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One crucial point made in this article which had somehow passed me by is how devoid of credibility the West's intelligence agencies have become. I know it has b

by kitd 11y ago

One crucial point made in this article which had somehow passed me by is how devoid of credibility the West's intelligence agencies have become. I know it has been known for a while since Snowden, but the implications are far-reaching. It has come to something when social media can point the same spotlight on whole armies doing things they would rather keep secret as it has done on politicians doing the same.

FreakyT 11y ago
Wait, what? Western intelligence came to the conclusion pretty early on that Russian separatists were to blame -- only Russia's intelligence still contradicts the content of this article, insisting that Ukraine was at fault.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  And Russia's politicians and the so-called rebels. In NL there is a ton of activity on various newspaper and news websites trying to discredit the report. Makes you wonder how much of that activity is due to organizations such as this: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-professional-trolls-help-russia-with-online-propaganda http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-professional-trolls-hel...
  - r721 11y ago
    Here's an article on this particular topic trolls: http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/10/13/russias-reality-trolls-and-the-mh17-war-of-misinformation-buk-missile/ http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/10/13/russias-reality-trolls-a...
- olau 11y ago
  From the article: "Such groups can be more nimble than government bureaucracies. They also have more credibility -- something that the intelligence agencies of some Western democracies have squandered with skewed findings, serial violations of privacy and repeated evasions of oversight. For one thing, because the material Higgins and others draw on is publicly available, anyone can check their findings."
- kitd 11y ago
  I'm not referring to specific instances of good or bad intelligence, but how in general anything thrown up by the NSA/GCHQ now is as likely to be met with scorn as praise. The average man or woman doesn't trust them to be the "good guys" any more. A lone wolf on YouTube is apparently more trustworthy now.
ptaipale 11y ago
> how devoid of credibility the West's intelligence agencies have become. I know it has been known for a while since Snowden It's older than that. I remember 40 years ago it was possible that rather obvious facts (such as "you need to queue a long time to get basic consumer goods in the USRR") were dismissed simply because they could be labeled "CIA propaganda". In my country we even had an initiative for a "peace law", whose purpose was to outlaw discussion that might pose negative light on the Soviet empire, as any such discussion was obviously only there because it is spouted by the discredited Western intelligence agencies.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  > It's older than that. I remember 40 years ago it was possible that rather obvious facts (such as "you need to queue a long time to get basic consumer goods in the USRR") were dismissed simply because they could be labeled "CIA propaganda". This was even scarier before that. Check out the following biography review[0]; it's worth the time to read. Some quotes: "although it is clear to him that the Soviet economy is struggling, every dispatch they are given to send home declares that things are better than ever, that the Workers’ Paradise is even more paradisiacal than previously believed, that the evidence is in and Stalinism is the winner. It doesn’t matter what he makes of this, because anything he writes which deviates from the script is rejected by the censors, who ban him from sending it home. He is reduced to sending secret messages at the bottoms of people’s suitcases, only to find to his horror that even when they successfully reach the Guardian offices back in Britain, his bosses have no interest in publishing them because they offend the prejudices of its progressive readership. (...) His final break with the rest of the enlightened progressive world comes when he decides to do something that perhaps no other journalist in the entire Soviet Union had dared – to go off the reservation, so to speak, leave Moscow undercover, and see if he can actually get into the regions where rumors say some kind of famine might be happening. The plan goes without a hitch, he passes himself off as a generic middle-class Soviet, and he ends up in Ukraine right in the middle of Stalin’s Great Famine. He describes the scene – famished skeletons begging for crumbs, secret police herding entire towns into railway cars never to be seen again. At great risk to himself, he smuggles notes about the genocide out of the country, only to be met – once again – with total lack of interest. Guardian readers don’t look at the newspapers to hear bad things about the Soviet Union! Guardian readers want to hear about how the Glorious Future is already on its way! He is quickly sidelined in favor of the true stars of Soviet journalism, people like Walter Duranty, the New York Times‘s Russia correspondent, who wrote story after story about how prosperous and happy and well-fed the Soviets were under Stalin, and who later won the Pulitzer Prize for his troubles." Guessing from the review, the book paints a scary picture of how West intellectualists basically fooled themselves and self-spun propaganda about the Soviet Union for decades. [0] - http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/08/11/book-review-chronicles-of-wasted-time/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/08/11/book-review-chronicles-...

