Growing up in the early 2000s, my mother instilled within me certain precepts: eat your vegetables, avoid processed foods, recycle. Buying organic was preferable, but often cost-prohibitive. Ideally, you’d want to be able to pronounce the words on a label. Red dye 40 and sugary breakfast cereals were no-nos — though sometimes she could be convinced otherwise. All of these principles, she said…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The Republican-controlled U.S. Senate has given its stamp of approval to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, despite his noted vaccine skepticism and other conspiracy-based beliefs on myriad health subjects. All 47 Democratic senators voted against Kennedy’s confirmation. Nearly all Republicans — save for Sen.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
In the age of information, misinformation is undoubtedly the biggest epidemic. Last year, the World Economic Forum said that India was at the “highest risk of misinformation and disinformation”. For Alt News, 2024 was anything but ordinary. From debunking claims that god was put behind bars to investigating rumours of multiple fractures and 150 grams of semen being found in the postmortem report of a junior doctor who was raped and killed at Kolkata’s R G Kar Medical College and Hospital, Alt News had its hands full.
The 2024 Lok Sabha elections, which spanned for over a month — between April 19 and June 1— were pivotal. As political parties kicked off their campaigns, we saw a spurt in not only misinformation but also hate speech. Through the year, Alt News documented several such instances. This includes speeches by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose pre-poll communal rhetoric blatantly disregarded the Election Commission guidelines.
The second round of the farmers’ protests, attacks on Rafah refugee camps in Palestine, student protests in Bangladesh, the R G Kar rape and murder and ongoing violence in Manipur were other major events that shaped 2024, unleashing, in its wake, a flood of misinformation and targeted hate against certain communities.
Through the past year, Alt News published 347 reports in all. Of this, in at least 299 stories we fact-checked viral claims, often false and peddling misinformation. This included misinformation that was viral on social media as well as misreporting by media outlets. In the remaining 48 stories, we documented instances of targeted hate speech and hate crimes (read this and this), platform accountability by big tech (examples 1, 2) and also did deep-dive investigations (for instance, this and this) and analysed coverage patterns by news publications (1, 2 and 3). More on this later.
The ‘Others’ category in the above graphic refers to stories that do not exactly fall under the aforementioned categories. Take, for instance, our story on Dharmendra Pradhan going from ‘no corruption’ to assuming ‘moral responsibility’ all within a week amid allegations that the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test papers were leaked; or our story on the desperate search for a sabotage theory amid several train accidents.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the themes that dominated our coverage, sources from where most misinformation emerged and the medium most effectively used to disseminate this as well as who some of the biggest targets were.
The Lok Sabha elections dominated the news cycle in the first half of the year. Between April and June, Alt News conducted 42 fact checks on election-related misinformation. Nearly 31% of such misinformation targeted the Congress while 24% targeted the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. We documented multiple instances wherein the model code of conduct set by the Election Commission was blatantly violated. We also wrote about the polling body’s reluctance to act against violations by the BJP or its leaders.
Our reportage looked into several instances in which pre-poll campaign speeches delivered by the Prime Minister himself were the source of misinformation or targeted hate, violating the model code of conduct (Read here, here and here). Post results, our analysis showed that the BJP lost in at least 20 constituencies where PM Modi delivered hateful or communal speeches.
In February 2024, farmers held the second round of protests demanding that the government mandate a minimum selling price (MSP) for all crops and waive off their debt. Our first fact-check report related to the farmers’ protests was published on February 16, barely three days after their ‘Delhi Chalo’ march began. In February alone we debunked eleven claims that spread misinformation about the protests.
In May, Israel launched airstrikes in Rafah, Gaza, killing at least 20 civilians. Soon after this, several social media users who associate themselves with the Right resorted to sharing distasteful edits of a viral AI image that said “All Eyes on Rafah”. Our deep dive looked at how distorted versions of this image, originally made to show solidarity with affected Palestinians, were now trivialising Palestinian casualties. Indians, especially celebrities, who shared the viral image were trolled for talking about atrocities happening “thousands of miles away”.
