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 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 Breotan wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
I can see Russia working with Wikileaks.

"Keep your friends close and your enemies closer" comes to mind.

I was thinking closer to the "useful idiots" analogy.

Yeah, I sorta saw it the same Breotan. I mean, we know that Russia has been after us since WW2, so it only makes sense for them to get someone who can/will get whatever "intel" they can get their hands on, without russia getting its hands very dirty.

I think you are painting the Russians as cheap petty opportunists, which is somewhat unfair.

Assange is a toolbox for those who can cultivate links to him and are not currently sitting with their own balls in his hands. Wikileaks has massive amounts of data, much of it unreleased leaked by Manning. Both Assange and Maning have claimed before that much of what wikileaks has was never published and some never will.
I think there is a price involved, also Assange can discretely sell some undisclosed information to discrete clientsin return for special favours.

I can see why Mosocw finds him interesting. Any discomfort and embarrassment in Washington is merely a side effect, much of the Russian hierarchy is thinking similarly to the how the Soviets did and the Soviets were largely disinterested in international spin, in Soviet doctrine you score points decision maker to decision maker, court of world opinion being distinctly secondary. Frankly I think they have a more mature attitude to international relations.

 dogma wrote:
Wait, you honestly believe that the Soviets were not concerned with "international spin"?

Is that why they launched Sputnik, had massive parades, and generally extolled the virtues of Communism?

Thats not 'international spin'. Any spin effect large as it might be is of secondary signifgicance.

Sputnik was a message with decision makers in western governments, its was the western media that made it international spin. the Soviets didn't court the media this way.

The rallies had internal value, you could read a lot into them but often that was all that you could read. If watched who was on Lenins mausoleum close to the premier you could see who was in favour with Moscow. The May Day and other parades was just about the only clue you had a lot of the time. Moscow did not give oput those clues willingly. If the parades were primarily for international spin they would not have occurred as they were consistently read for information that the Svoiets otherwise were able to well conceal.

As for extolling the virtues of Communism, to the Soviets that wasn't spin but as integral to Soviet life as breathing. Extolling communism is not part of any media circus act as we would have it in the west, it was a continuous state of being.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LordofHats wrote:

 dogma wrote:
Wait, you honestly believe that the Soviets were not concerned with "international spin"?

Is that why they launched Sputnik, had massive parades, and generally extolled the virtues of Communism?

I think his point was that it wasn't their first priority (not that I agree). From what I can tell, if anything, Communist governments tend to care more than others about International spin. I mean, watch China! They do International spin 24/7.

China and the Soviet Union are completely different animals.