by kitd 11y ago

FreakyT 11y ago

Wait, what? Western intelligence came to the conclusion pretty early on that Russian separatists were to blame -- only Russia's intelligence still contradicts the content of this article, insisting that Ukraine was at fault.

jacquesm 11y ago
And Russia's politicians and the so-called rebels. In NL there is a ton of activity on various newspaper and news websites trying to discredit the report. Makes you wonder how much of that activity is due to organizations such as this: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-professional-trolls-help-russia-with-online-propaganda http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-professional-trolls-hel...
- r721 11y ago
  Here's an article on this particular topic trolls: http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/10/13/russias-reality-trolls-and-the-mh17-war-of-misinformation-buk-missile/ http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/10/13/russias-reality-trolls-a...
olau 11y ago
From the article: "Such groups can be more nimble than government bureaucracies. They also have more credibility -- something that the intelligence agencies of some Western democracies have squandered with skewed findings, serial violations of privacy and repeated evasions of oversight. For one thing, because the material Higgins and others draw on is publicly available, anyone can check their findings."
kitd 11y ago
I'm not referring to specific instances of good or bad intelligence, but how in general anything thrown up by the NSA/GCHQ now is as likely to be met with scorn as praise. The average man or woman doesn't trust them to be the "good guys" any more. A lone wolf on YouTube is apparently more trustworthy now.

ptaipale 11y ago

> how devoid of credibility the West's intelligence agencies have become. I know it has been known for a while since Snowden It's older than that. I remember 40 years ago it was possible that rather obvious facts (such as "you need to queue a long time to get basic consumer goods in the USRR") were dismissed simply because they could be labeled "CIA propaganda". In my country we even had an initiative for a "peace law", whose purpose was to outlaw discussion that might pose negative light on the Soviet empire, as any such discussion was obviously only there because it is spouted by the discredited Western intelligence agencies.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
> It's older than that. I remember 40 years ago it was possible that rather obvious facts (such as "you need to queue a long time to get basic consumer goods in the USRR") were dismissed simply because they could be labeled "CIA propaganda". This was even scarier before that. Check out the following biography review[0]; it's worth the time to read. Some quotes: "although it is clear to him that the Soviet economy is struggling, every dispatch they are given to send home declares that things are better than ever, that the Workers’ Paradise is even more paradisiacal than previously believed, that the evidence is in and Stalinism is the winner. It doesn’t matter what he makes of this, because anything he writes which deviates from the script is rejected by the censors, who ban him from sending it home. He is reduced to sending secret messages at the bottoms of people’s suitcases, only to find to his horror that even when they successfully reach the Guardian offices back in Britain, his bosses have no interest in publishing them because they offend the prejudices of its progressive readership. (...) His final break with the rest of the enlightened progressive world comes when he decides to do something that perhaps no other journalist in the entire Soviet Union had dared – to go off the reservation, so to speak, leave Moscow undercover, and see if he can actually get into the regions where rumors say some kind of famine might be happening. The plan goes without a hitch, he passes himself off as a generic middle-class Soviet, and he ends up in Ukraine right in the middle of Stalin’s Great Famine. He describes the scene – famished skeletons begging for crumbs, secret police herding entire towns into railway cars never to be seen again. At great risk to himself, he smuggles notes about the genocide out of the country, only to be met – once again – with total lack of interest. Guardian readers don’t look at the newspapers to hear bad things about the Soviet Union! Guardian readers want to hear about how the Glorious Future is already on its way! He is quickly sidelined in favor of the true stars of Soviet journalism, people like Walter Duranty, the New York Times‘s Russia correspondent, who wrote story after story about how prosperous and happy and well-fed the Soviets were under Stalin, and who later won the Pulitzer Prize for his troubles." Guessing from the review, the book paints a scary picture of how West intellectualists basically fooled themselves and self-spun propaganda about the Soviet Union for decades. [0] - http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/08/11/book-review-chronicles-of-wasted-time/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/08/11/book-review-chronicles-...