Between July and September, we fact-checked claims related to the Manipur conflict. An important story by us on Manipur was a misreport by the news channel Republic. On September 3, Republic aired a video purportedly showing a boy firing a man-portable air defence system and labelling it as ‘exclusive’ footage of Manipur insurgents attacking a village. Our investigation found that the video was actually from Myanmar and had no connection to Manipur whatsoever. Another important story by Alt News on Manipur was a media analysis of Hindi news channels’ partisan reportage of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s visit to Manipur in July.
In August, a junior doctor at Kolkata’s R G Kar Medical College and Hospital was raped and brutally murdered in her sleep. The incident shook the country. It also resulted in a massive wave of misinformation and false narratives being widely shared as public knowledge. Most mainstream Indian media houses too fell short of delivering verified and credible information. Between August and September, Alt News verified at least 12 false claims related to the R G Kar rape and murder. A fourth of these were misreports by the media. (Read here, here and here)
Around the same time, student protests in Bangladesh also began taking a violent turn. The aftermath of the protests, which eventually resulted in Sheikh Hasina’s government being overthrown, also generated a massive spurt of misinformation that the country continues to reel under. Through the year, Alt News published at least 35 fact-check reports debunking misinformation from Bangladesh.
Other key events that shaped our coverage were the allegations of corruption and paper leaks surrounding the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test and the indictment of Indian billionaire Gautam Adani and senior Adani group executives by a United States court.
Broadly, our fact-check reports dealt with five major categories: communal misinformation, religious misinformation and claims related to national politics, international affairs and sectarian conflicts. Misinformation targeting specific communities, often with the intent of fostering harmful and offensive narratives, was categorised as communal misinformation In contrast, reports involving claims that mention a particular religion but did not necessarily target that community were classified as religious misinformation. Claims related to political parties, party leaders or their statements were classified as national politics, while those mentioning world affairs were categorised as international. Stories verifying claims targeting certain ethnic groups were classified under sectarian. Most of our Manipur coverage has been classified under this classification.
Stories that did not strictly fall under the above categories were classified as ‘others’.
As the data shows, 42% of Alt News’ fact-check reports published last year debunked claims related to national politics. Our coverage included fact-checking Union home minister Amit Shah’s claims about the West Bengal government not providing Durga Puja holidays, LoP Rahul Gandhi purportedly carrying the Chinese constitution in election campaign meetings and OpIndia editor Nupur J Sharma misquoting the Supreme Court.
This was followed by communal misinformation, which accounted for 39% (118 reports) of all fact-check reports we published. We looked into claims related to the Mira Road clashes in February 2024, how the rape of a Spanish vlogger in March was given a false communal spin and how surveillance footage by Ranchi police during Ram Navami was used by social media users to falsely target the Muslim community.
Fact checks dealing with international news made up 4% of misinformation we verified, religious misinformation was at 3% while misinformation targeting sects made up 1%. Other stories such as a protestor at the R G Kar protests being misidentified as a doctor, OpIndia inaccurately fact-checking Live Law or an AI image of Algerian boxer Imane Khelif going viral constituted 11% of the claims we debunked in 2024.
To authenticate the veracity of most viral claims, we often need to track down the source of misinformation and from where it all took off. Interestingly, many of these sources identified in our reports were repeat offenders. These sources include social media accounts of political parties, party leaders, news outlets, journalists and prominent social media users.
Prominent social media users—usually those with a fair number of followers—were further split into three groups based on the content they usually share. Social media users who frequently appeared in our fact-checks and publicly identified with Right-wing ideology or frequently endorsed content by the BJP were classified as pro-Right social media users. Users such as @MrSinha_, @SaffronSunanda and @arunpudur, whose social media posts we have often fact checked, fall under this category. The classification also includes propaganda outlets such as OpIndia, Sudarshan News and Panchjanya, which openly identify with or are affiliated with the Right. Meanwhile, anti-Right social media users include those who openly counter or oppose the BJP or Right-wing narrative, such as Prashant Bhushan (@pbhushan1). ‘Other social media users’ include individuals who share misinformation but do not have any clear political leanings.
