In a blatant piece of Russian Propaganda, Russia Today announced in dramatic fashion that the U.S. Military is (insert scary music) dunh, dunh, dunnnn. . .
“Taking Over the World!” – “The World Wide Web That Is. Twitter – Facebook – Youtube. Service Members in Afghanistan are now posting images and reports from the battlefield to the front lines of the Internet. “
Didn’t you know this already? First, we built the intertubes out of a secret military funded program, then we genetically engineered Bill Gates & Steve Jobs (don’t blame us for Larry Ellison) and in the last couple decades we’ve been farming our underground DNA vaults to develop evil geniuses like Facebook’s Zuckerberg, Youtube’s Hurley & Chen and Twitter’s Ev Williams & Biz Stone. So don’t blame us – you wasted away your money on a crappy GPS system (GLONASS) – I mean seriously, your system sounds like the fusion of Glow & Ass; “Hey mariners, where you at – don’t know – check out the “glow’n ass”. Seriously, don’t blame us when you waste your billions on assy technology. OK, so you’re probably a little peeved about that whole “Great Game” thing right. And sure, our putting stingers into Afghanistan probably left a bad taste in your mouth. Take a little lesson from the mean streets – as we say here in good old America “Don’t hate the player, hate the game.”
OK, so you caught us in our evil game – but we did in fact warn you. Remember the year 2000, “All Your Base Are Belong to us” – we released that video as our ‘warning shot’ across the bow. We gave you fair warning and our virtual Ambassador “Cats” spelled it out to you in this immortal declaration:
CATS: “How are you gentlemen. All your base are belong to us. You are on the way to destruction”
You (Russia): “What You Say!!
CATS: “You have no chance to survive make your time. HA HA HA HA . . . .”
OK, so now let’s snap back to reality and examine RussiaToday’s video
First, the video from Russia Today is a clever little piece of propaganda with one very interesting “video editing trick”. About 20 seconds into the video the host asks:
“Transparency or a propaganda tool?”
Right after asking the question, the video gremlins cut in a quick (but unrelated) statement from Ivan Eland ( a Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace and Liberty) where he says:
“I rather doubt this is a transparency issue – it’s more of a way to interest people in what the military is doing and maybe get some recruits since it’s on the media that younger people use”
They’ve tried to transpose Ivan’s initial statement “I rather doubt this is a transparency issue” as an answer to their question of transparency vs. propaganda. Sorry Big Bear but this don’t fly! Ivan goes on to explain that it’s a “a way to interest people in what the military is doing” – wow! Amazing! NATO & the US are getting people interested in public policy and national security… shame on them!
Then, they go on to criticize NATO’s Afghanistan Matters video contest and imply it’s some sort of propaganda. Really – really? I mean NATO is being extremely upfront and transparent here. They’re looking for current or former military members who want to make a video about why Afghanistan matters. They want the men and women who’ve been on the front lines to share their stories of sacrifice and explain why they’re there. Now in my humble opinion this is pretty leading edge: NATO is asking the average military member – perhaps a junior enlisted, young officer or NCO to sit down and make a video about why Afghanistan matters. If anything, we should be encouraging this. In fact I’d argue that more social media websites should get involved in efforts like these and support NATO or the military. I’d like to see Mashable, TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, UStream or any others get behind these transparent public policy efforts (any takers out there?)
We’re in an age where the public wants to know about our policy – and they deserve to hear it from the people that actually do this work on the ground, in the front lines. The American public wants to know why we’re in Iraq; why we’re in Afghanistan; why we’re fighting this war on drugs; why we send our military to assist in disaster relief. Now, shouldn’t we support governments which decide to open up and share these stories. I would honestly prefer to hear a lot more from the men and women on the ground – not just military – but State Department, USAID, DEA and everyone else who works daily under difficult and dangerous conditions to make the world better.
NATO is doing just that with the Afghanistan Matters video contest ; SOUTHCOM is doing it by distributing Flip video cameras in South America; Adm Allen encourages social media and front-line videos from across the US Coast Guard; and this is only the beginning of a more transparent public policy and national security dialogue between the government and the public.
