War in Ukraine

[Rev.JoelDufresne]

(Dictated by phone).

This war is a world changing event. We should have already mobilized a primary group to collect information and begin community outreach.  All outreach should strictly be kept to right and wrong and what the actual facts are. The less we say about ethnic groups, outside of Russians and Ukrainians, would go a long way toward appealing to a larger audience. Matters outside of those ethnic groups, can be taken up at a different time as they would only serve as a distraction to the issue at hand. 

Remember ... this is a world changing event. 

We can become a part of it, or have opinions about it.

[Rev.JoelDufresne]

"Active Measures"...Commonly used term to refer to the political warfare activities of the Soviet Union and Russian Federation which often rely on a combination of propaganda, political pressure, and sometimes covert military activity to achieve national objectives.

Great Read: ACTIVE MEASURES by Thomas Rid
https://www.amazon.com/Active-Measures-History-Disinformation-Political/dp/1250787408/

This revelatory and dramatic history of disinformation traces the rise of secret organized deception operations from the interwar period to contemporary internet troll farms

We live in the age of disinformation―of organized deception. Spy agencies pour vast resources into hacking, leaking, and forging data, often with the goal of weakening the very foundation of liberal democracy: trust in facts. Thomas Rid, a renowned expert on technology and national security, was one of the first to sound the alarm. More than four months before the 2016 election, he warned that Russian military intelligence was "carefully planning and timing a high-stakes political campaign" to disrupt the democratic process. But as crafty as such so-called active measures have become, they are not new.

The story of modern disinformation begins with the post-Russian Revolution clash between communism and capitalism, which would come to define the Cold War. In Active Measures, Rid reveals startling intelligence and security secrets from materials written in more than ten languages across several nations, and from interviews with current and former operatives. He exposes the disturbing yet colorful history of professional, organized lying, revealing for the first time some of the century's most significant operations―many of them nearly beyond belief. A White Russian ploy backfires and brings down a New York police commissioner; a KGB-engineered, anti-Semitic hate campaign creeps back across the Iron Curtain; the CIA backs a fake publishing empire, run by a former Wehrmacht U-boat commander, that produces Germany's best jazz magazine. Rid tracks the rise of leaking, and shows how spies began to exploit emerging internet culture many years before WikiLeaks. Finally, he sheds new light on the 2016 election, especially the role of the infamous "troll farm" in St. Petersburg as well as a much more harmful attack that unfolded in the shadows.

Active Measures takes the reader on a guided tour deep into a vast hall of mirrors old and new, pointing to a future of engineered polarization, more active and less measured―but also offering the tools to cut through the deception.

Admin Note: Russians did not elect Trump. The Russian conspiracy has since been debunked. The book is nevertheless still a recommended read.