In the graph, media misreports refer to instances where news outlets were the source of misinformation. When a falsehood was shared by independent journalists or posted by influential correspondents (not necessarily their publications) the source is classified as journalists. Other political parties and their leaders include Trinamool Congress, Telugu Desam Party, Shiv Sena (UBT) and Samajwadi Party.
As the data clearly shows, pro-Right social media users were the biggest proponents of misinformation in 2024. A third of all misinformation Alt News fact checked last year was propagated by this group. The second-biggest source of misinformation was other social media users propagating claims such as the Golden Temple being surrounded by churches, sharing footage of a Dhaka student league leader being ‘punished’ as an attack on Hindus or misattributing cattle slaughter in Bangladesh to West Bengal.
Meanwhile, 14% of the misinformation we fact checked was shared by official handles of the BJP and its party leaders combined; the Congress and its leaders accounted for 3% of the misinformation we verified.
Ironically, media—dubbed democracy’s fourth pillar—was the fourth-largest source of misinformation in Alt News’ reports last year, accounting for 14% of claims we fact checked.
We also found that in 113 of the 126 fact-check reports dealing with political misinformation nationally, the source was either political parties, politicians themselves, influential individuals or other social media users. The media was the source of political misinformation in 13 instances.
Pro-Right social media users had a major role to play in spreading communal misinformation. These users were the source of misinformation in 58% of the 118 communal claims we debunked last year. These users were a key source of misinformation at a time when there was a surge in cases of violence against Hindu minorities in Bangladesh. In several other stories, we point out how unrelated images, videos and claims were being shared by this group as cases of atrocities against Hindus in Bangladesh. In 2023 as well, when the Israel-Palestine conflict was at its peak, we had seen that a lot of anti-Palestine misinformation came from Indian social media users.
While misinformation campaigns targeted many including political parties, religious and ethnic communities and prominent individuals. Based on our reports, the Muslim community was the most frequently targeted; 32% of our fact-check reports featured misinformation singling out this community. (Read here, here and here)
The Congress and its leaders were the second-most targeted group (16%), followed by the BJP and its leaders (10%). Other religions in the graph include Buddhists, Christians, and Kukis while other political parties refer to AAP, AIMIM, CPI(M), Samajwadi Party, Shiv Sena (UBT), Telugu Desam Party and YSRCP.
Medium is a key factor in the spread of misinformation. We focused on five broad mediums through which much of the fake news we verified was spread. This included videos, claims, images, audio and news.
Claims here largely refer to text in social media posts (such as X or Facebook posts and viral WhatsApp messages) and statements made by influential individuals during campaigns or in media interactions.
Videos accounted for approximately 49% of the content we verified this year. This was followed by viral claims, accounting for approximately 20% of the content we checked in 2024.
One category of viral videos we encountered, especially during election season, was clipped videos. These are usually montages created using bits and pieces of video footage, eliminating some key information and context in the process. Take, for instance, the time when BJP leaders shared a clipped video of Rahul Gandhi’s maiden speech as Leader of Opposition. They claimed that Gandhi called the entire Hindu community violent. However, as our story clarifies, his comments were an attack on far-right political organisations like the BJP and the RSS and not the Hindu community as a whole. Here is a link to the full story. Misinformation was also spread through morphed or scripted videos.
The claim by the BJP leaders and Right-wing ecosystem that Rahul Gandhi labelled the entire Hindu community as violent is FALSE. The video of his Lok Sabha speech viral in this connection is clipped. Find out more in this #AltNewsFactCheck | @AbhishekSayhttps://t.co/SyRpAbixkL
— Alt News (@AltNews) July 2, 2024
In 2024, viral claims, which often surface during a major or unusual occurrence or news event, were mostly communal in nature. For instance, a few days after news broke of the trainee doctor being raped and murdered at Kolkata’s R G Kar Medical College and Hospital, claims that three Muslim doctors were the primary accused began circulating. Through elaborate ground reports, Alt News verified that none of the three was close to the scene of the crime when the incident took place.
Around the same time, other claims such as the scene of the crime being vandalized and 150 grams of semen being found in the rape victim’s body also surfaced and went viral. Our investigation found the claims to be completely bogus. Interestingly, this claim was also amplified by media outlets including Barkha Dutt-led Mojo Story, Republic, The Times of India and Business Today among others.
