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Fierce censorship, as practiced in the USSR, essentially exhausted its usefulness during the last decade of the Soviet rule. Of course, it managed to keep under wraps some of the most damning facts about the Communist era, like the secret protocols to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and the open-air testing of nuclear weapons on tens of thousands of our own troops. But its overall effectiveness in the information age could not prevent 9/10 of the things it tried to block out from percolating to our public.With his past in the secret services and his natural perceptiveness, President Putin has been fully aware of that. Which is why he pioneered a very effective system of opinion control. This system is sure to be deployed and perfected by many players in other countries. It substitutes censorship with the following elements.“Market Stalinism”. You establish a police state but let a considerable part of potential opposition to direct their energies to enriching themselves. You make it plain to everyone that voicing too awkward opinions may harm their pocket and their career prospects.Authoritarianism through opinion polls. This is essentially a disciplined, data-driven populism in power. You appear the way the nation wants you to look like. You go with the stream and never push through unpopular measures. If an acute need arises for painful moves like retirement age increases, or price hikes, you pick some fall boy in your government to take the blame, or drown the bad news in a massive noise from something like a World Cup, Olympic games or a lightning victorious war.You go after their money. Court decisions, harassment from the tax police or fire inspectors make sure that trouble-makers run out of money, premises, personnel and friends in a matter of weeks, or a few months.You define a safe zone of “systemic opposition”. Dedicated minders from your administration patrol the media and work with publishers trying to keep them from straying into the risky terrain of “non-systemic” opposition. Something like a “third strike out” rule is applied. The most pig-headed fools who test your patience too much risk falling out into the uncertain terrain where p. 3 starts to apply.You establish limited, but very clear no-fly zones. In Russia, it’s our President’s personal wealth, his family and love life, his past in St. Petersburg, and the apartment bombings in 1999. Here, a merciless “first strike out” rule is enforced.“Trump bug”. You task your secret police with collecting compromising information on anyone who start sticking out their neck too much. You let them know you have that file, but if they observe some basic traffic rules, no one’s gonna know what it contains.The vigilante card. You make crystal clear that everyone understands how your duty to protect citizens from random violence in the streets is conditional on their loyalty to you. How can anyone expect their President to keep them safe from loyalist crazies if they call him a thief, a murderer and require him to go?The law. The unwritten motto of the Putinist rule is, “to my friends, everything—to my enemies, the law”. Those who know how to protect themselves from crazies and have good lawyers that make them impenetrable for state harassment, can always be pinned down with our anti-extremists laws. These are awesomely flexible: you can almost always find someone who feels offended or threatened by the troublemaker’s words and actions, which makes him a dangerous disrupter of public order and social cohesion.In its entirety, this creates a kind of environment where almost everyone stepping in the public media space are acutely aware of the need of self-censorship. All you need is just run some show cases every now and then to remind newcomers and too frivolous old players about the existence of your rules, and your determination of enforcing them.How to handle newsbits and opinions percolating into the country from abroad? In the era of Internet, the answer to this is white noise. My propaganda training helps my brain routinely block it off. But I can easily see how confused anyone can become trying to navigate the plethora of Russian news resources and media platforms. This is a wild cacophony of click-baits, image memes, tired sensationalist titles, conspiracy theories, expert opinions, news about future events or from a few years back repackaged as new, and other garbage. They constantly contradict each other, but on the loyalist side they all have one common denominator: everything Putin does is good, anyone who opposes him are either stupid or evil. On the fringes, there are opposition resources where the narrative is totally reverted, and everything that hurts Putin is per definition good news.The Internet art below shows an average Russian family trying to make sense out of the available media content. No need for censoring anything. On the contrary, more and more citizens require of the government to step in already and put an end to this unbridled, shameless craziness.

