Useless Dissident

Review: The Education of Lev Navrozov

2010-02-28T14:07:00.000-08:00

Subtitled A Life in the Closed World Once Called Russia, this book is an autobiographical novel, but it's just as much a political history of the Soviet Union. The Education was published in 1975 by Harper's Magazine Press, and, as far as I can tell, was never reprinted.

The first thing to know is that Lev Navrozov, as he admits, comes from one of the highest "castes" of Soviet society. This caste system, as Navrozov describes it, is first territorial and then based on occupation or usefulness to the regime (ultimately to Lenin or Stalin, whom Navrozov calls "pseudo-tsar-god I" and "pseudo-tsar-god II," respectively).

Navrozov was born and lived in Moscow, the highest of the territorial castes, the center of Soviet government and bureaucracy, out from which the territorial castes successively got lower and lower. The author uses this language of "castes" throughout the book, explicitly rejecting the notion that the Soviet Union is in any way a socially advanced society. He likens it to ancient Eastern despotism, a new barbaric totalitarianism that threw off 1,000 years of development in law, politics, and economy; and called it a "revolution." Such language is strong for one who was paid handsomely by the regime, did not suffer in a labor camp, defect from the KGB or GRU, or personally experience (direct) political repression.

But like many Russian dissident writers, Navrozov dismisses the claim that Lenin's pure revolutionary idealism was corrupted by the power-hungry Stalin. Navrozov writes:

Privileged enough to spend his childhood in the last residual enclave or afterglow of Russian culture, the author found Bolsheviks like Ulyanov-Lenin, Bukharin, Trotsky or Lunarcharsky cheap vulgarians of the most unpleasant kind.

He often refers to the Bolsheviks and their Soviet successors as "megacriminals."

The second thing to know is that remarkably, Navrozov seems really to be innocent, an actual freelance writer who survived physically by not being political and survived spiritually by turning down all government positions requiring Communist Party membership, and all positions as a journalist or writer for official publications, which amounts to the same thing. Mostly he translated older Russian works into English.

One of the book's major topics is the inability of the West to comprehend the world's Eastern despots, its naive eagerness to proclaim the Soviet Union and Communism great accomplishments of civilization, its willingness to trade with and sustain totalitarianism-- a form of "government" antithetical to its own-- and its almost total incomprehension of the form and structure of Soviet society.

In this way the author broaches another major topic: the difference between behavior and speech. Navrozov writes of useful idiots in the West verbally praising socialism while behaviorally acting as capitalists, free individuals enjoying free expression in a free society. He implicitly compares these Western leftist fellow travelers with the "revolutionary" activities of the Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, social revolutionaries, anarchists and others in the relatively free post-serfdom tsarist Russian government of 1861-1917. He also uses this device to explore the actions of Western diplomats in post-1917 Russia; as well as the mundane lives of Soviet citizens.

All of this is framed within an account of the author's childhood (when he was 6-7 years old), sharing a nice apartment building in Moscow with several families. Navrozov writes somewhat about a collective school he attended, a "creative house" he went to with his father and mother, and several other personal anecdotes.

The book is extremely well-written and very literary. It is also a well-sourced history of "revolutionary" Russia, with many quotes from the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda and biographies of "revolutionary" figures.

It is strange, having read this book, to read Navrozov's current articles. His constant theme is still totalitarian government (now of the Chinese variety) and the inability of the West to comprehend it, but I think that in later years his writing has lost the flair and life of this semi-autobiographical historical novel.

What made Navrozov the author of so brilliant a book seems then to be his natural irritability. The curmudgeon, reflexively dismissive of grand projects and noble-seeming objectives, cannot accept even the Iraq War; nothing less than formal recognition, on the part of the United States, that China is evil and means us harm, will sate him. Not that he is wrong, necessarily, but to say something in opposition: George W. Bush was a duly elected public servant who faithfully tried to execute the duties of his office, not one of the "humorless, pompous, intellectually illiterate megacriminals," as Navrozov characterized Lenin and his cohorts. Sometimes, in Navrozov's current writing, it is hard to tell the difference.

In one column he mentioned that there was a planned second volume to The Education, but that he switched to writing his weekly column instead. Perhaps that was the wrong idea.

No matter. This book is a gem. It deserves to be up there with Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago.

Review: To Build a Castle

2009-07-03T12:08:00.000-07:00

When I picked up Vladimir Bukovsky’s To Build a Castle: My Life as a Dissenter, I didn’t know that he is currently an opposition party leader in Russia. It was better for me not to know this, because it would have been better for Bukovsky to die in GULAG. This gruesome statement is the darker side of the recognition that things are not always what they seem, especially when concerning the Soviet Union and today’s Russia.

This line of thinking, enforced by numerous experiences, leads Useless Dissident to suspect any so-called “dissident,” “opposition leader,” or “moderate voice” coming from Russia, a state obsessed with its image in the West. Thus Mikhail Gorbachev’s “perestroika” is kind of unbelievable, as are any reported divisions within the political leadership, or the Army, or the KGB. Furthermore, so-called dissidents like Andrei Sakharov who call for “peaceful coexistence” between the West and East are to be seen as serving the interests of their totalitarian state.

When we hear the cry of “dissent,” then, from within the Soviet Union (or modern Russia, or China, or other totalitarian states), we must ask, “How does this serve the regime?” That must always be our first question. “Why did they allow this to be published?” Knowing the circumstances of a text’s release is important, but not always necessary. From the book itself we can discern, if we have been paying attention, what its purpose is and whose it is.

But of course, there is real dissent, and word of it will inevitably reach Western shores in authentic expression. What, though, is authentic? Certain writers are so naïve and know so little that what is for them authentic and heartfelt opinion is considered so harmless and inconsequential by KGB and Party censors that it is allowed to pass to the West virtually unedited. Some of these may even work for Writers’ Unions, and are paid by the state to write their feckless criticisms, a fact sure to be included in their works. Thus their “dissent” turns into an endorsement of the regime and a backhanded criticism of those who identify more completely the evils of communism.

Bukovsky approaches this subject: “I have even heard the following argument: Your protests are misleading world public opinion: people in the West will think that we are allowed to speak openly here and change things. Therefore you are helping Soviet propaganda.”

Well? It’s true, right? But no excuse, nevertheless, for cowardice in the face of oppression. And that’s Bukovsky’s point, for this “argument” is given in a list—a catalogue—of excuses:

No man can flay a stone.

What can I do? (If everyone acted, so would I.)

If I didn’t, someone else would. (And better me because I’ll do less harm.)

You must make compromises, concessions, and sacrifices for the sake of the main cause. (Thus the Church holds that it must make concessions for the sake of self-preservation, yet there is no end to these concessions…)

We must live for Russia, and the Communists will one day disappear of themselves.
(This argument is a favorite with scientists and the military.)

We must live for posterity, create the eternal values of science and culture, a trivial reoccupation with protests merely distracts us from the main thing.

Never ever protest openly; that is a provocation which merely enrages the authorities and brings suffering on the innocent.

Open protests play into the hands of the hard-liners in the Politburo and prevent the doves from carrying out liberalization. [Russia is fond of using this argument to stifle Western criticism today. –UD]

Open protests hinder liberalization, which can only succeed by means of power politics and secret diplomacy.

To protest about details is merely to expose oneself. The thing to do is to lie down. Then, when the decisive moment comes, okay. But in the meantime we’ll disguise ourselves.

Yes, but not now, this is the worst possible time: my wife’s pregnant, my children are ill, I have to defend my thesis first, my son’s about to go to university… (and so on till the end of a lifetime).

The worse things get, the better. We must deliberately take all the system’s idiocies to their logical and ridiculous conclusion, until the people’s patience runs out and they understand what is happening.

Russia is a land of slaves. The Russians have never had democracy and never will. They don’t have the aptitudes for it, it’s no use trying. There’s no other way for our people.

The people are silent. What gives a handful of malcontents the right to speak out—whom do they represent, whose opinion are they expressing?

Your protests are misleading world public opinion: people in the West will think that we are allowed to speak openly here and change things. Therefore you are helping Soviet propaganda.

You have to get on quietly with your career, get to the top, and try to change thins from there; you won’t achieve anything from the bottom.

You have to gain the trust of the leaders’ advisers and teach and educate them on the quiet, there’s no other way of influencing the government’s course.

You protest; I’ll stay out of it. Someone has to survive to bear witness. (I heard this in the labor camp just before a hunger strike.)

If only there were a new theory to replace Marxism and carry people away; you can’t build anything on sheer negation.

Communism has been visited upon Russia in retribution for her sins; to resist God’s retribution is equally sinful.

And so everyone, from members of the Politburo, academicians, and writers down to collective-farm laborers and factory workers, manages to find a justification. Moreover, most people sincerely believe that these are their true feelings. Very few realize that they are pretexts and excuses. And hardly anybody will admit openly and honestly that he is simply afraid of reprisals.

Though To Build a Castle contains many fine passages, I believe that none is more representative than this one. Bukovsky and his fellows are principled dissidents, who will not compromise. In this passage we see that he can see through the justifications that everyone uses to get ahead and get along in the evil communist state. And surely that is why he cannot but be a dissident.

But his group also has its pitiful side. Many of the “dissidents” still are ideologically-believing socialists/Marxists/Leninists who just want to return Russia to its glorious, righteous pre-Stalin roots. One man is obsessively focused on the Constitution and the law (in the USSR), and goes about teaching other dissidents their “rights” so that they will know them when they are arrested, even though they won’t be respected. The title thus becomes apt in a presumably unexpected way: the dissidents are no more realists than those who delude themselves with excuses for not resisting, and the author’s “life as a dissenter” as he describes it is compared to life “for hundreds of years in [a] castle... I built it between interrogations in Lefortovo, in the camp lockup, and in the Vladimir punishment cells. It saved me from apathy, from indifference to living. It saved my life.” But, of course, it’s imaginary.

These dissidents are often students who have been kicked out of universities and/or their positions because of their disagreements with the regime. They had to exhibit courage to get to even this point. And then they do whatever small things they can do, like distributing samizdat, organizing underground art shows, and meeting for silent protests (sometimes holding banners) in public places.

These are small things, but they did have an impact on the West. To some extent one has to suspect that the Communist Party and KGB laughed at these protestors, because they were showing the West that protest could happen in the USSR and thus reinforced their wishful thinking about how the Communist giant couldn’t really be that bad. But on the other hand—if one denies the Golitsyn thesis about the complicity of the Eurocommunists with the Russians in fabricating their own dissent—even Western leftists sympathized with the Soviet dissident movement.

Revelations from this time period like Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago—about the labor camps—and Bukovsky’s To Build a Castle—about the dissident movement and the use of psychiatric hospitals to incarcerate and debilitate those dissidents, did much to awake the West from its partially self-induced and partially propaganda-induced stupefied thinking about how the Cold War was a waste of time and money, how the world needed a convergence of the two systems (a “peaceful coexistence”), how the West should work with “liberal reformers” in Moscow instead of approaching the country aggressively.

Of course, the West soon forgot all about this. It has deluded itself again into thinking it “defeated Communism” and that labor camps, propaganda, brutal civic repression, and heinous things like state manipulation of churches and psychiatric hospitals are things of the past. They’re not.

To Build a Castle is very much worth reading, but it is hardly a timeless book in the way that Gulag Archipelago is. It strikes me that the author has insufficient sense of the dissident movement’s place in Russian history, its scope of influence in the West, and its meaning in relation to the Russian state. Gulag is not only solid on all of these points but is also a story of the spiritual value of suffering and the way of forgiveness and redemption. These lofty heights To Build a Castle aspires to but does not attain, but it is nevertheless a beautiful and important memoir.

Today Vladimir Bukovsky lives in exile in Britain from his native Russia. He is a strong ally of conservatism and national sovereignty. He is a critic of internationalist schemes and extremely skeptical of all new “glasnosts” and progressive reforms. He was not and is still not taken in by the Mikhail Gorbachev’s “perestroika.” He has, however, been taken in by some of the ridiculous exaggerations and accusations of “torture” surrounding the United States’ military detention facilities. This is unfortunate, but somewhat understandable.

David Kahane

2009-05-05T14:33:00.001-07:00

If you're not reading David Kahane, how can you call yourself a paranoid, right-wing anti-communist lunatic?

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that I’m currently working on yet another sequel to The Manchurian Candidate and I’ve come up with this crazy notion that, seven years after 9/11, the American people elected a man they had not even heard of a few years before, a man whose campaign was handled by a red-diaper baby, a man who was part Arab-African, the son of a Muslim, the circumstances of whose nativity are still unclear, whose college applications and transcripts have never been seen, who appears to have no friends from his days at Punahou, Occidental, Columbia, and Harvard. Heck, Hussein even went to Georgetown and made them cover up Jesus. And yet the enchanted Washington press corps finds Michelle’s bare arms and the Obamas’ new puppy — oddly enough, named BO — of far more journalistic interest. Talk about the dogs that don’t bark in the nighttime, the daytime, or any time!

Or, to put it another way, if BHO II actually were the nutbag Right’s worst nightmare, a crypto-Muslim Marxist bent on the destruction of the Principal Enemy, as our friends the Soviets used to call us, how would he act any different?

Grab your shotgun and get with the program!

Review: Abel

2009-05-03T11:15:00.000-07:00

Abel is a perfect example of how terrible some books about the Cold War can be. This account, written by Louise Bernikow, covers a relatively narrow subject in the intelligence battle between the Soviet Union and the United States, yet it widely misses the mark.

In the book's epilogue, the author and her main source, Rudolph Abel's "friend" Burt Silverman, go to Moscow in an attempt to meet Abel. This is ten years after the trial, and Abel has since been exchanged for an American pilot. They never get to meet him, but Silverman writes a letter to Abel:

The book about you will, I think, be a truthful and honest one. It will try to explain why you are remembered so [d]early by many of the people you met. Certainly all my friends have that memory and think of you affectionately.

He is, of course, talking about a man who lived in the United States under false pretenses and spied on it for a hostile foreign power. Yet, he is thought of "affectionately."

Bernikow, Silverman, and their ilk think that they have a sophisticated and nuanced view of the world, not like those reflexive "McCarthyist" anti-communists who are somehow the villains of this story. Yet their idiocy-- their useful idiocy-- is manifest. Here is a book in which a Soviet illegal's legend-- a man who never really existed-- is held up as a charming and beautiful human being, worthy of adoration and respect. Even after he was revealed to be a spy for the KGB! Instead of facing reality, the author and her accomplice Silverman chose to believe that it was the legend, Emil Goldfus, who was real, and the spy Rudolph Abel who was the legend. One could excuse them for thinking this way, but to write a book with this as the premise is just incredible.

The story is a good one, to be sure. The man known to Burt Silverman and his group of New York intellectual, liberal, Jewish artists as "Emil Goldfus," to his fellow KGB illegal and incompetent subordinate Reino Hayhanen as "Mark," to those who inspected his travel documents for his journey to the US as "Yurgesovich Kayotis," to different people in New York as "Martin Collins," and to those who investigated him for espionage as "Colonel Rudolph Abel, KGB," was in fact none of these; he was Vilyam Genrikhovich Fisher, born in England but raised in the Soviet Union.

The name Fisher never appears in Abel, as it was unknown to the author and pretty much everyone else. Nevertheless, Bernikow knew the extent to which Abel's life was a deception and yet chose to believe that Emil Goldfus, painter and musician, friend of liberal intellectuals, was the real man. Why? Because it is more convenient and comfortable to believe it, despite all the evidence. Because to admit otherwise would be to challenge a catalog of presumptions that Bernikow would prefer unchallenged.

Still, it's interesting why Fisher maintained such a legend. In The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB, Christopher Andrew writes, "The Centre [KGB] instructed Fisher not to seek employment for fear that his employer would make inquiries which would blow his cover. Instead, he was told to open an artist's studio and claim to be self-employed."

Bernikow would argue that, despite the determination of the outward appearance of Fisher's life by the KGB, in his inward life Abel really was a thoughtful and sensitive artist and intellectual. The alternative, that liberal intellectual types are easily deceived and naturally sympathetic with political systems that are the antithesis of our own, is apparently too much for the author.

Bernikow spends most of the time with the trial arguing that the case being made in the press, that Abel was a 'master spy' and connected to all sorts of illegal KGB activity in the country, is ludicrous. In her understanding, Abel was a professional who did what he was asked but didn't do very much, while his subordinate Hayhanen (who testified against Abel), was an incompetent, drunken philistine.

Thus, there is not much about this book that is "truthful and honest" as Silverman claims. The reader does not learn practically anything about Fisher/Abel/Goldfus's actual activity in the United States. For example, from Sword and the Shield:

In 1949, as the basis of his illegal residency, Fisher was given control of a group of agents headed by Morris Cohen (codenamed LUIS and VOLUNTEER), which included his wife Lona (LESLE). Following Elizabeth Bentley's defection, the Centre had temporarily broken contact with the Cohens early in 1946, but renewed contact with them in Paris a year later and reactivated them in the United States in 1948. The most important agent in the VOLUNTEER network was the physicist Ted Hall (MLAD), for whom Lona Cohen had acted as courier in 1945 when he was passing atomic intelligence from Los Alamos.

Andrew writes later that "in recognition of the VOLUNTEER group's success, Fisher was awarded the Order of the Red Banner in August 1949." Yet Bernikow in Abel makes it sound like any connection between Abel and Cohen is highly spurious.

Nevertheless, it is true that the American media made the spy out to be much more than he actually was. (Later, the KGB did the same thing.) Andrew writes:

In reality, Fisher never came close to rivaling the achievements of his wartime predecessor, Iskhak Akhmerov. During eight years as illegal resident, he appears never to have identified, let alone recruited, a single promising potential agent to replace the VOLUNTEER network. Unlike Akhmerov, however, he did not have the active and enthusiastic assistance of a well-organized American Communist Party (CPUSA) to act as talent-spotters and assistants. Part of the reason for Fisher's lack of success was the post-war decline and persecution of the CPUSA.

So perhaps there is something to Berniknow's account. Did Abel fall in love with his life as a layabout New York artist and intellectual? Despite his professionalism, was his heart just not in recruiting agents in his adopted country? We can't really know, but Bernikow's highly impressionistic and naive book doesn't help us, either.

Here's an example of how terribly wrong Bernikow's book is:

What you learned about the craft of intelligence was elaborate, but wrong. You learned that it was the "Enemy's" craft. The New York Times printed stories of other spy rings that had been "exposed" and a historical rundown of the KGB. It was, of course, terrible one-sided. Although reporters knew enough to liken the KGB to the CIA, they went no further. There was no indication at all that we operated the same way or that we, too, had intelligence networks set up around the world. It was the pre-U2 era and no one spoke of the American craft of intelligence; comparing KGB with CIA only made it more mysterious.

This is the kind of snide assumption that irks me and anyone else who knows anything about the history of the intelligence war between the Soviet Union and the United States. Because the KGB should not be likened to the CIA. It's comparing apples and orchards.

Perhaps the media reports didn't include parenthetical remarks about how, of course, we operated this way too because they were reflexively pro-American. That is the way Bernikow repeatedly presents it. But perhaps they didn't include such remarks because the CIA did not and does not operate in the same way as the KGB. We certainly never had illegal residencies in the Soviet Union; they have had many in the US.

It is Bernikow who is ignorant and blinded by prejudice, yet she and her kind will assume to the end that it is those patriotic, God-fearing Americans who are ignorant and prejudiced. She takes it on faith that of course we do this stuff too, and a lot worse! (as the applause line goes at the leftist universities).

In reality, the KGB and CIA were and remain incommensurable. The KGB is many, many times the size, has far, far more responsibilities and infinite resources to perform them-- it was in fact the most important organization in the Soviet Union, along with perhaps the Party and the Army. And it remains very important in Russia today. The CIA, on the other hand, is quite small in comparison and marked by repeated failure. And at the time of Abel's trial, it was barely a decade old. And in a liberal democracy it is by necessity scarred by constant exposure of its methods and practices, it cannot keep its files secret for long, and it is prevented by law from defending itself in the press against media and public abuse.

And most importantly (in my opinion), the KGB has always made disinformation and propaganda a top priority, and the CIA is a preferred target of those attacks. The CIA's efforts at disinformation and propaganda on the other hand, have been stilted and comical. Yet-- and this is the remarkable thing-- in common perception KGB propaganda and disinformation are regarded as comical and ineffective, while the CIA is seen as devious and conspiratorial. What has caused this but the continued effort from one side and non-effort from the other, to influence public opinion?

Thus for all the tough work and thinking that must have informed the writing of Abel, it might as well have been written by KGB disinformation specialists for the terribly skewed picture it paints of the intelligence world. A definite pass.

Black is Beautiful: Part Four

2009-05-01T07:03:00.000-07:00

Continued from Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.

Let me describe briefly exactly how the KGB manipulates your media, apart from these pictures; why they do it, and what to do about it. Some of what I say is described in the book, KGB Today, written by John Barron. Of course, I cannot put all the information that I have in my poor head, which was pumped into me by the KGB during six years of training in Moscow. It took the American CIA six months to debrief me. I am unable to put all of that into one lecture. I have two publications which I published myself in Los Angeles. Love Letter to America: this is the way I feel. And this is the way millions of people feel in my country; we are not your enemies. We are your friends. The Junta in the Kremlin are the enemies of the ‘United States and the enemies of my people. It is not conflicts between nations; peoples do not start wars. Governments do. Your Ronald Reagan was absolutely correct when he said this.

I described it in this little booklet, which I peddle for $5 (I know-- it’s highway robbery). Consider it support of a needy family: mine. I must compete with Jane Fonda. I describe the process in which I took part, the process of ideological subversion, which has nothing to do with espionage. It has something to do with your perception of reality. Why does the KGB want to mess up your minds? Very simple. Soviet international communists realize perfectly well they cannot defeat [the] United States economically or militarily. They cannot force your government to do what they want it to do because your government is being changed every four years. You mess up Jimmy Carter; then along comes Ronald Reagan. It’s impossible. But it is possible to confuse the minds of millions of Americans so that YOU will force your government to do what the communists want you to do.

It is a longer-term process, but believe me, it is easier, and it is bloodless. If war comes, it only comes as a last stage of the process which I describe in this book. The principle of subversion has not been invented by the Soviets, or the communists or Russians. We are too dumb to invent such principles; we drink too much vodka. The principle of subversion is as old as mankind itself. If you don’t believe me, open your Bibles. Read chapters like Judges, Chronicles or Kings. You will find at least 12 examples of “subversion,” when the mightiest rulers were cheating and lying to their own people. Why? Simple. To achieve something they want. Earthly interests, above all: power, money, gold, camels, beautiful women, or whatever. When it doesn’t work, then they go to war.

The principle of subversion was formulated by a Chinese philosopher 2,500 years ago. Sun Tzu said, “All warfare is based primarily on deception of your enemy. To fight on the battlefield to achieve your goals is the most primitive and barbaric [way] to achieve your goals. The highest art of war is not to fight at all, but to subvert anything of value in your enemy’s country.” Which includes religion, moral principles, traditions, and natural[ly] established relationships between people, families, groups, classes, races. Turn the blacks against the whites; turn the teachers against students; turn Ralph Nader against the government; labor unions against business; homosexuals against heterosexuals; and keep on fighting, my dear friends, until you demoralize and destabilize yourself, and then you flop like a rotten apple and the enemy will take you over. You will invite the enemy.

This is the essence of subversion, and it is not new. In this little booklet I explain to you what exactly is the objective of the KGB. It is not destruction of the United States; please don’t believe your peaceniks and freezeniks. Yes, nuclear warheads have their dangers, but the objective is not to destroy [the] United States. Please use your heads. If they destroy [the] United States’ productive capability, where will they get their grain, credits, technology, computers, blue jeans. Where will they get the Cadillacs? From Zimbabwe?

The main objective of [the] KGB is to turn you from an open society, as I described in this diagram, to a closed one, which is carbon copy of the Soviet communist, or socialist, or fascist society. Why? Why would they bother? Very simple. To merge into one global system. They make no secrets about it. You cannot merge our systems today. They are incompatible. If we merge the U. S. free market capitalism with the state monopoly of the Soviet economy, it will be a great mess. Russians may enjoy it; they will disappear in your liquor stores and K-Marts. But you may not when you wake up tomorrow morning and see a tank in your back yard. I’ll bet you’ll become emotional. Merging, convergence, or interdependent economy, like some of your beautiful Brzezinskis are professing, is IMPOSSIBLE. But it is possible to slowly, in the long stretch of time, turn your country into a carbon copy of my society.

How? By infiltrating ideas into your minds. Not agents into your offices. No, KGB cannot infiltrate all the newspapers, all the public schools. Why? Because they will need an army of agents, thousands of them, and if they come to United States, you know what would happen to these agents? They will defect, because even the dumbest communist realizes that your system is the best. It may not be perfect; by no definition is it a perfect society. But it simply is the best. And they will defect. But it is possible, instead of infiltrating bodies into your system, to infiltrate ideas into your minds, and this is how it is being done.

I describe only one idea on this diagram. Not because it is the most dangerous, but because it is the most popular and evident in your ideology today. The idea is called egalitarianism, and it is not new. It goes all the way back to the time of French Revolution. It is simply equality. What’s wrong with equality, you may ask. Everything. Look at yourself. Are you equal in any imaginable way: spiritually, physically, socially, economically, racially, whatever? There is no such thing as equality. There never was.

All through the history of mankind, some people were tall, curly and dumb. Others are short, bald and smart. There are no two individuals which are identical. Every one is unique if we are talking about people. Fish may be equal. Insects, ball bearings, but not people. If we presume that we are created by God, I would think it would be no great deal for Him to make us all equal. No? We are unequal.

And that’s where I come into conflict with your beautiful intellectuals. They say, “Mr. Schuman, you don’t know our Constitution, especially our Declaration of Independence. It says, ‘We, the people, take it as self-evident truth that all men are created equal.’” See how ignorant I am? I don’t know your Constitution. Believe me, I know. I read it at the age of 15, and I was amazed how simple and how beautiful it is. It is the best constitution in the world. First of all, there is no period, there is a comma. Your liberals quote only one line: “We, the people, take it as self-evident truth that all men are created equal.”

Equal only in one respect. It has nothing to do with legislative, social, economic or any other type of equality. It has something to do with equal opportunities for unequal people to come to this land, or are brought here by force sometimes, to enjoy roughly equal opportunities. And above all, you the people are equal in one important respect-- in respect of the undetachable right to stay alive, be free and pursue happiness. And these basic rights are given to you people, the way I understand it, by God.

“So what?” they say. Very much so. Because you cannot reelect God. You cannot take Him down to face cameras and to lie to you about the quality of the distribution of wealth, social programming, social welfare, [and] all these beautiful concepts. Why did leaders throughout the history of mankind [want] people to believe that they are equal? We know we are not. We know we don’t have to be. Why then? Simple (and communists take advantage of this misconception): because it is impossible to control and exploit people as long as they stay unequal.

Then why have poor people always wanted to be equal? Simple. You name me one American who wanted to be equal with someone who has one popsicle less. I think you want always to be equal with someone who has one car more, one bedroom more, 20 cents an hour more. And if you don’t get this 20 cents an hour more, you become very unhappy.

What is the motivation of equality in the minds of poor people then? Greed. This is what happens. And this is the core of ideological manipulation of the masses. The concept of equality, forcefully introducing such ideology creates false expectations which clash with reality and produce unhappiness, frustration.

Discontented people produce less. Lower productivity creates economic instability and social unrest. This leads to radicalism because people become impatient. That leads to power struggles. Power struggles lead to replacement of social, political structure. That replacement is the fastest way to internal upheaval, civil war, or invasion. The result for the last observable 35 years is always the same: closed society. Just the opposite of what we started with. Everything is nationalized, from banks to washrooms. Human beings belong to the state. My right to live and pursue happiness in the USSR is not given by God because God is removed from the school, right? My right to live in Russia is given by the state. The State giveth, and the State taketh away.

Sixty-six million of my people lost the right to live. In your country, even the worst criminal who raped five neighbors and killed his babushka [is] still taken to court, and he is politely called a suspect. You see the difference? This is the core of ideological subversion. You go all the way from open to closed society, and later on to a merging. Four stages of subversion-- Demoralization: 20 years, destabilization: 5 years, crisis: one year, “normalization”: forever. On the stage of demoralization, the media plays the most important role. Why? Because it conveys ideas into your mind. If your media presents the picture of socialism this way, this image of your country, which you see every day on television-- crime, child abuse, police brutality, racial discrimination, acid rain, explosion-- this image is not to the advantage of the United States. A child can grow up in America believing that he lives in the worst possible country on earth, whereby the reality is just the opposite: you live in the best possible country.

If you think that I am crazy, please ask Mexicans. Have you ever heard of any smart Mexican sneaking across the border into Cuba, Nicaragua, or the USSR? Boat people never swim to Red China for equality and justice. Black African brothers are not running from South Africa. They run from Zimbabwe, Angola and Mozambique TO South Africa. If you don’t believe me, go there and stay for one hour at the border check.

Your media lies to you. Why? Media is a part of the process of demoralization. They are monopolized today. They are controlled by the same group of people, unelected, super-rich and super-powerful people who trade with murders of my nation in the Kremlin. Interesting isn’t it? With one hand these people send your boys to Vietnam for 12 years. [Who? The media?] With the other hand they send billions of dollars of credit to the Soviet government to build weapons to kill your boys in Vietnam. Imagine, when people make a mistake once and repeat this mistake-- repeats the same mistake three times-- we call him a dangerous idiot. What would you call people in your establishment who repeat the same mistake, aiding your enemy and the enemy of my people in the Kremlin, over and over again for 68 years? Traitors. And they control your media. [Who? Our Congress?] I described it here in this booklet World Thought Police, exactly what your media did for us, for the KGB. One service after another, how to recognize it in your media, and what to do about it.

And this is the last thing I want to mention before you fall asleep. What to do about it. I don’t want you to go home depressed. I want you to go home happy. You deserve to be happy. You look like normal people. The process of demoralization, which takes 20 years, has taken place only in part. Andropov, a year ago when he was still half alive, talking to the Kremlin assembly, said, “We (meaning communists) are entering the final stage of the battle for minds and hearts of the people.” He was not talking about invasion of El Salvador. No, he was talking about this process I just described. You have five more years, according to Andropov. Presuming that you are demoralized, which I don’t believe because you are still alive, and Andropov is dead. So is Chernenko.

What to do about this crazy situation. Believe me, the solution is ridiculously simple. You do not need any more MX-- you may have them, just in case, but you may not need them if you take my solution. If you prefer Dr. Kissinger’s solution, go ahead. Suit yourself. You’ve been following the advice of people like Kissinger, Schlesinger, Brzezinski, Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relations, for the last observable history. Look where you are now. You lost all your friends in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and you are on your way to losing El Salvador, South Africa, Philippines, Mexico, Canada, and on and on.

Just for the sake of experiment, listen to Schuman. It costs you nothing. My solution is simple. You don’t want to be demoralized. Stay moral. See how simple? Stay moral. What does this imply? Exactly what CAUSA is telling you. Exactly what many millions of sensible Americans who belong to a multiplicity of conservative and religious groups are telling you on TV and radio. These stations grow like mushrooms. Stay moral. Bring prayer back to school. No matter what prayer, as long as your children will remember that their grand-grand-grandparents were not monkeys.

And so that they will grow up realizing that their right to live, to be free and pursue happiness, is not given by the state or federal government. It is given by God. You have to implant in the minds of your children, before it is too late, that yours is the best system. No, it is not perfect. No, it is not smooth. It is rough and there are pains and ups and downs, but believe me, your problems are nothing compared to the problems of Zimbabwe, and Angola, or people living now in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. That’s all you have to do.

Suppose you believe Andropov and are demoralized. Suppose we are really entering the final stage of your life, destabilization, five more years. Even then there is a solution. And again, this solution has nothing to do with more nuclear warheads. This solution is so primitive and so simple that nobody wants to listen to me, in the establishment. It is very simple, peaceful, nonviolent and very beneficial: stop aiding your enemy.

Right now, as your Congress is thinking how to cut the budget, how to reduce the deficit, they are thinking that your Pentagon doesn’t deserve $500 toilet seats. That Salvadorans do not deserve $30 million to protect it against communism. At the very same time, your Congress votes for billions of dollars of credits to the enemy of my people in the Kremlin. These billions of dollars are not reaching poor people in my country or Asia or Africa or Latin America. All of them are directed to the Soviet military-industrial complex, to world terrorist networks, to [the] destabilization process in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Stop this before it is too late.

Force your Congress to stop aiding my enemy and your enemy and there will be no nuclear war. You will not need more MX missiles. That’s all. You will not need more boys to be killed in Lebanon, Vietnam, or in Central America. Why? Because my people don’t want to fight war. There will be no international terrorist network, because all of them are on the Soviet payroll. If you think I am crazy, give me one example when terrorists are blowing up Soviet embassies, hijacking Soviet airplanes, abducting a Soviet diplomat. All you have to do is to stop aiding your enemy. You will immediately save yourself billions of dollars. The Soviet system already owes you $100 billion. Half of your deficit. Could you imagine? And they are thinking in Congress how to cut social welfare, or a $200 hammer for [the] Pentagon. Stop aiding your enemy! That’s all.

And if we are talking specifically about media like that, already I gave you the solution. Start your own media. If you read such monsters as The New York Times, or The Washington Post, or The Los Angeles Times, if you watch the garbage coming through the three major TV networks, just for curiosity’s sake, please subscribe to conservative literature. If you watch The Phil Donahue Show, just for curiosity watch Pat Robertson or Jimmy Swaggart, or Jerry Falwell; there are many others.

If you read The Los Angeles Times, read The Washington Times for a change. You will see the difference. That’s all I have to say to you. Please do it fast. Because if you pooh-pooh your system, you will follow the destiny of the Vietnamese, Cambodians, Nicaraguans, Zimbabweans and Ethiopians. And yours will be the last country.

Why am I shouting? Why am I so emotional? I am sick and tired of defecting! And believe me, if you destroy your system, you will have no place to defect to. Because your country is the last hope for mankind’s survival, freedom and justice.