This brings us to the next medium through which misinformation can be spread: News. Through the year, approximately 14% of what we fact-checked was owing to misreporting by media outlets.
It’s important to mention here that these categories are not watertight compartments and there are some overlaps. For instance, clipped videos often make their way into coverage by news publications. During the farmers’ protests in Punjab and Haryana in February, a clipped video of farmer leader Jagjit Singh Dallewal went viral. In this video, Dallewal purportedly urged listeners to brainstorm how PM Modi’s popularity, which soared after the Ram Mandir consecration, could be “brought down in a few days”. Our investigation revealed that the clip was edited and some parts from the original video were cut, distorting the context as a result. This edited video was circulated on social media and then aired by major news outlets including TV channels such as News18, India TV, Zee News, Times Now Navbharat, India Today and Republic among others. The video was also shared by news agency ANI.
WATCH how Zee, News18, Times Now Navbharat, India TV etc aired a doctored video which distorted a statement by farmer leader Jagjit Singh Dallewal. Several RW influencers amplified the edited clip while questioning the agenda behind the farmers’ stir: pic.twitter.com/6uRqeFNrxJ
— Alt News (@AltNews) February 24, 2024
Images were another common proponent through which misinformation was spread and accounted for 16% of the content we fact-checked. Misinformation through images can be spread by distorting photos using photo-editing tools or AI or by passing off old images as new or presenting them out of context to suggest something else.
For instance, in March, an image showing former Union minister Smriti Irani ‘belly dancing’ went viral. Our fact check revealed that the original picture was digitally altered and Irani’s face overlaid. Similarly, in another case, edits using an AI tool made it seem like Sonia Gandhi was holding a cigarette.
We also found several cases wherein official handles linked to political parties shared misinformation, especially around elections. In May, many state accounts of the BJP shared a poster claiming that under the party’s regime, 20 Indian cities had metro rail connectivity—a significant jump from 2014 when only five cities had them. The poster had a savvy metro train with elevated tracks in the background and PM Modi in the foreground. However, the image of the metro used in the poster is from Singapore and not India.
Besides these, we also fact checked WhatsApp chain texts, fabricated quotes and unveiled fake social media accounts.
Last year we published 41 long-form stories including documentation of communal speeches and hate crimes, investigative reports, media analyses and issues with platform accountability.
In February, our investigation unearthed a complex web of fake handles on X (formerly Twitter) running fraudulent fundraisers benefiting a ‘Sandeep Mandal’.
Alt News was instrumental in documenting hate speeches throughout the year, especially during the Lok Sabha elections which saw a major spike in communal speeches. Even PM Modi left no stone unturned in amplifying the party’s anti-Muslim rhetoric, dubbing Muslims as those who “have more children” and “ghusapethiyon” (infiltrators). We also looked at the Election Commission’s shortcomings in curbing the BJP’s communal speeches. Read our stories here, here and here.
With technology playing such a crucial role in the spread of misinformation, we did several stories on the cross-section of politics, society and technology platforms. In one such story, we looked at political ad spending on Meta, which operates Instagram and Facebook, around the elections and found that the BJP had invested the most in advertisements on the platform. Expenditure by BJP’s proxy pages — accounts that support the party by promoting its posts and ads but are not officially affiliated with it — was much higher.
In another report, we looked at how Meta failed to check the misuse of its ad system by allowing political ads glorifying someone getting shot and killed.
Before the year began, experts had warned that AI and deepfakes would fuel misinformation in an unprecedented manner in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
There were a handful of instances such as AI-voice cloning being used to manipulate a video of actor Aamir Khan to make it seem like he was endorsing the Congress. Similarly, AI was used to swap the voice of actor Ranveer Singh and make it sound like he was criticising PM Modi.
