is based on extensive research and reporting. I
have an archive of some 85,000 articles that I've copied and pasted,
and I add a dozen or so articles to the archive every day. I have to
be sure of every fact, because if I make a mistake, then I know that
people will pound on me for it.
But that's not true of the Russian trolls. They know very well that
Russians shot down the MH17 plane. They know very well that Bashar
al-Assad is committing genocide. They know very well that Vladimir
Putin is guilty of war crimes. But they're paid to lie, and they sell
their souls every day to defend the greatest genocidal monsters of the
21st century so far.
Guardian (London) and Washington Post
Related Articles
- Dutch report confirms that Russian missile shot down airliner over Ukraine (14-Oct-2015)
- Australia's PM Tony Abbott promises to 'shirt-front' Vladimir Putin when they meet (14-Oct-2014)
****
**** The future of the Mideast
****
> [indent]<QUOTE>Jasmine16: "President Assad wants to kill all Sunni
> Muslims? Come on. His wife is a Sunni. Many of his ministers and
> military officers are Sunnis. Many of his armed force officers are
> Sunnis. The majority of Syrian population prefer to live in
> government controlled areas. Even CIA and Qatar study reveal that
> 70% of Syrians-most of whom are (moderate) Sunnis, support him,
> while 20% are neutral, and only 10 % are against him. How on earth
> could the writer claims that the president wants " ... to massacre
> ... all Sunni Muslim civilians ...."?"<END QUOTE>[/indent]
There is an extremely bloody historic fault line between Shia/
Alawites (like Bashar al-Assad) and Sunnis. It's pretty clear that
al-Assad wants to kill a large segment of Syria's civilian population,
possibly millions of people, on the other side of that historic fault
line, but there's a problem of how to characterize those people --
what name should we give that group? Al-Assad just calls them all
"terrorists," but obviously children in a school or women and children
in a marketplace slaughtered by an al-Assad airstrike are not
"terrorists" in any meaningful sense. So in view of the historic
hatred between Alawites and Sunnis, I use the characterization "Sunni
Muslims" as the most convenient way to describe the portion of the
population that al-Assad wants to exterminate. It's possible that
there's some kind of ethnic descriptor that could be used to make the
characterization more precise, but I'm not aware of one.
> [indent]<QUOTE>TheLastConservative: "'In other words, it’s just more
> bizarre garbage coming out of the mouths of Russian officials.'
> Which is a lot like #*&$ coming out of the State Department isn't
> it? There are no good guys in this situation. We are obviously
> too incompetent and should get out of it. We've messed up enough
> as it is."<END QUOTE>[/indent]
A lot of people feel that way. But a lot more people feel that
America has a moral obligation to be policeman of the world, so it's
unlikely that we'll get out of the situation.
> [indent]<QUOTE>TheLastPlainsman: "So now that confuses me- what is
> your prediction then with a US/Russia conflict but then us still
> being allied in the next world war? Is there any kind of timeline
> to consider?"<END QUOTE>[/indent]
Russia's historic enemies are the Turks, the Mongols, and particularly
the Crimean Tatars. Russia has absolutely no reason to start a war
with the West, as many people fear.
As I've been writing for many years, from the point of view of
Generational Dynamics, Russia will be our ally in the coming Clash of
Civilizations world war. Those who think that this is impossible
should recall that the Soviet Union was our bitter enemy before and
after World War II, but was our ally during World War II. Something
like that will happen again. This prediction should make the Russian
trolls very happy.
Related Articles
- Russia continues large air defense military buildup in Syria (06-Oct-2016)
- Hard issues prevent full reconciliation between Turkey and Russia (08-Jul-2016)
- Arab views of Iran nuclear deal (15-Jul-2015)
KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Russia, trolls, Syria,
Bashar al-Assad, Vladimir Putin
Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Contribute to Generational Dynamics via PayPal
John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe
