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Sputnik News?
Sputnik news. It exists. Have a close look, and give me your best shot. Why was this–for a good twenty minutes–the second item I saw when I looked at the US edition of Google News in Paris?
NATO Pushes for War by Encircling Russia – French Newspaper
Sputnik International
30 minutes ago
Sputnik news. I’m sitting in Paris. That was the number two item on a general search for “news.”
Give our old friends at Sputnik a good, close study. I’d like a serious answer to this question: How did “Sputnik news” manage to become the second thing I saw when I casually “looked to see what was in the news?”
I was using Google. It was set to “US edition.”
It’s gone now. But I’d really like an answer to that. And an answer to the problems this suggests.
Published in General
vveerrrryyyyy interrestink. It’s pretty slick. Seems to be playing with the Main Feed layout.
Claire, you might want to check your embed there, or else get Max to do so. You stumbled on a code weakness here that scrambled the Main feed a bit.
Nested posts!
Seems that alerts don’t work from the main feed/home page. I get an alert but can’t click through to read them. Can read them from this page, though.
What hath Claire wrought?!
I didn’t see at first you were referencing the same article I noticed right away…NATO pushes for war by encircling Russia?? The takeaway thought seems to be that NATO “desperately” wants to get involved in the Ukrainian conflict to justify their continued existence.
1. Seems to me that NATO isn’t desperate to get involved in anything whatsoever so I’m not sure I can take this magazine seriously.
2. This sounds like Ron Paul news letter material
From the font of all knowledge (or the sink trap – YMMV):
In other words, Vladimir sez.
The fear of being encircled? Wasn’t that the Kaiser’s reason for launching WWI?
All that article needs is some connection to how the Jews profit from all of this, because if there is one thing we know the Jews are always behind these sort of things.
A crazy news rag but you gotta like this (at least today):
I would be really impressed if the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was able to truly encircle Russia.
Somebody wake me up when Finland, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China, and Japan all join NATO.
The EU has been after Google to mend its ways (read: kowtow to the imperatives of EU’s speech regulators) for some time. And Google, for all its vaunted rhetoric, has been acceding for some time, rendering its vaunted rhetoric to the level of Obamatalk.
That the article that had turned up so high in the search list has…disappeared…is itself troubling.
Incidentally, with your prompt, I searched via Google News and switched to the France edition. Searching on “NATO” turned up this article as the first in the list.
Or it may be just a further example of the delusion of the Left regarding European–and American–enemies.
Eric Hines
Google’s dirty little secret is that with countless billions of links; petabytes of data spread among hundreds of data centers around the world; and some of the best computer science, math, and machine learning talent on the planet…
They still employ human beings to manually curate search results. And the occasional bow-wow choice is made, and somebody sees it. Fleetingly.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity, and all that.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity, and all that.
Nor is there any necessary reason to attribute stupidity to very smart people who know what they’re doing and are busily doing it.
Eric Hines
Sputnik News launched a view months ago, part of the Kremlin’s attempt to spread its propaganda in western countries. Not only are they going Web, but are setting up digital TV channels, some based by country.
There’s talk that they will hire about 20 people in each Baltic state, for example, to act as a local Sputnik affiliate, producing Web and video news with an official Kremlin spin, like Russia Today (now branded RT) in the local language.
It’s worrisome, because while for example, here locally for me, Estonia has decided to start a separate Russian-language channel (it already has Russian-language programming, including a news program, on the main public broadcasting channel, ERR), and on the macro-level, there is talk about the EU starting its own pan-European channel in Russian, the Kremlin is willing to throw much more capital into its news-propaganda organs than anyone else.
I don’t remember where I read it, but apparently Russian is spending more in producing its media news outreach than it does on pensions for its citizens – that’s the entire country. That’s mind-boggling, if true.
…apparently Russian is spending more in producing its media news outreach than it does on pensions for its citizens – that’s the entire country. That’s mind-boggling, if true.
It’s also an opportunity, did western governments have the wit and the stones. This simply expands a spending contest Russia cannot win.
Eric Hines
Google knows where you are, the country you’re accessing them from, at the very least. The headline included “French Paper”.
Another question is if you are logging into Google, or are using a generic account. I go ahead and have a login, along with a gmail mailbox, and YouTube, where I maintain subscriptions.
I know that the headlines in Google News are tailored to me.
While Sputnik is a Russian propaganda outlet, you did notice that the story they’re referencing is from French media, right? I don’t read much French, so maybe you can summarize whether Sputnik is being honest about what the column actually says: http://www.lepoint.fr/monde/ou-va-le-monde-pierre-beylau/ukraine-le-chiffon-rouge-de-l-otan-13-02-2015-1904743_231.php
I did the page in Google Translate, but I put the original link for your French readers to see if there’s much difference. Here it is in ‘Murican.
Claire, I know zip about Le Point. How big is it? Is it like a French Guardian?