MY PUBLICATIONS

5. “THE BEST OF SCHUMAN” on videotape. Two hours of continuous battle of ideas, recorded during my TV appearances—from “700 Club” to “Round Table With the Marxists.” Also included: my slide show, biographical story and examples of Western media being manipulated by the KGB. This tape is not only an “eye opener,” it is pure fun, I like it! So did some 60,000,000 Americans who saw me on TV and send me their letters of love and appreciation. Quality may not be as good as CBS, but what you expect for $39.60?

Mail your checks made to N.A.T.A., [omitted].

ISBN 0-935090-18-5
Copyright by Tomas Schuman [Thanks again.]

TOMAS SCHUMAN has been personally involved with the worldwide propaganda efforts of the Soviet regime. Like a true-life Winston Smith, from George Orwell’s “1984”, Tomas Schuman worked for the communist equivalent of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth: The Novosti Press Agency. Novosti, which means “News” in Russian, exists to produce slanted and false stories to plant in the foreign media. The term for this K.G.B. effort is “disinformation.”

Mr. Schuman was born under the name of Yuri Bezmenov in Moscow in 1939, the son of a senior officer in the Red Army. Consequently, he went to good schools. At the age of 17 he entered the Institute of Oriental Languages of Moscow State University.

After graduating, he worked for Novosti, then spent two years in India as an interpreter and public relations officer with Soviet Refineries Constructions. He returned to Moscow in 1965 to work for Novosti, serving as Economic Editor for the Hindi, Urdu and English Editions of Sovietland Magazine. In 1969 he went back to India and continued propaganda efforts for Novosti in New Delhi, working out of the Soviet Embassy in a department called Research and Counter-Propaganda. Due to his growing disgust, he began to plan defection.

In February of 1970 he disguised himself as a hippie complete with beads and [a] wig and joined a tour group to escape to Athens. He contacted the United States Embassy and, after a long debriefing by U.S. Intelligence, was granted asylum and went to Canada.

In Canada, he studied political science at the University of Toronto for two years, taught Russian language and literature and in 1972 was hired by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s International Service as a Producer/Announcer, broadcasting to the Soviet Union. The K.G.B. forced him out of the job in 1976, so he began freelance journalism and worked on a variety of projects.

Today he is a political analyst for PANORAMA weekly in Los Angeles. He is married, and has two children. He is the author of two yet unpublished books.

You can order this book by mailing your check made to N.A.T.A.. (New American Talent Association)-$5.00 plus 60 cents for postage- to: Almanac, [omitted]. Tape-cassettes with Schuman’s talk on KGB’s Active Measures are available for $5 a piece plus postage.

ALMANAC
Los Angeles, 1985

Black is Beautiful: Part Three

2009-04-30T21:32:00.001-07:00

Continued from Part One and Part Two.

This is another type of KGB curiosity. I am on the left with the beautiful Walter Mondale smile. On the left [is] Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, famous Indian guru. Again, the legitimate question, why KGB socializes with the religious cults? Simple: we are not after Maharishi’s secrets. We are after [the] public opinion of [the] United States. If you remember the history of rock and roll music you know the name of The Beatles. They were trained in India in an ashram in transcendental meditation, and they landed in the United States and they poisoned millions of minds of your children with the strange blend of Oriental mysticism and revolutionary music. “Yeah, yeah, yeah!” My KGB supervisors were dying of curiosity: how could it possibly happen that four degenerate monkeys are so rich and famous in [the] United States?

This was the subject of our studies. You can see me infiltrating the ashram there. I am not implying that Maharishi is on a KGB payroll. I am illustrating to you people that the main objective of KGB activity is your minds.

These two gentlemen: the one on the right is now, by the way, in the United States. He is a Soviet official at the United Nations. On the left, a famous Indian communist. Both of them worked together with me in a secret department called Research and Counter-Propaganda. What we did was neither. We simply compiled information on each individual who is instrumental in shaping public opinion. Those who promote Soviet propaganda will be promoted by us to positions of power and influence by bribery, corruption and publicity. Those who resist Soviet propaganda will be listed by us for defamation, blackmail, or at the time of a people’s revolution, for this: execution.

This picture was taken in Cambodia, but the same execution happens everywhere the ‘people’s” government [is] established. In Nicaragua, in Zimbabwe, in Angola, in Ethiopia, in Bangladesh, in Afghanistan, in Cuba. Everywhere, but you have thick eyeglasses. You have bananas in your ears. Your liberals don’t explain to you what is happening. Maybe I will.

Maybe you will remember the name of a small South Vietnamese city by the name of Hue. It was occupied by North Vietnamese communists for about 10 days, but it was recaptured by the South Vietnamese and US military. They discovered to their horror that several thousand pro-American Vietnamese, your best friends, who talk too much against communism, were rounded up, taken out of the city limits, and executed this way. The CIA could not figure out how the communists could possibly round up that many people, several thousands of them. How did they know their identity, their political affiliations, and their addresses? I knew how.

Long before communists invaded that city, they had established a network of informers, Vietnamese citizens: barbers, taxi drivers, [and] teachers who acted under control [of] the Soviet Embassy in Hanoi, from the department which is called Research and Counter-Propaganda, for which I was in New Delhi doing exactly the same job. And it took me one year, because I am a thick-skulled Russian, to realize that what I was doing [was] compiling death lists for innocent people simply because they talk too much. Believe me: the same lists exist in United Stares. There may be some informers right here in this room, and you don’t need to be paranoid about this but you must KNOW about it. You have the right to know what the Soviet Embassy is doing in your country, and your media doesn’t explain it to you. The dimwits like Dr. Kissinger are appealing to you that quiet diplomacy is what you need. You don’t need any quiet diplomacy. You need LOUD diplomacy, loud and clear against what the Soviet Embassy is doing in United States.

I have no chance to explain it to Dr. Kissinger. Maybe you will have a chance. This is what we are doing. It took me one year to realize that what I was doing [might] bring irreparable damage to India. Naturally my decision was to run away and to scream at the top of my voice: “People, please wake up before this comes to your country.”

My attitude was different. I love India, I respected their culture. I meditated about marrying an Indian girl, which I could not. Naturally, my decision was obvious. Run away! It was a very painful decision.

First of all, because I have to leave behind this type of life. I was filthy rich by Soviet standards. Maybe not as filthy as your Jane Fonda, but definitely rich. My father was a big boss in the military; I was a frequent traveler. I could buy anything I want[ed]. Just one telephone call: television sets, cars, booze, girls, you name it. Try to understand leaving all this behind to run to the United States to take the side of losers: you! And what do I get for this? For the last 15 years I have been screaming, “Wake up people!” What do I get in return? More than 15 countries since my defection have been occupied by communists. And yet your media calls me paranoid, right-wing fanatic, ultra-conservative, McCarthyist, or whatever.

This morning-- I have a tape if you want to listen. This morning people on the radio called me these names, dimwits living right here in Atlanta. A “fanatic and idiot” because I am trying to wake you up.

My decision was extremely painful because, as I say, you have to be absolutely crazy to leave behind a luxurious life to come to your side, trying to save you and get spit in my face. What do I get for the last 15 years? I was driving a taxi, I was a security guard, I was a farmhand, I was a translator, [and] I also worked for Canadian Broadcasting. For the last two years I was manager of an apartment building in downtown Los Angeles. Come and visit me. A building populated by [the] chronically unemployed and people who complain about American capitalism. They sit on welfare; they don’t want to pay rent. Even to collect rent would require a machine gun sometimes! Imagine, a Soviet diplomat, a son of high-ranking military officer in USSR, changing bulbs and flushing toilets in Los Angeles. I bet you would not like to take my place…

Another reason to think twice before defection: This secret document, which is called [a] recommendation letter… every Soviet agent assigned to a foreign country has to be co-sponsored by three long-standing members of the Communist Party. Their signatures are at the bottom.

If I defect, all three of them will be fired, imprisoned, or executed. Two of them are my friends. I don’t want to endanger their lives. Because I will feel guilty. Dr. Kissinger feels OK-- he has sentenced to death half of Asia. He is OK; he is nice, fat, talking about “important social-political structure confrontation.” He is smart! He feels OK-- he charged $15,000 for one lecture. Right? He sleeps well. He has good food. No problem.

Then there is another reason: my family. Even though it was a marriage of convenience, by mistake we made a baby already. It’s a shame to leave a baby and a wife. Even in the United States where husbands leave their wives without any political reason, it’s a shame. I was feeling reluctant to defect, and I could not take my wife and my child with me. Why? Very simple. Because the Indian government, which is described in your media as a “non-aligned democratic government,” betrays defectors to the Soviet KGB. Especially after this lady defected in India-- she is Stalin’s daughter-- she defected in 1967, but she is back in Russia, by the way. The Soviet Embassy was so mad at Indira Gandhi that we forced her to adopt a law which says that “no defector from any country has a right of political asylum in any embassy on the territory of India.” Which, as you may understand, is the highest degree of hypocrisy because only Soviet defectors need political asylum.

Imagine yourself, an American citizen, in India and you want to defect to the USSR. What kind of asylum do you need? Political? No, Psychiatric! In my case, my defection would end predictably if I walked into United States Embassy. I would be taken back to the warm embrace of the KGB, and yet I had to run away.

How? This is how. I noticed there are many American hippies [with] no shoes, long hair, smoking hashish, [and] gravely annoying Indian police. And I realized that with my pale European face I would stand out in the crowd of Asians; they will catch me in two minutes. But if I dress as a hippy, and I join a bunch of hippies from the United States, a crazy Russian in a crowd of crazy Americans, [I will be] very difficult to identify. This is exactly what I did. I mixed with them.

All papers carried my picture, and [a] promise of 2,000 rupees for information leading to me arrest, as if I was a criminal or a murderer. An insult to me. And other insult was 2,000 rupees. I was sure I was worth more than that. And yet they could not find me because they were looking for this gentleman:

…and at the time of defection I looked like this:

No sensible detective would even imagine that the normal Russian diplomat would look like a total idiot and walk away from the Soviet Embassy. This is what saved my life and another thing was the American CIA which smuggled me out from Bombay airport, first to Greece. They debriefed me for six months. They gave me the name Tomas Schuman to protect my family [and] friends and keep me away from mischief for five years. I worked in Canada; I was employed by Canadian Broadcasting for six years. I was fired from there for my anti-communist jokes because I was stupid. I thought to be an anti-communist was OK in Canada. No? I was wrong. Under Pierre Trudeau it was a crime to be an anticommunist and be employed by Canadian government.

Continued in Part Four.

Black is Beautiful: Part Two

2009-04-30T20:57:00.000-07:00

Continued from Part One.

This is another type of activity. You can see me second on the left with my KGB supervisor, with a group of intellectuals, “progressive writers, journalists, freedom fighters, and civil rights movement leaders, visiting the Kremlin in this picture, seemingly for one purpose only: to denounce American racism and imperialism and to glorify Soviet imperialism and racism. And of course they are being paid for this; don’t worry. Secretly people like [me] call them “useful idiots.” This is a gathering of such idiots in the headquarters of Novosti Press Agency. I am standing next to one of them: an Indian poet who wrote a poem entitled “Springtime Blossom for Mankind, Comrade Lenin.” You can imagine how much money we paid to him.

Pay attention to the number of bottles on the table. This, my dear friends, is hard booze. Part of my job was to keep foreigners permanently on a certain level of intoxication, not too drunk, not too sober. Why? Simple. So that everything looks nice to them in Russia. The moment that they walk out of the airplane in Moscow, we take them to the VIP lounge and we toast with champagne to friendship, understanding, detente, brotherhood, Andropov-style. And if they refuse to drink, we tell them, “It’s unethical. You may offend [the] feelings of our people, because it’s a tradition in our country to get drunk for friendship.” And the poor idiots start boozing for three, four, five, ten days continuously. And then next morning we stop. And if any of you who ever tried this trip, to drink for five days and then stop, you know what will happen next morning? You will be sick with a hangover, even sicker. You will feel guilty sometimes, trying to recollect: “What were we talking about yesterday? With whom did you spend the night?”

In the United States, this decadent capitalist country, it’s not a big problem. You go across the street; you buy a 6-pack of cold beer and refresh your memory. In my country, I control these idiots. I take them to the hotel and there is not a drop of alcohol miles around. And they are dying for a drink. This is the time, when their mentality is the most ‘flexible.’ If you don’t believe me, ask your doctor. Alcohol does it, drugs do it. This is the time when we get them involved in propaganda operations--not espionage, no: propaganda, blackmail.

Your beautiful politicians, journalists, can do any idiocy such as citing Helsinki agreements, SALT accords, [and] preferential trade agreements with the Soviet bandits in the Kremlin. They can make a speech in the Kremlin denouncing America and glorifying the USSR. They can sing a song like Pete Seeger did, or Paul Robeson did, in the Kremlin. Anything we want, to our advantage, and to the disadvantage of your nation. And when they come back to America, your media describes this type of people as “soberly thinking politicians.”

This is one sober-thinking politician, Edward Kennedy, dancing with a Russian bride in a wedding palace. We don’t have church weddings because churches are being destroyed by the communist party. So we have official weddings, and Edward Kennedy is attending one of them. What he believes is that (and Time magazine describes [this] misunderstanding too) he is finding common language with the Russians. No, he is not. He thinks he is a beautiful, charismatic politician. No. He is not. He is a part of a circus. It is a specially prepared occasion to impress your politicians. Then they come back to the United States and say, “Russians are just like us. They are normal people.” Yes, we are. We have two hands, one head and go to bathroom just like you do. We make love, we make babies.

I may forgive a little monkey, Samantha Smith, when she goes to Russia on the invitation of comrade Andropov, comes back and says, “Oh, Russians are lovable people.” Yes, we are. Samantha Smith may not notice the difference between the systems’ political structure[s], and I can forgive her. But I can never forgive a political prostitute like Edward Kennedy for not knowing the difference. You can see Edward Kennedy taking part in a farce, and I hope you will believe this is a farce. This is the same type of farce I organized for hundreds of delegates.

You can see [me] in the middle, probably the same bride on the left, and three impressed correspondents on the right. They will come back home and they will explain to their people in Asia, Africa, and Latin America: “Look, Russians are just like us.” Of course we are like you. Please, try to understand, we are not talking about people. We are talking about systems and concepts and moral principles.

Another type of activity: You can see me in the background under the red spot with a group of journalists visiting an ordinary kindergarten. The trick is: it is NOT an ordinary kindergarten.

THIS is the ordinary kindergarten. This picture was published by mistake in one of the government publications in Canada. The caption says, ‘Typical day care center in Siberia.” My dear friends, it is typical, but it is not day care center. It is a prison for the children of political prisoners. They don’t explain it to you, your beautiful journalists.

This is Stalingrad, now Volgograd, the monument to Mother Russia. This propaganda complex is being used to indoctrinate soldiers in unquestionable loyalty to Communist Party.

This is [me], in the same place, with a group of American journalists representing Look Magazine. You can see in the background the statue to Mother Russia. It is a huge monster, ten limes bigger than the Statue of Liberty, an oversized lady with an overdose of hormones, brandishing a sword at you.

This is a copy of Look Magazine, and we’ll come back to that issue later if we have time.

After several successful propaganda operations with American journalists, I was transferred back to India. Your media lies to you when they describe India as the biggest democracy in Asia. India never was the biggest democracy. It was an autocracy, ruled by the Nehru families: Jawaharlal Nehru, his daughter Indira Gandhi, and now her son.

Indira Gandhi was not a non-aligned politician. She was very much aligned with the Soviet Union. She was in the Soviet pocket from the moment she stepped into her office.

When she arrived in United States to visit you two years ago, she lied to you and your media repeated these lies. Indira Gandhi said to your people, “There is no evidence of Soviet military presence in India.” My dear friends, it was the biggest and fattest lie. I was dealing with the Soviet military in India. Some of them were building Indian seaports for Soviet nuclear submarines. Others were preparing invasion into East Pakistan, which the dimwits of your media described as a grassroots Islamic revolution. Believe me please, there was no grass, no root, no revolution, and least of all Islam. There is no such thing as an Islamic revolution. Revolution has nothing to do with Islam. There is no such thing as Islamic terrorists.

Your media lies to you when they say that [the] United States embassy was blown up by “Islamic terrorists.” They are terrorists, yes. But they are not Islamic simply because they were born in an Islamic country. Do you know the difference? I cannot call Comrade Andropov a Christian dictator simply because he was born in a country which was Christian. Islamic people do not hate America. They love you. They know where the money comes from. I am a Christian, but I have no reason to hate Islam, but if you read your own newspapers, you may have an impression that Islam is an enemy of American Christians. Baloney. Open up your eyes please.

This is another type of KGB activity. You can see on my right my KGB supervisor [and] in the middle [a] professor of political science, Delhi University. Why do you think [the] KGB socializes with professors of political science? What kind of secrets [do] we want from [a] professor? We don’t want his secrets. We want the brains of his students.

The KGB is not after secrets.

It is after public opinion.

We invite this professor to a meeting of the Soviet Cultural Society.

There is the whole meeting. We trained him in the teaching of Marxism-Leninism. We sent him to Russia, to study that. You can see me [above], sitting next to politicians and members of the Parliament of India. Why? To create an atmosphere of legitimacy and respectability for this propaganda operation. And these dimwits don’t realize what is going on in their own country. Then the professor will be sent back to Delhi University, and for many generations he will indoctrinate students. And they will grow up firmly believing that socialism is good and that America is bad. They will close their eyes; they will have bananas in their ears. Even though they will see that people die from socialism, they say, "No, no, this is because of [the] CIA."

These are the people who are in charge oft this type of propaganda. About the Information Department of the Soviet Embassy: Sometimes your journalists ask me questions, “Mr. Schuman, how many KGB spies do you think there are in Washington, D.C.?” I think it’s a very dumb question. All of them are. The solution is not to find who exactly works for KGB in which rank. The solution is to kick out all of them if they misbehave, together with their beautiful United Nations.

This is [a] group of people who have nothing to do with espionage. They have something to do with your minds. This gentleman is still in the United States. He’s in New York City. Your officer of [the] United States Army in East Germany was shot to death yesterday by Soviet soldiers, on the pretext that your soldier was spying. Whether he did or not is a big question. Besides, spying is an activity in which superpowers do engage.

This gentleman is also in New York City, a correspondent for the Novosti Press Agency. He IS spying. Nobody shoots him, which is a great pity. The FBI knows perfectly well what he is doing against your people. But you see-- there is no law which would enable FBI to kick him out, together with hundreds of other Soviet agents in your country. But there is a law in your country which forbids your FBI to use your own American mass media, even to explain to your people what they want to do to criminals like these. Please explain to me who is more dangerous to you: your FBI or my KGB? Are you a proud and free nation, or are you a bunch of masochists, afraid of your own police?

Continued in Part Three.

Black is Beautiful: Part One

2009-04-30T13:23:00.001-07:00

The following excerpts are from a talk on DISINFORMATION IN THE LIBERAL MEDIA, given March 26 [1985] at a CAUSA USA Regional Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. The speaker, Mr. Tomas Schuman (Yuri Bezmenov), was formerly a correspondent for the Soviet Novosti Press Agency, specializing in producing disinformation for the foreign media. A defector, Mr. Schuman now works as a political analyst and public speaker on disinformation and other activities of the Soviet KGB.

My dear American capitalists, and oppressed masses, I would like to start my talk with three magic words, which usually give three years of imprisonment to any citizen of any socialist country if they pronounce these three magic words loudly and continuously: “I love America.” Apart from loving America, I also love CAUSA, if only for one reason, that they can collect so many interesting people in one room, including Hispanics and blacks.

I’m very happy to see many black Americans in this room, because my message concerns you, greatly. I believe that black is beautiful, but unlike some of your liberals, I practice what I preach. I live in a black area of Los Angeles, in the city which has the best black mayor in the United States, Tom Bradley. I am married to a girl who is rather black, maybe not as black as Andrew Young or Jesse Jackson, but nobody’s perfect. And I am trying to bring such beautiful concepts as equality, justice, and freedom into practical implementation. And believe me, I am not telling these things to you people just to please you. I am not running for political office. I don’t want anything from you people. I am not selling anything, I don’t want any money. I’m simply telling you what I feel.

The rest of my message may not be as pleasant. I’m going to tell you something that is extremely unpleasant to hear. My impression and my knowledge, based on my experience on the Soviet side, is that much of the American mass media is being manipulated by the Soviet KGB. That was my job for about 12 years. There is a strange, nagging negativism in the American mass media in relation to America. The monopolized media in the United States tends to blame everything on the United States--earthquakes arranged by the CIA, acid rains come from American capitalism, oppression, discrimination, racism, come from America. I’m not disputing that there are some bigots in the United States: bigots are everywhere, and through the history of mankind there were people who were pathologically unable to be friendly to blacks, yellows, or any race.

I’m talking about governmental, state racism. This is something that never existed in the United States in observable history. America is not racist. Socialism is. And I’m going to demonstrate to you how and which way. When this morning I was on radio talk show, some caller said, “Mr. Schuman, we don’t want to discuss differences between capitalism and socialism. We want to discuss the injustices which exist in both camps.” Obviously, he doesn’t know what real injustice means.

Before I go into specifics about the mass media, why the media is so masochistic about the United States, why they lie to you--and I’m going to prove how they lie to you--I’m going to show you several pictures which will give you a glimpse into my life and my activity as a Soviet product, as a Soviet disinformation agent, and believe me I was not a spy.

When you watch your Hollywood movies about James Bond espionage, please believe me, most of it is pure garbage. The Soviet KGB do not need any James Bonds today; YOU GIVE THEM THE SECRETS, or SELL THEM THE SECRETS. I was engaged in something much more unpleasant than espionage. I was engaged in ideological subversion, which is seldom explained to people by your media, because the media is part of that process.

Let me show you part of my life story and activity. This is the town in the suburbs of Moscow where I was born. You can see Comrade Lenin’s statue in the middle of the central square, on the right. This is a typical decoration in any Soviet city.

Comrade Lenin is described in your mass media as a great politician, and great revolutionary. He is the idol of many of your intellectuals and freedom fighters and civil rights movements. The United Nations recently celebrated the anniversary of Comrade Lenin’s birthday. And your government sent congratulational telegrams to my government.

Now please try to understand that in the eyes of people who walk by Comrade Lenin’s statue, he was a short, bald man with a speech impediment who died from syphilis, and who introduced the system of mass terror and concentration camps in my country long before these beautiful ideas came to the mind of Adolf Hitler. Nazis killed 6 million Jews. The system established by Lenin killed 66 million of my people. Do you see the difference? Or similarity? You don’t have time to count how many people were killed by the system which is glorified in your mass media.

This is another great politician, the statue of Comrade Stalin, and [me] at the age of 6 or 7. When I realized that the mass media lied to both my people and your people when they describe Uncle Joe as a peacemaker. President Roosevelt called him a nice, charming Uncle Joe. The New York Times described him as a great humanist at the time when he was killing millions of my people.

At the age of 6, as you can see, I realized perfectly well that the United States is not my enemy. You have to be an exceptionally dumb child at the age of 6 to believe that such delicious food as Spam meat was supplied to us by the enemy. When Soviet propaganda tried to convince me that United States [was] just about to invade us, believe me, kids in my school and thousands of other schools were counting the days and minutes: When is Gen. Patton to invade our country?! We wanted to be invaded. We wanted to own blue jeans, jazz records with Glenn Miller music, more chocolate bars, more condensed milk, more Spam meat. We did not want Uncle Joe. Yet your presidents, multinationals, and religious groups imposed Uncle Joe on us to continue the slavery in my country. With your silent consent.

This is my father on the right, Inspector of Land Forces of the Soviet Army General Staff. He inspected Soviet troops stationed in such countries as China, Mongolia, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and East Germany, where one of your officers was killed last morning. My father died in 1973, but believe me, his comrades are doing the same job right now, inspecting Soviet troops in such countries as Nicaragua, El Salvador, Yemen, Mozambique, Syria, and Iraq. You want more? There are more. Zimbabwe, Angola, Ethiopia, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Afghanistan. You want more? Well, keep on sitting on your fat bottoms. There will be more countries like that.

Your media, your beautiful intellectuals, your think tanks, which I call stink tanks, all these countries they describe as Third World countries, nonaligned countries, and neutral countries. Some idiots come forward with such names as liberated, anti-colonial countries. Sensible people in my country--the Russians as you call us--we have different names for these countries. We call them betrayed countries, betrayed by your government, by your multinationals, by the dim wits of your establishment, intellectuals, some of your freedom and whatever fighters. And there will be more countries like that until you understand the difference between freedom and slavery.

This is the college from which I graduated: Institute of Oriental Languages, a small, elitist school for children of high-ranking officials of the USSR. I studied the languages of India, Pakistan, Hindi and Urdu. I also studied history, economy, political science, communications, mass media--anything that would enable me to be an effective Soviet bureaucrat in India.

I also studied the music of India, as you can see. I even tried to look like an Indian when I was a second year student, and I was encouraged to do so because we were preparing to be foreign correspondents, diplomats or spies.

[Picture not from book.] As every other Soviet student, I had to volunteer to harvest grain in Soviet collective farms. Strictly according to Marxist-Leninist slogans, those who do not work shall not eat. You can see me eating; therefore, I was working.

This is the area where Soviet students spend their vacation; it is marked by the yellow color; it is called Kazakhstan. The picture is taken from an American news magazine, US News & World Report. I demonstrate it to you as an example of the monumental ignorance of your mass media. They call this area Russia’s breadbasket. I hope you people realize that Russia’s breadbasket is not Kazakhstan; it is Kansas, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, Ohio.

This is my first assignment as a translator with a Soviet economic aid group building oil refineries. At the time I realized that what we were doing in India has nothing to do with friendship, cooperation. detente, peace. What we were doing was building a carbon-copy of the Soviet socialist system in India, peacefully, without tanks. I hated socialism back home, yet I did my job in India. Why? Simple.

My country sent me to India. My country, good or bad, I love my country, and I still do even though I despise the system. I tried to be friendly to Indians. I was trying to be friendly to little Indians like this boy [not shown]. I was trying to be friendly to not-so-little Indians like this girl.

If you remember, Karl Marx said, ‘Proletarians of all the countries, unite.’ To be a good Marxist, I wanted to unite with a nice proletarian girl. I was always crazy about Oriental girls for a very simple reason: apart from being a “racist” I spent my childhood in the Oriental part of USSR, in Kazakhstan. My father was fighting on the front lines; my mother was working in the factories. My adopted mother was an Oriental girl with dark skin and slanted eyes. That was the first lady [who] showed me some respect, love and tenderness, changed my diapers and wiped my nose. As every normal child, I remember her face for the rest of my life. I did not want to marry a fat, white Russian girl. I wanted to marry a slender, dark Indian girl.

I wish I could explain it to your freedom fighters in the United States, who blame America for being racist. It is my country, under Soviet socialism, which is the most racist system in the world. By law in USSR, I was not allowed to marry a foreign girl, and--Marx forbid!--to make love to her, because the Communist Party has control on my genes and chromosomes. I was not allowed to marry into an ‘inferior race,’ and this is something that I have desperately tried to explain to your civil rights activists who blame America.

They show you these pictures, taken from Time magazine: a black South African showing his passport. “Worldwide outcry against racism.” Yes, it is a shame to deny certain parts of a population--the majority of blacks in South Africa--their political rights. I am not debating that. Yes, it is a shame to have a passport, an internal document, which is unheard of in the United States, with a picture, description of nationality or racial origin, and a police rubber stamp, which prescribes for this man where he is supposed to live. His place of residence, right?

Now, why don’t you look at this passport--it is my passport, a Soviet passport. There is my picture. There is a police rubber stamp which prescribes where I have to reside, and there is my indication of racial origin on the right bottom line; it says ‘Ruski,’ Russian. I was lucky to be Russian. But if I were born a Jew in a God-forsaken village, I had no right to move from one city to another. Now there are demonstrations in front of the South African Embassy because 30 blacks were killed in South Africa. Have you ever heard about anyone of your liberal establishment demonstrating in front of the Soviet embassy, [which] killed 15 million Ukrainians, 2 million Crimean Tartars, and thousands of other ethnic minorities in my country? Where are your Jesse Jacksons? Why don’t they demonstrate in front of the Soviet embassy? Please explain it to me; maybe I’m a dumb Russian. Maybe I don’t understand what racism is. THIS IS RACISM!

Coming back to my wife’s story--the Communist Party didn’t want me to marry an Indian girl, so I had to marry this nice Russian girl in the middle. I couldn’t stand her, but that was the desire of my superiors. A Soviet bureaucrat of my caliber is not allowed to marry anyone he wants. My wife has to go through security clearance. Without love, husband and wife in the Soviet bureaucracy become virtually informers on each other to prevent defection. And if you behave like a good boy, if you marry who they want you to marry, this is what happens.

A status symbol of a Soviet young bureaucrat, government job, private car, nice-looking wife who speaks English--she hates you very much and reports everything you say to KGB--and a transistor radio, manufactured in Japan to listen to Voice of America.

[Picture not from book.]If you behave like a good boy, they promote you. You can see me on the right as a press officer of the USSR Embassy translating a speech by a Soviet boss on the occasion of the commissioning of this oil refinery in India. When the job was done, I was transferred back to Moscow to work for the Novosti Press Agency.

This is headquarters of Novosti. Novosti means ‘news’ in Russian. Novosti has nothing to do with news. Novosti is the KGB-controlled front for political indoctrination, ideological subversion, espionage and terrorism.

Part of my job was to manipulate and befriend students of Patrice Lumumba Friendship University. This is a group of such students visiting the Kremlin with me. They don’t look like students, and they were not. Nor were they spies.

They were future agents of disinformation, subversion and terrorism. They were imported to the USSR from Asia, Africa and Latin America, trained at Lumumba Friendship University, then for two years in KGB school, then dispatched back to their countries. And after a short period of time, they become leaders of national liberation movements.

And when they destabilize their own country, they start indiscriminately shooting and killing their own people. And when they do that, beautiful journalists of the United States describe these bandits as “anti-government guerrillas,” “leftist rebels,” right? Some even come forward with such fancy names as “freedom fighters,” or “fighters for majority rule.” Now, when Salvadorans want to fight back against these KGB-trained bandits and assassins and rapists, when Salvadorans shoot back, what does The New York Times call them? “Death squads,” “right-wing death squads.” Now, these are left-wing death squads. You ever heard this name in your media? Why not? Explain to me why not.

Continued in Part Two.

Black is Beautiful: Introduction

2009-04-30T11:32:00.000-07:00

The following is the text of Yuri Bezmenov's pamphlet, Black is Beautiful, Communism is Not. I have included scans of the pictures where or near to where they appear in the text. I have performed some minor grammatical edits to the text, most of which are demarcated with "[]" brackets. Some typos from the OCR may remain. Credit is due to T. from Germany for scanning the book.

The PDF is here.

Black is Beautiful is similar in many respects to Love Letter to America and Bezmenov's interview with G. Edward Griffin and lecture to a group in Los Angeles, both available on YouTube. This document is merely the transcript of a similar talk that Bezmenov gave to a CAUSA group in Atlanta. Presumably Bezmenov gave this talk many other places around the country.

The booklet contains many of the same anecdotes, and the pictures are mostly identical to the ones shown in the Griffin interview. Apparently Bezmenov used the same slide show wherever he went.

However, there are many new ideas in this booklet, and even for the old ones it is helpful to hear him expound on them in a different way. He also says a number of bizarre and controversial things beyond his main thesis. I am talking about passages such as:

Believe me please, there was no grass, no root, no revolution, and least of all Islam. There is no such thing as an Islamic revolution. Revolution has nothing to do with Islam. There is no such thing as Islamic terrorists.

Or:

The main objective of [the] KGB is to turn you from an open society, as I described in this diagram, to a closed one, which is carbon copy of the Soviet communist, or socialist, or fascist society. Why? Why would they bother? Very simple. To merge into one global system.

Or:

Your media lies to you. Why? Media is a part of the process of demoralization. They are monopolized today. They are controlled by the same group of people, unelected, super-rich and super-powerful people who trade with murders of my nation in the Kremlin.

(Emphasis mine.) These passages need to be taken within the larger context, but even then many of them are extraneous and misleading from Bezmenov's central point.

He doesn't mean that Islamic terrorism doesn't exist, but that it isn't naturally Islamic, and it didn't begin as an organic movement. He goes too far when he says that Muslims don't hate Christians and don't want to kill them, because some of them do. But his point, that terrorism is an invention of Soviet communism and not a natural development in the Muslim world, is correct. He neglects to mention that the Islamic world was incredibly susceptible to anti-American propaganda and already had the discipline and commitment necessary to commit violent, often suicidal acts of terrorism.

The second passage I have quoted could be construed by some conspiracy-theory-mongers to mean that the KGB is part of a "New World Order" conspiracy controlled by a higher group, perhaps "international bankers." This is nonsense; and in fact many of these theories have been formulated by disinformation wizards in the KGB specifically to discredit those who outline the actual activities of the Soviet junta.

The problem is that today these wacky theories are disconnected from their roots in actual Soviet propaganda, or more accurately, their overt diplomatic chatter. In the 70s and 80s the Soviets were talking about a lessening of Communist ideology, and talked up how similar they were to the West and the United States. They spoke about how eventually the two systems of capitalism and socialism would converge into a global system. This was music to the ears of Western liberals who believed that ideological opposition to socialism and communism were merely xenophobia and racism in disguise, and that, in the words of Jimmy Carter, we no longer needed "an inordinate fear of communism."

"Commies: they're just like us"-- that was the message. Even so-called dissidents like Andrei Sakharov peddled this message, for instance in his book Progress, Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom.

This also catered to the wishes of the American right-wing or Republican leaders, who wanted to believe there was a strong democratic, intellectual movement for freedom in the Soviet Union, and that only by working together with the system could real change be achieved. Thus President Reagan softened to Gorbachev and President George H.W. Bush spoke of a "new world order."

These events are completely taken out of their context by NWO people. So could this saying of Bezmenov's. But he is saying precisely the opposite of the Soviet propagandists; that is, that there is no possible merging of Soviet communism and Western capitalism. The world government would not be some secret intergovernmental body as the NWO people imagine, perhaps run by Zionist Illuminati bankers or some such nonsense, but merely the Soviet (and probably also the Chinese) Politburo.

Those who are innocent of this topic may take these as the same thing (wild conspiracy theory). They are not. One is completely divorced from reality and is based on flights of fancy, the other is (or was) the stated goal of international communism.

