It Feels So Damn Good

The South Ossetian conflict began and ended with some epic examples of badly timed blog posts. First, a couple of "the Russians have sucked it down, they can't do jack now" posts on August 8, a mere hour or two before the surprise (that wasn't). But I'm pleased to say the worst of timing luck has befallen our old friend La Russophobe. You don't want to be the hysterical war-monger when your "dangerous" "enemy" have just shown themselves to be wise and to mean what they say.

Ladies and gentlemen, here's something that doesn't occur every day: an hours-old anachronism.

Special Extra Editorial: Answering Russia

Here are ten steps that NATO countries, which will soon be meeting for an emergency session to respond to Russia’s outrageous aggression in Georgia, should take immediately.

1. Admit Ukraine. Arm it to the teeth.

2. Eject Russia from the G-8.

3. Call for Russia’s ejection from the U.N. Security Council.

4. Recall all national ambassadors from Moscow for 90 days.

5. Invite a conference of Russian opposition leaders to Brussels for a formal meeting with the EU, followed by one in Washington.

6. Begin supplying weapons to the rebels in Russia’s breakaway provinces of Chechnya and Ingushetia. Call openly for Russia to free these regions from bondage.

7. Announce a massive new program of military spending, pushing Russia into a lethal new arms race it can’t afford or consigning it to permanent military impotence.

8. Announce a new program to aggressively seek alternatives to Russian fossil fuels, with fixed reduction targets.

9. Announce a boycott of the Russian winter olympics in Sochi in 2014 as long as Vladimir Putin remains in power.

10. Announce the creation of a new information network, much larger and better funded than Voice of America or Radio Free Europe to deliver Internet, TV and radio broadcasts into neo-Soviet Russia so that Russians can learn the truth about their country.

The hatred and the craziness speak for themselves. Should anyone who agrees with this agenda ever comes to power, we'd be obliged to protect not only ourselves but the entire world from those lunatics and their spawn of Saakashvili-like bullies. If our luck runs out and the likes of La Russophobe do manage to bring about a new Cold War, it seriously seems we'll be the good guys this time. We'll defend not just ourselves, not another wacky ideology with nothing to vouch for it except dead words and live ammunition, but the 21st century and all the good things it should have stood for. The things that are yet to be given fancy names for media to play around with. For the moment, we may just remember what we once imagined this century to be like. Specifically: at long last, a century of grown-ups. Humanity's adulthood beginning.

I'll address #10, though, as it's the most reasonable one except grossly misguided. (No fear of La Russophobe actually knowing or understanding something about Russia.) A "huge truth network" has already been in existence for some years, at no cost to anyone in particular. It's called the Russian blogosphere. It's free-thinking, it's vibrant, it's audacious, it proved more than once it was capable of causing real change... it broadly agrees that the version of "truth" you'd have fed to us is just more rubbish propaganda. Sorry. The problem seems to be on your end. Which in the last couple of days has been proven unto you yet again.

Thank goodness the Russophobes of this world seem to be losing after all. Thank goodness they're not losing in some silly geopolitical sense while keeping everything else. They're losing whatever moral high ground they ever chanced to have. They're losing their own minds. They're losing the 21st century, which their heroes and their causes have managed to mess up in less than a decade.

Could this be the time whose joints we were meant to set right?

Could this be another awfully timed blog post?

We'll see. We're in no rush now. And that's why today – or, to be on the safe side, this hour – it feels so damn good to be Russian. Any idiot can make a comeback as a military power. We've just shown the world there's more to us than that.

Wicked weapon of murderous Moscow: Retrocausality

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc is an old and dreary logical fallacy. To claim, with little or no direct evidence, that something happened after something else, hence because of that something else ("I was taken ill after she looked at me that way, BURN THE WITCH"), means nowadays to expose yourself as a manipulator. How about something new and shiny to replace that rusty monstrosity? We can call it praeter hoc, ergo propter hoc. A happened before B, hence because of B.

Doesn't make sense? Causation doesn't work backwards except in science fiction?

Welcome back to Propaganda 2.0, the smart solution for idiot-mode journalism. No tricks, just open and honest self-contradiction. In this issue, Britain's The Independent is accusing Russia of someting even Yakov Smirnoff would've hardly thought possible.

30,000 homeless as a chaotic conflict intensifies

Putin condemns 'genocide' as eyewitnesses claim South Ossetia's capital is destroyed. Moscow missiles kill dozens in Georgia's frontline city as peace effort gets under way

[Those "Moscow missiles" border on immaculate Propaganda 1.0. Much like an indignant Communist going "Pentagon" this, "Washington" that all the time, the author or editor was so desperate to throw in a trigger name – the regular repetition of "Moscow" and "Kremlin" serves, of course, to remind the reader of the tight grip of Russian authoritarianism on the country – that they made it sound as if the were fired straight from the Tsar Cannon. But let's not nit-pick, something big is coming. – Ed.]