I believe this was an honest mistake made by “those overworked folks at Google” as much as I believe Russia slipped on a banana peel and invaded Croatia. What I don’t understand is the mechanism by which they got it to the top of Google’s list. Unfortunately, the common sense–yes, common sense–answer, not a “conspiracy theory”–is that they probably have an asset at Google. That’s how I’d do it if I were Russia. Of course it is.
Congratulations, Google–you’ve been penetrated by Russian spies.
How, how, how, can this be a question of “having the wit and stones?” How can this not be the most basic, bleedingly obvious matter of “common sense self-defense” at this point?
No. Please, please, please, believe me.
That’s not how Russian propaganda works in 2015. They’re too smart for that. The way it works is the opposite: They sell themselves as the protectors of Jews and Christians of Muslims. That’s why Westerners fall for them. That’s why otherwise sensible Americans start thinking LePen is sounding mighty good. Please take them seriously: They are smart enemies. Smart enemies are a million times more dangerous than dumb ones.
It’s big. And this tells me they’ve found a natural friend there and are cultivating them. Just as they have Marine LePen.
Yes, this frightens me. You never heard me say “I am terrified by what happened at Charlie Hebdo and the attack on the Hyper Cacher–to the point of wanting to flee.” You heard me say, “I am enraged and I will stand and fight.” Enraged, not terrified.
I know Islamist terrorists are something we can and will fight and win. I know America understands what side they’re on. I know France does. Everyone understands that what people who kill satirists and Jews represent is the enemy. We know we’re at war–the West is just arguing about strategy, not the necessity of defeating that.
Russia is another story. I am terrified of them. I am truly unsure whether if Americans–or Europeans–grasp how serious this is. I can’t protect myself from Russia on my own.
Google allows you to set your locality. I can set it to “let’s say I’m in France.” Or, as in this case, “Pretend I’m in the US.” It will do the former by default, but I set it to the latter–I like to pretend I’m in the US to see what things look like to you, otherwise known as “my country.”
That’s what it looked like to you. Otherwise known as “my country.” They managed, for about 20 minutes, to show that to my country.
You have no idea how hard I’m working to obey the Code of Conduct. I want to swear, use all-caps … and shoot Russians.
We took care of that. And I am praying that Americans of a pay grade higher than ours “took care” of Sputnik news. And if not, I want to put my hands around the throats of the Americans who are supposed to be doing that and …
Calmly elect a new government. Whatever my instincts are, I do understand that Americans aren’t allowed to do it that way. But my instinct when I saw that–which I know I have to control, because I’m American and there is no point to being American if we don’t behave like Americans–was to commandeer a tank and stage a coup on Washington.
We don’t do that. I understand that. And there are good reasons we don’t. And I know it impresses no one for me to scream and get hysterical. But I have to figure out some way to persuade my fellow Americans that we need to take this as seriously as we did the last Cold War. Because Russia is.
Take it seriously. Take it deadly seriously. This is being shown to your fellow Americans. This is being shown to the world. And “Moon Landing News” is not.
My biggest fear is this: The pattern is so very clear.
Russia’s propaganda strategy is that of people who know Americans, understand how they think, and know their weaknesses. They know Americans and Europeans can be worked into a frenzy about Islamic extremism–for good reason–and they know that Jews and Christians can be, especially.
And they will use that against us. And we will fall for it. But there is no such thing as an Islamist–yet–as dangerous as Russia. We (correctly) worry that Iran will acquire nuclear weapons. But as of February 14, 2015, Russia already has 1,643 of them. Ukraine gave them up, and did so because we reassured them that we’d be there for them. That we aren’t–and that Sputnik news is the news–is about as scary as it gets.
ISIS has a PR strategy that involves, “Telling even the stupidest Americans, in no uncertain terms, how that they are not friends of American values.”
Russia has a PR strategy that involves, “Telling smart Americans, in a very convincing way, that they are friends of American values.”
You will not find a “pro-ISIS American.” ISIS will not be able to convince anyone at Google that for the sake of peace, they should lend ISIS a hand.
You will find many Americans who think it sounds very reasonable to lend Russia a hand. I suspect someone at Google has been persuaded of this.
And I know that if I voice this suspicion, loudly–or scream my head off about it–people will laugh at me as if I’m telling them about the dangers of fluoridated water.
Google ranks particular pages according to an algorithm that determines how many clicks the site gets, how many other sites link to it, and how many clicks the linking sites get. There is a general description here. It is possible to manipulate the ranking by various strategies.
That doesn’t mean that Google doesn’t have a Putin stooge or two – after all, the White House does.
And yes, this is my next fear: When Americans do wake up to how serious this is, the next step is obvious: blame Jews and Christians who have been promoting the line, “Your biggest concern is jihad–why worry about Russia? At least they’re sensible conservatives who see that.”
I trust my country to be more sensible than that–but yes, that could happen. Because at some point, people will realize what Russia has been doing.