Finally, in the third passage I have brought to your attention, Bezmenov says that the "media" is "controlled" but a super-rich elite who are also responsible for fighting war in Vietnam while also subsidizing their real enemy in Vietnam, the Soviet Union. This also strikes me immediately as wild, unsubstantiated conspiracy theory. Later in that paragraph he remarks that those who "send billions of dollars of credit to the Soviet government" are same same people who "control your media."

What is he talking about? As best as I can surmise, he just means by "same group of people," the "establishment" mentality of the elite who occupy the positions of power in the media and the government, who suck up lies about the Soviet Union and think that by providing credit to communists (financial in the case of government, moral in the case of media), they can somehow defeat communism.

One more point: Some of Bezmenov's recommendations involve evangelical Christianity and for this reason can be distasteful. He advises us to listen to Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart, and Jerry Falwell. He apparently thinks that the theory of evolution is a demoralizing force: "Bring prayer back to school. No matter what prayer, as long as your children will remember that their grand-grand-grandparents were not monkeys." Perhaps the idea of evolution is demoralizing, but it doesn't mean it's not true. I myself would identify Bezmenov's indifference about Christian religion (he is apparently Orthodox, but goes to a Catholic church, and advises us to listen to evangelical preachers) as the result of demoralization; his own chart "The Subversion Process" lists the "methods" of "demoralization" for religion as "politicize, commercialize, entertainment." I would include Robertson et al. in that category.

As I have said before, Bezmenov is largely impressionistic and tends to exaggerate. For this reason what he says should be taken with a grain of salt. However, his main thesis, that the Soviet Union aims to demoralize Western society by destroying everything of cohesive value in it, and thus make it ready for conquering, is extremely important. Of course it needs to be combined with other more serious and academic accounts. But Bezmenov is more fun.

He is at his best in such passages as:

I was filthy rich by Soviet standards. Maybe not as filthy as your Jane Fonda, but definitely rich. My father was a big boss in the military; I was a frequent traveler. I could buy anything I want. Just one telephone call-- television sets, cars, booze, girls, you name it. Try to understand leaving all this behind to run to the United States to take the side of losers—-you! And what do I get for this? For the last 15 years I have been screaming, “Wake up people!” What do I get in return? More than 15 countries since my defection have been occupied by communists. And yet your media calls me paranoid, right-wing fanatic, ultra-conservative, McCarthyist, or whatever.

And:

I described it in this little booklet, which I peddle for $5; I know it’s highway robbery. Consider it support of a needy family—mine. I must compete with Jane Fonda. I describe the process in which I took part, the process of ideological subversion, which has nothing to do with espionage. It has something to do with your perception of reality. Why does the KGB want to mess up your minds? Very simple. Soviet international communists realize perfectly well they cannot defeat United States economically or militarily. They cannot force your government to do what they want it to do because your government is being changed every four years. You mess up Jimmy Carter; then along comes Ronald Reagan. It’s impossible. But it is possible to confuse the minds of millions of Americans so that YOU will force your government to do what the communists want you to do.

And:

And that’s where I come into conflict with your beautiful intellectuals. They say, “Mr. Schuman, you don’t know our Constitution, especially our Declaration of Independence . It says, ‘We, the people, take it as self-evident truth that all men are created equal.’” See how ignorant I am? I don’t know your Constitution. Believe me, I know. I read it at the age of 15, and I was amazed how simple and how beautiful it is. It is the best constitution in the world. First of all, there is no period, there is a comma. Your liberals quote only one line: “We, the people, take it as self-evident truth that all men are created equal.”

Well, read it yourself...

Go to Part One.

"If you think that I am crazy, please ask Mexicans."

2009-04-29T08:30:00.000-07:00

Coming soon:

The following excerpts are from a talk on DISINFORMATION IN THE LIBERAL MEDIA, given March 26 [1985] at a CAUSA USA Regional Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. The speaker, Mr. Tomas Schuman (Yuri Bezmenov), was formerly a correspondent for the Soviet Novosti Press Agency, specializing in producing disinformation for the foreign media. A defector, Mr. Schuman now works as a political analyst and public speaker on disinformation and other activities of the Soviet KGB.

Continue to the Introduction.

Preobrazhenskiy/Bukovsky Interview

2009-04-27T11:59:00.001-07:00

Konstantin Preobrazhenskiy, a former KGB/FSB officer who now lives in the United States, recently interviewed the Soviet dissident and Russian opposition party leader Vladimir Bukovsky.

They discussed the KGB infiltration of the Russian Church, Putin's deception of world leaders including President Bush, and the manner in which President Obama is likely to be deceived. Here is an excerpt:

Preobrazhensky: Kremlin propaganda has openly called America the number one enemy. Many Russians are sure that America wants to destroy their country. Recently, the President of Ingushetia (the Russian Caucasus), an official person, has said so too. For Americans, it is hard to understand that Putin doesn’t need friendship with their country at all. He mostly needs the U.S. as a symbol of the exterior threat, which is so necessary for consolidating Russians in a time of crisis. Also, the ideas of American democracy penetrated into Russia in 1990s, so Putin has to cauterize them.

Bukovsky: The editors of the Western media tolerate the tone of their Moscow correspondents. The west has managed to justify even Putin’s severely anti-Western Munich speech by explaining it on the basis of some domestic factors. The Western leaders do not want to make Putin angry, naively believing that it will help them. While in fact that is just what Putin needs. Putin tells the West: “You are hostile!” and the West makes all possible concessions in order not to anger Putin again. Because Americans live in a society without conflicts, hostility causes stress, under which Americans have not been accustomed to live. But we Russians can tolerate it very well. Because we have been brought up in an atmosphere of police arbitrariness, of total boorishness. We all have stood in endless queues for many hours in order to buy something in the empty Soviet stores. Americans are much more vulnerable than Russians.

Preobrazhensky: And that is why Obama wants to improve relations with Russia.

Bukovsky: “Improving relations” is a senseless phrase. The West was also improving relations with the Soviet Union in the period of détente, but it resulted in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Preobrazhensky: But the new American President wants to seriously understand what is separating us.

Coincidentally, I have just read books by both Preobrazhenskiy and Bukovsky and will review them here shortly.

The interview is on FrontPage Magazine.

Editor's Note

2009-04-21T11:01:00.001-07:00

I will no longer be using Useless Dissident to comment on current news stories or recent articles. I will now use this space only to review the books I have been reading on the subjects of intelligence, Russian history, Communism, and espionage. Upcoming reviews:

Abel, by Louise Bernikow
To Build a Castle, by Vladimir Bukovsky
New Lies for Old, by Anatoly Golitsyn
Spy Wars, by Pete Bagley
Deception, by Edward Jay Epstein
On the Wrong Side, by Stanislav Levchenko
KGB/FSB's New Trojan Horse, by Konstantin Preobrazhensky

History Lesson

2009-04-13T23:05:00.000-07:00

From Lt. General Ion Mihai Pacepa:

The Cold War and the Iraq War are far from being identical. But they are similar. In both wars our enemies were armed with Kalashnikovs and Katyusha rockets. And in both wars our enemies were indoctrinated by Moscow to hate Americans. In 1972, Yury Andropov, the first KGB chairman to be enthroned in the Kremlin, tasked the Soviet bloc intelligence community to transform Palestinian anti-Semitism into an armed anti-American doctrine throughout the whole Islamic world. A billion adversaries could inflict far greater damage on America than a million could,” he told me. Our task was to portray the U.S. as a Zionist country dedicated to converting the Islamic world into a Jewish colony. The KGB chairman explained that Islamic cultures would be uniquely receptive to our goals. They had a taste for nationalism, jingoism and victimology. Their oppressed mobs could be whipped up to a fever pitch. Terrorism and violence against “Zionist America” would flow naturally from their religious fervor.

Sounds familiar?

We do not have an instrument to measure the results of intelligence influence operations. But over the course of thirty-some years the Soviet bloc community spread millions of Protocols of the Elders of Zion (a tsarist Russian forgery that had become the basis for much of Hitler’s anti-Semitic philosophy) in the Islamic world. It also sent thousands of influence agents to the same area, tasked to portray the U.S. as a country intent on subjugating the world to Jewish interests. It is safe to presume that this combined effort must have played a role in generating the hatred for America that is now screamed forth across the Islamic world.

[...]

The general perception is that Germany was the cradle of contemporary anti-Semitism. But before we had the word Holocaust we had the Russian word pogrom, meaning massacre. An official Russian dictionary of 1939 defines pogrom as the government-organized mass slaughter of some element of the population as a group, such as the Jewish pogroms in tsarist Russia. Russia’s first major pogrom against the Jews took place on April 15, 1881, in the Ukrainian town of Yelisavetgrad.

Totalitarianism always requires a tangible enemy.

The Protocols was compiled by the tsarist political police, the Okhrana, to compromise Russia’s Jewish minister of finance, Sergey Witte, who wanted to modernize the country. The author of the Protocols was an Okhrana disinformation expert, Petr Ivanovich Rachovsky, who was assigned to France at that time and had been inspired by the enormous wave of anti-Semitism aroused by the Dreyfus controversy. Rachovsky lifted most of his text from an obscure, 1864 French satire called Dialogue aux Enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu (Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu), written by Maurice Joly and accusing Emperor Napoleon III of plotting to seize all the powers in French society. Rachovsky had essentially done nothing more than substitute the words the world for France and the Jews for Napoleon III.

To disguise its hand, the Okhrana claimed the Protocols to be the minutes of the first Zionist Congress (held in Basel, Switzerland in 1897), at which the Jews had allegedly plotted to take over the world.

The Protocols are one of the most resilient pieces of disinformation in history. In 1921, the Times of London published a devastating exposure of the forgery by printing extracts from the Protocols side-by-side with the passages from the Joly book that had been plagiarized. That did not stop the Protocols from becoming the basis for much of Hitler’s anti-Semitic philosophy as expressed in Mein Kampf, written in 1923. In fact, Nazi Germany later translated the Protocols into many languages and flooded the world with them to support its allegation that there was a Jewish conspiracy aimed at world domination, and to demonstrate that the persecution of Jews was a necessary self-defense for Germany.

After the Soviet Union collapsed, the Protocols began infecting Russia itself. The state-controlled Orthodox Church, alleging Jewish plans to overthrow Christianity in Russia, started printing the Protocols and selling them to the population. In October 1998 Albert Makashov, a retired Soviet general and member of the Duma, called for the “extermination of all Jews in Russia,” after insinuating that they were being paid by American Zionism. On November 4, 1998, the Duma officially endorsed Makashov’s statement by voting (121-107) to defeat a parliamentary motion censuring his hate-filled statement. On August 3, 2001, a letter from ninety-eight U.S. Senators expressing concern about the rise of anti-Semitism in the Russian Federation was sent to President Putin.

Footnotes excised. For more, read the original at FrontPage Magazine.

Did This Happen Without Help?

2009-04-09T09:26:00.000-07:00

Just 53% Say Capitalism Better Than Socialism (Rasmussen):

Only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 20% disagree and say socialism is better. Twenty-seven percent (27%) are not sure which is better.

Adults under 30 are essentially evenly divided: 37% prefer capitalism, 33% socialism, and 30% are undecided. Thirty-somethings are a bit more supportive of the free-enterprise approach with 49% for capitalism and 26% for socialism. Adults over 40 strongly favor capitalism, and just 13% of those older Americans believe socialism is better.

Yuri Bezmenov, Love Letter to America:

All you have to do to “screw up” the status quo of a free nation, is to borrow ONE false idea from the ideology of a communist or totalitarian government. For the sake of simplicity, I have chosen the idea of “egalitarianism.” “People born equal therefore must be equal.” Sounds great. But look at yourselves. Were you born equal? Some of you weighed 7 pounds at birth, others 6 or 5... Are you NOW equal? In any way? Physically, mentally, emotionally, racially, spiritually? Some are tall and dumb, others short, bald and clever. Now, let's figure out what will happen if we LEGISLATE EQUALITY, and make the concept of “equality” a cornerstone and pillar of socio-economical and political system. All right? You don't have to be a great economist or sociologist to foresee that some of the people who are “less equal” would demand as much as those who are “more equal” BY LAW!

For how long have we been educating the youth of America, and in how many places, in this false principle of "equality" and not in the goodness of the American system of government and capitalism?

To change the direction of America's future and to return to the basic American values, proven to be efficient and productive for almost 200 years of historically unprecedented freedom and affluence, you have to educate a NEW generation of Americans, this time in the spirit of patriotism and CAPITALISM. All right, you don't want to 'return.’ You'd rather have something new and progressive AND constructive, to make America once again respected and loved all over the world, so that the recipients of t he U.S. aid no longer shout 'Yankee Go Home’? In any case, even if you start the education of a NEW generation of Americans RIGHT THIS MINUTE, it will take you the next 15 to 20 years to raise this new generation to the levels of power and authority.

What hope do we currently have of wrenching the power to educate our children away from the academic Marxists?

It is no absurdity to believe that leftist control of education is the reason why half our young people think socialism is better than capitalism, despite the nourishment they have received from capitalism, despite the greatness of the American system, which is capitalist, and despite all of the inefficiencies, loss of freedom, and horrors that are or should be associated with socialism around the world. This is not some natural development of thought-- one generation more inclined to socialism than the next. It is the result of a conscious and directed effort that has not been sufficiently opposed and counter-balanced.

Aw Geez, Don't Sell Drones to Russia! and Other Stories

2009-04-08T13:45:00.000-07:00

Russia buys unmanned drones from Israel: report (AFP):

Russia has purchased its first unmanned drones from Israel after its own manufacturers turned out to be ineffective at making the high-tech reconnaissance aircraft, a newspaper reported Tuesday.

Yea, there's no arms embargo against Russia, but there should be.

Russia is in the midst of an ongoing effort to modernise its military and equip its armed forces with up-to-date technology.

Of course, they're not preparing for anything, just repairing and updating equipment. Nothing to see here. Summon: cliché of "rusting Soviet-era tanks." Most people I talk to honestly believe that Russia's military is old and obsolete, not a threat to anyone. Summon: paranoid conspiracy theorist voice: that's what they want you to think!

And those drones? Not double-headed eagles or solely Russian Federation colors to be emblazoned on them. Also Soviet red stars!:

Lawmakers keep red stars on Russian planes (AP):

Russian lawmakers on Wednesday reversed their earlier decision to have Soviet-era red stars on military aircraft repainted in three colors of the national flag.

The Kremlin-controlled lower house of parliament voted 408-0 with one abstention to keep the five-pointed stars red and only add stripes in the national colors around their contour.

The move reverses the preliminary approval in December of a bill that called for repainting the stars in red, white and blue.

No, the Duma isn't a sham body whose members live in fear of persecution for dissension, or anything. It's just that not one member was excepted from the mass change-of-heart that precipitated this re-embracing of the Soviet era.

But anyone who sees ominous tidings in this, well... they just haven't gotten rid of that "Cold War mentality."

Meanwhile...

Iran to say mastering final stage of nuclear cycle (Reuters):

"I will have good nuclear news for the honored Iranian nation tomorrow (April 9)," Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday in a televised speech at the central city of Isfahan.

A peaceful nuclear reactor for peaceful energy for peace and peace and stuff?

[A]nalysts expected Ahmadinejad to say that Iran has perfected the last of several phases of fuel output.

"A possible announcement will be production of natural uranium pellets (in Isfahan) for Iran's Arak heavy water reactor and also production of fuel rods and assembling rods into bundles," said an analyst who asked not to be named, citing the issue's political sensitivities. "It is the final stage in a long process to produce nuclear fuel."

Oh. But... Russia has our back on this right? They are our partner in opposing the nuclear ambitions of terrorist-sponsoring, unstable, autocratic regimes, I thought... didn't we talk about giving up missile defense facilities Poland and the Czech Republic in exchange for their help? Yea, we can count on Russia.

Oh:

Russia opposes sanctions against N.Korea over rocket launch (Novosti):

"We are definitely concerned by the recent rocket launch and believe it does not offer grounds for stabilizing the situation in the region," Sergei Lavrov said, adding that "we also believe that any threat of sanctions would be counterproductive."

Why would it be counterproductive? They didn't say. Presumably it might upset them, causing them to... launch a missile when we said they couldn't?

Ok, then, at least the United States will oppose Iran.

US to attend group nuclear talks with Iran (AP):

The Obama administration said Wednesday it will participate directly in group talks with Iran over its suspect nuclear program, marking another shift from former President George W. Bush's policy.

Oh, talks. That sounds scary. At least it's "a shift" from Bush's policy of not meeting with Iran, except for all of those times that we met with them.

"If Iran accepts, we hope this will be the occasion to seriously engage Iran on how to break the logjam of recent years and work in a cooperative manner to resolve the outstanding international concerns about its nuclear program," [State Department spokesman Robert Wood] said. "Any breakthrough will be the result of the collective efforts of all the parties, including Iran."

Oh, yea? That sounds promising! Let me know how that works out...

Well, maybe Israel will do something about it. You know, besides selling sophisticated drones to Iran's main ally in nuclear weapon acquisition.

Our Utility Networks are Vulnerable?

2009-04-07T22:10:00.000-07:00

Siobhan Gorman, WSJ:

Cyberspies have penetrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system, according to current and former national-security officials.

The spies came from China, Russia and other countries, these officials said, and were believed to be on a mission to navigate the U.S. electrical system and its controls. The intruders haven't sought to damage the power grid or other key infrastructure, but officials warned they could try during a crisis or war.

Of course they would. It would be leverage against us (i.e. we will take out your power if you don't...) or a way of creating mass havoc at a time of war or invasion.

With this latest in a string of very serious revelations about the threats posed by Russia and China, not jut Iran and North Korea, we will of course hear the same responses:

-These intrusions are coming from individuals, not governments.
-What reasons would Russia and China have to compromise our security?
-I'm more afraid of this being used to deny us our civil liberties.
-etc.

The sophistication of the U.S. intrusions -- which extend beyond electric to other key infrastructure systems -- suggests that China and Russia are mainly responsible, according to intelligence officials and cybersecurity specialists. While terrorist groups could develop the ability to penetrate U.S. infrastructure, they don't appear to have yet mounted attacks, these officials say.

As in the recent news about Chinese worms, private computer network intrusions and theft of sensitive information, the attacks are marked by 'sophistication.' Either the Russians and Chinese are doing a poor job of making their preparations look like the work of individuals, or they are unable to fool our own sophisticated analysts. One thing, however, is certain:

Officials cautioned that the motivation of the cyberspies wasn't well understood, and they don't see an immediate danger.

Our own lack of perspective on these events is the real problem. The Spartans (Russia and China) will do what the Spartans will do. It is the free world that must be on alert.

Unfortunately, we will only squabble amongst ourselves and vote in European trans-nationalists who think defending one's country is bigoted and fascistic, down to the very day when Russia or China would use these methods to compromise us. We better hope that they have no such plans, that everything that has been happening recently is simply evidence of increased surveillance and intelligence work, routine and ordinary and not part of any strategy to attack us. Just as we want to be stronger than they, after all, they want to be stronger than us.

They wouldn't even have to try very hard. They can just say "Iran poses no threat," and we believe it, or half the country believes it. In fact they take our own words and arguments, which may have come from them in the first place in some respect, and throw them right back at us, and we take it as original and unique.

"This president," the Russians say. "We can work with him." Indeed. "Some people in the U.S. still have a Cold War mentality." Indeed again.

It is nearly impossible to know whether or not an attack is government-sponsored because of the difficulty in tracking true identities in cyberspace. U.S. officials said investigators have followed electronic trails of stolen data to China and Russia.

And the Russians have denied it; the Chinese have denied it. And half the country will take their word for it, because to believe otherwise would contradict their childish world view. Out of the second half, four-fifths will ignore it as unpleasant to think about, and after all, a long way off and seemingly inconceivable (that one day, the Chinese and Russians will attack us, utilizing all sorts of agents and methods and controls that had been put into place while we weren't paying attention). The other fifth is ignorant anyway, and even though they rightly fear the Spartans, don't really understand them. The quantity of those who recognize and think rationally about the threat is negligible.

Of course, just because the Russians could smuggle a nuclear weapon in a suitcase across the Mexican border under the guise of terrorists and set it off in Washington, doesn't mean they will or even that they want to. Even though the Chinese, say, could hijack our electrical networks in the midst of a surprise attack by them, doesn't mean they will. The goal, if there is a goal, is still:

All warfare is based primarily on the deception of an enemy. Fighting on a battlefield is the most primitive way of making war. There is no art higher than to destroy your enemy without a fight—by SUBVERTING anything of value in the enemy’s country.

But that doesn't mean there won't be preparations in the case of collapse or civil war. Russia and China would beat themselves up endlessly if a serious crisis erupted in the United States and they were unable to take advantage of it. They must always be ready, but especially at tense and unstable times. That is why they are probing so much and so often right now. We are detecting some of their probes, but they are banking on us getting distracted and forgetting about it, too much focused on "hope" and "change" and economy.

We see here, another conservative publication make the argument:

China, for example, has little incentive to disrupt the U.S. economy because it relies on American consumers and holds U.S. government debt.

Gordon Chang recently made this argument in National Review. It is a dangerous thing to assume, that economy always trumps ideology. It doesn't, especially not with Leninists. We are seeing this in our own country right now, with the false centrism of Barack Obama, and his party's cynical exploitation of an economic and political crisis to make changes based not on economic rationalism but on ideology with a view to 'social justice' and world perception.

Finally, a point about those intrusions into the grids. We may shore up our cyber-defenses, and that's good. But the hackers may have created superusers and hidden administrator accounts that can lie dormant, ready to be turned on. What's more, it's highly possible and almost certain to be the case in at least a few instances that these utility companies have moles or spies in them who have helped to create vulnerabilities from the inside, or at least pointed out to their Russian and Chinese handlers possible vulnerabilities.

Or maybe it's just that "some people overseas with [a] Cold War mentality are indulged in fabricating the sheer lies of the so-called cyberspies in China."

The Chinese Are Not Our Friends

2009-04-07T12:18:00.000-07:00

Casting new light on the "cooperation" between the United States and China on the North Korea problem: China is helping Iran get the materials they need to construct nuclear missiles:

Officials plan to unseal a 118-count indictment Tuesday accusing a Chinese national of setting up a handful of fake companies to hide that he was selling millions of dollars in potential nuclear materials to Tehran.

It's a good thing we caught them. But how many networks like this are we privy to? How much of this kind of thing is going on behind our back?

Every time something like this-- Chinese hacker networks stealing defense information from government computers, Russian journalists murdered in the street by the FSB, secret lines of communication between Russia and Syria, say-- it belies the "partnerships" and "cooperation" we supposedly have with these countries. They are not our friends, no matter how much we want to believe it. They work toward our destruction.

The indictment will outline the financial conspiracy behind 58 different transactions, including shipments of various banned materials from China to Iran between 2006 and late 2008.

Among them:

* 33,000 pounds of a specialized aluminum alloy used almost exclusively in long-range missile production.
* 66,000 pounds of tungsten copper plate, which is used in missile guidance systems.
* 53,900 pounds of maraging steel rods, a superhard metal used in uranium enrichment and to make the casings for nuclear bombs.

And yet we act as if China is key to "pressuring" North Korea not to go ahead with their own missile plans.

Another article on this story has more information on the implication of British bank Lloyds TSB Bank plc, "which allowed Iran and other sanctioned countries illegal access to the U.S. financial system":

Prosecutors in January said they found evidence of Iranian interests trying to buy tungsten and other materials used in the guidance systems of long-range missiles. Lloyds wasn’t the bank involved in those attempts, prosecutors said.

At the time, Morgenthau said nine major foreign banks besides Lloyds were under investigation for using the same technique to disguise illegal money transfers. Credit Suisse Group AG and Barclays Plc have said they’re cooperating in the probe.

U.S. banks have software filters that look for entities barred from doing business in the country, prosecutors said. Lloyds stripped out identifying features on the wires so the filters wouldn’t catch them. Credit Suisse and Barclays say they are among the banks that have been probed for their handling of money subject to sanctions.

I am no anti-capitalist, but on questions of national security and national interest, the desire for profit must be curbed. Banks and other firms must not be allowed to bring about the conditions of destruction of free society just to obtain some filthy lucre.

But this is not just a question of desire for profit jeopardizing our national security. It is a revelation about the fundamental goals and positions of the Chinese government.

This should be a huge, huge story, a scandal splashed across the front page of every newspaper in the country. Here is our main "ally," the second biggest economy in the world after ourselves, who just a moment ago was "helping" us "put pressure" on another dangerous nuclear threat, caught red-handed pursuing a policy of helping another dangerous nuclear threat become more nuclear-enabled and more dangerous.

But it will not be a big story, because it contradicts our wishful thinking about China. China's just a country that wants to make money like any other, the story goes. They wouldn't do anything to sacrifice their economic stability. They are only involved in this for the money, they'll say. Those Chinese, they are unpredictable and strange.

No one wants to hear such a story because China provides massive exports to the United States; foolishly we have tied up our economy with theirs. (For this reason some make the mistaken argument-- see, for instance, the article "Eastern Exposure" by Gordon G. Chang in the April 6 issue of National Review-- that China therefore has more to lose from this economic downturn than the United States, because we at least do not rely on foreign customers.) The import-export balance is only part of the picture. The Chinese own large quantity of our debt, and aren't in debt themselves.

So this is not some sort of conspiracy-theory-mongering. It is a basic reality of the world, made evident periodically. But with our short-term, hopeful outlook, we always forget.

Charles Krauthammer, though, gets it:

Well, the administration is pretending, as we heard from Susan Rice, that China is on our side on this. It's not. It has no interest in weakening its ally and puppet in Pyongyang. It's working against us.

We are not going to get a resolution of any sort. Even if we did, it would have no influence.

As for the presidential statement, which is a weak alternative, as Bill indicated, we couldn't even get a presidential statement from the council because China objected to any expression and use of the word "concern," let alone "condemn" or "denounce."

So it's entirely a fantasy. But what makes it worse is that Obama, in Prague, spoke about getting the whole world behind us. He spoke about the international community, which is, in and of itself, is a fiction. He spoke about the U.N. and these resolutions having force, which is also a fiction.

He spoke about a world without nuclear weapons, which is beyond a fiction. It's a childish fantasy.

And what does he talk about? America signing the test ban treaty and working on START talks with the Russians. They are both useless.

Our only defense, our only incremental increase in our defense against these weapons is missile defense. And what the Obama administration announced a day after the launching of this missile from North Korea? A drastic cut in missile defense, which is our only hope of having something which would be effective.

And onward we march to the tune of Obama's childish fantasies...

Comrade Obama

2009-04-03T11:13:00.001-07:00

To American audiences, it's a joke:

Russia's Dmitry Medvedev hailed Barack Obama as "my new comrade" Thursday after their first face-to-face talks, saying the US president "can listen" -- even if little progress was made on substance.

But to Russian ones it is a signal-- you have no friend in President Obama. He, and the world, are going our way. And there is nothing you can do about it.

Otherwise, the substance of the Russians' remarks were catered to American ears, American audiences. They are reinforcing our own little delusions about the nature of American foreign policy and this historic 'change' that has taken place. Interspersed are subtle jabs, announcements of victory:

"I liked the talks. It is easy to talk to him. He can listen. The start of this relationship is good," he said, adding: "Today it's a totally different situation (compared to Bush)... This suits me quite well."

And again:

"Today from the United States there is at least a desire to listen to our arguments," he said, adding that: "Such defence measures should be carried out jointly" between Washington and Moscow.

The missile defence plan was "a mistake that the previous US administration is responsible for. Many of my European colleagues also believe this," the Russian leader added, without specifying who.

Obama, speaking on Wednesday, admitted US-Russian ties had cooled, saying: "What we've seen over the last several years is drift in the US-Russian relationship.

"There are very real differences between the United States and Russia, and I have no interest in papering those over. But there are also a broad set of common interests that we can pursue," he said.

The notion that the Russians were hurt and offended by the intransigence and belligerence of the mean Bush, but now are heartened by the open and friendly Obama, is quite ludicrous. Yet it is exactly what the Obama people, and their loyal denizens in the media, and thus all sophisticated Americans, actually believe.

In reality, Bush was almost as taken in by the Russians as Obama was. However, he was not an ideologue, so he wasn't about to 1) compromise on missile defense, 2) leave our true allies in the cold, 3) disarm nuclear weapons, and 4) apologize for American arrogance. Obama has already done most of those things, and is prepared and eager to carry them out completely. It is a very, very dangerous thing.

Meanwhile...:

"It's impossible that capitalism can regulate the monster that is the world financial system, it's impossible," Chavez told Venezuela's state TV late Thursday. "Capitalism needs to go down. It has to end. And we must take a transitional road to a new model that we call socialism."

Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, shared that critique, saying "some decisions by the world leaders cannot restore dead imperialism."

The two leaders, appearing Friday at the inauguration of joint commercial bank, referred to their nations as the "G-2." In recent years, Chavez and Ahmadinejad—both well-known for their anti-U.S. rhetoric—have boosted economic and political ties.

We ignore the growing alliance between Iran and Venezuela...

...a partnership that is almost certainly fostered by Russia...

and yet our new administration is 'pushing the reset button' on relations with Russia.

Russia, our friend, our strategic partner...

Just like China...

Russia, China...

Apologizing for American arrogance, asserting European prominence, representing American spinelessness, bowing to barbaric dictators...

And everybody's happy:

Disarmament, etc.

2009-04-02T11:41:00.000-07:00

As far as I'm concerned, what has just happened is very bad for so-called "Russian-U.S. relations":

The United States and Russia set a newly ambitious course for global cooperation Wednesday as presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev ordered negotiators into immediate action on a treaty to further reduce nuclear weapons.

This is, of course, what Obama promised he would do. There is no negotiation here; it is mere surrender. Obama and his foreign policy people naively believe that the only way we can "improve relations" with Russia is by admitting fault and negotiating on their terms.

John Bolton has a good article on this in the latest issue of National Review. Basically he makes the point that one side can't unilaterally "push the reset button" on relations without completely acquiescing to the desires of the other country. But this is the naive, peacenik foreign policy. This is what it amounts to.

The justification, absurd as it is, is accepted by many Americans, stupefied as they are by their indoctrinating education. It's this simple: Bush's attitude has caused all of our problems with Russia. Now that he is gone, our attitude is different, and so everything is different. The naivete of this is astounding.

Meanwhile, the Russian government continues to murder journalists in the street:

A newspaper employee in a Moscow suburb has died after being beaten near his home in the latest of a string of attacks on journalists in Russia, his editor said Wednesday.

But the problem was Bush's attitude? These people are children.

They don't remember that nuclear disarmament was a policy of Soviet Russia in the latter half of the 20th century-- a strategy for gaining the upper hand against the West by using its own peaceful inclinations and liberalizing influences against us. This is not Golitsyn-conspiracy stuff. This is basic reality. And the neo-Soviet regime in Russia today is pursuing this same path. But the people in charge in America are the kind of people who thought in the 70s and 80s that all we needed to due was disarm our nuclear weapons and all the world's problems would be solved.

What we have here is shocking in its scope: They set a date for "a substitute treaty for START." Obama pledged "to work for the U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty." The article happily notes that "Moscow has ratified the test ban pact, but the United States has not." Well, why not? Because we have known (until the leadership of our country was assumed by morons) that Moscow would not comply with the terms of the treaty, and we would.

The new U.S. president also said he would put his shoulder behind Russia's bid for World Trade Organization membership, a key to Moscow's integration into the global trading system.

In return, the Russians put Iran on notice that it "needs to restore confidence in its exclusively peaceful nature."

Restore confidence? When was there any notion of Iran's "peaceful nature"? Never! And yet we are making all these concessions to the belligerent Russians, whom we know are helping the Iranians with weapon and energy technology, in exchange for them to "put Iran on notice"? This is a joke.

Going into the new nuclear talks, the United States had 2,200 strategic nuclear warheads deployed; Russia has 2,800. Under the subsequent 2002 Treaty of Moscow, a plan negotiated under the Bush administration, the two sides committed to reducing their nuclear warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200.

Wait, I thought "Obama's engagement with the Russians marks a stunning reversal from policies of the Bush administration, which was disinclined to take up deep arms control negotiations..."? No? They actually agreed to something, the Americans complied and the Russians didn't? Then why the hell are we making agreements with them now?

Obama has declared his belief that the United States and Russia should take the lead in ridding the world of nuclear weapons altogether.

President Obama is either a useful idiot or a Soviet plant. There is no way he could possibly think that what he is doing is in the best interests of American safety, security, and sovereignty. Unfortunately, he is a naive transnationalist who thinks that the future of world relations lies in international bodies. Thus American security means little to him; America as such means little. That's why he is incredibly dangerous. First he leaves our crucial NATO allies, Poland and Czechoslovakia, out in the cold on the missile defense systems for which their leaders worked hard on our behalf-- for nothing, for a word. And now he is committing to American disarmament, always a long-term Russian goal-- for nothing, for word.

Together, Presidents Obama and Medvedev released a statement. It is a shameful day for American strength. Our liberal commentators are calling it a "foreign policy coup." They are idiots. It is a coup only for the Russians.

We, the leaders of Russia and the United States, are ready to move beyond Cold War mentalities and chart a fresh start in relations between our two countries. In just a few months we have worked hard to establish a new tone in our relations. Now it is time to get down to business and translate our warm words into actual achievements of benefit to Russia, the United States, and all those around the world interested in peace and prosperity.

The cynicism of the Russians knows no bounds.

Answer this, if you doubt. Why, nearly twenty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, are we still using phrases such as the "need to move beyond Cold War mentalities"? If we really had moved past that, there would be no need to say so. Instead, every indication from the Russian domestic front is that they have returned to the Cold War mentality, if they had even left it at all.

So why, now, do we pretend that they are our strategic partners? It is extremely disheartening.

Finally, a word from Iran that is telling about where we, and they, are coming from:

Iran dismissed American government reports that senior U.S. and Iran envoys had a cordial—and promising—face-to-face exchange at an international conference, saying Wednesday that no "talks" took place. The competing accounts of Tuesday's encounter in the Netherlands appeared to reflect the different approaches to overtures to end the United States' and Iran's nearly 30-year diplomat standoff.