So we have to wonder, why is RussiaToday scared? Well first, keep in mind that RussiaToday is funded by the Russian Government (I guess they forgot to disclose that in the video…). So, there’s a political & strategic dimension to this video – a very big dimension. It’s not so much bad ‘news’ reporting as it is a reflection of Russian fear – fear that they’ve lost control in Central Asia; fear that they don’t control the intertubes; a deep, and historical fear common and ever-present in Russian history.
It also highlights the fact that NATO and the US are on the right path – transparency. Because the answer to RussiaToday’s question “Transparency or Propaganda” is in fact “Transparency”. One of our greatest struggles over the last three decades has been the loss of public trust – the public will – to engage and support our nation’s (and NATO) efforts abroad. We’ve relegated our communication to talking heads; we’ve communicated our strategy & vision through a centralized main-stream media system that filtered out reality and replaced it with “talking points” and obfuscation that no one in the public really understood or had time to understand. And now, in the era of social media, NATO and the US Government are quickly finding a new voice (in fact thousands and millions of voices). Properly employed, this new strategy of communication via social media, via the men and women who actually carry out our policy, offers us an honest and open understanding of what we’re doing and why it matters. And in the words of Forest Gump, ” That’s all I have to say about that”
P.S. If you want to support NATO and submit a video to their Contest “Afghanistan Matters”, go HERE to submit your video. Happy hunting! And remember “All Your Base Belong to Us!”
MORE ALL YOUR BASE PICTURES
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All Your Base Belong to Us
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Sounds like Russia Today went to the Michael Moore school of documentary film making.
Should we remind them that they are part of the game? Would Russia really like to see the Taliban as the new authorities in Afghanistan? Russia, you are invited to fight for democracy and to defend the Afghan population against islamic terrorism. You are part of the democratic world! We are partners in this fight.
Propaganda is about espousing one point of view. Even though the films will be diverse and transparent, ultimately the point of the view will be from NATO military service members. NATO by definition represents many points of view, but to take the “This is not propaganda” challenge one step further, why not create a program whereby the Afghan people get access to video cameras with film capabilities and ask them to post, on the same “Afghanistan Matters” site, their views of interactions with NATO troops. What an interesting tactic to have more Afghan citizens getting their views heard and seen on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.
Liz – I think everyone would love your idea of opening the competition up; in fact I’d like to see submissions from as many audiences as possible. But, rather than criticize NATO and use a highly pejorative term & insult them for their boldness, I’m more inclined to applaud them for their efforts in taking an important step. NATO along with the rest of the world is trying to catch up and figure out this new world of social media, web 2.0 and more. Your idea of getting video cams into the hands of Afghanistan’s citizens is solid – can you help organize this or get someone behind the idea? Of course, they’ll probably need a bit more assistance as well – we should think about how we give them the bandwidth & tools to send in submissions – not a whole bunch of Starbuck wifi stations sitting around Afghanistan these days
ROFLMAO
George Patton is proven right day after day.
Oh well… I’m ashamed by this video… really, it’s sounds so cheap In fact, there is a show on a federal TV channel (financing by government as well) here in Russia that uses TV methods like this “the Maximum” where anchorman (I don’t really know what the right word for this profession… master of ceremonies?), making faces and playing with voice tone similar to this girl, waging about UFOs, Hitler’s unborn children, catfights between schoolmates, tortures in celebrities’ families and so on… this show is made for dull narrow-minded people to switch of your brain and relax a little after a hard week People assure that their stereotypes – is the only true and that making them thinking that everything in the world live by the order they know well
I don’t really understand why do this people from Russia Today chose such format of presentation maybe because the Maximum is extremely popular here and tabloids generally are the way to achieve people’s attention as quick as possible But most of all I wounder why do you so overreact about such a filthy and pathetic issue? Why did you descend to giggling about English pronounce of Russian words and shortcuts? Such a behavior is not creditable for you
Ough and sorry for my “All Your Base Belong to Us”, Russia not a bilanguage country for a long time
Hi Admin, yes I could help organize this. The elements would be — backing of the idea from an influential source; a video cam manufacturer with lots of extra models in stock (probably all video cam manufacturers); a satellite-based wi fi provider; and a strategic marketing plan.