As many as 2,000 people may have been killed and 30,000 made homeless as the chaotic conflict between Georgian and Russian forces in the pro-Moscow enclave of South Ossetia entered its second bloody day.

[...]

The casualty tolls were also much confused. Russia's figure of 2,000 dead and 30,000 homeless was largely supported by South Ossetian leaders, who said that about 1,400 had died there since Friday. Georgia said only 129 people had been killed, but this is believed to refer only to the death toll for the town of Gori. UN officials put the number of refugees from South Ossetia at between 2,400 and 5,000.

The conflict began when Russian troops poured into South Ossetia on Friday, hours after Georgia launched an offensive aimed at restoring control over the separatist province.

Now that I think of it, no, this isn't pure 2.0 by far. This is Propaganda 1.4 or something. -0.1 for those "Moscow missiles", -0.5 for not going all the way and contradicting themselves in plain sight. There's an important number they do shy away from mentioning.

How many hours is "hours after", one wonders? Three? Five? Maybe even eight?

The answer is fifteen. Check this detailed timeline of Friday, August 8 (in Russian or via machine translation). Note the entries (it's bottom to top) for 0:06, 14:22, 15:06 and 16:14.

FIFTEEN BLOODY HOURS of all-out Georgian shooting and shelling before the Russians went in. And what happened next? "The conflict began."

The conflict began.

Inappropriately except for reflecting my feelings, this reminds me of a crude joke which starts with a string of very hard and elaborate obscenities and continues, "– said Lieutenant Rzhevsky, and began to swear."

What conflict began? Let's take a jigsaw of quotes and put it together. The "chaotic conflict between Georgian and Russian forces", in which "[a]s many as 2,000 people may have been killed" "since Friday", which is "Russia's figure" "largely supported by South Ossetian leaders".

Ay, since Friday. The early hours of Friday. The Russian/S.O. figure refers, rather obviously, to the death toll from the moment the Georgians began to attack.

In other words, the conflict between Georgia and Russia claimed the lives of 2,000 people, some of whom (possibly even most of whom) had perished before that conflict began.

It's like saying a patient died from the chaotic conflict between cancer and chemotherapy. Implying both share the blame kind of equally. Russia became involved because people were dying. The Independent tried to pull a Russian reversal on that. Classy.

Introducing Propaganda 2.0

Propaganda 2.0 (as I propose to call that eerie phenomenon when more or less quality media is compelled – perhaps compelled inwardly – to go into idiot mode) is based on a clever observation that you don't really need classical propaganda. Propaganda 1.0 is overkill. Without a monopoly on information, it's counterproductive. It makes you vulnerable to any factual counter-claims. When you're caught manipulating facts, you lose your credibility.

Propaganda 2.0 has an answer. Manipulate in plain sight. Just give the plain facts, or the actual words, alongside your twisted interpretation. It'll work. Just like those billboards that shout "FREE* LAPTOPS!!" and whisper, "*with a purchase of $500,000,000 or greater". Did laws requiring the fine-print footnotes make ads with hollow promises go extinct? No. The fine print, besides being a requirement, is good practice. Don't lie to people: use the people's own imagination. And it doesn't matter that in a news article, you can't make some parts larger than others.

Wait, you can. It's called a headline. Everything under a headline is essentially fine print. However, you don't have to stop there. Inside the article, you can twist-in-plain-sight just as successfully. Think that's impossible?

Russia Warns Baltics, Poland To Pay For Georgia Stance

Russia's ambassador to Latvia Monday warned the Baltic states and Poland that they would pay for their criticism of the Kremlin over the conflict in Georgia, the Baltic news agency BNS reported.

"One must not hurry on such serious issues, as serious mistakes can be made that have to be paid for a long time afterwards," Alexander Veshnyakov was quoted as saying by BNS.

See? It's both there. "What he said" and "what we want you to believe he said". Actually, no: "what you want to believe he said". Propaganda 2.0 doesn't make the mistake of trying to instill prejudices. It caters to the ones that are already there.

Thus was Alexandr Veshnyakov, ambassador to Latvia, former head of the Russian Centrizbirkom, the authority overseeing elections, and as such, widely remembered as a very well-mannered and pleasant public speaker, something we could admittedly have more of in Russia, – thus was he transformed into a shoe-banging, knout-wielding drunken bear bellowing, "You wheel pay, Pauland! You wheel paaaay for krrriticking the Krrremlin!!" Thus was the idea of paying for a mistake twisted into "paying" in the adrenaline-rush sense of imagined violent retribution.

You can always rely on someone saying it's what he meant anyway.

More on Propaganda 2.0 as further particularly juicy examples come up.

Oh hai.

I had a blog at veryrussian.net in 2006 and 2007; it was rather fun to write, had 84,000 unique hosts a day... okay, one day it had, the daily norm was about a hundred. It's now defunct and the domain name is lost to squatters, but the blog is preserved intact, sans pictures, here. I could actually continue it, but don't want to. I may discuss that later. To business.