Indeed. The purpose of the Obama administration's foreign policy doesn't seem to be to pursue the best course for the future strength and stability of the United States, but to make it seem to the American people that they are achieving all sorts of concessions and friendships with countries that only disliked us before because of the belligerence of George W. Bush. Irrational Bush-hatred will win them much esteem for a long time in America, but their actions will do us great harm. After all, our enemies are actually trying themselves to win an advantage. And Obama's weakness and naivete is already a coup for them.

I was watching the Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC and she mentioned this exchange, speaking of how much of a breakthrough this was. She said that this hadn't happened in 30 years, that-- she said in her youth culture, hip, chic, disgustingly ignorant way-- it was like a happy song from Radiohead.

In fact, the Bush administration had 28 separate meetings with Iran. But reality, to these people, is nothing but appearance.

Review: Myagkov's Inside the KGB

2009-04-01T10:58:00.000-07:00

There are numerous memoirs from KGB defectors floating around out there, mostly out-of-print and hard to find. One of them is Aleksei Myagkov’s Inside the KGB, published in 1976.

This book is certainly a good addition to any collection of accounts of former KGB officers. It is unique in that Myagkov was part of the Third Chief Directorate, responsible for military counter-intelligence in the Soviet Union. Most other accounts we have (such as the Mitrokhin Archive) and books from other defectors concern the First Chief Directorate, which performs foreign intelligence (thus giving officers a chance to defect); and the Second Chief Directorate (internal security and counter-intelligence).

Inside the KGB gives an account of how Soviet military counter-intelligence works. Myagkov was in charge of intelligence for—spying on—a Soviet army unit stationed in East Germany. The author portrays the power and prestige of the KGB, its pervasiveness and influence, its networks of informants and the total freedom it has over Soviet citizens. He also shows us the organization's opulent corruption, from the top on down, and compares it to the poverty of the people.

Of course, many similar books give such an account, and more eloquently. But this is Myagkov's own story, and an interesting one. The body of the book is framed by a thrilling tale of the author's defection during a trip to West Germany, during which he was the one who was supposed to be watching out for defection of military officers in the unit.

No KGB defector ever has the whole picture, and for that reason I think Myagkov would have been better off telling us more about his own life and responsibilities than trying to piece together an account of how the system works all the way through. Even then, the book is very quick, readable, and interesting. If you're only going to read one book about the KGB, you’re definitely better off reading something else. But Inside the KGB is a nice, quick little supplement to more weighty and far-reaching tomes.

George C. Constantinides, author of Intelligence and Espionage: An Analytical Bibliography (1983), wrote that the author's knowledge of the KGB was “largely bound by his association with this one department.” I agree. Nevertheless, Myagkov was the only defector from that department to write an account of his KGB work, as far as I know.

More News: Part Two

2009-03-31T11:16:00.000-07:00

Chinese spy ring:

China on Tuesday denied a research report's contention that a China-based computer spy ring stole sensitive information from thousands of hard drives worldwide, calling the accusation a lie meant to feed anxiety over Beijing's growing influence.

Need a weak defense? Follow China's lead. Unleash teams of hackers to steal sensitive information from governments around the world, and when called out on it, protest that they are just trying to spread "anxiety" over your "growing influence." Well yea, that is what we're doing.

Officials in the U.S., Britain and Germany have accused Chinese hackers backed by China's military of intruding into their government and defense computer networks.

How is this not a huge story? Oh, that's just China for you. Military hacking programs to steal government and defense information. No big deal, I guess.

Speaking at a media briefing, [Foreign Ministry spokesman] Qin [Jang] did not directly respond to questions about whether the network exists and if its actions are supported by the government. Instead, he said Beijing opposes criminal activities that compromise computer networks and criticized the report for claiming otherwise.

How do they get away with this? Because we tell ourselves that we are their friends, and they, ours.

The article goes on to demonstrate that these hackers are not typical Chinese nationalist hackers, or cyberpunks, or what-have-you, but a sophisticated and organized network that bares the marks and tactics of espionage. China's defense? "Their attempt to tarnish China with such lies is doomed to failure." Well, I agree. It is doomed to failure.

In a further report, Qin Jang elaborated:

"Nowadays the problem is that there are some people abroad avidly concocting rumors about China's so-called Internet espionage," spokesman Qin Gang told a regular news briefing.

"There's a ghost abroad called the Cold War and a virus called the China threat," Qin continued, breaking into English-language phrases to make his meaning clear.

"People possessed by the ghost of the Cold War constantly issue this China threat virus."

Oh, that's really clever. Ha-ha! I forgot all about your military hackers already! You brought up the Cold War, and that is so over! God forbid you should accuse us of having a Cold War mentality. Let me guess, President Obama is the right man to forge a new path and a new way of thinking, past the kind of paranoid, Cold War thinking that makes us see your theft of sensitive defense information as a threat?

"The attempts of these people to use rumors to vilify China will never succeed," said the Chinese spokesman Qin.

Again, he's probably right.

Now, we turn to a world currency. Once the domain of conspiracy theorists, it's now becoming a reality. China is on board! So is Russia! And our own Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, is open to the idea! Well, what are we waiting for?

Ahead of the Group of 20 summit in London later this week, the Kremlin has published a raft of proposals to overhaul the global economic order, including plans for a supra-national currency that could replace the US dollar.

Make no mistake, there will be some sort of decision about this at the G20 summit. Soon we will be embarking on a path toward an international currency system that is anchored not by the U.S. dollar, but by European interests ultimately controlled by Shanghai and Moscow. Of course:

US President Barack Obama has said he does not see why the dollar should be replaced and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the summit would have more immediate issues to discuss.

He says this now. But he will be singing a different tune come next month. How can our naive and simple President fail to turn down something that sounds transnational and progressive? As for China:

“This is a clear sign that China, as the largest holder of US dollar financial assets, is concerned about the potential inflationary risk of the US Federal Reserve printing money,” said Qu Hongbin, chief China economist for HSBC.

Perhaps now we see the folly in allowing the Communist Chinese ("as the largest holder of US dollar financial assets") to have a say about our economy and our dollar?

What will happen is that our administration will agree in principle that U.S. regulatory agencies should be supervised by the International Monetary Fund, an organization (unlike the World Bank) in which the U.S. has little say. This is likely to happen, and there is very little we can do about it.

Russia and their gold:

Chinese and Russian leaders both plan to open debate on an SDR-based reserve currency as an alternative to the US dollar at the G20 summit in London this week, although the world may not yet be ready for such a radical proposal.

[Arkady Dvorkevich, the Kremlin's chief economic adviser,] said it was "logical" that the new currency should include the rouble and the yuan, adding that "we could also think about more effective use of gold in this system".

Why gold? First, Russia has massive untapped gold resources. Second, Russia has been furiously buying gold assets. And lastly, the U.S. and the West have been ignoring gold for a couple decades now.

A couple new stories from today: First, apparently the Chinese have developed a special "kill weapon" to destroy U.S. aircraft carriers, according to the U.S. Naval Institute. The significance of this is unclear. But this much is obvious:

In recent years, China has been expanding its navy to presumably better exert itself in disputed maritime regions. A recent show of strength in early March led to a confrontation with an unarmed U.S. ship in international waters.

China and Russia both have been spending huge percentages of their budget on military research, development, and armament projects. This is important to keep in mind along with their current economic coup. Meanwhile, in the United States:

A Senate defense committee chairman says Pentagon budget will include large, painful cuts. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin said Tuesday that major program cuts will not be pushed off until the 2011 budget, but will be included when Defense Secretary Robert Gates sends his spending plan to the president later this month.

Different directions.

More News Than You Can Shake a Conspiracy Stick At: Part One

2009-03-31T09:46:00.000-07:00

Once Upon a Time in the West has it right: the White House had an "incredible explanation" for President Obama's meeting with former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. "The president tends to roam around the larger (White) House and sometimes walks into meetings that weren't previously on his schedule." It's incredible because it's ridiculous. The president doesn't just wander anywhere, especially not into meetings with former heads-of-state. Of course, our pliant press left that weak explanation alone. After all, Gorbachev is a good guy, right?

I wrote about Gorbachev not long ago, when he conspicuously criticized Vladimir Putin. I took that as disinformation, a shoring up of Gorbachev's ludicrous but entirely accepted image as an independent reformer, a sort of Russian maverick who is genuinely interested in world peace and things like global warming.

It's unclear why the ruse of Obama "roaming" into a meeting with Gorbachev is necessary. After all, "a delegation led by former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger visited Russia last week and met Medvedev."

Once Upon a Time in the West points us to an interview Gorbachev had with the Italian paper La Stampa after the U.S. elections. It was picked up by Novosti:

He said the Republicans have failed to realize that the Soviet Union no longer exists, that Europe has changed, and that new powers like China, Brazil and Mexico have emerged as important players on the world stage.

This theme, that "Republicans have failed to realize that the Soviet Union no longer exists," albeit silly, is important. It has been repeated often lately, and we will hear it more and more as war preparations, if that's what they are, heat up. Novosti also quoted "former Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky":

He said that, "being a liberal himself, he thinks that the world will take a left turn," and that "a global perestroika would be a logical response to the global crisis."

"The paradigm of global development is about to change. The era inaugurated by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher 30 years ago is over."

He said decisions in neoliberal economies had been made mainly by supranational institutions and transnational corporations.

This is scary stuff. As is plain for all to see, even Gorbachev's reformer persona stresses a new, internationalist, anti-sovereign world system. Perestroika, for him, is a convergence of political systems toward a unity that looks a lot more like international socialism than it does a collection of national interests unified only by capitalist trade.

This much is clear in Gorbachev's own formulation of perestroika. As Once Upon a Time quotes from Gorbachev's book, he writes, "Perestroika is closely connected with socialism as a system... We are looking within socialism, rather than outside it, for the answers to all the questions that arise... We will proceed toward better socialism rather than away from it." Gorbachev's appeal to the West is precisely his claim that socialism and democracy are compatible, which we know is nothing more than a Leninist lie.

Perestroika itself is a lie, a lie that is inherent in Leninism, a tactic outlined by Lenin himself in Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder, What is to be Done?, and many other places. It is not a spontaneous development within ideological communism that breaks down the walls of authority, but a deliberate concoction meant to appeal to the wishful thinking of the West. And it works.

A brief introduction of the devil's advocate

2009-03-29T20:20:00.000-07:00

Thank you to Useless Dissident for the invitation to post on his blog. I will be playing the part of the Golitsyn-sympathetic voice - not only for sport and to enliven the debate, but also because it is my natural inclination. However much one wants to hew to a strict empiricism and an even temper, the facts comprising the phenomenon Russia - and especially Bolshevik Communism and its actual institutions - defy such a desire in significant respects.

I think the most reasonable way of proceeding will be to reconstruct my own intellectual journey towards an acceptance of what might be described as the form of Golitsyn's analysis rather than its particular details. It is of course the details that confound the natural American sensibilities; the reality of Bolshevism (and police-party states in general) sounds too exotic, too much like a conspiracy theory, to mesh with expectations. And therefore, since its beginnings, Americans and the heirs of other liberal-revolutionary traditions - the French, the inchoate German, etc. - have always found it easier to accept the notion that Communism is a brash experiment in enlarging human freedom than that it is a vicious conspiracy bent on world domination.

Unfortunately, it is a conspiracy bent on world domination with absolutely nothing in common with any liberal impulse. Yet no matter how many times you repeat this, or provide actual examples or analogies or any of the usual didactic devices, somehow this fact breeds no insight in the vast majority of non-Communist minds. Communicating what this actually means, though, is partly the point of this blog, and the Golitsyn thesis is a perfect prism through which to do so.

And so, I will open with a simple question, and leave it to later posts to elaborate: is it so unlikely that a government which is itself a conspiracy, came to power through conspiracy, maintained and expanded its power through conspiracy, and whose primary institution - the KGB - is a gigantic conspiracy wielding absolute power...should engage in a conspiracy of the kind Golitsyn claims to have defected in order to report?

Review: The KGB & Soviet Disinformation

2009-03-29T14:24:00.000-07:00

Parts of this book by Ladislav Bittman are repeats of sections of the author's first book, The Deception Game. (My review is here.) However, these are mostly anecdotes that aptly demonstrate the author's thesis.

This book is written better than The Deception Game, but it also lacks that desperate energy and need to tell it all that characterizes the earlier work and many books by Communist defectors and dissidents. This is more scholarly.

Whereas The Deception Game leaves off in 1968, the year of the author's defection, and concerns itself almost entirely with Czechoslovakia, The KGB and Soviet Disinformation, as the title suggests, is an extension of the earlier thesis to the larger and more interesting subject. This means that Bittman speculates about events and episodes he does not know about from direct personal involvement, but rather from the experience of being a senior officer in a Soviet-bloc disinformation department.

With his experience and natural even-handedness, the author does a good job speculating about the Soviet Union's methods, the origin of items he finds in the newspaper and magazines, and the current objectives of Soviet intelligence. (The book was written in 1985.)

The KGB and Soviet Disinformation is also organized better than The Deception Game, and includes topics (especially in the later chapters) not broached by the earlier book. Both are excellent, but this one is certainly more comprehensive.

There is nothing in this work of Anatoliy Golitsyn’s thesis of “long-term strategic deception.” The author does not question the authenticity of the Prague Spring, the rapid termination of which was the cause for his defection.

Rather, Bittman concerns himself with the nuts-and-bolts tactics and methods of Soviet-bloc disinformation, such as planting stories in newspapers and obtaining the cooperation of foreign dignitaries, diplomats, and correspondents.

However, the author does examine the ideological basis of Soviet disinformation, in Lenin’s What is to be Done?, for example. And he does often discuss disinformation efforts in terms of long-term objectives, though his list of those objectives would be incomplete to a follower of Golitsyn:

+ Turning world public opinion against U.S. foreign policy
+ Creating favorable conditions for Soviet foreign policy by confusing the world public about the real nature of certain Soviet policies
+ Isolating the United States from its allies and friends in Western Europe by creating new rifts or exploiting current differences
+ Paralyzing NATO from within by convincing NATO countries that U.S. military strategy is against their national interests
+ Expanding traditional mistrust of Third World countries toward Western Europe and the United States, preventing closer economic, political, and military cooperation between the two groups, and demonstrating that U.S. goals and policies are incompatible with Third World ambitions.

Bittman expresses reservations about Soviet détente, but not to any significant extent. As such, he makes no attempt to interpret overt Soviet diplomatic and military efforts within the context of disinformation. Never does he suggest that apparent Soviet failures, rifts between Communist countries, and significant changes in policy are part of disinformation efforts.

In this light, one may read Bittman as being more even-handed than Golitsyn in New Lies for Old. I think it would be more plausible, however, to say that Bittman only gives us part of the picture. One should read The KGB and Soviet Disinformation as a treatise on active measures, and little else. It is a very good book on that topic.

Other reviews:
R. Cort Kirkwood, National Review:

Bittman gradually makes clear that disinformation is a "game" only in the same sense that "war games" are: It is a highly specialized field of study requiring the "operator" to understand the politics, history, psychology, foreign relations, culture, and weaknesses of both the "unwitting agent" and the "adversary." Additionally, Soviet active measures are part of a long-term strategy. "Moscow's disinformation specialists know that a single covert action . . . cannot tip the balance of power between the Western Alliance and the Communist bloc. But they believe that mass production of active measures will have a significant cumulative effect over a period of decades."

Bittman confirms two beliefs long held by knowledgeable critics of the media: a) Soviet disinformation is successful; and b) it is successful in large part because journalists think they are too sophisticated to be duped by Soviet agents.

Undercover Putin

2009-03-19T10:20:00.000-07:00

From Skynews:

A picture has emerged apparently showing Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in his former days as a KGB officer.

What's interesting about this is that it corroborates accounts that dissent from the official KGB biography of Putin:

[A] Russian political analyst and author of books on Vladimir Putin dismissed Mr Souza's claims as "nonsense".

"Vladimir Putin was a major serving in Dresden and he wasn't important enough at that time to be brought to Moscow", said Andrey Piontkovsky.

Mr Putin served as a KGB officer in the East German city of Dresden.

But according to other sources, there are a number of years for which Putin's whereabouts are unclear. For instance, ex-FSB officer Konstantin Preobrazhensky, in his arduously titled KGB/FSB's New Trojan Horse: Americans of Russian Descent, has a chapter called "Putin's History Reveals the Man" where he discusses "Putin's Missing Years."

According to Preobrazhensky and others, Putin worked for the KGB's Fifth Division (or Branch, or Directorate), responsible for dissidents and the Orthodox Church. This division was also called "Protection of the Constitution," and, less formally, "Political Repressions."

This much is known. However, Putin doesn't talk about it because he is ashamed of the work he did there. This probably included looking for anti-Soviet tendencies in the student population and getting students to report on each other. It probably also involved contacts with Church leaders who were KGB collaborators. Such a task as posing as a tourist for a meeting with the U.S. President would have been a respite from such work.

The point of departure between the official biographies and the underground ones is Putin's supposed job with the First Chief Directorate in Dresden, East Germany from 1985 to 1990. This picture was taken during that time, and in Moscow.

Putin plays up the East German part of his resume because to Russians it is glamorous and patriotic to work for intelligence abroad. But to spy on your fellow Russians, subverting students and the Church, is shameful. So he doesn't talk about that part.

It has been speculated that Putin didn't really do anything for the FCD in East Germany; rather, he was involved in some other undisclosed intelligence tasks. Could he have been in Moscow at some kind of political training?

Nobody Knows

2009-03-18T09:21:00.000-07:00

Reading the comments on Andrew Osborn's latest article for the Wall Street Journal, it is clear to me that nobody really knows anything about what's going on with Russia. That includes yours truly; but at least I recognize that the huge disparity of opinion and the general atmosphere of ignorance is a problem. Most others seem content to dismiss Russia as weak and comical. Why?

Part of it is the intense level of indoctrination our own citizens have been subjected to from their early education onward. Quick, what comes to mind when you hear the word "communist"? Is it "McCarthyism"? Or "Red Scare"? I thought so.

Most Americans have been taught to believe that the Cold War wasn't necessary; just a paranoid dream in the fevered minds of right-wingers who can't understand or tolerate people who are different from them. Chic, effete liberal commentators will use the word "commie" ironically, conjuring up not the image of a communist out for world domination (because such a creature could never exist!) but an imaginary caricature created by conservatives to frighten the populace into supporting unnecessary wars.

It's almost like communism isn't responsible for the deaths of over 100 million people in the last century. Like the gulags of China and Russia don't exist and never existed.

There are five movies a year about the Nazis and their persecution of Jews, but none about Communism. Zilch on Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Che Guevara*, and Kim Il Sung. That Hollywood liberalism can maintain the fantasy that the Nazis were right-wingers only explains so much. Communist regimes persecute Jews too, so it's not that either. It's that they agree with the ideology of communism, and think its crimes are excusable. And Hollywood producers are creatures too of our self-defeating education that doesn't teach the morality of the American cause, the victory of what was a largely justified power over one that was unjustified. In their Manichean worldview only the Nazis were evil, and for all time shall be the symbol of political wrong. Communism is based in warm sentiments, and thus cannot be wholly evil, and thus is not evil but good, in their Manichean outlook. So... no movies, not a one.

Not understanding what we faced in the early period of the Cold War, how can Americans possibly grasp this new phase, with the name "Communism" dropped and cold gangsterism in its place? They will say anything to make the threat look small. After all, haven't we been taught from childhood, like milk from our mothers' breast, that when we fear the other, we really just fear ourselves? That strength is bigotry, power is propaganda, and opposition is self-serving paranoia?

Nobody knows about Russia, not just because the country has mastered the art of controlling perception and information, but because our own country has voluntarily subdued itself, reeducated itself into ignorance. Maybe Russia is not a serious threat to us. Maybe there is zero continuity between the Soviet Union of the past and the Russian Federation of today. But if there were, we would be the last to know.

* Excluding positive portrayals.

News of the World

2009-03-17T16:58:00.000-07:00

These are good days for Golitysn conspiracy theorists, but ominous times for America.

First, there is news that Russia is planning on installing bases for strategic bombers in both Cuba and Venezuela. I guess we are to think that the peaceful democracy of Russia is just using the socialist countries to work around the American hegemon, not that it does this because it is still dominated by Leninist ideology and Communist goals of world domination.

Remember that in 1962 in Cuba the Russians claimed they were only installing surface-to-air missiles for defense, and not the surface-to-surface missiles armed with nuclear warheads we knew they were bringing thanks to a U.S. mole within the GRU. It's unlikely we have any such intelligence now; nevertheless, "strategic bombers" can carry nuclear loads.

Second, today Russian puppet president Dmitri Medvedev announced a "large-scale rearming" of the country's military and defense resources. On the very same day, the Pentagon announced that it expects to make big cuts to our defense budget. Russian "re-arming," American "cuts." Gee, if there were a Cold War going on, that might be disconcerting.

Finally, the Kremlin today called "for the creation of a supranational reserve currency to be issued by international institutions as part of a reform of the global financial system." The silliness of this as a response to a temporary economic downturn is demonstrated within this very article:

[Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev] also suggested that the Eurasian Economic Community, a loose group of five former Soviet republics including Kazakhstan and Russia, adopt a single noncash currency -- the yevraz -- to insulate itself from the global economic crisis.

To insulate itself... Nevertheless, a universal currency system entails the weakening of national sovereignty, and readies the world power for exploitation by whomever is positioned to exploit it. It is clear that the world's greatest power today is happy to surrender its sovereignty to international bodies, while its next closest rivals, Russia and China, are aggressively expanding both militarily and diplomatically.

What happens when advanced nations surrender their sovereignty? You get the European Union, a hapless disaster with no will to defend itself and no means to do so.

Perezagruzka or Peregruzka?

2009-03-16T12:53:00.000-07:00

Control-Alt-Delete?

You've probably heard that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presented a "reset button" to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as a symbol of the new administration's desire to renew positive relations with the country. Whatever that means.

Of course, the destructiveness of this new administration's policies is matched only by its blundering incompetence. The button included a label with "PEREGRUZKA" written in Roman letters. Not only did they get the word wrong, but it was pointlessly transliterated.

By some cosmic twist of fate, the United States foreign policy and diplomatic relations apparatus, the U.S. State Department, which employs thousands and thousands of language specialists, put the word for "overcharged" on the button, not the word for "reset." How appropriate.

Why are we giving gag gifts to the Russians anyway? Our president returns a bust of Churchill to London, then in return for a number of fine gifts including Sir Martin Gilbert's seven-volume Churchill biography, Obama got the Brits some DVDs. Aren't we glad "the adults" are in charge now? This is how we treat our friends?

And our enemies... they don't even accept that there could be such a thing. I think it was Mark Steyn who said that liberals don't have enemies, just people whose grievances they haven't accommodated yet. Even the Russians, whose "main enemy" we have been since the end of World War II, at least.

It seems now that President George W. Bush, who 'looked in Putin's eyes' and saw the soul of a Christian or some such nonsense, was too much of a bully to those peaceful Russians. Apparently helping NATO allies such as Poland and the Czech Republic; and helping other countries like Ukraine and Georgia join NATO, is not what President Obama and his team meant by 'restoring our broken alliances' and 'fixing American's reputation in the world.' That's not the bilateral approach they have been looking for.

Apparently unilaterally accommodating the aggressiveness of Iran, Russia, Hamas and the Taliban is more important than standing by our allies in Eastern Europe, who have been debating for more than a decade now about whether to be a part of the American/European sphere of influence or the Russian/Chinese sphere of influence, and at great danger to themselves and with much effort have moved toward strategic partnership with the Western countries. Great arguments have taken place. Politicians have risen and fallen over supporting or not supporting the United States and whether to allow missile shield facilities to be built in their countries.

But Obama, Biden and Clinton want to "push the reset button" on Russian-American relations. The language error is appropriate. American leaders naively believe that the slate with Russian can be wiped clean; Russia can be appeased into partnership with the U.S. Russian leaders believe that the situation in the U.S. is overcharged and ripe for exploitation.

Sorting Out the Russian (Dis)Information: Part IV

2009-03-12T09:07:00.000-07:00

Part IV: Igor Panarin
Russian Scholar Says U.S. Will Collapse Next Year

"There is a high probability that the collapse of the United States will occur by 2010," Panarin told dozens of students, professors and diplomats Tuesday at the Diplomatic Academy — a lecture the ministry pointedly invited The Associated Press and other foreign media to attend.

Worthy of seriousness? We'll see.

First, it should be obvious that "a dean at the Foreign Ministry's school for future diplomats and a regular on Russia's state-guided TV channels" is not going to be saying something like this unless he is asked to do so. That is my basic assumption and one that I think is irreproachable. The idea that such a prediction or sentiment would be expressed by such a figure without prior approval and planning-- as well as a specific purpose-- is simply indefensible when one considers the current nature of the Russian government in conjunction with its long and successful history of controlling what ideas are heard when and by whom. This is clear enough: foreign press were "pointedly invited" to attend this lecture.

As reported by Novosti, Panarin made similar remarks back in November 2008:

He predicted that the U.S. will break up into six parts - the Pacific coast, with its growing Chinese population; the South, with its Hispanics; Texas, where independence movements are on the rise; the Atlantic coast, with its distinct and separate mentality; five of the poorer central states with their large Native American populations; and the northern states, where the influence from Canada is strong.

So what's the purpose? First, one should note that many of these predictions are patently ridiculous. It is highly unlikely, for example, that "large Native American populations" would have anything to do with any future division of the United States. So presumably the Western population is to take away from this that the Russians are incredibly deluded in their strategic notions, and thus not to be taken seriously. Another example from the later piece:

Panarin argued that Americans are in moral decline, saying their great psychological stress is evident from school shootings, the size of the prison population and the number of gay men.

This brings to our attention a second possible prospect of such remarks: to tie the (presumably homophobic) American right-wing and some of its more colorful conspiracy theories in with the aforementioned Russian delusion:

On the fate of the U.S. dollar, he said: "In 2006 a secret agreement was reached between Canada, Mexico and the U.S. on a common Amero currency as a new monetary unit. This could signal preparations to replace the dollar. The one-hundred dollar bills that have flooded the world could be simply frozen. Under the pretext, let's say, that terrorists are forging them and they need to be checked."

He iterates something similar in his later remarks:

Panarin insisted he didn't wish for a U.S. collapse, but he predicted Russia and China would emerge from the economic turmoil stronger and said the two nations should work together, even to create a new currency to replace the U.S. dollar.

Thus we are to connect the notion of Russian desire for global hegemony, which is real, with wilder theories about new regional currencies or even NWO-type flights of fancy.

A third possibility is a very old one: the confusion of Western audiences about differing voices of Russia, creating the impression that official Russian opinion on these topics is far from monolithic:

But Alexei Malashenko, a scholar-in-residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center who did not attend the lecture, sided with the skeptical instructor, saying Russia is the country that is on the verge of disintegration.

"I can't imagine at all how the United States could ever fall apart," Malashenko told the AP.

Of course, such a purpose would be rote and secondary to such a strange piece of disinformation.

The most important purposes, I think, would be to feel out Western opinions about such a possibility, preparing the Russian people psychologically, and finally to cover any future Russian or joint Russian/Chinese action against the sovereignty and security of the United States by cloaking their actions in the demise of the American and Western financial system. Russia had to act because of the weakness and insecurity of the United States, they would say. In other words, their action would be toward normalization.

Another commentary on Panarin's recent predictions: "As if Things Weren't Bad Enough, Russian Professor Predicts End of U.S." (by Andrew Osborn, Wall Street Journal, 12/29/08). Osborn notes that "for a decade, Russian academic Igor Panarin has been predicting the U.S. will fall apart in 2010" and that Panarin is "a former KGB analyst" and that he "publishes books." It might interest the reader to know that Panarin's books are about "information warfare." Osborn calls this study "the use of data to get an edge over a rival," which hardly begins to describe it. He says that "his bleak forecast for the U.S... is music to the ears of the Kremlin," failing to note that the cause-and-effect of that relationship, between an "ex-KGB analyst" and the Kremlin would almost certainly be the other way around; the Kremlin almost certainly ordered Panarin to produce this "music." There is no such thing as an "ex-KGB" who also works openly for the state. If one is truly "ex-KGB," then he does not work for the Russian Foreign Ministry and appear on state-controlled TV. Osborn:

Mr. Panarin's apocalyptic vision "reflects a very pronounced degree of anti-Americanism in Russia today," says Vladimir Pozner, a prominent TV journalist in Russia. "It's much stronger than it was in the Soviet Union."

Vladimir Pozner is still alive and giving "his" opinions, it seems. You might remember him from Bezmenov's LA series (@ 6:10):

But then, my former colleague, Vladimir Pozner, appears on Nightline, and Ted Koppel asks him, “Well, Vladimir, what do think about this?” What can he think? He is an instrument of propaganda! He thinks what Comrade Andropov tell[s] him to think. He is just a nice, articulate mouthpiece of the Soviet subversion system. And Ted Koppel makes you believe that my friend Vladimir Pozner thinks?

Here he "poses" as the moderate counterpoint to Panarin's "apocalyptic vision," serving to give the appearance of healthy and varied debate among Soviet academics and journalists. To the extent that such a debate genuinely exists in Russia, it is reported in state-controlled media only when it helps the propaganda line. However, considering the backgrounds of both Panarin and Pozner, it is likely that both are willing instruments of deception, playing the roles they have been given.

Finally, here's an interview with Panarin from Russia Today. It's worth reading and I will use some of Panarin's language there in what follows.

My final (but tentative) analysis is that some of what Panarin says is sensible, but it is mixed with some complete rubbish. For instance, the collapse of the U.S. financial system does make the country vulnerable, but Panarin's fault lines are absurd. There are critical divisions in American society but they are not "globalists" and "statists" as Panarin claims. In fact, what Panarin projects into U.S. politics is actually the false conception of Russian politics that they want Americans to have, if that makes any sense, namely that there is a constant struggle in Russia between self-interested rationalists ("want prosperity for their country") and internationalist ideologues ("it’s not Russia that we need, but a world revolution.") This has been the false picture presented by Russia of Russia for many decades now. At the high levels of government, it's doubtful that such a conflict really exists.

Just to highlight the absurdity of Panarin's remarks: He calls "statists" "the armed forces, special services and military and industrial complex." They "want prosperity for their country" and not "world revolution," and they "were the key players who had enabled Obama to win." Meanwhile the "globalists" are "mainly the financial elite" and are led by Condoleeza Rice and Dick Cheney. Uh-huh. Make sense of that.

Though this interview was translated into English, it's likely that it was meant for a Russian audience. This would explain the completely ridiculous characterization of disagreements in the American government and the types of leaders he singled out for leadership of the movements: Defense & State Secretaries, intelligence chiefs, and the Vice President, positions that are far more ancillary in the U.S. than in Russia.

To conclude, this is certainly a manufactured narrative of some kind, but what purpose it serves isn't clear. Perhaps it is just to amuse us?

Update: Here is Jeff Nyquist's take on the story. Jeff is correct to focus on the truth in what Panarin says, that the United States could collapse and we could find ourselves in a situation where all or part of the country has lost its sovereignty and is ruled, directly or indirectly, by a foreign power. Influential Americans and political commentators always dismiss this possibility, if it is brought up at all.

Nyquist responds to my remarks by raising a simple point: the purpose is to show that America is weak and put it in people's minds that perhaps it is time to start thinking about joining the winning team. The idea that capitalism immiserates the poor and readies the developed world for socialist revolution is an inherent part of Marxist-Leninism, and thus the Panarin prediction is merely a petty example of Communist propaganda to the West: when your institutions build on greed and bourgeois desires crumble to the ground as they inevitably will, the non-capitalist (or less capitalist) world is ready to take their place.

It's a good point. Still, in some sense I think Nyquist plays into their hands by discussing such a report so uncritically. It is my opinion that this particular piece of disinformation combines very sensible and real things with very ridiculous and silly things. Thus if we do not separate the wheat from the chaff, we will be discarded with the chaff.

Sorting Out the Russian (Dis)Information: Part III

2009-03-08T10:34:00.000-07:00

Part III: Is Garry Kasparov for real?
That's a good question. It provides an excellent chance to demonstrate the methodology of Useless Dissident. That this methodology differs greatly from what would be considered 'fair' doesn't concern me. Rather I am interested in getting close to what is true.

Arnold Beichman, in his 1984 National Review review of Anatoly Golitsyn's New Lies for Old, told a joke:

It seems that two Jewish merchants and business competitors, Muttel and Yussel, living in a small town in czarist Russia, meet one morning at the local railroad platform, luggage in hand. Muttel asks Yussel, "So where are you traveling?" Yussel responds, "To Minsk." Angered by the reply, Muttel shouts: "You, Yussel, are telling me that you're going to Minsk so that I will think you're really going to Pinsk. But I know for a fact that you're going to Minsk, so why do you lie to me that you're going to Minsk?"

Once we understand first the special place of disinformation in the Russian character; second the particular emphasis on false representation in Leninism; and third the advanced development of disinformation under the cynical, immoral, and post-Stalinist nomenklatura, my methodology begins to seem not so ridiculous.

Thus when Garry Kasparov writes an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal in which he claims that the United States should not make deals with Russia because it is on the brink of disintegration, my immediate inclination is to file it under what Golitsyn calls the "weakness and evolution pattern" of Soviet disinformation.

Of course, this is far too simplistic. Even if there was and still is a "grand strategic deception," as Golitsyn claims, there are still individuals and spontaneous developments; nothing is wholly determined. Yuri Bezmenov would say, "There is no grass-roots, period." But there are individual circumstances.

What are Kasparov's "individual circumstances"? Some call him the greatest chess player of all time-- that certainly makes him unique. Because he is widely known in the West, it would be hard for Putin to murder or "suicide" him if he were a genuine dissident. He would be in a unique position to be who he pretends to be: an opposition party leader in a country that has one party and pervasive police control over all public institutions.

On the other hand, a quick glance at Kasparov's enyclopedia entry reveals a profile that is also uniquely qualified to be an agent of disinformation. '84 Joined Communist Party, '87 CC Komsomol, '90 Helped found Democratic Party of Russia, Involvement in opposition parties, dissident marches, etc. Most Westerners hear that Kasparov has been involved in say, "The March of the Dissenters" and arrested and think about how great it is that he is willing to suffer for his political beliefs. I hear that and imagine a KGB dossier on a disinformation campaign called "The March of the Dissenters." But that's just the paranoid methodology for you.

