The importance of the Russian LiveJournal blogosphere is leading the Western Powers to suck up to the leading bloggers and infiltrate the discussion sites. In 2007 I reported on how the British ambassador invited the top bloggers to lunch (IZO). For the Obama inauguration leading bloggers were invited to the US Embassy. LiveJournal user south-fragrance is claimed to be in charge of contacts with bloggers at the US Embassy; apparently his department is a month-and-a-half old (papasha-mueller). Israel is recruiting citizens with Russian and other non-Hebrew first languages to fight ideological battles on the internet (life.ru, in Russian). And a School of Bloggers has been created by the Russian Glasnost Defence Foundation and the USA Centre of Journalist Education (latter name translated from Russian, may not corrrespond to original English nomenclature), at which students will be taught how to blog effectively (idiot.ru, in Russian); teachers include investigative journalist Grigori Pasko (Wikipedia). There is plenty of evidence that Russia has been waging this kind of propaganda war for some time.