There were three parties involved in the Red Wedding: the Lannisters, Freys and Boltons. The Lannisters - i.e. Tywin - were the masterminds behind it, and took advantage of the Freys and Boltons’ loose loyalties. Tywin probably came up with the basic idea at some point in the course of ACOK - we can’t say exactly when, since he’s mostly off-page in that book. The Lannister forces were unable to defeat the Stark forces in battle in AGOT and ACOK, and they had to worry about Renly and Stannis attacking the capital while the Lannister forces were engaged in the Riverlands. Tywin needed to get his forces to King’s Landing, while dealing decisively with the Starks once and for all. He decided that the only way to achieve it was through underhanded means.The Freys were never very loyal to the Stark cause in any case - Catelyn had to buy their loyalty by making multiple concessions and marriage pacts. Walder was just looking for an excuse to jump ship - and he found a particularly good one when Robb broke the marriage pact and married Jeyne Westerling. This happened at some point before the last Arya chapter in ACOK - Roose Bolton’s Frey squire tells her about it in that chapter (we readers don’t actually learn what happened until ASOS).The Boltons were probably the last to join the cause. Roose, like the Freys, was just looking for an excuse to rebel, and he found one when he learnt that Winterfell - the bastion of Stark power - had fallen to the Ironborn. Ramsay must have sent him the news even before it became publicly known. Roose had married a Frey girl, and he presumably knew about their dislike for the Starks/Tullys as well, so when he decided to turn against the Starks, he knew he would have the Freys’ support. And through them, the Lannisters as well. We don’t know exactly when Roose put his plans into motion, but he probably did so during or before the last Arya chapter of ACOK. Nothing is stated to that effect - Roose plays his cards much closer to his chest than the Freys do. But there’s a scene in that chapter in which Roose goes off to hunt wolves (the four-legged kind) which is rife with symbolism.The Westerlings were never in on the Red Wedding at all. If Jeyne’s mother Sybelle had known what was going to happen, she would not have allowed her son Raynald to go to the Wedding, where he was killed. And the only reason that Jeyne didn’t go to the Wedding is that Catelyn told Robb it would be inappropriate to bring her - Sybelle didn’t try to stop her.Robb and Jeyne’s wedding definitely did not happen at Tywin’s order. More like the opposite - the Westerlings, especially Sybelle were terrified that Tywin would destroy their family for marrying into a rebelling family, and so Sybelle tried to do some damage control by spying on Robb for Tywin and preventing Jeyne from getting pregnant and thus bearing Robb’s heir.

There are quite some biased answer here… So let’s take it from a political strategy perspective. And in order to do that, let’s answer another question:“What could Prabowo have done differently in order for him to win the elections?”Use Jokowi “defectors/deserters” more effectively, and use these people more as public face of Prabowo’s campaign (more than Fadli Zon & other parliamentarians)When we use the word “defectors”, it comes to mind either Cold War spy agents from Moscow being recruited by the CIA… or North Koreans trying to escape their country and being illegally smuggled across many countries before finally landing in Seoul.But in this case, we are talking about the Ministers that Jokowi has reshuffled out of his cabinet, Prabowo could have used more effectively and aggressively inProving that he has the same professional experts backing ready as Ministers, compared to JokowiRake additional votes in the areas where these experts have public influenceAnd within the ranks of these “defectors” there are 3 significant names that could have been used more effectively (judging from the regional results, they were not maximized)Yes, Anies Baswedan, Sudirman Said, and Rizal RamliBut man, they are publicly branded as “failed ministers”!True that! But that sentiment is from Jokowi’s supporters mostly. And at the end, it’s not about the public sentiment but how they can consolidate support…Sudirman Said, despite losing his 2018 Central Java Governor election, managed to eke out 40% of the votes, the support for him was even stronger in the Northern Coast - even if many stated that Central Java is a Jokowi & PDI-P stronghold… which means that indeed, there was the sentiment calling for a fresher name in Central Java, but how did it go in the election? Many quick counts have said Jokowi trashed Prabowo in Central Java. So that’s #1 evident that Sudirman Said was not used effectively during the campaign.Anies Baswedan as well for example, was never really utilized in the campaigning in Jakarta. Yes, several analyst have