Another facet of the methodology is the "useful dissident." A perfect example is Andrei Sakharov. He spoke out for intellectual freedom, not political freedom. He was openly a Marxist, a Leninist, a supporter of the one-party state! So the USSR says, "Look at how open we are, look at Sakharov speaking out for intellectual freedom." Did he know that he was helping the regime? Possibly, when it was too late. But anyone who writes a book called Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom is not a danger to a USSR trying to pretend that it is becoming open and Westernized, a place where the intellectuals ask the same questions they do in the West.

But see, just because Sakharov was a useful dissident doesn't mean he was dishonest. It means that he is not to be taken seriously. There were lots of genuine intellectuals in a very genuine civil rights movement in Moscow who were nevertheless committed Marxists, committed Leninists, considering themselves real Communists and the current rulers merely Stalinist pretenders. Yes, they were delusional, themselves poor victims of propaganda. But they were nevertheless genuine dissidents, not "KGB plants" or agents.

Nevertheless, even the greatest hardliners of the deception thesis seem to think that Kasparov is genuine. And I think a close analysis of his op-ed bares this out.

For why would the Russians want an influential Russian to speak out against new and renewed American-Russian relations just when their policies have been bearing fruit, and the new American administration is falling over itself in infantile sycophancy? (We'll talk more about that in a later post).

It is true that normally such statements as "it is no longer taboo in Russia to speak openly of the post-Putin era" and "in all likelihood Mr. Putin will not be around that much longer" could be interpreted as "weakness and evolution" disinformation from within a strong and cohesive unity, aimed at deceiving the West into complacency. Even as it contradicts what looks to be the current direction of American foreign policy toward Russia, a direction that favors Moscow, it would in fact work to further that direction because it gives an indication that Russia and its current government are weak and thus not to be feared.

In fact, one paragraph in particular Golitsyn would point to, I think:

Some may doubt the fragility of the Putin government. But there are plenty of examples in history of supposedly entrenched regimes falling quickly. In late 1989, many in the West were surprised to see the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia. Others didn't foresee the sweeping away of totalitarian regimes in Poland and Hungary.

I'm not sure, but I would assume that Golitsyn would characterize those revolutions and sweepings away as largely deception and disinformation meant to deceive the West. Thus another possibility arises: that Russia, sensing Putin's unpopularity and perception as a criminal gangster in the West, is about to orchestrate his "fall from power" and the rise of a new party (that will actually be run by the same people).

It is important to remember that just because Kasparov is known as a dissident and opposition leader, and has been arrested and had his political offices raided, doesn't mean he is genuine. But it doesn't mean he isn't. In this case, judging from the extent of Kasparov's criticism of Putin (who doesn't tolerate mockery even in the form of disinformation) and the Kremlin's persecution of him, combined with his international prestige, it is safe to say that Kasparov is a genuine opposition leader and foe of the Russian regime.

Even if, in the end, his optimism about Putin's fall serves his enemies' interests.

Sorting Out the Russian (Dis)Information: Parts I & II

2009-03-05T10:38:00.000-08:00

Part I:
You think I know? I have some ideas, but it's a mystery to me. I'm just a citizen here. But let's try, shall we? We shall.

In continuation of my rambling exploration of the events surround President Obama's "secret letter" to the Kremlin about giving up the missile sites in Eastern Europe for Russia's assurance that Iran won't get long-range nuclear missiles...

Was Obama's letter leaked by U.S. officials in order to show off Obama's "smart diplomacy"? After all, this is the kind of thing liberal peacenik morons think is smart. Or was it leaked by Russian officials in order to show off what a dummy Obama is? By the way, from that Times article:

The officials who described the contents of the message requested anonymity because it has not been made public. While they said it did not offer a direct quid pro quo, the letter was intended to give Moscow an incentive to join the United States in a common front against Iran. Russia’s military, diplomatic and commercial ties to Tehran give it some influence there, but it has often resisted Washington’s hard line against Iran.

Shouldn't it be, "...give it some influence there, so it has often resisted..."?

And so the Russians both accepted and publicized the American weakness, and flatly rejected the offer. Now they announce (AP):

Russia is working to develop anti-satellite weapons to match efforts by other nations, a deputy defense minister was quoted as saying Thursday.

"Other nations," being, of course, the United States.

The Kremlin has criticized U.S. plans for space-based weapons, saying they could trigger a new arms race. Russia and China have pushed for an international agreement banning space weapons, but their proposals have been rejected by the United States.

You mean the Kremlin just wants peace? The Russians and Chinese just want peaceful co-existence, and it is only our belligerent American intransigence that causes them to build space weapons? Well, by all means, President Obama, de-weaponize! (Our liberals will actually say this. And they will say it like it's the most obvious thing in the world.)

Gen. Valentin Popovkin said Russia continues to oppose a space arms race but will respond to moves made by other countries, according to Russian news reports.

It's the Cold War all over again. We want peace, but the Americans... And our useful idiots, right on cue, will say... well, you know what they will say.

Part II:
Moving on to more complicated stuff. Mikhail Gorbachev (AP):

Mikhail Gorbachev says Vladimir Putin's United Russia party is similar to "the worst of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union" and that Russia is today a country where the parliament and judiciary are not fully free.

Gorbachev also says the global economic crisis showed capitalism should be tempered with elements of the socialist system he played a critical role in sweeping away.

In an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday, some 20 years after Communism began unraveling on his watch, Gorbachev also said the moment was right for better relations between Russia and the U.S. And he called on the world community to head off an Iranian nuclear weapon not with confrontation but "a maximal dialogue."

If I were a Golitsyn conspiracy-theorist, and I'm trying not to be, this would really set me off.

First, you have a criticism of the current government. If I were looking at this through the eyes of someone who believes in the continuity of the regime from the USSR of 1991 to the Russian Federation of today, I might think that Gorbachev's criticism of Putin is calculated disinformation meant to reinforce the Western readers' notion that Gorbachev and Putin represent different periods in Russian history, wholly different regimes. Because what Gorbachev says here is a widely held belief anyway, having him say this does more good than harm. After all, how bad can it be if Gorbachev can tell an AP reporter in Moscow such a thing?

And doesn't Gorbachev represent a softening-- a moderate voice in Russia? One of the good guys? "Gorbachev also says the global economic crisis showed capitalism should be tempered with elements of the socialist system he played a critical role in sweeping away." Yea, moderate!

He played "a critical role" in "sweeping away" Soviet socialism! If I am a Golitsyn conspiracy theorist who believes that the "fall of the Soviet Union" was a carefully-orchestrated "perestroika deception" meant to deceive the West, Gorbachev's claim that "capitalism should be tempered" by socialism only reinforces my already rampant suspicion that the long-term strategic goal of the Soviet system is the "convergence" of all systems of the world into one system, of course controlled by the Russians and policed by the KGB.

And finally, we have an endorsement of the Obama plan for "the world community to head off an Iranian nuclear weapon not with confrontation but 'a maximal dialogue.'" You see? See? He's an enemy of Putin! A moderate! Oversaw the "downfall" of Communism. And even he's saying that "the moment [is] right for better relations between Russia and the U.S." So what's the problem?

I wonder if the average reader can detect my sarcasm. It's obvious to me, of course. I imagine my sarcastic voice being some agreeable British chap, smart but shallow, a sort of straight-man interlocutor parrying the wilder claims of his more unstable partner but unable to deviate from popular clichés. He's intrigued, but exasperated; intellectual, but chummy; and ambitious, but unimportant.

And his friend the Golitsyn conspiracy theorist tells him, "Listen here: what has Gorbachev been doing for the past 20 years? He stepped down, voluntarily, as head of the party. Set up something called 'the Gorbachev Insitute' where he promotes 'global solutions to global problems,' blah, blah, blah. Basically he uses his carefully crafted image as a 'reformer within the Soviet Union' as a platform to promote the UN-style agenda of weakening nationalist interests and strengths toward the goal of a universal governorship that would of course be controlled by Russia and China. And what issue does he use to promote that agenda? Why, global warming, of course! The favorite rallying cry of the internationalists and the trans-nationalists. The favorite weapon of the Communist East against the Capitalist West-- weaken your economy, agree to 'global emissions standards,'-- nothing less than the future of the planet is at stake!" Reuters:

"I'm sorry the United States has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol," Gorbachev said, referring to the international accord to reduce emissions of gases that contribute to global warming.

"I bet you are," says Golitsyn conspiracy theory guy. "I bet you are."

Review: The Deception Game

2009-03-04T10:10:00.000-08:00

The Deception Game is the first book Ladislav Bittman wrote after his defection. He was the deputy chief of Czechoslovakia's Department D, or Disinformation department, but defected shortly after the Soviet invasion in 1968.

Before that time, the Czechoslovakian intelligence service was built largely on the same model as Soviet intelligence, as were the other Soviet-bloc intelligence services. The Soviet-bloc intelligence services were subordinated to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the KGB. The disinformation departments, too, were built on the Soviet model (becoming more and more important in the late 50s and getting stronger in the 60s). The Czech department’s objectives were subordinated to Moscow to such an extent that it often carried on operations in countries where Czechoslovakia had no strategic interest. They would do this either because the developing country that was the theater of disinformation operations was not friendly toward the Soviet Union (but naively friendly toward Soviet-bloc countries), or to keep the Soviet Union's hands off of particularly weighty efforts of disinformation, forgery, or black propaganda.

Thus Bittman's account of his country's disinformation operations applies to the Soviet Union and its satellites as well. However, Czechoslovakia did have a particularly large and effective department, if Bittman's estimates are to be taken seriously.

The book consists of a brief account of the author's origins, education, career and defection; the course of Czech politics and Soviet control over his career; the nature and extent of the objectives of Czechoslovakian disinformation; the relationship of the disinformation department to the rest of the Czech intelligence service and to the Soviet Union's intelligence agencies; and very many specific example of disinformation operations consisting of a wide range of methods and approaches.

Books like this one are a necessary complement to accounts such as The Mitrokhin Archive (The Sword and the Shield and The World Was Going Our Way) and general impressions of espionage: information-stealing and illegal agents of influence embedded in foreign circles. That's because much of what Soviet-bloc disinformation departments did (and probably still do to some extent) is mundane and simple, relying upon pre-existing sentiment in the target countries as well as a cumulative effect, while maintaining plausible deniability and effective distance. Scientists stealing nuclear secrets, Kim Philby passing on top secret documents, and James Bond-style operations get all the glory, but in the long run it's the weight of clever imitations and subtle manipulations that wins Communism and socialism its power and influence.

On the other hand, The Deception Game is even-handed. Unlike Yuri Bezmenov (aka Tomas Schuman), who was involved in very much the same type of work as this author, albeit at a lower level, Bittman does not overstate the influence of Soviet-bloc disinformation operations in the world and the United States. For instance, he demonstrates that there is considerable distance between the New Left in the U.S. and Soviet control and indoctrination. Often he speaks of the Soviet Union trying to harness and control movements in the U.S. but being unable to do so. And ultimately he concludes that there is nearly as much danger in blaming all of America's problems and unrest on the Soviet Union as there is in blaming all of the world's problems on the U.S. It is folly to counter the latter with the former.

As with all books on this subject, even though the Soviet Union as such has fallen, it is still relevant. First, more practically because the power structure of the KGB is still intact and in power in Russia and still exerts itself in this way. Second, because the disinformation and active measures described by Bittman are not particular to a time and place, but are rather phenomena essential to the manifestation of socialist and Communist ideology, which is far from dead.

Translation: Obama is a Pushover

2009-03-03T12:39:00.000-08:00

November (DPA):

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned on November 5 [the day after Obama was elected President] that Russia would deploy semi-ballistic missiles to its Baltic Sea enclave of Kaliningrad, bordering NATO members Poland and Lithuania, if US plans [to build missile shields in the sovereign nations and NATO ally countries of Poland and the Czech Republic] went ahead.

OK, clear enough, right? We saw this all during the Cold War. This is simple. We make a move that threatens their hegemony and power, and they make a counter-move to threaten us. Your move, O.

Putin added [later in November] that Russia was hoping for "more constructive" negotiations on a key nuclear arms treaty set to expire next year.

The comments came as Medvedev eased his tone, saying at an Asia- Pacific forum in Peru that he was open to compromise with the new US administration.

Translation: we know that Obama is a pushover.

"Dialogue is possible, a change of position is possible," Medvedev was quoted by news agency Interfax as saying in Lima, where current US President George W Bush was also in attendance. Obama has shown signs he may even rescind the shield plans, Medvedev said.

Obama and his advisors have not staked out a position on the missile defence issue ever since a Polish statement was released stating that the matter had been decided.

Translation: The Russians know Obama is a pushover. So far, Obama has voted "present" on this, even while our NATO allies who are threatened by Russia's aggressive tendencies call out for our unwavering support.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in November (AFP):

"Our concerns can only be removed by one thing -- the renunciation of plans for unilateral establishment of a missile defense system and an agreement to work together from scratch," he said.

Translation: We will not back down. The Sovet Un... err, Russian Federation does not back down. We know that Obama is a pushover and will gladly back down.

From Interfax, "U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns visited Moscow...":

Q. U.S. President Barack Obama and later U.S. Vice-President Joseph Biden said that it was time to push a “reset button” in relations with Russia. Could you be more specific as to what the new U.S. administration might be actually implying by saying that relations with Russia should be “reset” and what do you think will change in Washington’s policy towards Russia?

A. First, I am very happy to be back in Moscow.

Translation: The Russians treat me very, very well.

But seriously, you should read that interview. Burns seems to be a pliant public servant, which isn't always a great thing, especially when he is controlled by an administration of useful idiots. But Bush 'looked into Putin's eyes and saw the face of an angel' or something, so it seems the Russians managed to pull the wool over the eyes of the previous administration too, despite all this talk of "new directions" and "working together to push the reset button" or whatever the current vapidity is.

Now we see the fruition of this talk: "Obama 'ready to drop shield plans for Russian help on Iran'" (Novosti):

Washington has told Moscow that Russian help in resolving Iran's nuclear program would make its missile shield plans for Europe unnecessary, a Russian daily said on Monday, citing White House sources.

Well that's weird. Sure we said before that the missile shields were about Iran and North Korea in addition to NATO defense against Russia, but everyone in the intelligence community knew what it really was: Hey, Russia, we're watching you. It turns out it had nothing to do with Russia after all! It was about Iran! In fact, if you can believe it, Russia and the United States are working together against Iran! For real! What did you think this was about?

Next day, March 3rd (AFP):

The US could rethink its plans to site a missile defense shield in eastern Europe, which have been strongly opposed by Russia, by contending such a defense system was no longer necessary in exchange for Moscow's help with Iran, the Times said.

At least that's what we were saying yesterday.

The overture was rebuffed Tuesday by Medvedev, who said it was "not productive" to link talks over the US missile defense system with Iran's suspected nuclear program.

Translation: Your missile shield has nothing to do with our Iranian nuclear program... I mean the Iranian nuclear program.

October 2007 (BBC):

Iran wants Russian help in its dispute with the West over its nuclear aims.

Up to now Moscow has blocked any new UN sanctions, saying it wants to enable the UN's nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, to work with Iran on clearing up outstanding issues.

But Moscow is seeking Iranian compromise over the issue, says the BBC's Jon Leyne in Tehran.

Not good enough? What about this?

The Russian president said Moscow had an interest in a "strong Iran" and that he wanted deeper ties with the country, state television reported.

Now we're supposed to believe that for dumping some missile shields, which we will do eagerly under Obama, Russia is going to cut its "strong ties" with Iran?

More here and here. Russia and Iran are strategic allies. Hence Medvedev's response:

"If we are to speak about some sort of exchange, the question has not been presented in such a way, because it is not productive," Medvedev said during a trip to Spain Tuesday.

But he acknowledged: "Our American partners are ready to discuss this problem. This is already good."

Translation: Obama is a pushover. We have him making concessions, offering ridiculous trades giving up missile shields for "help" in maybe-sorta-putting pressure on the Iranians, etc. We can get him to give up the missile sites and maintain our strategic relationship with Iran. We can weaken the United States on both fronts. We can do it and we will. So why would we make concessions?

Asked about it in Jerusalem, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the missile defense system "has always been intended to deter any missile that might come from Iran."

Oh really? Here's an April 2008 article from the super liberal Der Spiegel:

Rice had traveled to Warsaw to sign a treaty for the stationing of interceptor missiles in Poland, a deal that had been in the works for years. In the future, they could be used to intercept warheads launched against the US by rogue states in the Middle East. Of course, Moscow has argued that the missile shield could also be used against Russia. "Poland is now a target of our missiles," one Russian general hissed not long ago after the Polish and Americans reached an agreement. But the country, a young member of the European Union, is determined to remain undeterred. "No one can dictate to Poland what it should do," Kaczynski told his people on Tuesday evening. "That's in the past."

For Poland, nestled as it is between the Oder and Bug rivers, the missile shield has far more than just military significance. Even 19 years after the disappearance of the Iron Curtain, 11 years after it became a member of NATO and four years after its EU accession, Warsaw still feels the need to demonstrate its independence against the old hegemony of Moscow. Russia's invasion of Georgia in recent days, following Georgia's strike on its breakaway province of South Ossetia, has only served to strengthen Polish fears. Prior to the war, a steady majority of up to 80 percent of Poles opposed the missile shield according to public opinion polls. In the past week, however, the polls have swung the other way, with 50 to 65 percent now expressing their support for the shield. Polls show that 65 percent of Poles are afraid of Russia, whereas barely 20 percent are worried about Iran and North Korea.

Or we could go back to May 2007 (Reuters):

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State John Rood came to Warsaw to discuss placing 10 interceptor rockets in Poland aimed at protecting against missile attacks from what Washington calls rogue states such as Iran or North Korea.

"There is still a lot to discuss but after today's talks I am very optimistic that we will come to a conclusion," Rood told a news conference.

The plan has drawn strong criticism from Russia, which sees it as a threat to its national security.

"Our opposition is known," President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday at a news conference in Luxembourg.

"We don't believe that it could be about missiles of North Korea or Iran -- they won't have them in any case for 10 to 15 years."

So the Russians see it as Russian vs. American hegemony, the Polish see it as being about the Russians, and only officially do we Americans talk about it being for Iran and North Korea. It was, is, and always will be about Russian aggression and ambition. Are those countries threats to us (and to Russia)? Yes. But the idea that Russia is our ally in building defenses against the aggression of rogue states is farcical. Russia is a rogue state.

So this new "dialogue," or whatever they are calling it, is not encouraging. Here's former and current Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in February:

NATO has agreed to a ballistic missile defense that would protect against a launch from Iran. The Czech Republic will host a radar for the system, with the missiles based in Poland.

Russia adamantly has opposed the system.

"I told the Russians a year ago that if there were no Iranian missile program, there would be no need for the missile sites," Gates said.

This is a new narrative. If Gates did say that, it was more about pointing to Russia's cooperation with Iran as another reason why the missile sites were needed. Obviously he didn't mean, Yea, we'll just get rid of the Iranian nuclear program and then we'll be set here. Such a scenario is ludicrous. But that's exactly what we're being sold now.

On April 2, Obama and Medvedev will meet in London, where in November 2006 an ex-Russian FSB officer and current British citizen who spoke out against Russian abuses, Alexander Litvinenko, was murdered by Russian agents using polonium-210. This assassination was carried out in full accord with Russian law. The Western world, afraid of offending an "ally," has done nothing to reproach Putin's criminal government.

[Some links from Jake Tapper's blog.]

Rubin on Cohen

2009-03-02T15:44:00.000-08:00

Michael Rubin: Roger Cohen, Useful Idiot

I was traveling for lectures last week, and so am only catching up on my reading now. I came across this column by the New York Times's Roger Cohen entitled "What Iran's Jews Say" and his defense of it, here. What to say? I'm familiar with the synagogue and attended it when I lived in Isfahan. I chatted with some of the university-aged students who had taken shelter in an attached guesthouse because, as Jews, they were beat up in the university dormitories. Men and women both referred to the Jews' representative in the Parliament as a flunky for the regime, and would not discuss problems or issues when he was around. Several would say one thing in the synagogue, but when we went to parks on took walks through the city, they would bend over backwards to make clear that they cannot talk freely in the synagogue since the walls have ears. The same sentiment was expressed at synagogues in Tehran and Shiraz. Cohen, however, talks to him as the authority and takes his word that he is not a quisling. True, Jews are better of in Iran than in many neighboring countries, but there is a reason why their number has dropped by 80% over the last three decades. Cohen simply appears on a propaganda tour; parachuting in, an eager recepticle for his regime minders. It should not surprise that his column now graces the pages of the regime's mouth piece, The Tehran Times.

You'd think after the Grey Lady would have learned her lesson after, a few years ago, the New York Times correspondent visited Tehran and quoted a University of Tehran professor talking about domestic protests. The correspondent was simply unaware that the man he quoted was known to every academic who went into Iran as the person in charge of 'minding' foreign visitors to Iran.

They never learn.

I-Rainy Days

2009-03-02T08:53:00.000-08:00

For all the talk of 'we're willing to negotiate, we aren't cowboy bullies like the ignorant hick Bush, an opened hand is better than a clenched fist,' etc. that took up the entirety of the very small amount of time that was spent discussing foreign policy during the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, the lack of attention paid to this item is shameful:

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is "Doubtful" That Iran will respond to offers of engagement, a senior State Department official said on Monday.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Clinton had told her counterpart from the United Arab Emirates that the United States was under "No illusion" Over Iran. "She (Clinton) said she is doubtful that Iran will respond to any kind of engagement and opening the hand out and reaching out to them," Said the official, who was speaking on the sidelines of an international donors conference for Gaza where Clinton held a series of bilateral meetings. (Reuters)

Of course it was published by Israel News. Why is it that so many news stories concerning international events that affect the United States are covered not by U.S. papers and news outlets, but by the Times UK and other foreign English-language papers?

By the way, Bush officials met with their Iranian counterparts 28 times. But hey, why let facts spoil a convenient narrative?

Meanwhile, Iran likely has enough material to make a nuclear weapon, Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen told CNN's John King Sunday. There's nothing else of note in that blurb, though CNN mentioning it at all is noteworthy. The comments are interesting too:

These hawkish pigs should leave Iran alone, and get out of Iraq and Iran.

If any country should have to destroy its nuclear arsenal, it shourld be the Neo-Nazis in Israel.

They're the source of war crimes, bloodshed and the nurder of millions of women and children.

Yes, those Jewish neo-Nazis, aggressively withdrawing from Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza, leaving themselves with a massive plot of land about the size of your neighborhood Costco.

The same day Robert gates says iran DOE NOT have nuclear tech. CNN and the fascist douche bags say iran does. Who is trying to spin out a war cnn?

CNN trying to spin a war? Someone doesn't watch the same CNN I do.

More one sided stories from CNN, run by zionists.

Enough said.

I have "stuff" to make an apple pie, but it doesn't mean I'm going to do it. In fact, I probably don't even like apple pie.

Ha! Fun analogy. Let's continue it, shall we? All your life, you have screamed and shouted about how you want to have pie in your stomach! It is even written on your birth certificate. You tell all your kids about how some day, you will all have pie in your stomachs! Finally you assemble all the ingredients for pie-making. Will you not make a pie?

IDIOT! Iran's stated goal is the destruction of Israel. A nuclear weapon not only gives Iran massive leverage, it would allow them to destroy Israel if it chose to do so. So they're assembling the ingredients for nuke-making, and they're not going to make a nuke? Who are these people, and how can they possibly justify thinking this way?

Ok, here are the facts:

1. Iran will eventually, if not already, have nuclear capability.

2. There is nothing that the U.S. or the rest of the world can do about this.

3. There is no justifications for keeping Iran from accuriring nucldear technology and use of nuclear energy.

OK, here are the facts:

1. Iran has a shitload of oil.

2. Nevertheless, Iran imports a shitload of gasoline.

3. If Iran was worried about energy production, they could build some damn refineries.

4. Thus, their acquisition of nuclear material has absolutely nothing to do with nuclear energy and everything to do with their desire to control the Middle East and ultimately destroy Israel.

Good NRO Video on Iran

2009-02-27T10:37:00.000-08:00

Mario Loyola has a lot of interesting things to say:

I'll sum in up in two points.

First, the perception about the Bush administration on foreign policy is wrong, especially with regards to Iran. We did not act unilaterally, but rather used as our principle that we would act together with and according to the desires of our "allies," including China and Russia. After the 2001 State of the Union address, when President Bush characterized Iran, Iraq and North Korea as an "axis of evil," there weren't many instances of calling out Iran. In fact, we had many diplomatic meetings with Iran, gaining us nothing. This totally contradicts the perception of the cowboy Bush unilaterally making demands and threatening enemies. It's just false. That is a totally incorrect characterization of the State Department under Bush. Yet, somehow, it is an article of faith for the left.

Second, the policy of the new administration's foreign policy people is extremely mistaken and also backward. They claim they just want to "try diplomacy" and see if that works first, but they aren't unwilling to use military solutions if it comes to that. First this presumes that the Bush administration didn't use diplomacy with Iran, which is totally false. They used diplomacy to no effect, instead of say, fomenting and supporting the Iranian dissident movement. Second, they miss the point of the military. One uses the military to gain concessions and a diplomatic advantage. Diplomacy doesn't work by appealing to universal humanity and post-nationalistic brotherhood, especially not with countries like Iran. One negotiates from a position of power, or one will lose. By putting the cart before the horse (diplomacy before military strategy), the Obama administration actually increases the chance of a Iranian aggression, a preemptive U.S. military strike, and staggering loss of innocent civilian life.

This is what the left doesn't understand about foreign policy and diplomacy. They think we should be a friendly, compliant face for the world, not aggressive, not belligerent, but openhearted and friendly. Once our 'enemies' see that we are not threatening, they will make peace with us and we can live together in harmony. This is bullshit. In fact, it's the opposite. By being weak, we encourage our enemies to act boldly and aggressively, increasing the chance for large-scale conflict. Whereas, if we had been strong before, and acted from a position of power before, we could have prevented a large-scale conflict.

This is the lesson of modern history. This is the lesson of Neville Chamberlain, who made concessions to Hitler and then came back triumphant, declaring that he had achieved "peace in our time." All he did was give time to Hitler to increase the size and scope of the conflict that would soon envelop the entire Western world. Had England and other European powers acted from a position of strength in opposing Nazi Germany's aggressive expansionism, World War II would not have happened.

The horse is military power, technological advantage and moral superiority. The cart is diplomacy. Like almost everything else, liberals have this backwards.

Review: Love Letter to America

2009-02-25T12:33:00.000-08:00

Love Letter to America, by Tomas Schuman (aka Yuri Bezemenov), can be read on my website here. The PDF is here.

I'll say the same thing here I did in my review of World Thought Police, Schuman's other book: "I should warn the prospective reader that the book contains many typos, is somewhat strangely organized, and may strike a reader who is totally innocent of this topic as insane conspiracy theory. Even for the seasoned reader of intelligence nonfiction, the book is eye-raisingly eccentric. But that is what makes it so interesting."

The book World Thought Police is more specific and based on Bezmenov's direct experience working for Novosti Press Agency. It is a complement to other books by defectors from Soviet intelligence. Whereas one might read Aleksei Myagkov to learn about the Third Chief Directorate (military counter-intelligence) and Vasili Mitrokhin to learn about the First Chief Directorate (foreign intelligence), one should read World Thought Police to learn about the activity of the KGB in media and public relations circles, specifically in terms of interactions with visitors from other countries, invited to the USSR. This further complements contributions by Stanislav Levchenko, who under cover as a journalist in Japan did similar work to that of Bezmenov/Schuman in India; and Ladislav Bittman, who was deputy chief of Czechoslovakia's Department D (Disinformation).

Love Letter to America, on the other hand, is more of a general work directed at a mainstream audience (even if it is only read by conspiracy theorists and intelligence agencies). It details Schuman's far-reaching theory of "ideological subversion" of the West, familiar to those who have seen the interview with G. Edward Griffin (Soviet Subversion of the Free World Press, 1984). This interview, which has been widely circulated in the past year, has great appeal for kooks of all types because Bezmenov talks about "brainwashing" and "subversion," casually forecasts the execution of Western fellow-travelers, calls them "useful idiots," and in general, maintains a wry, comical tone about some very depressing matters.

So he has a certain sicko appeal. He knows no one wants to listen to what he has to say (except for weirdos like Griffin). He has gone from a successful career where he is well-respected and thought to be an intelligent, thoughtful person, to a life as a deranged right-wing nutcase. You would act strange too, I think.

All in all, Schuman's thesis is simple. First, the Soviet Union demoralizes the United States (or its target). This is done by encouraging the disintegration of institutions and functions that have kept it together, encouraging class and race struggle, encouraging more and more functions of society to be assumed by the government, stressing the importance of relatively unimportant issues (global cooling, gay rights, equal pay for women-- in general, stressing special 'rights' for special 'interest groups') over important issues (national defense, economic stability and sustainability), and undermining the government and its agencies through the creation of anti-war and anti-proliferation groups, publishing secret information, and pouring the fuel on the fire of any scandal (like Bay of Pigs, Watergate, Pinochet, whatever).

Once a country is demoralized, it is ready for destabilization. This happens by weakening national defense and the economy. In the former, decreasing spending, limiting research, disarming and drawing down through a perception of peace and understanding. In the latter, creation of a socialist welfare state. The third stage is crisis, when the country is in turmoil and reacts irrationally, resulting in civil war, foreign invasion, or some kind of power shift. The final phase is normalization, when a pro-Communist or pro-Soviet government comes to power.

This is an interesting thesis on many levels. However, it is important to keep in mind how general these ideas and stages are. I think Schuman often gives his KGB active measures department too much credit. His work generally ignores the pathology of the West, its stupidity, its ignorance about its greatness and the failures of Eastern despotism (Communism). Yes, part of Schuman's thesis is that the Soviet Union gets the West to subvert itself, train itself in how to break down its society. But he underestimates 1) the aimlessness of that disintegration as it is affected by the West, and 2) the determination of some Western patriots to counter that subversion.

In my view, this is best illustrated by Schuman’s own words:

This is my 'simplistic' and highly 'unscientific' outline of the events which have happened in many countries of the world. Any nation is able to do this to herself without any help from comrades Andropov and Brezhnev and their numerous KGB agents. Any one of you can easily observe this vicious chain of events by simply reading your newspapers regularly or even watching the TV.

This illustrates both the mundane character of this ‘subversion’ and the indistinctness of its authorship. Both of these points serve to undermine, in a limited way, what is the central thrust of Schuman’s argument: that America is under the spell of a centrally-organized and systematic effort to weaken and ultimately destroy it. What he’s saying is still true. It’s just that it’s hard for him to say both that America needs no help from the Soviet Union to destroy itself; and this:

Introduction of NON-ISSUES is another powerful method of demoralizing at the level of IDEAS. It will take another full size book to describe in detail this method. Suffice it will be here to give a brief definition of NON-ISSUES. An issue, the solution of which creates more and bigger problems for majority of a nation, even though it may benefit a few, is a non-issue (civil rights of homosexuals is not an issue; defending sexual morality is the larger, real issue). The main purpose of non-issues and the devastating result of their introduction is the SIDE-TRACKING of public opinion, energy (both mental and physical), money and TIME from the constructive solutions. Soviet propaganda elevated the art of infiltrating and emphasizing non-issues in American public life to the level of actual state policy.

Okay, he says he would need another book to describe this. But how influential were Soviet attempts to influence American policy, to introduce “non-issues” into public life? This is vague and dubious, and I am therefore skeptical. As he said previously, Americans need no help introducing non-issues into public discussion. (Global warming, anyone?) The profit motive, American self-consciousness, and a large, regulatory government are sufficient for that.

The booklet is fascinating. I think what he is saying is largely true. But the author is too often bogged down in a kind of historical predetermination that leaves no room for new forces and new directions. Human society has more complexity than he gives it credit for. Read Love Letter to America with that, and Schuman’s genuine love for America, in mind.

Review: World Thought Police

2009-02-25T12:01:00.001-08:00

World Thought Police, a small booklet by Tomas Schuman (aka Yuri Bezmenov), a Soviet defector, can be read on my website here. The PDF is here.

Before I start, I should warn the prospective reader that the book contains many typos, is somewhat strangely organized, and may strike a reader who is totally innocent of this topic as insane conspiracy theory. Even for the seasoned reader of intelligence nonfiction, the book is eye-raisingly eccentric. But that is what makes it so interesting.

Tomas Schuman (whose real name is Yuri Bezmenov) worked as a "journalist" for Novosti Press Agency, which was a disinformation and propaganda agency controlled by the Soviet non-military intelligence agency (commonly known as the KGB). The Soviets called their disinformation work through Novosti "active measures," though Schuman uses the phrase "ideological subversion" to describe the activity of Novosti. Actually, "ideological subversion" was more of a term used by Soviet and Soviet-bloc propaganda to characterize the supposed actions of the West to undermine socialist and Communist ideology within the Soviet Union.

In the fifties and sixties, the Soviets and their allies began to use more creative means to mislead and misinform the West and the Third World, creating a cumulative effect that would in the long term be favorable to the Soviet Union. Novosti Press Agency was an overt and legitimate organization that published articles and books mainly for the West. It was ostensibly independent of the government, but we now know that this is a ridiculous claim. Most people assumed (and observed) that Novosti's work was somewhat propagandist, but until Bezmenov many did not realize the extent to which Novosti worked closely with the KGB to produce disinformation and mislead foreign governments and organizations, to the extent that Novosti's goals were quite simply the KGB's goals.

Looking back, many people might think that no one really took Novosti seriously. This is not the case. Western journalists and newspapers treated Novosti as a legitimate source of news and opinion. Papers like The New York Times used Novosti press releases just as they would the press releases of the AP, Reuters, AFP, or Groupe Presse. Novosti publications like the magazine Soviet Life and various books and travelogues were widely available in the United States and throughout the world and treated for the most part as honest, legitimate publications. Many of these publications can be found simply by searching Amazon for "Novosti Press Agency."

All of this is by way of saying that Yuri Bezmenov, who became Tomas Schuman upon his defection to the West, worked for Novosti (not as a KGB agent as is sometimes reported, but merely as a co-opted "journalist") to spread disinformation and actively subvert the Western world.