Apart from these, we did not find deepfakes having a major impact on the election or its outcomes but we did see AI-generated content catching up in a bigger way after the Lok Sabha elections. In November, we fact checked a viral video that used actor Amitabh Bachchan’s AI-cloned voice to make it seem like he was making scathing remarks on the state of affairs in the country. Days after the 2024 Paris Olympics and the controversy over Algerian boxer Imane Khelif being allowed to compete in the women’s category, a bare-chested image of hers was viral on social media. In this image, which we found to be AI-generated, Khelif was shown with very masculine features, reigniting the debate surrounding her gender identity. More recently, we verified another viral image, manipulated using AI, to make it seem like Rahul Gandhi was smashing 140 coconuts in a show of strength after the BJP tried to claim that he admitted to ‘dhakka-mukki’ in Parliament.
Authenticating some of these AI clips also made us realise that this area continues to pose a major challenge for fact checkers. For instance, just before assembly elections in Maharashtra, the BJP released audio clips alleging that opposition leaders were trying to illegally encash bitcoins. The audio clip was a purported call recording of Maha Vikas Aghadi leaders Supriya Sule and Nana Patole talking to an IPS officer and an audit firm employee. Sule claimed that the audio was AI-generated. This was backed by several fact-checking organisations. Alt News, however, could not publish any report on this because we were unable to independently verify whether the clip was factual or fake without using external AI tools that flag AI-generated content. Since these tools have been inaccurate in the past, there was no conclusive way to determine the authenticity of the audio.
We foresee the year 2025 to bring on more challenges, albeit of a different kind. With the United States undergoing a regime change, communal and media-based misinformation continuing unabated and Meta shutting down its fact-check initiative, the onus will be on us to put in more hard work and keep at what we do, perhaps in larger volumes.
The post 2024: The year when misinformation shaped elections, fuelled hate and aided conspiracy theories appeared first on Alt News.
This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Oishani Bhattacharya.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Dear Mr Zuckerberg,
Nine years ago, we wrote to you about the real-world harms caused by false information on Facebook. In response, Meta created a fact-checking programme that helped protect millions of users from hoaxes and conspiracy theories. This week, you announced you’re ending that programme in the United States because of concerns about “too much censorship” — a decision that threatens to undo nearly a decade of progress in promoting accurate information online.
The programme that launched in 2016 was a strong step forward in encouraging factual accuracy online. It helped people have a positive experience on Facebook, Instagram and Threads by reducing the spread of false and misleading information in their feeds.
We believe — and data shows — most people on social media are looking for reliable information to make decisions about their lives and to have good interactions with friends and family. Informing users about false information in order to slow its spread, without censoring, was the goal.
Fact-checkers strongly support freedom of expression, and we’ve said that repeatedly and formally in last year’s Sarajevo statement. The freedom to say why something is not true is also free speech.
But you say the programme has become “a tool to censor,” and that “fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the US.” This is false, and we want to set the record straight, both for today’s context and for the historical record.
Meta required all fact-checking partners to meet strict nonpartisanship standards through verification by the International Fact-Checking Network. This meant no affiliations with political parties or candidates, no policy advocacy, and an unwavering commitment to objectivity and transparency.
Each news organisation undergoes rigorous annual verification, including independent assessment and peer review. Far from questioning these standards, Meta has consistently praised their rigour and effectiveness. Just a year ago, Meta extended the programme to Threads.
Fact-checkers blamed and harassed
Your comments suggest fact-checkers were responsible for censorship, even though Meta never gave fact-checkers the ability or the authority to remove content or accounts. People online have often blamed and harassed fact-checkers for Meta’s actions. Your recent comments will no doubt fuel those perceptions.
But the reality is that Meta staff decided on how content found to be false by fact-checkers should be downranked or labeled. Several fact-checkers over the years have suggested to Meta how it could improve this labeling to be less intrusive and avoid even the appearance of censorship, but Meta never acted on those suggestions.
Additionally, Meta exempted politicians and political candidates from fact-checking as a precautionary measure, even when they spread known falsehoods. Fact-checkers, meanwhile, said that politicians should be fact-checked like anyone else.
Over the years, Meta provided only limited information on the programme’s results, even though fact-checkers and independent researchers asked again and again for more data. But from what we could tell, the programme was effective. Research indicated fact-check labels reduced belief in and sharing of false information. And in your own testimony to Congress, you boasted about Meta’s “industry-leading fact-checking programme.”
You said that you plan to start a Community Notes programme similar to that of X. We do not believe that this type of programme will result in a positive user experience, as X has demonstrated.