pointed out Jusuf Kalla made a secret pact to Jokowi promising Anies will not be campaigning for Prabowo extensively, but that could have been circumvented by several indirect measures… like the Islamist & Betawi mass organizations that were rooting for Anies in 2017. And again, in Jakarta, Prabowo lost to Jokowi. Another evidence Anies was not utilized properly.Lastly… Rizal Ramli, instead of being used to appear as Prabowo’s “debating face” in televisions, could have been used to find and attack several of Jokowi’s minister projects (see below).Attack the faulty work of several Jokowi’s ministersThis is building up from the first point about “Jokowi’s defectors”, Prabowo should have attack Jokowi’s cabinet works more effectively because of one factor - within the young millenials who voted for Jokowi in 2014 but this year opted to abstain (golput), there is one reason that I saw recurring again and again“Some of the people in Jokowi’s inner ring are toxic and really corrupt”Having overseen several cases in Indonesian infrastructure, commodities mining and procurement cases… this is true. There are indeed people in Jokowi’s inner circle that were just taking in the profits for themselves, instead of being a servant of the nation’s interest.And I mean, I got this info because I have seen some confidential documents and financial statements - if a 20-something-year-old man in Belgium can get a hold of these evidences, why couldn’t Prabowo?P.S.: I could name some names, but I think it’s a public secret already now… yes, I’m looking at the duo of Mr. Everything and Madame of Enterprises. There are more names, but these two are the biggest offenders (in terms of contract values swindled)And if you see carefully, there are indeed several cases in infrastructure and/or mining where Jokowi tried to distance himself from his ministers work…That is where Prabowo could have attacked more, making the point that these certain people are doing damage very much and reframing them as a fact that Jokowi could not control his own cabinet, and thus reinforcing their point that Jokowi is simply a “party cadre controlled by the coalition”.The mistake that Prabowo camp made was they only attacked these several minister’s works incidentally. Instead, they opted to attack Jokowi’s signature proposals like the cards (KIP, KIS, etc.) or BPJS (which was actually already started from SBY administration, but it was fully operational under Jokowi) where Jokowi’s name is already too much imprinted as a brand.Whereas if the attacks on this side (some faulty works from his Ministers) could have been intensified, while it might not add more votes to Prabowo directly, it could have pushed more people who previously supported Jokowi to abstain (golput) - which was definitely to Prabowo’s advantage. Last but not least…Better coordinate Party support (and lessen the attacks on SBY)One of the major dumb mistakes Prabowo did was his passive-aggressive relationship with former President SBY, and his Demokrat party by extension. Prabowo & his party Gerindra could have been much, much more strategic in his relationship with SBY-Demokrat. This could be seen by the passive-aggressive comment Prabowo made during the debates. SBY’s family could have been used more strategically to gain votes in Jokowi’s stronghold of Central and East Java (strangely, not owing to SBY’s influence himself, but to his wife Ani Yudhoyono being one of the children of Soeharto-regime general Sarwo Edhie Wibowo).Besides Demokrat, there is also the problem of PAN. While indeed the more hardliner part of the Party heeded the call of founder Amien Rais for really supporting Prabowo, the case is not the same with the current Chairman Zulkifli Hasan. In some way it also stems from Zulkifli being the speaker of MPR, but if he would have “whipped” his cadres to be more in line to vote for Prabowo and not Jokowi, it could have gotten Prabowo some additional votes as well.Finally, Party support don’t just translate into his coalition of party supporters (Gerindra-PKS-PAN-Demokrat), but also to encourage even more “defectors” from Jokowi’s side. Yes, Prabowo did score some victories like getting Erwin Aksa and several Golkar politicians to his camp, or getting Ferry Mursyidan Baldan from Nasdem to his campaign team. However, these are very limited. There were some opportunities wide open for Prabowo to build up even more defectors from Jokowi side, like when PPP chairman Romahurmuziy was indicted for corruption, when Hanura chairman Oesman Sapta Odang was cemented as Speaker of supposed-to-be independent DPD, or even when PDIP refused to back PKB’s Khofifah Indar for the East Java Gubernatorial Elections. Yet the Prabowo camp didn’t use opportunities like these to grab defectors from Jokowi’s side….So yeah, these 3 factors are where Prabowo failed to maximize his campaign team. And that’s why he failed to win.