In World Thought Police, Schuman extensively details the various methods that Novosti would use. These are divided into legal and overt actions that are still nonetheless dishonest and harmful to the West, such as publishing a Novosti article, disseminating Novosti's material in bookstores, establishing a pro-socialist newspaper or tabloid, etc.; and illegal and covert actions, such as defamation and slander, infiltration into anti-Soviet or conservative publications in order to destroy them, financially aiding terrorists, etc.

Schuman also details the extent to which Novosti used foreign collaborators, what those collaborators would do for Novosti and the KGB, their motivations for collaborating, and their rewards for collaborating.

The book, which is basically a short pamphlet, ends with a very stirring account of the author meeting four American deserters of the Vietnam War who basically parrot Novosti/KGB's propaganda back to them, taking it as original thinking. Schuman, disturbed by this, tells the story to an apparatchik friend of his, who then relates to him an interesting dream about the Vietnam War. The book ends:

The only way I could interpret this dream of the Central Committee's apparatchik is: guilt, the feeling most of my generation of the Soviet "new class" desperately wanted to suppress. Because, unlike the American "peaceniks," we know perfectly well who is the aggressor, and our conscience bothers us.

This book, it seems, was the author's attempt to clear his conscience.

I strongly advise the prospective reader to take Schuman’s assessments with a grain of salt. Ultimately I think he is both overly optimistic about the success of Soviet active measures and overly cynical about the ability of the West to form a strong opposition to Soviet aggression. In no way do I suggest any intelligence buff, anti-Communist, or other amateur to begin or end his study with Schuman/Bezmenov. That would leave him with a ridiculously simplistic and very limited understanding of the topic.

On the other hand, I think World Thought Police in particular is a necessary supplement to other works on the far-reaching intelligence arm of the Evil Empire. The Sword and the Shield, for instance, is extremely comprehensive but spends little time on active measures. Furthermore the authors seem to be unaware of the extent of KGB control over “journalism” both within the Soviet Union and over Soviet press agency offices around the world. Schuman’s work, however eccentric, fills in the blanks left by other accounts.

Re: Propaganda Blogs

2009-02-23T09:52:00.000-08:00

After I published this post about this blog, wondering whether it was chekhist disinformation, I got a message from an Australian named Artyom who is eager for me to denounce his blog too.

It's kind of a bizarre message:

If u think Vara's blog is FSB funded, you will love ours. It will be the mother of all what we call "loyalist" blogs. We aren't funded by the MP or FSB but believe me if we could get dollars from them - we would.

Not exactly the tone one would expect from a coreligionist-- "if we could get dollars from them we would." Not, "How dare you slander our sister in the faith like that?" Or, "Brother, let me set you straight, for you have strayed from the path."

I like the term "loyalist." It's a surprisingly cynical, open, non-euphemistic term that accurately describes the relationship between ROCOR and MP, as I understand it (not very well). Who does? What is there to know? Who wants to know?

Anyway - if you feel like commenting there, please do. Looking forward to some interesting debates.

Regards
Artyom
Sydney Australia

Not, "In Christ," or "God Bless," mind you. "Regards." Very professional, at any rate.

I have no intention of posting at Artyom's blog, ROCOR Unity, except sarcastically, to amuse myself. Unfortunately I am just as cynical and detached as my Australian friend, who takes the tone of clever adversary ("the title of your blog suggests that if nothing else, u do have an excllent inight into your condition") and cynical professional, not faithful Christian and dutiful servant of God.

His earlier creation, "Rocor Loyalism Central" demonstrates this even better.

So is Artyom a propagandist for the Moscow Patriarchate's Department of External Church Relations, or for the KGB or FSB's Service A or whatever they're calling their disinformation department these days? I don't know, and I don't particularly care. However, I do find pretty amusing the image of jaded, atheistic KGB men reading up on theology and church history in order to make their grist more believable.

I can't imagine a faithful Orthodox Christian, who is sincerely committed to the unity of the Orthodox Church, making pictures like this one of the left, or an arrow pointing to a clergyman with big red letters reading, "Traitor."

I can't imagine such a person making bizarre connections like this one between a non-loyal bishop and "monarchists." A priest in Canada marries a couple and the groom has distant connections to a former Russian tsar, and this Australian sees fit to point out the "monarchist" connections. It's pretty laughable. Yes, I'm sure "Prince" Alex Galitzine and Bishop Andronik Kotliaroff are instrumental parts of a monarchist plot to bring back the czar to Russia, overthrowing the "democracy." Maybe they are Trotskyites, too?

So I sent Artyom a brief, polite response. He waited a week, and then impatient, wrote me:

Could u add a mention/link of my blog in ur "propoganda blogs" post please? I feel a bit left out with poor old vara getting all the attention - i feel mine is far more propogandistic than hers... ;)

Yes, "all the attention." What a media firestorm my blog post set off! Tens of people saw it! And the only person who cares is Artyom of Sydney. Why the undue interest?

Of course, Artyom can explain the tone of his e-mails by saying that I am a crazy kook, and he is just having fun with me (of course, this is not the tone one should take with one who is in error about such weighty matters, especially a fellow Orthodox Christian). Still, his tone is kind of unbelievable, and if he is actively writing disinformation, a little unprofessional.

But perhaps I just don't understand. It seems the best course for the hypothetical Artyom-as-propagandist is to ignore me. Sure, a blogger identifying a fellow propagandist as such is something to take note of, even if that blog is kooky, weird, and unread. But why contact that blogger? To compromise him? But his kookiness is already a testament to his lack of trustworthiness. Aren't you imparting more seriousness to his claims than is due? Or are you just bored, amusing yourself?

Secondly, why would you, hypothetical Artyom-as-propagandist, want the weird, kooky blogger to identify you as such? Well, obviously, it is because he's a weird, kooky blogger and so him identifying you as a propagandist only serves to discredit the opinion that you are a propagandist-- look, this crazy blogger says this, and he also says Crazy Thing B and Crazy Thing C, so if you say that I am a propagandist then you are on the level of this kook who says Crazy Things B and C-- and it also serves to discredit the movement of the non-loyal Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, which is more important.

Then he can point to Useless Dissident as an example, saying, "This is representative of the schismatics. They are more concerned with opposing Russia than with church unity. Their loyalty is more to a political movement of anti-Communism than to the Church. And what's more, they are hopeless conspiracy theorists, who can't accept that the Russia of today is not the Soviet Union of the past." And who can argue with this? I can't even argue with that. Because, first of all, this blog isn't about "ROCOR Unity" or disunity or even religion at all. It's about politics. Even if it weren't in some degree a kooky conspiracy site, Artyom could say, "Look, the schismatics only care about politics. This guy opposes the union of MP and ROCOR because he's a right-winger." And on a certain level, he would be correct.

On the other hand, what is the point of a "ROCOR Unity" propaganda blog? Doesn't it only serve to undermine the valuable work that honest, sincere, and genuine blogs and commentaries in support of union do for your cause? Union is over and done with; certainly not many people are talking about it anymore in our churches. Why call attention to the ongoing process of assimilation of ROCOR into the MP hierarchy and bureaucracy? Why make anyone wonder about a possible function of ROCOR as Russian foreign intelligence channel? Why not leave it to sincere and faithful Orthodox Christians who honestly and cheerfully celebrate the union of ROCOR and MP as the healing of a painful wound and a new opportunity for evangelism and outreach? Why do you need a blog that makes "loyalism" look bad, by publishing obviously one-sided accounts and shamelessly slandering schismatic bishops?

I know Westerners are extremely naive and trusting, and for the most part cannot recognize disinformation. Russians look at everything with cynicism; but Westerners gaze with rose-colored glasses. Russians assume it is propaganda; Westerners don't even consider that it might be. For that reason, there is little danger in blogs like Voices from Russia or ROCOR Unity, if in fact they are propaganda (that is, created by paid employees of the Moscow Patriarchate or some Russian government or military agency).

Are they? I really don't know. It doesn't matter, either. Nor is it so black-and-white, like either they are active disinformation measures or not. Artyom wrote, "We aren't funded by the MP or FSB but believe me if we could get dollars from them - we would." So what's the difference? If you would accept money from them, it means you think you are doing them a service that should be paid for with money. Of course, money is only part of the equation. The acronym MICE outlines the reasons for cooperation: Money, Ideology, Compromise, Ego.

Artyom, for instance, could perform this service out of Anti-Americanism, thinking that by promoting the union between ROCOR and MP and discrediting the opponents of union, he is increasing Russian hegemony and pulling one over on America. This is just one possibility. Or he just thinks he's a Russian patriot. Or, he could be totally innocent, just a particularly naive and simple person.

Intelligence is about making educated guesses. It's not about certainty. Nor is it about particular cases, but about a greater movement of influence. Thus I know that certainly there are propaganda blogs, but which are and which aren't... in the absence of information, in a world full of all sorts of different people with all sorts of different motives and beliefs, it's foolish to announce that this is, but that other is not.

What I do know:

1) Disinformation is used by government intelligence agencies.
2) The KGB in particular is very good at it.
3) There is little indication that the KGB today (FSB/SVR) is any less zealous than the KGB of the past.
4) The Russian government was very excited about the possibility of union between MP and ROCOR and worked hard to achieve that goal.

Thus, I can safely assume that the MP/ROCOR union is an intelligence and foreign policy goal of the Russian Federation and that the intelligence apparatus, including its disinformation functions, would be employed toward achieving that goal. Of course, just because a government is "excited" about some prospect doesn't mean it will use any and all underhanded tactics at its disposal to achieve that goal. It's just my knowledge and suspicion about Russia in particular that lends credence to that possibility.

The Perfect Metaphor

2009-02-16T12:52:00.000-08:00

...change you can believe in...

The "fresh vibrancy" of socialism. Somehow I get the feeling that the NY Times would celebrate it all the more if Obama struck down presidential term limits so that he can "organize us" however he feels best for however long he needs.

Comrade, Pick up Your Blue Book and March Into the Glorious Future!

Propaganda Blogs?

2009-02-13T16:35:00.000-08:00

Blogs and websites made by foreign government agencies under the guise of some independent blogger or grassroots organization-- do they exist? Of course they do.

Here's one (I think): Voices from Russia. The author of the blog is purportedly a woman named "Vara." She has a second, very similar blog named "Art and Faith." For our purposes the first is much more interesting.

For the most part it just consists of Novosti, World of Russia, and Interfax news releases. What is telling are the choice of news items and the occasional editorial comments.

The pretense of being an Orthodox Christian who cares deeply about church issues is disgusting. The blog of course parrots the line of the Moscow Patriarchate (MP).

The Russian propagandists who most likely run this piece of work focus heavily on MP/ROCOR (Russian Church Abroad) issues because this avenue is currently a priority for the criminal leaders of the country.

ObamaSpeak

2009-02-07T10:41:00.000-08:00

Spendulus:

Ratcheting up the sarcasm, the president said: "So then you get the argument, 'well, this is not a stimulus bill, this is a spending bill.' What do you think a stimulus is?"

According to John Maynard Keynes, it's government spending taxpayer dollars. According to real economists, it's cutting taxes.

Obama warned Republicans not to "come to the table with the same tired arguments and worn ideas that helped to create this crisis." Americans, he said, "did not vote for the false theories of the past, and they didn't vote for phony arguments and petty politics."

Hmm, "the same tired arguments and worn ideas that helped to create this crisis," eh? You mean like government spending and regulation? Or was it 'tax cuts for big business'? I was under the impression that Americans did "vote for the false theories of the past" and "phony arguments." It's called 'the welfare state,' or 'Big Brother government.' As for "petty politics," I guess that's just what it means to dissent from our Sarcastic, Derisive, Arrogant Fool of a Leader.

ROCOR and the Moscow Patriarchate, United for How Long?

2009-02-06T14:09:00.000-08:00

10/30/1970:

The Moscow Patriarchate in its present form consists of persons selected by the atheist state and is absolutely controlled by the latter and imprisoned. The main feature of this imprisonment of the Patriarchate is that it not only does not glorify the countless New Martyrs of the Russian Church, but even mocks their memory, stating that there are no persecutions of the Church in the USSR and that there have been no such persecutions.

ROCOR, or the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, reunited with the Russian Orthodox Church on May 17, 2007. ROCOR waited a long time to end this schism, for a long time not trusting the Russian state to be substantially different from its Soviet past; or to keep out of the affairs of the church.

Present at the ceremony? Vladimir Putin:

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who played a key role in facilitating reunification, also spoke at the ceremony.

"The split in the church was caused by an extremely deep political split within Russian society itself," said Putin, who has attended Orthodox services.

"We have realized that national revival and development in Russia are impossible without reliance on the historical and spiritual experience of our people," Putin added.

"We understand well, and value, the power of pastoral words which unite the people of Russia. That is why restoring the unity of the church serves our common goals."

Our common goals... To me, that is a chilling phrase. What common goals do the Orthodox Church and the Criminal Fascist State share? Will Putin ensure that the Church has the state's goals?

Reunification has been a controversial issue within the church abroad, with opponents arguing that the hierarchy in Moscow still has not properly addressed the issue of KGB infiltration of the church hierarchy during the Soviet period.

Konstantin Preobrazhensky, a former KGB officer turned Kremlin critic who now lives in the U.S. said Thursday in a telephone interview from Washington that he believes the church outside Russia would lose its independence and that eventually priests with loyalties to the Russian government would be sent to work in the United States.

The picture above is the criminal Putin present at the elevation of a new Patriarch over the Russian Orthodox Church (both home and Abroad): Kyrill.

In a recent article entitled "Putin's Espionage Church," Preobrazhensky begins:

On May 17, 2007, Russia has gained a historical victory over America. It has opened its province here, which is called the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Of Russia (ROCOR). On this day it has recognized Moscow’s superiority over itself by signing an Act of Canonical Community with the Moscow Patriarchate (MP). But in Russia the Church and state separated only on paper. In fact, the Moscow Patriarchate (MP) is controlled by the Russian neo-KGB state and has always been the pawn of the Russian intelligence.

Preobrazhensky exaggerates greatly, but he is to be taken seriously. For those who attend a ROCOR churches it should be positively chilling.

From Preobrazhensky, also read:
Does Putin believe in God?
An interview with Washington Profile

Perspective on Putin

2009-02-06T13:34:00.000-08:00

From Ralph Peters, NY Post:

We Americans inherited a unique tradition from England, the belief in the freedom of the public space. But most human beings - not least, Russians - are content with the right to do or say what they want behind closed doors, among family and friends.

Sad, but true.

This was a move of genius. The Putin model - tolerant totalitarianism - gave the dying command-state a new lease on life. The new czar saw that most human beings don't care who governs them, as long as the government minds its own business. And if the ruler can revive the illusion of national power, so much the better.

Shamelessly cynical, Putin goes through the stage-managed forms of democracy. He even permits scripted media criticism of the state (though not of himself).

But there are limits to the new totalitarianism's tolerance. You can call Putin a baboon-butt monkey-boy over the vodka bottle at your kitchen table - but don't do it in public.

And in public they cheer: Putin has given us a strong Russia!

Working through the traitorous Ukrainian power-broker Yulia Timoshenko, Putin's also going to do all he can to "reunite" Ukraine and Russia. And he'll continue to use natural gas as a strategic weapon, while Europe boldly responds, Oh, dear. . . One really ought not to do that . . . Really, one oughtn't. . ."

Who is Ralph Peters? Wikipedia:

He spent ten years in Germany working in military intelligence... Peters later became a Foreign Area Officer, specializing in the Soviet Union. He attended the Command and General Staff College. His last assignment was to the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence. He retired in 1998 with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

Interesting. My take is far less subtle. Putin is a cocky douchebag. He oozes bravado and fascist forcefulness. I can see all the Aryan girls cooing when Putin says, "We don't need help. We are not invalids. We don't have limited mental capacity."

I think Peters' characterization is interesting, but I don't share his optimism that Putin and his particular gang of thugs have learned some new and upgraded form of totalitarianism. They merely limit themselves in the ways they need to limit themselves, for the moment, to cement their power. And how can their control of the media and the public square fail to expand into the churches, families, homes and minds of the Russian people? It cannot.

It is the nature of totalitarianism to be total and the nature of power to corrupt. As soon as the Russians' unprecedented boom decade of economic prosperity dries up, the dissidents will be strengthened and there will be a reactionary wave of violence and repression. The networks of informants will be bolstered and people will, once again, be afraid to speak the truth in their homes.

As they laugh

2009-02-03T11:42:00.001-08:00

As the smug and confident Joe Biden, useful idiot extraordinaire, administers the Oath of Office to the New Secretary of State, everyone laughs in lighthearted good cheer.

Meanwhile, in Pyongyang...

33 minutes.

Obama:

I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. I will not weaponize space. I will slow our development of future combat systems...

“I will set a goal for a world without nuclear weapons. To seek that goal, I will not develop new nuclear weapons; I will seek a global ban on the production of fissile material; and I will negotiate with Russia to take our ICBMs off hair-trigger alert, and to achieve deep cuts in our nuclear arsenals.

Iran: You Fail, America

2009-02-02T10:58:00.000-08:00

It's what foreign policy hawks have been saying all along: if you make overtures of conciliation and admission of guilt to the world, it will see you as weak:

US President Barack Obama's offer to talk to Iran shows that America's policy of "domination" has failed, the government spokesman said on Saturday.

"This request means Western ideology has become passive, that capitalist thought and the system of domination have failed," Gholam Hossein Elham was quoted as saying by the Mehr news agency.

"Negotiation is secondary, the main issue is that there is no way but for (the United States) to change," he added.

After nearly three decades of severed ties, Obama said shortly after taking office this month that he is willing to extend a diplomatic hand to Tehran if the Islamic republic is ready to "unclench its fist".

In response, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad launched a fresh tirade against the United States, demanding an apology for its "crimes" against Iran and saying he expected "deep and fundamental" change from Obama.

Now Iran admits as much.

What do we expect when our new president goes to Egypt and speaks of the need to "repair" our relations with the Arabic world, even apologizes for U.S. actions? The U.S. has nothing to apologize for. And even if it did, what does apologizing accomplish? What does a foreign policy of guilt and self-incrimination accomplish? Nothing but the weakening of U.S. power, just when a professed enemy like Iran is at its weakest.

Of course now we see news stories everywhere about how Obama is initiating talks with Iran, Syria, etc. Not like that cowboy Bush, who wouldn't talk to them. Except, his administration talked to Iran 28 times. He just didn't make big public relations farces out of those events, turning them into propaganda for the Iranians like Obama is.

"Talking to the Iranians" is nothing new. We have been doing it since 1979. It's just that under Democratic administrations the Iranians get more propaganda value for their buck, ratcheting up their profile and influence, and under Republican ones they face tougher sanctions, less of a willingness to be played for public relations purposes, and a hard line against weapons development (but not hard enough).

Now that the mullahs will imminently have nuclear weaponry, it is not the time for conciliation. It is the time to support Iranian dissidents, completely discredit and legitimize the Iranian leadership, and exert pressure on the rest of the world not to trade with or give aid to Iran.

It is not the time to speak of reaching out, unclenched fists, and common ground. The Iranian leaders are criminals and tyrants. Is America on the side of freedom and the rule of law? Or is it on the side of terror? As it stands, Obama (and Bush before him) supports the criminals who systematically persecute the Iranian people.

Meanwhile in Moscow, Havana and Tehran...

2009-01-28T10:56:00.000-08:00

As the United States "stimulates" itself into oblivion, the weak and coiled snakes begin to sense weakness, and make their moves.

Here, Russia 'stops missile deployment in Europe because of Obama.' Pffffffff... haha! That is a good one.

Russia has held out an olive branch to President Barack Obama by suspending plans to deploy missiles in Europe.

Defence Ministry officials said that the move had been made because the new United States leadership was reconsidering plans to establish a missile defence shield in Eastern Europe. Deployment of Iskander short-range missiles, which can carry nuclear warheads, in Russia's Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad had been halted in response.

The news emerged before Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's appearance at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last night. Mr Putin said on Monday that he was "cautiously optimistic" about improved relations with the US because Mr Obama had shown a willingness to reconsider the missile shield.

Bear in mind that the Times (UK) is a relatively conservative newspaper. Their foreign editor: "The Russians seem to have finally grasped the implications of Mr Obama’s whirlwind foreign policy review."

Did these people sleep through the Cold War? They even quote Novosti! Ah, "peace" propaganda. It can only be more effective in the Age of Obama. Tom of Naples, Florida writes, "Only President Barack Obama can bring peace to the world. After 8 years of Pres Obama, our citizens will realize the value of a liberal philosophy. After the last 8 years Americans have experienced the dangerous failure of conservatism. Conservatives are going to be in minority for a long time to[o.]" But to their credit, most of the commenters on this item take it for the public relations farce that it is.

Oh, but I have to share this one: "I hope President Obama follows through on his plans to end nuclear weapons and star wars programs. By destroying US weapons and ending new programs, unliaterally [sic], he would send such a positive signal of peace, that the other nations of the world would surely follow suit. This story is proof!" This is the kind of thing a conservative like me would write as a joke. I mean, there's lots of what could be sarcasm, mainly the implication that "detroying... weapons" and "ending... programs," "other nations would surely follow suit." This is obviously wrong, and yet... some people believe it. The useful idiots believe it. I guess it goes to show, once again, that left-wing sincerity and right-wing parody are the same thing.

Meanwhile, Raul Castro comes to Moscow! Nothing to see here, folks! They're just "boosting ties."

Castro told the ITAR-Tass news agency before the trip that Cuba and Russia enjoy "wonderful relations" again after a lull in the 1990s.

TASS! Our old friend! Officially state-run, but truly independent of the government propaganda now, for sure.

[Russian Foreign Minister Sergey] Lavrov also reaffirmed Russia's call for the United States to lift its trade embargo on Cuba. "We intend to firmly pursue our course for lifting the blockade, which we see as a vestige of the long gone era," he said.

Yes, a long gone era. Ah, who could forget all those peaceful democratic reforms that have swept through Cuba and the former Soviet Union? The rule of law established, freedom of speech, movement, religion and representation restored, and all. Otherwise it would be ridiculous to talk of lifting the embargo!

Lest we forget, Drudge reminds us: December 19, 2008-- 3 Russian warships visit Cold War ally Cuba. Those ships then moved on to Venezuela.

And finally, the inestimable Michael Ledeen speaks of Iran once again, reminding us how big a loss they suffered in Gaza through their terrorist proxy.

All of this confusion distracts us from the big story, which is that Iran is in a jam, defeated in Iraq and Gaza, facing a cash flow crisis, and the usual demonstrations raging on college campuses and factories all over the country. If ever there were a fine opportunity for the United States to support Iranian dissidents, this is it. But we’re apparently not going to do any such thing; we’re going to try to strike a deal, even though every president since Jimmy Carter has tried to do just that, and every one of them failed.

Later:

There are certainly Iranians who disagree with the official doctrine that is best summarized in the street chant we see so often on the evening news: “Death to America.” In fact, there are probably 50-60 million of them. They are the oppressed people of Iran, and we don’t need the Intelligence Community to identify them. We see them in prison, we see them publicly executed in very brutal ways (including stoning), and we see their offices raided and smashed. Those are the people we should be helping.

But instead we are 'pursing [the same failed] diplomatic solutions' to the same old problems. Russia, Cuba, Venezuela and Iran are weaker now than they have been in years. Now is the time to speak out harshly against them, to sponsor dissident groups and encourage the toppling of these governments. But to do that would be to vindicate President Bush's 'cowboy diplomacy,' where he 'alienated the world' and 'turned them against us.' He 'only strengthened our enemies,' by giving them causes and reasons to fight against us.

To do the right thing now, and treat the governing regimes of these countries as illegitimate would be tantamount to admitting that George Bush's foreign policy was not fundamentally flawed; that he had the right idea. And that is out of the question for the Democrats and for President Obama; he would rather play silly games with the leaders of these countries than support their dissident voices. For his shallow appearance as 'mender of nations and bringer of peace,' he will sacrifice the freedom of millions and ultimately the security of Americans.

HR1: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, William James, and Lobbyists

2009-01-28T09:21:00.000-08:00

Remember the first bill of this historic, wonderful new Congressional era, with the majority in full agreement with the President. Take it from the Wall Street Journal: "This is a political wonder that manages to spend money on just about every pent-up Democratic proposal of the last 40 years."

I'm not going to get into the details of this nightmare of a "bill": the word "Reinvestment" is an interesting one. Perhaps it might remind one of another "...Reinvestment Act," one that had a hand in getting this crisis started in the first place.

Remember:

"Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before."

-Rahm Emmanuel, Pres. Obama's White House Chief of Staff, 2009

I spoke of the "moral equivalent" of war. So far, war has been the only force that can discipline a whole community, and until an equivalent discipline is organized, I believe that war must have its way. But I have no serious doubt that the ordinary prides and shames of social man, once developed to a certain intensity, are capable of organizing such a moral equivalent as I have sketched, or some other just as effective for preserving manliness of type. It is but a question of time, of skilful propogandism, and of opinion-making men seizing historic opportunities.

-William James, 1909

Rush Limbaugh is pointing out that 20 days ago, Barack Obama was saying that there is no way to solve this financial crisis except through government. And now, of course, with this big government "stimulus" bill on the table, he is paying lip-service to the truth that 'only American workers and businesses' can stimulate the economy. Well, duh. But it kind of belies what Obama's saying that he says it in defense of a slush fund that takes the money from American workers and businesses and gives it to politically connected interest groups and "infrastructure funding" for business interests with the most vigorous lobby groups.

But that's not the fundamental dishonesty here. It's that President Obama has often spoken of the horrible influence of lobbyists in Washington, and yet everything he does only encourages them and further entrenches their positions. I don't like lobbyists either. But you can't just bar them from lobbying. It is their constitutional right to petition the government for "redress of grievances." You might say, 'Oh, that's an ancient term. More like for filling of pockets.' Well, no. Why are lobbyists in Washington in the first place? Because Washington plays a game of 1) regulation and control of industry and 2) picking winners and losers through funding, subsidies and taxes. The industries that are most regulated, that see the most fluctuation in funding, subsidies and taxes are the ones who have the most lobbyists in Washington; Because Washington is in their business, they are in Washington's business.

It's as simple as that, really. The cause of lobbyists is not greed, or malevolence, or dishonesty. It's self-interest. Is that petty? Well, so is Washington's constant manipulation and regulation of their industries. If Washington would leave them alone, would avoid giving money to or propping up their competitors, would lay off regulation that affects their industries, then they would have no reason to lobby in Washington.

So Obama's stated goal of lessening the influence of lobbyists is completely at odds with his big government, super-regulatory, top-down management approach. The prospect of his administration has probably only increased the number of lobbyists and their influence. No, definitely so, because his administration brings a unity of House, Senate, and White House, an unblocked path to a world of new legislation. Money is to be had in Washington! Favorable regulation and subsidies are to be obtained there. D.C. might as well be renamed El Dorado. It's a lobbying golden age!

HR1 is only the beginning.

U.S. Detention Policy in Iraq

2009-01-27T10:32:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd pass along this article by Jeffrey Azarva in the latest issue of Middle East Quarterly. Azarva doesn't go easy on the United States, speaking of U.S. detention facilities as breeding grounds for extremists, in many cases turning those who only planted an IED or fought alongside Al Qaeda for financial reasons into strong opponents of the U.S. and Coalition forces.

It sounds like a typical liberal argument about the war: the U.S. occupation has just made more terrorists and insurgents-- first they fight against you for economic reasons, but then because you have made them hate you; American liberals may love these arguments for their own unhealthy reasons, but for a long time they were largely true. Detention facilities mixed the most radical terrorists with people who were largely innocent or were not very radical. There, they were made by the radicals to follow their own prison code-- backward, barbaric Sharia law.

But with the long overdue counter-insurgency (a development the liberals who proclaimed the whole war lost have tried to downplay), a new policy in the detention centers came also:

The military realized that the point of departure for any successful reform would be its ability to detect and segregate irreconcilables—those incorrigible detainees bent on upsetting the apple cart and imposing their extremism on others. Although detainee assessments were administered under Maj.-Gen. John D. Gardner, Stone's predecessor, they were significantly expanded following Gardner's transfer of authority to Stone. The task force figured out that it was in detention, more so than in the alleyways of Baghdad, where the worlds of coalition and insurgent forces met. To capitalize on this interaction, the task force employed psychologists, teachers, social workers, and Iraqi imams to paint a rough sketch of each detainee's background, including their religiosity, education, skills, work history, and general motivation. The evaluations have since assisted not only in the physical placement of detainees—those deemed extremist are now quarantined in modular housing units—but have also proved instrumental in shaping the military's innovative reintegration programs.

In conjunction with the psychological assessments, surveys of detainees reaffirmed the potential for their rehabilitation. Many detainees, it turned out, were not avowed jihadists but Iraqi civilians spurred on by pragmatic considerations. Research commissioned by the task force revealed that in a majority of cases, a confluence of factors contributed to the average detainee's arrest, such as illiteracy, fear of reprisal, underemployment, and the enticement of cash. Family demographic studies also helped to explain why otherwise law-abiding citizens gravitated toward the insurgency: 63 percent of detainees were married, 79 percent had children, and the overwhelming majority lived with their extended family. For those detainees who acted as family breadwinners, the allure of $200-$300 a month in supplemental income—Al-Qaeda's average recompense for planting a roadside bomb—was simply too strong to resist.

Armed with this knowledge, the task force set out to counteract these motivations and provide detainees with an alternative to joining the insurgency. Education, vocational, and enhanced family visitation programs formed the backbone of the military's efforts, filling a void previously exploited by extremists. In August 2007, the military set up Dar al-Hikma (House of wisdom), an education center accredited by the Iraqi Ministry of Education. The school, which is open to both juveniles and adults and offers a core curriculum of Arabic, English, math, science, civics, and geography, has turned into an unequivocal success: On a number of occasions, detainees have postponed their releases to finish studies, and parents without detained children have petitioned to enroll their kids in the program.

Perhaps the education programs' true center of gravity lies in the Islamic discussion program. There, vetted Iraqi clerics employ a moderate exegesis of the Qur'an to encourage debate and refute extremist arguments. Ironically, most insurgents are not devout. Polling of the population has revealed that, prior to detention, more than 70 percent of detainees were not fastidious mosque-goers; in fact, 36 percent had never even set foot in one. On other questions about piety, responses did not reflect stringent or immoderate beliefs. Even mid-level members of Al-Qaeda and the Shi‘ite Mahdi Army at times exhibited few signs of religious fervor.

On the surface, such information would seem to render moot the utility of such a program. But it does not. Al-Qaeda has long used a perverted interpretation of the Qur'an to proselytize among secular, illiterate, and disenfranchised Iraqis. But for those who do not arrive in detention possessed of religious fervor, the program still has merit, both in its ability to reduce future susceptibility and to encourage independent thinking. A number of imams who led the juvenile Islamic discussion program attested to this fact, telling this author that the program unlocked adolescents' minds and made them less vulnerable to brainwashing upon release.

It is interesting to consider this new policy in light of American liberalism's beliefs about our own prison system. They support rehabilitation, right?

The problem with this (for them) is that the detainees aren't being rehabilitated in their own ideology. The left of the Democratic Party (which means our new President) would see this as an imperialist indoctrination, a form of rape and torture even more severe than anything we might do physically to some important "militant."

Ideologies of Hope

2009-01-27T10:11:00.000-08:00

The following is an excerpt from Postmodern Metaphysics, by Christos Yannaras (Meta-neoterike meta physike, Athens, 1993), translated by Norman Russell. I have emboldened some particularly interesting passages.

5. Ideologies of hope

Part of the characteristic "physiognomy" of the modern age is the transposition of social perspectives into ideological blueprints and teleologies.

The term "ideology" owes its origin to the first theoretical schematizations of the modern age: Destutt de Tracy first used it in 1796, marking the start of the faith of the Enlightenment that social reform would result from the reorganization of ideas: Only when people's ideas change-- their individual perceptions, convictions and interpretation of reality, their understanding of nature and history, of goals and obligations, of the meaning of existence and of life-- do new and desired social forms emerge.

The demand for new "ideas" implies that the change must be expressed as a system and put into effect. If "ideas" need to be changed, the existing ones must be mistaken and harmful. Confirmed error or harmfulness justifies putting forward a counter-proposal, legitimizing the effort of imposition.

Thus ideology is engendered by the logic of breaking with and struggling against, the past. It becomes specific, proposing new ideas which people must embrace if they are liberate themselves as individuals and as a society from the "darkness" of the medieval past: ideas which block progress towards the forms of society to which they aspire are to be set aside and faith in the desired goals is to be imposed on all.

Such demands ignore marginal areas where new ideas can be engendered naturally from the needs of the social body. The ideology dominates because its adherents are convinced that prevailing ideas are wrong and harmful. The correct and more profitable ideas are framed in advance without reference to the social body. The ideology interprets social and individual needs, the needs which people ought to have, by itself and a priori. And it systematically imposes previously framed ideas.

Ideology is by definition a rationalist construct. It emerges from the rational criticism of existing ideas, and its own counter-proposal cannot but be based on rational arguments, on "objectively" valid blueprints of the intended social perspective. Rationalistic systematization over-anticipates social needs, and would have had no chance of success without the goal of arousing collective desires at the same time. Collective and general desires spring from innate drives, such as the self-preservation urge or the egocentric quest for power.

Accordingly, ideology represents something more than its proposed new perceptions, convictions and interpretations. It can transform desire into a conviction-interpretation-goal, which does not need to correspond to the actual circumstances of life, seeing that these are to be transformed. Starting from rational motives for changing reality, ideology often transforms its own rationalism into mysticism, achieving a complete denial of reality for the sake of the desired illusion. Freud demonstrated how this "power of illusion" functions, and later studies have based an impressive critique of modern ideology on Freud.

Certainly, the function of ideologies in the modern age is complicated, contributing to the "physiognomy" of modern societies; ideologies have replaced the ontology that has been rejected or consciously marked as spurious. The "soteriological" character of ideologies, means they promise to fulfill collective hopes.

Ideologies do not respond directly to ontological questions-- nor do they aspire to do so. They are always clearly anthropocentric and sociocentric: they promise institutional and organizational change in society as a whole, in labor relations and in the functioning of the economy, which will lead to "general happiness." Ideology weaves together schematic programs with eudaemonistic promises, thereby mating rationalism with incompatible cherished illusions.