Research shows that many Community Notes never get displayed, because they depend on widespread political consensus rather than on standards and evidence for accuracy. Even so, there is no reason Community Notes couldn’t co-exist with the third-party fact-checking programme; they are not mutually exclusive.
A Community Notes model that works in collaboration with professional fact-checking would have strong potential as a new model for promoting accurate information. The need for this is great: If people believe social media platforms are full of scams and hoaxes, they won’t want to spend time there or do business on them.
Political context in US
That brings us to the political context in the United States. Your announcement’s timing came after President-elect Donald Trump’s election certification and as part of a broader response from the tech industry to the incoming administration. Mr Trump himself said your announcement was “probably” in response to threats he’s made against you.
Some of the journalists that are part of our fact-checking community have experienced similar threats from governments in the countries where they work, so we understand how hard it is to resist this pressure.
The plan to end the fact-checking programme in 2025 applies only to the United States, for now. But Meta has similar programmes in more than 100 countries that are all highly diverse, at different stages of democracy and development. Some of these countries are highly vulnerable to misinformation that spurs political instability, election interference, mob violence and even genocide. If Meta decides to stop the programme worldwide, it is almost certain to result in real-world harm in many places.
This moment underlines the need for more funding for public service journalism. Fact-checking is essential to maintaining shared realities and evidence-based discussion, both in the United States and globally. The philanthropic sector has an opportunity to increase its investment in journalism at a critical time.
Most importantly, we believe the decision to end Meta’s third-party fact-checking programme is a step backward for those who want to see an internet that prioritises accurate and trustworthy information. We hope that somehow we can make up this ground in the years to come.
We remain ready to work again with Meta, or any other technology platform that is interested in engaging fact-checking as a tool to give people the information they need to make informed decisions about their daily lives.
Access to truth fuels freedom of speech, empowering communities to align their choices with their values. As journalists, we remain steadfast in our commitment to the freedom of the press, ensuring that the pursuit of truth endures as a cornerstone of democracy.
Respectfully,
15min – Lithuania
AAP FactCheck – Australia
AFP – France
AkhbarMeter Media Observatory – Egypt
Animal Político-El Sabueso – México
Annie Lab – Hong Kong SAR
Aos Fatos – Brazil
Beam Reports – Sudan
Check Your Fact – United States of America
Chequeado – Argentina
Civilnet.am – Armenia
Colombiacheck – Colombia
Congo Check : Congo, Congo DR, Central African Rep
Doğruluk Payı – Türkiye
Dubawa – Nigeria
Ecuador Chequea – Ecuador
Ellinika Hoaxes – Greece
Estadão Verifica – Brazil
Fact-Check Cyprus – Cyprus
FactCheck.org – United States of America
FactCheckNI – Northern Ireland
Factcheck.Vlaanderen – Belgium
Factchequeado – United States of America
FactReview – Greece
Factnameh – Iran
Faktisk.no – Norway
Faktograf – Croatia
Fatabyyano – Jordan
Full Fact – United Kingdom
Greece Fact Check – Greece
Gwara Media – Ukraine
Internews Kosova KALLXO – Kosovo
Istinomer – Serbia
Källkritikbyrån – Sweden
La Silla Vacía – Colombia
Lead Stories – United States of America
Les Surligneurs – France
Lupa – Brazil
Mafindo – Indonesia
Mala Espina – Chile
MediaWise – United States of America
Myth Detector – Georgia
Newtral – Spain
Observador – Portugal
Open – Italy
Pagella Politica / Facta news – Italy
Polígrafo – Portugal
PolitiFact – United States
Pravda – Poland
PressOne.PH – Philippines
RMIT Lookout – Australia
Snopes – United States of America
Taiwan FactCheck Center – Taiwan
Tech4Peace – Iraq
The Journal FactCheck – Ireland
The Logical Indian – India
VERA Files – Philippines
Verify – Syria
Editor: Fact-checking organisations continue to sign this letter, and the list is being updated as they do. No New Zealand fact-checking service has been added to the list so far. Republished from the International Fact-Checking Network at the Poynter Institute.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
On Thursday, U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote a social media post declaring, “Yes, they can control the weather. It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.” Greene’s outlandish claim about climate engineering came as communities in six states grappled with the devastation of Hurricane Helene, which has killed at least 230 people. Despite widespread ridicule…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