If I were sitting in the defense establishment and trying to decide who should get a security clearance, I would want to get anyone who might be manipulated that way as far from classified information as possible. And that thought makes me ill.
But as an American–before all else–I also want that to happen.
Let me give you a few useful tips about how it will go next:
1) You will hear the words “Russophobic.”
2) Every American foreign policy decision that in retrospect strikes you as unwise will be thrown in your face as a good reason for inaction and isolationism.
3) In every country where the US has done something that people feel uneasy about, journalists who feel that was a mistake–one that had bad consequences for their country–will be making some very reasonable-sounding Russian friends. Or friends of those friends.
4) We will be seeing article upon article telling us that Ukrainians suck and have a nasty history of killing Jews.
5) There will be a lull. Then we’ll hear a lot about how much Poles suck, and we’ll be having debates about whether Estonians are really quite racist toward Russians.
6) We’ll be hearing that if only we’d listened to those sensible Russians, that sensible, beleaguered Mr. Assad would have been allowed to do the necessary, and we wouldn’t be dealing with ISIS.
7) We’ll be hearing that if only we’d stayed away from Iraq, we wouldn’t be dealing with ISIS.
8) Israelis will be hearing that Americans can’t be trusted: come make friends with Moscow.
9) Books of the kind I wrote a decade ago, pointing out that Europeans aren’t so great, will be used to suggest to you that you don’t really want to be in NATO.
And all I can do is say–toss that book out. It meant for you, not the KGB. Which is what they are: they just renamed it.
That is indeed how they say it works. And I believe Russian intelligence is smart enough to do it that way.
I also believe they’re smart enough to do it the old-fashioned way.
I believe they did it–one way or the other. And I pray we are doing it too. But I do not believe we’re doing it as well, as fast, or as adaptably. I hope it proves–again–that in the long run, the KGB is no match for a free society. But in the short run, a free society is no match for a sinister foreign intelligence service. And that is what Russia is. A huge, sinister foreign intelligence service that suffered a small setback when the Wall came down–but managed to rise again.
Until I saw that, I was trying to write a post explaining, “Here’s how Russia works.” It was long.
I can’t do it all on my own.
But “Sputnik news” is a good summary.
I believe this was an honest mistake made by “those overworked folks at Google” as much as I believe Russia slipped on a banana peel and invaded Croatia.
I tend to agree with you; however, smart men make mistakes, too, and the possibility of mistake is in the middle ground between Gödel’s Ghost’s end of the spectrum and mine. I can’t discount the possibility based on the available evidence.
Google may have been penetrated, or they may have been hacked. Or they made a mistake. Russia has very good hackers.
How, how, how, can this be a question of “having the wit and stones?” How can this not be the most basic, bleedingly obvious matter of “common sense self-defense” at this point?
I cannot speak for the European leadership; although their softness from relying on American defenses for 50+ years is apparent, as is their timidity presently now they’re left to their own devices. Oddly, the socialist Hollande is showing the most understanding and toughness, but France can’t go it alone anymore than can Ukraine.
As to our own leadership, I posed a question on Ricochet some time back (possibly lost in the archives move); I’ll repeat it here. Suppose President Barack Obama isn’t an incompetent hack, suppose instead he knows exactly what he’s doing. What implications flow from that? Context added since I posed that question (I think–it’s been a while).
Russia is another story. I am terrified of them. I am truly unsure whether if Americans–or Europeans–grasp how serious this is.
You’re terrified of the wrong thing. Our failure to respond in any meaningful way is what there is to be terrified of. Russia today is not the Russia that absorbed the best an overrated Napoleon had to offer, nor is it the USSR that absorbed a mad man’s thrust 70 years ago. Russia today is, ironically, a Potemkin country, waiting to be pushed over. It just needs someone to push. That lack in today’s leaders is what there is to fear.
Google allows you to set your locality.
Google, and Facebook, and… all know your true location, too, and make use of that datum along with all the other data they collect from you without your permission. They’ve all been caught too many times invading privacy for me to believe that’s just a string of honest mistakes by professional IT.
…and shoot Russians
Take a number. I sat across the fence from those b**ds and their proxies for 14 years. Some of what I described in a different thread was while I was active.
…praying that Americans of a pay grade higher than ours “took care” of Sputnik news.
I’m not. Don’t suppress it. This falls into what I suggested in that other thread: spread it loud and wide, and paired with a companion article of facts and debunkings of Sputnik’s manufactures. But we have this press in bed with Obama, and Europe has a press that thinks Russians can be reasoned with….
And yes, this is my next fear: When Americans do wake up to how serious this is, the next step is obvious: blame Jews and Christians who have been promoting the line….
Come home for a year, Ma’am. That’s not who we are; you’re being misled from being too immersed in European news media and European culture.
Let me give you a few useful tips about how it will go next:
That’s been going on for about 10 years, now. An increasing fraction of us aren’t buying it.
Eric Hines