This shotgun marriage always has its invisible or unacknowledged ontological presuppositions, which help ideology establish its self-evident, if not obligatory, acceptance. Modern social ideologies typically ignore questions concerning the causal principle of existence, subjective self-awareness, the modal absoluteness of existential otherness, the definitive relativity of the subject, or any other mostly unanswered question. Social ideologies work on the level of collective desires and eudaemonistic promises with concomitant anthropocentric criteria presupposing the "random" principle of existence, and a correlative agnosticism. They conceive of existence, nature and history on the assumption of the existential fact's axiomatic self-sufficiency, a human autonomy unfettered by ideas about causality or providence.

This existential autonomy explains the power of ideologies in the goal of "progress." Within this ideological framework, human beings aspire to be managers of their hopes, creators of their own future. Nature with its rich capabilities and energy sources is waiting for the human mind to tame it, intervening in its innermost functioning to satisfy the need for comfort and ease. Ideologies propose ways and means for a more productive management of humanity's existential autonomy, which can be imposed to constitute a hope of "progress" and "general happiness." The element of hope, the eudaemonistic promise-- either material or spiritual-- constitutes the ideological dynamic. The ideologies of hope, from realistic rationalist schemes to the wildest utopian illusions, have largely formed the modern age.

Russian KGB State and Obamian Ignorant State

2009-01-19T10:51:00.000-08:00

As the world convulses in its idiotic Obamania, Russia happily resumes being a fascist police state:

The broad-daylight slaying of Stanislav Markelov sparked anger among Chechens—already upset by the release of last week of Col. Yuri Budanov—and prompted an outpouring of grief and ire among Russia's beleaguered rights activists.

"This is a horrible, frightening crime," said Tatyana Lokshina of the Human Rights Watch, comparing it to the 2006 slaying of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya—a client of Markelov's and a fellow enemy of rights abuses in Chechnya and across former President Vladimir Putin's Russia.

Markelov, 34, was gunned down in central Moscow near a building where he had just held a news conference, about half a mile (1 kilometer) from the Kremlin, said Viktoria Tsyplenkova, a spokeswoman for the Investigative Committee of the Moscow prosecutor's office.

Markelov was shot in the back of the head at close range by an attacker who followed him after the news conference, wore a stocking-style mask and had a silencer on his gun—clear signs of a planned killing, state-run RIA-Novosti news agency reported, citing an unidentified law enforcement official.

A deputy editor of the Novaya Gazeta newspaper, Andrei Lipsky, said freelancer Anastasia Baburova, who had written for the paper, was shot when she tried to intervene after Markelov was shot. She was taken to a hospital, but Lipsky said he did not know her condition.

Obama's gonna change it, Obama's gonna leeeeead 'em...

Who is more like Abraham Lincoln-- Barack Obama, or George W. Bush? While our lovely free media voluntarily enslaves itself to the silliest hero worship, calling Obama Lincoln and not in any way pointing out the absurdity of the comparison or even laughing at it-- actually taking it seriously, those "divisive" right-wing blogs that are just too bitter to get on the love train point out that Obama is more like the anti-war Copperhead Democrats of Civil War Fame-- i.e. Lincoln's opponent.

And that would make Lincoln, who stubbornly persisted in preserving the Union despite what everyone was telling him about the impossibility of victory and sustainability, despite all the casualties that were put on his head-- that would make him more like George W. Bush, who heroically persisted in the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, refusing to turn the former into an Iranian proxy state and the latter into the free and open training ground for every backward terrorist group imaginable, despite all the insane Copperheads screaming about how the blood of our children and the lives of innocent Iraqis were on his head.

Yea, Bush=Lincoln. It's a hundred times more true than this disgusting parody of history in which the cowardly Obama, who has never been responsible for anything, who has advanced through life and to the highest office of our country on smiles and charm alone, is somehow compared to Lincoln, who was sullen and depressive, a stubborn and committed defender of the Union, who had more enemies than not and was smuggled to Washington (for the first time) anonymously under cover of night, not with empty speeches and flocks of ignoramuses at every stop.

Modern Bezmenov

2009-01-06T10:51:00.000-08:00

There is movement afoot, very noble and necessary, to de-liberalize the institutions that control and make public opinion, namely educational systems, the mass media, and Hollywood entertainment. Andrew Breitbart's new website Big Hollywood obviously applies to the last category.

However, I found it interesting that this post by U.S. Representative Thaddeus G. McCotter features a picture of The Beatles with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, about whom our pal Yuri had a few things to say. But Representative McCotter didn't seem to be using this occasion to bemoan the political idiocy of the entertainment industry; but rather to provide background for quoting The Beatles' "Dear Prudence" as an inspiration for Hollywood's conservatives to "come out and play."

Well, I found that a little ironic. And it can't hurt to go back over some Bezmenov, can it?

“The KGB was even curious about this gentleman (It may look innocent): Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a great spiritual leader, or maybe a great charlatan and crook, depending on from which side you are looking at him. [The] Beatles were trained at his ashram in Haridwar in India [in] how to meditate; Mia Farrow and other useful idiots from Hollywood visited his school and they returned back to [the] United States absolutely zonked out of their minds with marijuana, hashish, and crazy ideas of meditation.

“…[the] KGB was very fascinated with such a beautiful school, such a brainwashing center for stupid Americans. I was dispatched by the KGB to check [into] what kind of VIP Americans attend this school.

“…My function was to discover what kind of people from [the] United States attend this school. And we discovered that yes, there are some [members of influential families], public opinion-makers of [the] United States, who come back with the crazy stories about Indian philosophy.

“Indians themselves look upon them as idiots, useful idiots, to say nothing about [the] KGB who looked upon them as extremely naive, misguided people. Obviously, a VIP, say a wife of a Congressman, or a prominent Hollywood personality, after being trained in that school, is much more instrumental in the hands of manipulators of public opinion, and [the] KGB, than a normal person, who understands, who looks through this type of fake religious training.

“…This is exactly what the KGB and Marxist-Leninist propaganda want from Americans. To distract their opinion, attention, and mental energy from [the] real issues of [the] United States, into [non-issues], into a non-world, non-existent harmony. Obviously it’s more beneficial for the Soviet aggressors to have a bunch of duped Americans than Americans who are self-conscious, healthy, physically fit, and alert to the reality.

“Maharishi Mahesh Yogi obviously is not on the payroll of the KGB, but whether he knows it or not, he contributes greatly to [the] demoralization of American society. And he is not the only one. There are hundreds of those gurus who come to your country to capitalize on [the] naïveté and stupidity of Americans…

“So obviously you can see that if [the] KGB were that curious, if they paid [for] my trip to Haridwar, if they assigned me to that strange job, obviously they were very much fascinated. They were convinced that that type of brainwashing is very efficient and instrumental in [the] demoralization of [the] United States.”

I posted that as a comment there, but it was apparently too strange and irrelevant for them. It is strange, and it is somewhat off-the-point of the post, but it is a deeply undercutting irony that the author would use an instance of liberal idiocy to illustrate a point about conservative emergence.

Hell, to continue McCotter's analogy, the shy-- let's say "conservative"-- Prudence is beckoned out of her tent-- her identity and personhood-- by the seductive, comforting, entertaining, trans-nationalist Lennon. What does it mean to "come out and play" with him? What does it mean for Hollywood conservatives to "come out and play"? The game that Hollywood liberals play, the tasteless, shameless sermonizing and eternal perpetuation of half-truth and total nonsense?

Of course Prudence might play the game differently. But it is Lennon who made the rules, and if she plays his game, Lennon will always win. She needs a new and different game.

New Yuri Bezmenov/Tomas Schuman Video

2009-01-05T18:16:00.000-08:00

Just uploaded to YouTube, a lecture labeled "L.A. pt. III." Here is the playlist (it is in seven parts). Thank you, hermitcleric of Brazil, for uploading this!

Fred Thompson: Voice of Reason

2009-01-02T11:26:00.000-08:00

From 2007:

We’re also hopeful that, eventually, our ostrich-headed allies will realize there’s a world war going on out there and they need to pick a side — the choice being between the forces of civilization and the forces of anarchy. Considering the fact that the latter team is growing stronger and bolder daily, while most of our European Union friends continue to dismantle their defenses, that day may not be too long in coming.

In the meantime, let’s be realistic about the world we live in. Mexican leaders apparently have an economic policy based on exporting their own citizens, while complaining about U.S. immigration policies that are far less exclusionary than their own. The French jail perfectly nice people for politically incorrect comments, but scold us for holding terrorists at Guantanamo.

Russia, though, takes the cake. Here is a government apparently run by ex-KGB agents who have no problem blackmailing whole countries by turning the crank on their oil pipelines. They’re not doing anything shady, they say. They can’t help it if their opponents are so notoriously accident-prone. Criticize these guys and you might accidentally drink a cup of tea laced with a few million dollars worth of deadly, and extremely rare, radioactive poison. Oppose the Russian leadership, and you could trip and fall off a tall building or stumble into the path of a bullet.

Meanwhile, in the present, Michael Ledeen reminds us (again) that Hamas is a tool of Iran.

World Thought Police: Part Four

2009-01-01T16:58:00.000-08:00

Continued from Part Three. (Parts One and Two.)

COVERT & ILLEGITIMATE ACTIVE MEASURES
Most of the “covert” and “unlawful” actions have already been well described in many books by many Western authors (John Barron's “KGB Today” is one of the most recent). I shall list only several of them, known to be conducted through the Novosti Press Agency. Some of these active measures are harmful and unlawful enough to attract the attention of the law enforcement organs of the Free World, but remain unpunished for various diplomatic reasons, such as not wanting to “rock the boat” or “threaten the Russians,” or so as not to “harm the spirit of detente,” etc. Others are considered to be too unlikely to stand up in court, and, even if proven to be unlawful, too unlikely to result in punishment of the offender, that is the Soviet Government, by, say, collecting judgments or fines from the USSR, or for that matter from the administration of the Novosti Press Agency. In fact, there is a “catch”: the official Prospectus of APN specifics that “Novosti will not be legally responsible for any claims against the Soviet State,” and the other way around: the Soviet State is not accountable for claims against the Novosti (since it is a “non-government” organization).

Many of these active measures are “covert” only in a purely formal sense: every sensible member of the Western (or Eastern) security service knows perfectly well about Novosti mischief, and so does the media. Conservative and anti-Communist groups make this information available to the public and to government bureaucrats. It is being consistently ignored both by the bureaucrats and by the public, who prefer to remain in blissful ignorance about such unpleasant facts, leading to the uncomfortable realization that they are being duped.

So, with the support of, or in cooperation with, the KGB, with practically unlimited financing by the Soviet State (which in turn is being financed by the Western banks and the multinational corporations) with the assistance of foreign collaborators, and without any fear of being taken before any court of justice and punished, Novosti Press Agency performs the following dirty tricks and pays the following moneys (and awards) to the collaborators:

Service No. 1
Defamation and slander campaigns against Soviet citizens (dissidents, moral protesters, intellectuals, etc.) who fell into disfavor with the Soviet junta. If and when it is done in the Soviet media by a foreign collaborator, the “royalty” is paid either in Soviet rubles (the same rate as for the “overt” publication), or in a foreign currency, or through various “bonuses,” such as a free trip to the USSR. Thus, for defamation of Alexander Solzhenitsyn in the Soviet media, several Western writers and journalists were listed as “progressive” and their names were added to the lists for future invitations by the Novosti. For slandering Solzhenitsyn in Pravda, a Canadian writer by the name of Farley Mowat was awarded another free trip to Siberia, where he did research for another book-- a “bestseller” [this?] about the happy life of Soviet Eskimos. For slandering academician Sakharov in the Literaturnaya Gazeta, another Canadian “progressive” journalist, Mary Dawson, may simply have been paid some 3,000 decadent Canadian dollars in the innocent form of a “literary prize” from a Communist tabloid such as the Canadian Tribune.

Some of the remuneration to the collaborators comes in the form of a “valuable present,” as described above.

Due to the fact that Soviet dissidents have absolutely no opportunity to bring their foreign offenders to court (a Soviet or a Western one), most of the slanderers and defamers remain unpunished and free to enjoy Novosti payments and favors. Conversely, if a Soviet citizen would dare to say something “disrespectful” about any of the foreign stooges of the Kremlin, he may he charged with “defamation and slander” according to Articles 130 & 131 of the Soviet Criminal Code. The punishment may vary from a heavy fine to 3 years of imprisonment plus exile, unless “compounding ideological evidence” is found, in which case the Soviet dissident will end up either in the GULAG or in a psychiatric asylum.

Service No. 2
The same, but in the media of the Free World. In this case the foreign collaborator (slanderer) is being paid twice: once from the Novosti (in Rubles), and the second time in a foreign currency, by the publishers of the “progressive” media in the West.

Service No. 3
Slander, defamation or libel directed against a foreign person-- a politician, writer, publisher, etc.-- preferably an influential and anti-Communist (conservative, patriotically-minded person), resisting Soviet influence in his own country. The list of most desirable targets for the Novosti-KGB-orchestrated process of character assassination includes virtually every prominent public figure of the Free World daring to criticize Soviet foreign policy or Soviet practices at home. In India during my career with the Soviet embassy, such [a] target was Mr. Morarjee Desai, leader of “conservative opposition” to Indira Gandhi's ruling National Congress party. With financial and ideological encouragement from Novosti, collaborators in the leftist liberal media poured gallons of venom on that person, describing him as a “reactionary, fascist, ultra-right-wing fanatic, lackey of Western imperialism, etc.” Apart from name-calling, Novosti-sponsored radical tabloids published bits and pieces of rumors, half-truths and pure fabrications, designed to discredit this politician. It is difficult to distinguish, sometimes, a locally created hate campaign against a conservative politician from a Novosti-orchestrated one. To my knowledge, the role of many collaborators is often simply to fan the flames of slander hysteria. And it is difficult, indeed (unless one has an “insider” within the Soviet embassy), to establish the fact of payment to a collaborator. Even if payment could be proven, the law enforcement body of a target country has the problem of proving that the payment relates to specific seditious lies circulated in the media.

After my defection to the West and settling in Canada, I came across a classic example of how the libel (or character assassination) process is initiated. A Canadian journalist and broadcaster with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), a Mr. Mark Starowicz, for several years was supplying KGB agent Konstantin Geiwandov (officially a Pravda correspondent in Ottawa) with all sorts of information of a rather private nature about several members of the Parliamentary Press Gallery. Mr. Starowicz was handsomely paid for his services. He knew perfectly well the purpose of comrade Geiwandov's curiosity: that information was needed for only one possible purpose-- defamation. He also knew that what he was doing is described in Canadian law as “violation of privacy” and “spreading of gossip, harmful to individual(s).” But when the whole story was revealed in a conservative Canadian newspaper, The Toronto Sun, Mark Starowicz was not even reprimanded by the management of the CBC. On the contrary, he was promoted to the position of managing producer for one of the most popular and politically influential TV programs (“Sunday Magazine.” [The Journal?]) Interviewed by journalists, Mr. Starowicz responded to the effect that “writing for a foreign newspaper (Pravda), and receiving money for that, is not a crime in Canada.” He was right. Legally speaking.

A recent example of a character assassination campaign in the Western media which looks to me like a typical APN-KGB trick is The New York Times' charges against Salvadorian politician Roberto D'Aubuisson of being involved in “a plot to assassinate the U.S. ambassador to El Salvador.” To this date, The New York Times has failed to produce a single shred of evidence, or, for that matter, any common-sense logical explanation-- why would a leader of the second biggest political party in El Salvador be interested in murdering an American ambassador? (Especially on the eve of the U.S. Congress debate on the issue of U.S. financial aid to El Salvador.)

What we did during my career with the Novosti-KGB was indeed very simple. We would first plant a fabrication like that (against D'Aubuisson) in a lousy, insignificant leftist or Communist tabloid in a target country. Step two: Pravda (or one of APN's publications, press releases, etc.) would reprint that “news item,” referring to the source of information as an “influential progressive newspaper.” Step three: The New York Times (or Washington Post, or some other respectable Western paper) would quote Pravda, repeating the accusation. Step four: one of the Soviet commentators (Vladimir Pozner of Radio Moscow, incidentally my former colleague within APN-KGB; or Gennadi Gerasimov, or George Adamov) would quote The New York Times during an interview, such as on “ABC Nightline” referring to the news item as an expression of Western opinion. By the time the lie reaches the western public, it is nearly impossible to trace it all the way back to the third-rate tabloid, least of all to the originator of the slander-- Novosti Press Agency. This is exactly what happened to the “opinion” that the ill-fated KAL 007 was indeed “on a spy mission for the CIA” and that its shooting down by the Soviet MIGs was a justified “response. “The main objective of that disinformation trick is achieved: Western public opinion is skillfully SIDE-TRACKED from the real issues, which are: 1. The cold-blooded murder of 269 passengers of a civilian aircraft; 2. Soviet violations of the SALT treaties, which fact they were trying to hide; 3. There is hardly anything “secret” about Sakhalin Island-- every square inch of it has been photographed by United States satellites thousands of times. A simple and common-sense explanation of the incident never occurred to the minds of the Western analysts. The true nature of the Soviet system is being obscured again. The Western public was once more lured into wishful thinking and “forgiveness.” This is exactly what “active measures” are designed for.

Service No. 4
Infiltration into political organizations and groups which are considered by the KGB to be “anti-Soviet” or “reactionary,” and destroying these groups from within, using blackmail, corruption, bribery, sex scandals; exposing members of these organizations to local law enforcement agencies, and to pressure groups and “special interest” groups; filing suits in court against these organizations by charging them with “violation of civil rights,” etc.; and orchestrating vicious smear campaigns in the liberal media. Here Novosti plays the role of catalyst in this process. Rank-and-file members of the Liberal attackers seldom suspect that several (or one) of their leaders are in fact collaborators of APN-KGB. They probably would not care even if they knew it for sure.

Service No. 5
Slander campaigns against émigré groups and organizations in Western countries; spreading racial and ethnic hatred among various communities of immigrants from Communist (or Socialist, Soviet-controlled) countries, with the ultimate purpose of neutralizing them as a political force, isolating them from the natural democratic political process, preventing them from using freedom of the press and associations; preventing them from influencing and educating public opinion in the host countries by revealing the truth about the systems from which they have escaped. By calling the people from Communist countries “crazy ethnics” and “fringe lunatics,” collaborators of APN-KGB among the Liberal left in the West do their greatest service to the Soviet propaganda. They dismiss the information and opinions of the immigrants as “ravings of emotionally unbalanced people, paranoids, who see a Communist under every bed.”

I have met a number of such collaborators in Canada, where they are very active and effective. Some of them have a sympathetic ear in the Liberal government of Canada and the Civil Service.

Service No. 6
Financial, organizational and moral aid to local groups of radicals, militants, and outright terrorists. Novosti collaborators act in this area as middlemen to obscure the direct Soviet involvement in subversive and terrorist active measures in foreign countries. APN-KGB maintains a large network of useful contacts in many universities for the purpose of selecting and cultivating future recruits for “national liberation movements” and similar organizations. During my career in India, for example, one of my functions was to compile lists of young “progressively-minded” people, who could be recommended later for enrollment in “studies” at the Patrice Lumumba Friendship University in Moscow. The first step to such an objective is to befriend young people by regularly inviting them to various “social occasions” organized by the APN together with the “Cultural Department” of the Soviet embassy.

Financial aid to such groups in target countries (when they are created and led by graduates of Lumumba University) is affected through the above-mentioned front organizations and Novosti-created “organs of progressive mass media.” Moral support comes in the form of a steady flow of propaganda literature, edited and translated in Moscow by APN, but printed by friendly local publishers.

Service No. 7
With the help of foreign collaborators, APN-KGB orchestrates defamation and disinformation operations directed against the law enforcement and intelligence agencies of the target countries. This process is well-described by John Barron (“KGB Today”) and by Arnaud de Borchgrave & Robert Moss in their classic novel “The Spike.”

What I have described here is nothing new. Thousands of defectors from Communism have been telling the same stories for the past half-century. One of the latest defectors from the KGB, incidentally my former schoolmate from the Institute of Oriental Languages, Stanislav Levchenko, succeeded where I have failed for the last 14 years since my defection: he convinced John Barron to present the sensitive issue of ideological subversion (active measures) to the Western public. In its essence, the process of subversion is also not new-- it has not been invented by the Russians, or Communists-- it is as old as mankind itself. In 500 B.C., Chinese philosopher and strategist Sun-Tzu formulated the main principle of subversion very simply: “The highest art of war is not to fight on a battle field, but to subvert the enemy by destroying all the moral values in your enemy's country.”

The core of active measures consists of a consistent effort to demoralize the public, the majority of the population in the West. The media is the most convenient vehicle for such demoralization. Whether the “useful idiots” of the media do it for profit, for self-glorification, or due to ignorance or fear of “Mother Russia,” is totally immaterial. The rewards which APN-KGB collaborators receive are pathetic by Western standards, but they have to be taken into consideration. Here they are:

Material rewards
Regular payments in Soviet or foreign currency; free trips to the USSR for tourism, pleasure, indoctrination, or medical treatment in special clinics and sanatoriums; valuable gifts, from “Matreshka dolls” to automobiles.

Rewards of a material nature
Moneys paid in the form of “Lenin's (or some other dictator's) Prizes” which accomplishes two jobs at one time: vindicating a dictator and corrupting the prize-winner); covering expenses for publications of the collaborator's books and other works; admitting the collaborator's children to Soviet schools and universities for “free education.”

Rewards of a prestigious nature
Granting the title of “progressive” journalist (or writer, etc.); invitation to an international forum or a conference organized by APN-KGB; arranging meetings with “rare and famous” personalities in the USSR (space pilots, ballerinas, etc.); invitation to attend a celebration of something or other (like the October Revolution) at the Soviet embassy with lots of booze and nice girls (KGB “Lastochkas”); a trip to a “closed location,” such as a nuclear research center; an honorary scientific “degree” from one of the Soviet universities; a replica of “Sputnik.”

Rewards of [an] amoral nature
Sex (often perverted), alcohol, drugs.

And in exchange for these miserable (by Western standards) rewards, the foreign collaborators of Novosti trade to the Soviet tyrants something priceless-- the collective consciousness of their own nations, freedom of thought and sanity of judgment, and-- in the long run-- FREEDOM itself.

If we believe that the Communist threat is a MORAL problem, the solution to it exists, probably, somewhere in the realm of the IMMATERIAL, moral, or even SPIRITUAL existence of humans.

[Another collaborator of Novosti-- Mr.Kumaramangalam, accompanied by the author during his trip to Samarkand. Mr.Kumaramangalam refused to yield to the KGB-Novosti pressure to influence his brother-- Chief of General Staff of Indian armed forces. Several years later he died in an air crash.]

PENTAGON'S GUN FODDER OR AMERICA'S CONSCIENCE?
For a long time I refused to believe that our anti-American propaganda, even with a little help from such friends as Jane Fonda and Harrison Salisbury, could so successfully mislead the world that no one seemed able to see who the real aggressor was in Vietnam. Until I met four US Army deserters.

It happened on September 16, 1968, while Novosti staffers were still recuperating from the shock inflicted on us by the “normalization” of fraternal Czechoslovakia by our tanks. I was summoned by our Asia Department boss, comrade Pushkov. In his office I was introduced to an unsmiling comrade in civilian clothes, whom I identified as a GRU (military intelligence) officer. For a KGB he lacked that peculiar expression of dishonesty and artificial politeness on his face. It was explained to me that, together with the serious comrade and an APN photographer, I was to visit a group of Americans, “honest young men, the conscience of America,” said the boss. “Communist defectors,” I thought. “How boring!”

A black APN Volga took us by Leningradskoye shosse about 70 km north of Moscow. It was getting dark when we turned east into an unpaved country road, and went on through mud and large puddles for another half hour. On the way we passed two small gray collective farms, where, despite the total electrification achieved after the seventh five-year plan, not a single “Ilyich light bulb” was to be seen. Finally we entered an old estate on the bank of a small river. It looked like a large neglected park or a pioneer camp, with sandy driveway, rare flower beds, and numerous propaganda posters on plywood boards stuck wherever possible. The slogans were in English and Russian.

In a large guest room of an ancient pre-revolutionary mansion, we found four young boys in blue jeans and worn-out sweaters, looking like anything but the US Army soldiers we used to see on photographs in the Soviet media, with sarcastic captions such as “Pentagon’s gun fodder,” “American military war criminals,” etc. Two of them had long, untidy hair, one sported a beard “a-la-Russ,” and the fourth desperately wanted to look like Che Guevara. The “gun fodder” or “America's conscience” were playing billiards and were obviously bored. Our arrival was a welcome change for them.

Their story sounded like many other stories about Vietnam I had read in West European and Canadian newspapers. Charles Nathan Smith, Sarry Tipton, Robert Fiorris and Joseph Parra met in a hospital in Japan, where all four of them had been sent for treatment of minor wounds and detoxification from drug abuse. Released from the hospital, the GIs spent some time with Japanese girls, following the Beatles' slogan, “make love not war,” and decided to dedicate the rest of their lives to the struggle for peace.

For smiling red-head Sarry Tipton, it was “a hopeless war” because, as he said, the moment the Americans left, it would take the Communists two days to liberate the South. Charles Smith's excuse was “fear of becoming a professional killer.” Handsome Mexican-looking field doctor Joseph Parra expressed the desire “to treat, not wounds, when it is too late, but peoples' heads, before they go to war.” Robert Fiorris, the one with Czar Nicholas' beard, had a good reason to desert. It is criminal, he said, to kill the Vietnamese just because they want to live under Communism.

Having come to these profound conclusions, the four GIs one day walked right into the Soviet embassy and asked for political asylum and a chance to tell the world the truth about Vietnam. Both requests were promptly granted. The deserters were flown to Moscow and introduced to the expert on truth: Novosti.

The “press-conference” lasted hardly a quarter of an hour. The deserters, it seemed, knew all of my questions ahead of time, and I definitely knew in advance everyone of their answers. Putting my tape recorder aside, I tried to get rid of the GRU comrade by inviting the boys for a walk in the park, hoping for something more sincere in an informal atmosphere. Nothing doing! Even then, the boys went on playing back our propaganda to me: the United States was bad, Hanoi was good; killing the North Vietnamese with American bombs was a crime, killing the South Vietnamese with Soviet-made rockets was an anti-colonial struggle, therefore it was “good.”

The damn “rest home” had no bar, where I could pump some vodka into the Americans to make them less progressive, and the GRU agent was uncooperative when I suggested that we send our Volga to the nearest village store for a bottle. So, my efforts to get a “balanced” picture of the Vietnam War failed miserably. Time was running short, and the Novosti photographer, having exposed all his film, had lost interest in geopolitics and was impatient to go back home. So, we shook hands, pronounced meaningless “goodlucks” and “see-you-laters,” and left.

On the way back to Moscow it suddenly dawned on me that the Americans may actually have been telling me the truth, the way they saw it. Why would they care who is the real aggressor and who is the victim? They wanted to survive, and to enjoy life. And any “truth” which helped them to survive was OK with them. What do they care if that “truth” happens to be a big Communist lie, fabricated for the ultimate purpose of “liberating mankind,” which means destroying the society that has given them birth, life, and freedom, and which society now asked that they defend it by risking their lives? Their choice was clear: to die defending the better and freer society, or to survive in the worst one. Dead or red? They have chosen red and alive, and they do not want to be called traitors for making that choice. They'd rather be called “America's conscience.”

I, too, was contemplating defection. I would gladly have changed places with these GIs. But how about dying? And what sort of truth I would offer to justify my treason? Would anyone believe me if I said that betraying my country's inhuman and aggressive system, to help the West, is an act of conscience, self-sacrifice, and heroism?

These thoughts were driving me crazy. At moments like these, I needed a glass of vodka or a good friend to talk to. Or both. And, sending our photographer and Volga to the office, I flagged down a taxi and zoomed by the Ring Road to Kuntsevo Hospital, reserved for apparatus of the Central Committee and nomenklatura. There, behind the tall barbed-wire fence, in a “special” room with a TV set, my former schoolmate Vadim Smirnov was recuperating after an operation on his eye. (He had lost one eye in a stupid fight in Pitsunda, a Central Committee Black Sea resort, where, he said, a group of Georgians and local thugs trespassed onto the “Party property” and started a squabble with the Muscovites).

Kuntsevo hospital is heavily guarded by militia, but one has to know our Soviet security system. I sneaked into the area through a fox-hole under the face, about two hundred meters away from the brightly lit gateway. Once inside, no internal guard had the right to stop me. I got to the 8th floor uneventfully, and found comrade Smirnov in a rather depressed state of mind. His eye ached, and his reputation, as the youngest apparatchik in the India section of the International Department of the CC, was in question.

Nevertheless, Smirnov was glad to see me, and as usual, ready to listen to my problems or crazy ideas. I relayed to Smirnov the story of my meeting with the four American deserters, including their excellent playback of our propaganda, and then I shared some of my thoughts with him. How come, I asked, we're hysterical about the “psychological war of the Pentagon,” but the American GIs I had just met were so shamelessly “unbrainwashed”? How come the US Army is unable to occupy the whole damn country of Vietnam, if they're really the “warmongers” our propaganda claims? How come the war goes on-- on the territory of South Vietnam, not the North, if, as we claim, the “democratic” Vietnamese are a “peace-loving nation”? How do we, the Soviet people, benefit from supporting the Communists in Vietnam?

The young apparatchik was silent for a while, and then, instead of an answer, almost like a biblical prophet he told me a story, a dream he had had recently. The symbolism of my friend's dream shook me strongly.

“I found myself in an armored personnel carrier as it climbed onto the steep bank of a marsh, coughing out clouds of exhaust. In front of us, somewhere beyond a cluster of bushes and palm trees, we could hear sharp bursts of machine gun fire and the occasional blasts of mortars. My companions were strong, healthy boys, and I could not tell if they also were feeling the same sickening fear in their stomachs, as I did. With tightly pursed lips, and calm eyes with flickers of steel in them, they serenely looked at the scenery from under their camouflaged helmets set low above their eyebrows, as if they were on a sightseeing tour of Vietnam, not at war. They sat in straight but relaxed postures, casually holding their carbines. Some quietly chatted with their neighbors. A black soldier next to me was elegantly smoking something suspicious. There were about twenty of them, plus a sergeant. Their lazy laughter and crude jokes, which I did not understand, were in screaming discord with my own mood, and they irritated me. I felt out of place among these American soldiers, with my own fears, my dogmatic ideas, in the middle of a strange war which, in a way, was inexplicably a concern of mine.

“‘Laugh your stupid heads off,’ I mumbled in a trembling voice. ‘Damned cowboys!’ Why bother yourselves with such things as conscience?’

“Nobody responded. No one even turned his head to look at me. Fear and anger swelled in my chest, and words uncontrollably started pouring out of me, before I could realize what the hell I was talking about.

“‘Who gave you the right to kill the Vietnamese?’ I asked in a loud voice, tense with indignation I did not really feel. ‘Why don’t you go home to your color TVs and pumpkin pies, and leave the Vietnamese alone, to decide what they really want, communism or your so-called democracy?’ I almost shouted at the soldiers.

“Again, there was no response. The black soldier looked through me and tossed a roach over his shoulder. There was an ominous pause, and in the hot humid air the sound of my voice competed with the roar of the engine and bursts of gunfire. I knew I should shut up, but I could not.

“‘You are the professional killers!’ I shouted at the top of my lungs. ‘You are the brainless gun fodder of the Pentagon! You are the ‘universal soldiers,’ as your own Bob Dylan calls you! You are... you…’

“Someone behind me asked in a soft voice ‘Who the hell is he?’ And I didn’t know whether he was asking about me, or Bob Dylan.

“The carrier braked sharply and stopped in a cloud of red dust. ‘Dismount!’ ordered the sergeant in a strangely un-military tone. And the soldiers started jumping out of the carrier, lightly and gracefully as cats. Several GIs stepped right over me, as if I were an object. The sounds of guns grew louder and closer. Somewhere above, an Army chopper rattled through and disappeared beyond the tops of the palm trees. While I was watching it, the American soldiers silently moved into the bush, leaving me alone in the carrier. There was a wild orgy of gunfire, several blasts, and then a deafening silence. The tops of the bushes swayed, ahead of the carrier. In a moment I saw the tip of a machine gun popping out of a grass thicket. Then the black-haired head of a Vietcong soldier. Then another. And another from the right. With trembling hands I reached into the pocket of my shirt and produced a handful of badges with Lenin’s profile on a red background, and a couple of postcards with views of the Red Square and the Kremlin.

“‘Don’t shoot!’ I pleaded. ‘I am Friend! Russki! Freedom! Peace! Communism!’ I shouted in a strained, hoarse voice, waving the postcards at the Vietcong. They silently encircled the carrier. The leader of the group guardedly walked up to me, and with a movement of his Kalashnikov barrel ordered me to step down. Keeping the muzzle aimed at me with one hand he took the badges and the postcards with the other, and stuffed them into his tunic pocket, eyeing me all the time unemotionally. I tried to smile, and stretched out my hand as a sign of friendship. The Vietnamese pulled the trigger and shot three times into my stomach, sending me back against the carrier. The last things I saw were his calm, hateful eyes, and the steel-covered butt of his Kalashnikov crushing my skull against the steel wall of the carrier…

The only way I could interpret this dream of the Central Committee’s apparatchik is: guilt, the feeling most of my generation of the Soviet “new class” desperately want to suppress. Because, unlike the American “peaceniks,” we know perfectly well who is the aggressor, and our conscience bothers us.
--------

TOMAS SCHUMAN has been personally involved with the world-wide propaganda efforts of the Soviet regime. Like a true-life Winston Smith, from George Orwell’s “1984,” Tomas Schuman worked for the communist equivalent of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth--The Novosti Press Agency. Novosti, which means “News” in Russian, exists to produce slanted and false stories to plant in the foreign media. The term for this K.G.B. effort is “disinformation.”

Mr. Schuman was born under the name of Yuri Bezmenov in Moscow in 1939, the son of a senior officer in the Red Army. Consequently, he went to good schools. At the age of 17 he entered the Institute of Oriental Languages of Moscow State University.

After graduating, he worked for Novosti, then spent two years in India as an interpreter and public relations officer with Soviet Refineries Constructions. He returned to Moscow in 1965 to work for Novosti, serving as Economic Editor for the Hindi, Urdu and English Editions of Soviet Land Magazine. In 1969 he went back to India and continued propaganda efforts for Novosti in New Delhi, working out of the Soviet Embassy in a department called Research and Counter-Propaganda. Due to his growing disgust, he began to plan defection.

In February of 1970 he disguised himself as a hippie complete with beads and wig and joined a tour group to escape to Athens. He contacted the United States Embassy and, after a long debriefing by U.S. Intelligence, was granted asylum and went to Canada.

In Canada, he studied political science at the University of Toronto for two years, taught Russian language and literature and in 1972 was hired by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s International Service as a Producer/Announcer, broadcasting to the Soviet Union, The K.G.B. forced him out of the job in 1976, so he began free-lance journalism and worked on a variety of projects.

Today he is a political analyst for PANORAMA in Los Angeles. He is married, and has two children. He is the author of two yet unpublished books.

You can order this book by mailing your check made to N.A.T.A. (New American Talent Association)-- $5.00 plus 60 cents for postage-- to: Almanac, [address omitted], Los Angeles, Ca 90036. Tape-cassettes with Schuman’s talk on KGB’s Active Measures are available for $5 a piece plus postage.

ALMANAC
Los Angeles, 1985

ISBN 0-935090-14-2
Copyright by Tomas Schuman
[Thanks again.]

Useful Idiot of the Day: Nir Rosen

2008-12-31T15:16:00.000-08:00

Gaza: the logic of colonial power:

Terrorism is a normative term and not a descriptive concept. An empty word that means everything and nothing, it is used to describe what the Other does, not what we do. The powerful – whether Israel, America, Russia or China – will always describe their victims' struggle as terrorism, but the destruction of Chechnya, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the slow slaughter of the remaining Palestinians, the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan – with the tens of thousands of civilians it has killed … these will never earn the title of terrorism, though civilians were the target and terrorising them was the purpose.

Justice is the advantage of the stronger. -Thrasymachus, Plato's Republic

Normative rules are determined by power relations. Those with power determine what is legal and illegal. They besiege the weak in legal prohibitions to prevent the weak from resisting. For the weak to resist is illegal by definition. Concepts like terrorism are invented and used normatively as if a neutral court had produced them, instead of the oppressors. The danger in this excessive use of legality actually undermines legality, diminishing the credibility of international institutions such as the United Nations. It becomes apparent that the powerful, those who make the rules, insist on legality merely to preserve the power relations that serve them or to maintain their occupation and colonialism.

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas: i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch. For instance, in an age and in a country where royal power, aristocracy and bourgeoisie are contending for mastery and where, therefore, mastery is shared, the doctrine of the separation of powers proves to be the dominant idea and is expressed as an 'eternal law.' -Karl Marx, The German Ideology

It gets worse, and much dumber:

It is impossible to make a universal ethical claim or establish a Kantian principle justifying any act to resist colonialism or domination by overwhelming power. And there are other questions I have trouble answering. Can an Iraqi be justified in attacking the United States? After all, his country was attacked without provocation, and destroyed, with millions of refugees created, hundreds of thousands of dead. And this, after 12 years of bombings and sanctions, which killed many and destroyed the lives of many others.

"Attacked without provocation"? It's funny, Iraqis themselves have more nuanced views than the supposedly learned, nuanced questions the useful idiot Nir Rosen is presenting here, cleverly forgetting the most important and obvious part of the equation: SADDAM HUSSEIN AND HIS REIGN OF TERROR.

"Journalists" like Rosen are half-baked, intellectually illiterate scum, and a healthy America, educated in its own "revolutionary principles," would ignore them.

World Thought Police: Part Three

2008-12-31T11:11:00.000-08:00

Continued from Part Two. (Part One here.)

COLLABORATORS: WHO ARE THEY?
It is obvious to me that even the most charming and talented P.R. agent of APN-KGB would fail to plant disinformation in the foreign media unless he were assisted by the foreign collaborators. Ideological subversion, it was explained to me by my KGB supervisors, is always a two-way street. The effectiveness of Soviet propaganda depends at least 50% on the generous aid of Novosti's foreign collaborators.

The phenomenon of collaboration with the Soviet ideological “active measures” affects a wide variety of personalities, regardless of their nationality, ethnic and cultural background, education, level of intelligence, political ideas and affiliations, or social and class origins. I have come to the realization that virtually no foreigner is entirely immune to this infectious disease.

It would be naive to expect that only the uneducated “proletarians” fall victim to Soviet propaganda and become “revolutionaries.” As a matter of fact, my KGB supervisors explicitly instructed me “not to waste my time” and APN's money on the “true believers in Communism.” My KGB contact in New Delhi, comrade Gadin, suggested to me, after seeing my overly friendly socialization with students and young Indian radicals: “Aim higher-- at the upper middle-class intellectuals and otherwise INFLUENTIAL personalities.” True believers, he said, make the worst enemies if and when they become disillusioned with Communism, or finally see through the deception. What KGB-APN needs is a person who would be ready to compromise moral principles (if he had any) for his personal short-term advantage. According to my observation and practice, such persons suffer from one or more of the following flaws in their characters: egoism, ethnocentrism (or bigotry), greed, mental laziness, cynicism, lack of confidence (or, conversely, overconfidence), fear (especially fear of failure or fear of appearing as “misfits” and underachievers in their own careers and ventures), and the inability to be compassionate toward the sufferings of others. Often among the KGB-APN collaborators I could see persons with various physiological deviations: homosexuals, impotents, or-- conversely-- persons obsessed with sex and other pleasures, persons unable to establish lasting and meaningful relationships with the opposite sex, persons unable to show or receive love, etc. On top of it all, the most “recruitable” people are “materialists, pragmatists,” obsessed with the immediate and complete “success” of THEIR ventures. Another great category of collaborators are those who are unable to laugh at themselves, who take themselves too seriously. Healthy skepticism and a good sense of humor provide one of the best remedies against Novosti infection.

I have met scores of conceited snobbish “intellectuals,” who suffered from self-importance and firmly believed that the public in their own country was too backward to understand their genius. Novosti provides a very receptive audience for such megalo-maniacs, especially when they write books about their “experiences” in the USSR in surrealistic (or rather Social-realistic) terms.

To sum it up, as one Russian Orthodox priest told me, “Communism is not a political, economical, military or geographical problem. It is a MORAL problem.” Novosti Press Agency and her KGB bosses will be successful in the manipulation of public opinion in the free world as long as there are AMORAL persons ready to cooperate with APN-KGB for their own immoral gains and purposes.

The smallest category of collaborations are those who idealistically BELIEVE that Communism (and its first “civilized” stage of Socialism) is indeed a “better system” and better solution for all the problems of mankind. After 67 years of historical evidence, after hundreds of MILLIONS perished under this system, in view of its gross inefficiency in any area of human activity (except the military, an aggressive one)-- such idealism borders on insanity. Therefore I would not take this category of collaborators seriously. Ignorance, to my mind, plays a major role in this type of “idealism.”

But the greatest attraction, according to my observations, is a real (or imagined) REWARD for services rendered by collaborators to the Soviet promoters of “active measures.”

Foreign Press Collaborators
It took the Novosti elite three years, after we were established in 1961, to discover that our propaganda was too boring, dogmatic and unbelievable to print in anything but foreign leftist tabloids. To infiltrate the big press of the West, Novosti had to raise its materials to the international level. In 1964, following the example of the talented chief editor of Izvestia, APN introduced high-quality decadent capitalist methods.

Thus, to satisfy some solidnyi (big press) clientele, Novosti started to invite cooperation from professional foreign journalists stationed in Moscow. Some of them cooperated willingly, trying to convince themselves that they might obtain access, through the Novosti, to “reliable sources close to the Politbureau,” and we carefully maintained that illusion. Others reluctantly realized that they were being taken for a ride, but decided “better the APN, than nothing.” Some did it for the extra income from Novosti, and still others because they truly believed in Communism. Until this very day, none of the foreign collaborators have [had] enough courage to reveal the true nature of their deals with the APN.

The most common recruiting method is to approach a foreign journalist with a “backgrounder,” a crudely written collection of propaganda clichés, fictional statistics, and sometimes real names and dates. For a substantial payment, a foreigner can either rewrite this in his own style and pass it on as his own report, or edit it heavily and recommend it to the editor of his paper for what it is, an “exclusive” article by a Novosti commentator.

In our Asian section we utilized the services of Darshan Singh, a skinny, cross-eyed, intelligent Punjabi, who prior to coming to Moscow had been collaborating for years with the Delhi bureau of Novosti. He was invited to Moscow through Novosti and the Central Committee's Agitprop and, with many other fellow-travelers, was helped to a job as translator with the Foreign Languages Publishing House. There he did routine work, translating the masterpieces of Lenin and Brezhnev, novels by Sholokhov and Gorki, etc., into Punjabi. That was his cover job, which provided his regular income. The real creativity of Darshan Singh was used for a different kind of writing, for APN. Together with our boss, comrade Makhotin, Darshan concocted weekly a gossip column entitled “Letter from Moscow,” based on regular Agitprop material, sometimes simply borrowed from Pravda editorials. Using his old connections with several respectable large-circulation newspapers in India, such as Amrita Bazar Patrika (Calcutta) or a number of Punjabi papers, Darshan Singh established a lively traffic in propaganda, using Novosti teleprinter facilities, photographic services, and even our typists and stenographers. He was paid by the Indian paper as a regular correspondent in Indian rupees, and by Novosti in Soviet rubles.

After about a year of cultivating the foreign news desks of a couple of Indian newspapers, Novosti made them dependent on us as their source of “exclusive information.” Most Indian papers cannot afford to keep their own correspondent in Moscow, but for prestige would not mind having a regular “Moscow letter,” with the latest gossip from “diplomatic circles” planted by APN-KGB often arriving before that same news was reported on other international wire services. They would also appreciate human interest stories including such unorthodox features as photos of a Moscow farm market, pictures from a “typical Soviet wedding party,” and even interviews with some fake Soviet “dissidents,” provided by Novosti for such occasions as slandering Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

I doubt that Darshan Singh really believed in what he was writing. He was too smart for that. Neither was he a dedicated Communist. He was too cynical to love the system, the victory of which would render people like him unnecessary, or worse. My guess is that he was simply greedy and amoral and very conceited at that. It took him one hour to create a masterpiece of propaganda, while others would spend days and weeks concocting vapid articles. Darshan looked upon us, the Novosti rank and file, as primitives, unworthy of his attention. Even our New Delhi bureau deputy-chief Oleg Benyukh did not deserve Darshan's respect, especially after Benyukh decided to become a writer and gave birth to a monstrous creation of his entitled something like “Adventures of a Ukranian in India,” a rhapsody to non-existent “proletarian international solidarity.” The book was, however, published in India, thanks mainly to Darshan's rewriting the whole boring thing into passable Punjabi.

Each of Darshan's “Moscow Letters” cost Novosti about as much as the monthly salary of a junior editor like myself. How much Darshan was paid by the Indian newspapers, I can only guess.

Unlike Darshan, who spent a lot of time on the Novosti premises, and was not ashamed to receive payment, there were some “clean” collaborators, who wanted by all means to look honest and independent while dealing with the APN. They would attend some of our propaganda functions, orchestrated by Agitprop through Novosti, but they would avoid taking our “backgrounders.”

One such “innocent” collaborator was Dev Murarka. I met him on various occasions in the Dom Druzhby (Friendship House) in Kalininski Street, in the club of the Soviet Writers Union in Vorovski Street, and at numerous parties and gatherings on diplomatic or higher cultural levels. He did not like to be seen in deep conversation with APN employees. But I knew, and from very reliable sources, that Mr. Dev Murarka was in fact “our man.” Most of his dispatches from Moscow were presented as “freelance” material in the Western press. But there is simply no such thing in the USSR as a foreign freelancer: a foreign correspondent can obtain a residence visa and accreditation from the foreign affairs press department only if he represents a known newspaper. The exclusion from this rule is made only for Communists, representing non-existent (or barely existing) leftist tabloids. Thus Mr. Murarka's “freelance” status was a fake.

Those stubborn journalists who consistently reject Novosti's passes and try to dig out their own stories normally do not last long in Moscow. Thus my friend Nihal Singh, Moscow correspondent for The Statesman (New Delhi), was recalled after my efforts to cultivate him for Novosti and the KGB failed. Naturally, I did not try hard, and did my dirty job very unwillingly, feeling respect for Mr. Singh's integrity and common-sense conservativism. I tried to give him all kinds of signals and hints to indicate that my interest in him was strictly separate from the job entrusted to me by Novosti and my KGB contact. I am still unsure whether he realized what I was trying to convey. He and his Dutch wife were very nice to me and to Anna, my wife. We genuinely enjoyed their company and tried to make our picnics as natural as possible.

On arrival in Delhi in February 1969, I renewed our friendship, both for my own pleasure and following the recommendations of my new KGB contact, comrade Gadin. We met several times at my place in 25 Barakhamba Road, and in the Delhi press club, on one occasion where he made a rather critical speech about the decision of Indira Gandhi to nationalize India's banks.

Whether because he read my messages correctly, or simply because he .was a noble man, Nihal Singh published a very complimentary article about me in The Statesman after my defection. He had become the chief political correspondent and news editor by that time.

SERVICES AND PAY
The official Prospectus of the Novosti Press Agency says:

APN enters into contacts and concludes agreements and contracts with both state-owned and privately-owned newspapers, magazines, news agencies, publishing houses, broadcasting and television companies, as well as individuals, to supply them with Agency materials for an appropriate fee.

The above statement is an “overstatement,” if not a “bloody lie.”

All through my career with the Novosti I have never heard of anyone in their right mind giving as much as a penny for Novosti's “material.” Some sick-minded or uniquely stupid individuals and companies, yes indeed, sometimes do pay an “appropriate fee” to Novosti.

Thus, in 1975, editors and publishers of the world-famous Encyclopaedia Britannica bought from APN some 15 or 16 articles about the “Soviet Socialist Republics,” wherein the flora and fauna of the Soviet colonies is described in glorious socialist-realistic detail, but not a word is said about the methods of appropriating (or rather, annexing) the national statehoods of formerly independent East European, Baltic and Asian nations. Both the origin and the current functioning of the “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics” are described there in mythical terms, in typical Novosti style. But again, there is not a single mention of what happened to about 40% of the native (ethnically non-Russian) populations of the “Soviet Republics”: frozen and starved to death in Siberia, whence they were deported in cattle-vans, old men, women and children; able men machine-gunned by the KGB; or (the happiest ending!) forcibly assimilated by the fraternal invaders.

Also, not a word about the ethnic composition of the power organs of the “republics”-- the local Central Committees of the Communist Party-- predominantly Russian or Ukrainian even in (and especially in) such ethnically distant areas as Central Asia, Caucasus and the Baltics…

Instead the Britannica is full of praises to the Soviet “public and political organizations,” such as the Young Pioneers, the Young Communist League, DOSAAF (a paramilitary youth organization in the tradition of Hitler-Jugend), etc., and again, not a single word of EDITORIAL explanation about the nature of such unprecedented “political pluralism” in a country with a one-party system of power!

I can only guess about the true motivation of the Britannica publishers, borrowing such crude and very un-British propaganda from the Novosti, and PAYING for it with hard (though decadent) British pounds sterling. To my mind it is either a rare case of pure idiocy, or a side effect of an infectious disease of the 1970's called “detente”-- wishful thinking about making the Soviet junta more peaceful by describing it as such.

There is no need to pay an “appropriate fee” to Novosti, because in most cases Novosti is too happy to pay (rubles, dollars or pounds), to anyone who agrees to publish its crap.

In fact, according to my observations and experience, confirmed by dozens of defectors from the KGB and APN, Novosti has a well-developed list of services and payments for all sorts of foreign collaborators, which I quote below.

OVERT AND LEGITIMATE OPERATIONS
In its official Prospectus, Novosti states that “APN's publications are disseminated in foreign countries in strict accordance with the laws and regulations of these countries.” That may or may not be true. But let us look at the various methods of dissemination of APN propaganda from the viewpoint of LEGALITY as well as MORALITY (and I mean universal human morality, not the Communist one, where the end justifies the means).

I purposefully neglect considerations of “willingness” and “unwillingness” (due to ignorance, deceit, stupidity etc.) while observing the dissemination of APN's propaganda through the foreign collaborators in THEIR OWN countries. Why? Because it is indeed too hard to prove the degree of that “willingness” on the part of a collaborator. But it is very easy to review the “active measures” promoted and facilitated by collaborators, from the standpoint of Western MORALITY on one hand, and from the standpoint of Soviet law on the other. This comparison is extremely important to realize,:what the Soviet system itself considers ILLEGAL and CRIMINAL and what it does in foreign countries, using the legitimate freedoms of “open society” to achieve Soviet goals.

Thus, the “legitimate” or overt active measures conducted by the KGB-Novosti tandem abroad-- through the foreign collaborators--include the following:

--Publication of a piece of pro-Soviet propaganda material in the Soviet media, authored by a foreign collaborator, with further re-circulation (by quotation, reference or reprinting) in the country of the collaborator;

--A public statement in the interests of the Soviet State, made by a foreign collaborator on Soviet radio, TV, or at an international forum organized by the Novosti within the USSR; replaying of that statement in a foreign country;

--Same as above two, but originated in a foreign country and by the foreign collaborator, with further publication (and/or broadcasting or disseminating in any other way) in the foreign media;

--A speech made by a foreign collaborator at one of the CPSU-sponsored “international congresses” within the USSR, with further publication in the Novosti periodicals;

--Same as above, but in a foreign country, at a “leftist” or “liberal” forum, where the policies of the USA and its allies are being attacked;

--Publication of a book, literary work, piece of art, or scientific research, emphasizing the “virtues of a planned economy” and lambasting the “oppressive” capitalist system;

--Establishing a pro-Soviet newspaper, magazine, radical tabloid, or “liberal” periodical sharply attacking the “roots” of the “establishment” and the moral standards of Western society;

--Introduction and conducting of an academic course (or series of lectures, seminars, study groups, etc.) with an emphasis on Marxist-Leninist ideology, at any Western university;

--Establishing a pro-Socialist political or public organization in the country of a collaborator;

--Distribution of APN's periodicals, booklets, releases and other materials in the collaborator's country;

--Direct cooperation with APN's bureau (in the staff) abroad.

As you can see, there is nothing very dramatic in these active, but rather legitimate (from the standpoint of Western law) measures. Now, let us see what Novosti pays the foreign collaborators for these services, and what would be a Soviet citizen’s “reward,” if he would dare to do the same in reverse by cooperating with a foreign state or private organization-- from the standpoint of Soviet law.

Service No. 1
Publication of pro-Soviet (pro-Communist, pro-Socialist, but anti-American and anti- Western) material, an article, story or a news item, in the Soviet, or Soviet-controlled media, by a foreign collaborator of Novosti, concocted on the basis of an APN 'backgrounder,' supplied by Novosti agents, is worth an average of 25 rubles per typewritten page. (Depending on the rate of inflation, it may be more.) A collaborator may spend his rubles in the USSR, or receive his “royalty” in a currency of his own country according to the Soviet-established rate of exchange.

Now, look how the Soviet law defines this action, if committed by a Soviet (or Soviet-controlled country's) citizen: an author (a journalist, writer, or simply a restless person) who would dare to publish a pro-Western news item or an article (or anything even distantly critical of the Soviet empire) in the Western media, will get an average of 5 years of imprisonment (or concentration camp) for this so-called “anti-Soviet agitation” as defined by Article 70 of the Soviet Criminal Code. See the difference? For 10 pages of pro-Communist crap a Western collaborator gets 200 rubles, but a Soviet citizen - 5 years of hard labor. (Daniel and Synyavsky, the two Russians who ventured to publish their essays abroad, and a Yugoslavian Mijailo Mijailov, who did the same, spent more than 5 years-- but that is a pure “technicality.” Sinyavsky and Mijailov are now living in the West, so they may share their experiences with the Western collaborators of Novosti, if they were willing to listen, which they normally aren't.)

Service No. 2
For a verbal statement of a pro-Soviet nature made by a foreign collaborator of APN within the USSR, or in a “brotherly” territory (Cuba, Nicaragua, Angola, Vietnam, Afghanistan, etc), as arranged by APN on a radio or TV station, the foreigner receives from 200 to 1000 rubles, depending on the content of his statement and the reputation (notoriety) of the collaborator.

A Soviet citizen simply cannot make a pro-Western statement on foreign radio, even if he (or she) is allowed to visit a foreign country. This is specified in the Secret Briefing at the Visa Department of the Central Committee, which every Soviet citizen traveling abroad, without exception, must read and sign before his visa is approved. But if a Soviet citizen would dare to smuggle a tape-recorded message out of the USSR, he would be treated according to the same Article 70 of the Criminal Code: five years of hard labor in Siberia or some equally pleasant location.

Service No. 3
For the same as the above two, but directed by the Novosti towards the foreign media (planted in foreign newspapers, for example), a foreign collaborator, as a rule, is paid in both Soviet rubles at Moscow APN headquarters and in foreign moneys by a foreign branch of Novosti in his country. Sometimes the collaborator is also paid by the “useful idiots” of a foreign newspaper, publishing house, or TV network. In those rare cases when the story is “unacceptable” to the foreign media, a local bureau of Novosti may “push it through” by simple bribery, intoxicating an editor at an embassy party, or coercing a publisher in some other way (by promising a free trip to the USSR to meet with Bolshoi ballerinas and famous milkmaids in Murmansk). The amount of the bribe would depend on the importance and news value of the material. To my knowledge, Novosti included several cooperative Indian publishers in the group of “Jawaharlal Nehru Prize Winners,” which simply means a half-million Rupee bribe in a legitimate and rather respectable form.

Naturally, a Soviet citizen, should he dream of collaborating with, say, UPI or France Presse, will not survive for too long as a “freelancer”: instead of a Pulitzer Prize he may get 10 years at a concentration camp in the GULAG for “collaboration with foreign intelligence services” (and UPI is a “stooge of the CIA,” according to Pravda, isn't it?).

Service No. 4
A speech made by a foreign collaborator of Novosti at one of the “international forums” orchestrated by the Agitprop within the Soviet Empire. For the publishing rights of that pronouncement (the text of which is often prepared by the APN staffers long before a foreign guest lands at Moscow Airport), Novosti pays to the collaborator a one-time fee of about 2,000 rubles, plus all his travel expenses. Naturally, the collaborator has to earn the honor by being a good parrot and obedient pet. Mother Russia seldom extends hospitality to “unuseful idiots,” who stubbornly refuse to read their speeches from the prepared texts.

As you may have already guessed, no Soviet citizen has a LEGAL RIGHT to make any unauthorized speech at any international forum, least of all one which is “anti-Soviet” or pro-Western. Violation of this law is considered “high treason” by Article 64 of the Soviet Criminal Code, which, by the way, provides the ultimate punishment: DEATH.

The only possible way for a Soviet citizen to address an international forum is to be ASSIGNED to make such a speech by the Agitprop. Of course, there is another, more troublesome way: to become a dissident writer, to be arrested and sent to the GULAG for 11 years, released, harassed by the KGB for another 10 years, and finally kicked out of the country to the West. Then only-- yes, one may have a right to talk to an international forum, and in the process be ridiculed and offended by the Western liberal media as a “cold war paranoid” and “right wing extremist.” Alexander Solzhenitsyn tried this method.

Service No. 5
For making pro-Communist speeches and pro-Soviet statements OUTSIDE of the Soviet Empire, the collaborators of APN are paid accordingly in the currencies of their own countries, at the rate of exchange established by the Soviet bank (one progressive Soviet ruble for one decadent American dollar, or even less). Often APN-KGB funnels additional moneys to the organizers of pro-Communist gatherings, and also covers the expenses for media coverage of the event. So, the foreign collaborators again have two chances to be remunerated: from Novosti directly, and from local “useful idiots.”

Naturally, pro-Western public statements or speeches are unthinkable within the Soviet Empire even if and when such a science-fictional event might be financed by the CIA or the John Birch Society.

In any case, a Western collaborator of APN-KGB would be paid some $2,000, whilst a citizen of the Communist Bloc may have a choice of firing squad or psychiatric asylum with forceful “treatment” by mind-destructive chemicals.

Service No. 6
Publication of a book, literary work, piece of art, or scientific research, by a foreign collaborator, with APN's aid and ideological “encouragement,” glorifying the Communist (or Socialist) way of life, “collectivist” philosophy, planned economy and/or “bright future for all mankind”-- a one-world system based on “progress and just redistribution of wealth,” and defaming “decadent capitalism” in the process, is usually rewarded by Novosti with a lump sum in five figures in rubles, plus, very often, a similar royalty in “hard currency.” All the expenses for publication, editing, technical production and distribution are normally taken over by the Novosti. The author may also be invited to visit the USSR for a “free trip” and a title of “progressive,” together with some “honorable diploma” from Patrice Lumumba Friendship University, which the collaborator may proudly frame and exhibit to his (or her) academic brotherhood (or sisterhood).

A Soviet counterpart of a foreign collaborator, for even trying to do the same towards the free world, may earn various “royalties” for publishing his work abroad: from 5 years of labor camp (Daniel and Sinyavsky), to public defamation in the Soviet media (Pasternak, Bulgakov, Zoshchenko), to a forced exile from the Motherland (Solzhenitsyn), to a firing squad (Babel, Mandelshtam, Meyerhold and hundreds of other intellectuals during the period of unprecedented blossoming of Socialist Realism in arts and science). If the book published abroad has any scientific value (not even a “secret” or “defense” subject, but, say, something about the sex habits of polar bears), the author, for passing his work to foreign publishers, may be charged with “high treason,” according to Articles 64, 65 and 75 of the Criminal Code (treason, espionage, and divulging of State secrets). And every schoolchild in the USSR knows that every Soviet scientist, without exception, is the property of the State, together with all the contents of his brain. Therefore everything he writes, scribbles or utters IS a state secret.

Service No. 7
Establishing a tabloid, newspaper or magazine in a foreign country, in which, directly or otherwise, Soviet ideology and Soviet foreign policy are justified or supported, or in which Soviet-supported surrogates (Cuba, Angola, Nicaragua, the P.L.O., various 'National-Liberation Fronts') are described in positive, “progressive” terms. For this type of service collaborators of APN-KGH are rewarded through various “front organizations” formally not related to the Soviet embassy or Novosti Press Agency. In my own practice in India we gave birth to dozens of such illegitimate “children” of APN, from radical students' tabloids to “independent progressive” magazines, the circulation of which would not exceed 100 copies and the entire staff consisted of 1 person. The propaganda effect of these papers is negligible. And indeed it is not the main purpose of APN, but the creation of such periodicals gives APN-KGB a legal and overt channel to funnel money and support to the so-called “activ,” a group of radicals and agitators who are officially on the payroll of this or that newspaper as staff writers, columnists, etc., but who are in fact simply signing the materials (articles, commentaries, news items) prepared by the Novosti bureau in a foreign country. Most of the time these activists are engaged in organizational work on campuses and in slums of large “capitalists” cities. Their “salaries” from the newspaper allow them to survive financially without being employed productively anywhere at all.

The money is not paid to the papers directly. It is channeled through real or fake advertising agencies, which place commercial ads for such Soviet businesses as Aeroflot, Intourist, Tractorexport, or even for some non-existent products and services. What matters is that money transfer to the “activ” becomes legitimate.

The most active and survivable organs of such media conceived with the help from Novosti are taken good care of. The editors and the “staff” are regularly invited to the USSR (or one of the “Peoples” Republics of the Soviet Empire) for prolonged visits, or for medical treatment of their V.D. and hernias acquired in the endless “class struggle” in their own countries. Some of the activists spend their vacations in Soviet Crimea, or at Bulgarian Black Sea resorts. Some send their children to Soviet schools for a “free education” (paid by the Soviet taxpayers), or to Soviet summer camps like Artek in Crimea.

To realize what a mirror replica of such an activity would mean to a Soviet citizen within the USSR, try to establish a pro-Western (pro-“capitalist”) newspaper in the city of Sverdlovsk.

Service No. 8
Introduction of a “Marxist-Leninist” (or similarly “progressive”) course of lectures, seminars, study groups, etc. in any Western school or college by Novosti's collaborators is normally compensated by either one-time payment in the form of “prizes” dedicated to “peace, friendship and mutual understanding between the nations,” or by several (often regular) free trips to the USSR to attend various “international conferences” under the guise of “cultural and academic exchange.” Most of the expenses for such trips are paid by the APN-KGB. Some Western scholars, suffering from self-importance, are being “bought” by simply publishing their vapid books and “scientific works” (essays, research papers, etc.) in the USSR or other “fraternal” countries. Disproportionately large “royalties” paid by the Novosti to such collaborators soon become quite an addiction to a “professor,” especially if his “work” is poorly appreciated in his own country for being too “leftist” even for enfeebled Western brains.

For a comparison, try to imagine a Russian professor introducing a course of lectures on, say, profit-oriented management in… Leningrad University! Some Soviet academics have gotten themselves into deep trouble even for much less ideologically dangerous lectures on the subjects of genetics or cybernetics (“pseudo-science of the decadent West.”) Many Soviet academics perished in the GULAG simply for quoting from Western textbooks, or for being too slow to adjust to the ever-fluctuating “general line” of the Party Ideology. Some ended up in “sharashkas” (special prisons for scientists, where they continue to work for the glory of Soviet technology, as did Tupolev, Koroylyov, and many others. The “sharashkas” are excellently described by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his novel “First Circle.”)

Thus: half a million dollars for a Western collaborator of APN; life-time imprisonment for his Soviet colleague for trying to “build bridges between scientists of the world.”

Service No. 9
Establishing (founding) a pro-Communist public organization (such as the “Soviet-American Friendship Society” etc.), and popularization of the activities of such organizations through the local media, representing them as “true expressers of public opinion in a democratic society,” is rewarded by the Novosti through various “foundations” and front groups. Most of the funds and revenues are generated locally, in a target country, with the help of a professional fund-raiser, employed by the Novosti through intermediaries. Very often the activists of “peacenik” and “freeznik” movements do not realize that they are, in fact, on the payroll and under control of the APN-KGB. Some prefer to overlook or not to understand this sensitive issue... for the sake of financial comfort. An Indian friend of mine in New Delhi, an activist of the “Indo-Soviet Cultural Society” (ISCO), was paid as much as 600 Rupees a month, the average salary of a junior bureaucrat in Indian government plus some “expenses” and occasional trips to the USSR for fun, rest and further indoctrination. Surely he understood that the society he administered had nothing to do with either “culture” or “friendship” between the people of India and the USSR. But who could refuse an invitation to Sochi (a Black Sea resort) or resist the temptation to be mentioned in the world press as a “progressive and sober-thinking personality”?

The most active public figures, instrumental in the process of creation of pro-Soviet organizations and groups, are being systematically showered with all sorts of “international prizes”: Lenins, Nobels, Jawaharlal Nehrus, etc. A one-time “prize” from the Novosti maybe, sometimes, [is worth] as much as a million American dollars.

By comparison, a person in the USSR who would try to establish a pro-Western, pro-Democratic, or (what a horror!) pro-Jewish (pro-Israel) organization in Moscow, will get as much as 15 years in a concentration camp or even the death penalty, in strict accordance with the Soviet Criminal Code, Articles #70, 64, 65, 71, 75 (Propaganda, Treason, Espionage, Propaganda of War, and Divulging of State Secrets). Helsinki monitoring groups in the USSR (what could be more “peaceful” and “friendly”!!) were harassed by the KGB to their complete extinction. Rare daredevils of Soviet “peaceniks” who demanded the freeze of SOVIET nuclear weaponry were put in KGB psychiatric asylums and tortured by chemicals.

In other words: a million dollars for a Western peacenik and a slow painful death for a Soviet one. Do you sleep well, Western collaborators of Novosti? Does anything bother you, aside from the Pentagon’s warheads'?

Service No. 10
Dissemination (distribution) of APN periodicals and propaganda booklets in the free world through legitimate circulation agencies and retail book stores, on campuses and through school libraries is rewarded by a regular salary roughly equal to that of an agent for subscription in the target country. The collaborators-distributors are also rewarded by regular free trips the USSR (or fraternal countries), and sometimes by one-time prizes and valuable presents, from a “Matreshka” doll to a camera, watch, TV set, or even a Soviet-made car.

Promotion of subscriptions to Soviet propaganda publications is also rewarded by a generous “commission” of up to 60% of the retail price of the publication, such as “Soviet Life,” (officially published by the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C.), and other magazines, and books.

A similar “service” by a Soviet citizen to a publisher in any free country is unheard of, but punishable by the same above articles of the Criminal Code.

Service No. 11
Direct cooperation with Novosti Press Agency, either in one of the foreign bureaus or within the USSR, pays regular wages, roughly equal to the wages of the media workers in the target country. Bonuses may include a variety of awards, from a free automobile to a free space at the cemetery near the Kremlin Wall, next to many other collaborators-- from John Reed to Dean Reed (an American pop-singer, residing mainly in Moscow. He is not dead yet, though.)

Direct employment of a Soviet citizen by a foreign mission or a news agency is high treason, unless the employee is an officer of the UPDK) a branch of the KGB responsible for hiring domestic servants, secretaries, drivers, interpreters, etc., for foreign nationals residing in the USSR. UPDK means “Directorate of Affairs of Diplomatic Corpus”-- Upravlenie Delami Diplomaticheskogo Korpusa, in Russian).

Any other Soviet citizen who would dare to be hired by a foreigner in Moscow is treated as an enemy of [the] People, with every regular consequence.

This is a brief and far-from-complete list of “services” which the foreign collaborators of Novosti render to the self-proclaimed enemy of their own countries. These actions are OVERT: any sensible person can, if he wants, observe them and monitor the results in both short and long time spans. There is not a SINGLE law in any free country that would prevent collaborators from OPENLY and LEGITIMATELY cooperating with the APN-KGB. But there is a law in the USA, which forbids the American intelligence services to contact (or use in any other way) their own American media to even EXPLAIN (to say nothing about JUSTIFY) their operations against the KGB-controlled Novosti Press Agency, the ideological subverter that feels at home in any “belligerent capitalist country.” I was told it is a price Democracy must pay for its freedom. To my mind, it is a price the Free World pays for self-destruction.

Continued in Part Four.