As we continue to cover the aftermath of Hurricane Milton, we speak with Manuel Ivan Guerrero, a freshman at the University of Central Florida and an organizer with the Sunrise Movement, who says young people are extremely worried about the impact of the climate crisis on their communities. “This just has me more scared for what the future’s going to look like in Florida,” he says.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
They are squat, stationary and seemingly innocuous. But ever since the high drama of the 2020 presidential election, humble drop boxes have been more than a receptacle of absentee ballots; they’ve morphed into a vessel for emotion, suspicion and even conspiracy theories. In the battleground state of Wisconsin, especially, the mere presence of these sidewalk containers has inspired political…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
When the vice presidential nominees meet on Tuesday night to take part in a debate hosted by CBS News, moderators won’t be fact-checking in real-time — even if candidates promote blatantly false (and dangerous) lies. The debate will feature Democratic vice presidential nominee Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota and his Republican counterpart, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio. The debate will be moderated by…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
During a speech on Thursday at the Economic Club of New York, former President Donald Trump suggested that he would enlist multi-billionaire Elon Musk to work in his administration and help him make cuts to government spending. Musk, who owns Tesla, X (formerly Twitter) and SpaceX, apparently made the suggestion to Trump himself, the Republican nominee for president explained.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
It began as a devastating, confined storm off the coast of Sicily, striking the luxury yacht Bayesian in the form of a devastating water column resembling a tornado. Probability was inherent in the name (Thomas Bayes, mathematician and nonconformist theologian of the 18th century, had been the first to use probability inductively) and improbability the nature of the accident.
It also led to rich speculation about the fate of those on the doomed vessel. While most on the sunk yacht were saved (the eventual number totalled fifteen), a number of prominent figures initially went missing before being found. They included British technology entrepreneur Mike Lynch and his daughter, along with Morgan Stanley International Bank chairman, Jonathan Bloomer, and Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo.
Lynch, co-founder of the British data analytics firm Autonomy and co-founder and investor in the cybersecurity firm Darktrace, had been recently acquitted by a US federal jury of fifteen counts of fraud and conspiracy, along with his co-defendant Stephen Chamberlain, regarding Hewlett-Packard’s acquisition of Autonomy in 2011. While the firm’s acquisition had cost a mighty US$11 billion, HP wrote off a stunning US$8.8 billion within 12 months, demanding an investigation into what it regarded as “serious accounting improprieties, disclosure failures and outright misrepresentations at Autonomy.” Clifford Chance was instructed by Lynch to act for him following the write down of Autonomy’s value in November 2012, hence Morvillo’s presence.
Lynch had his fair share of unwanted excitement. The US Department of Justice successfully secured his extradition, though failed to get a conviction. The investor proved less fortunate in a 2022 civil suit in the UK, one he lost.
For all his legal travails, Lynch stayed busy. He founded Invoke Capital, which became the largest investor in the cybersecurity firm Darktrace. Other companies featured in terms of funding targets for the company, among them Sophia Genetics, Featurespace and Luminance.
Darktrace, founded in 2013, has thrived in the thick soup of security establishment interests. British prime ministers have fallen within its orbit of influence, so much so that David Cameron accompanied its CEO Nicole Egan on an official visit to Washington DC in January 2015 ahead of the opening of the company’s US headquarters.
Members of the UK signals intelligence agency GCHQ are said to have approached Lynch, who proceeded to broker a meeting that proved most profitable in packing Darktrace with former members of the UK and, eventually, US intelligence community. The company boasts a veritable closet of former operatives on the books: MI5, MI6, CIA, the NSA, and FBI. Co-founder Stephen Huxter, a notable official in MI5’s cyber defence team, became Darktrace’s managing director.
Other connections are also of interest in sketching the extensive reach of the cyber industrial complex. This need not lend itself to a conspiratorial reading of power so much as the influence companies such as Darktrace wield in the field. Take Alexander Arbuthnot, yet another cut and dried establishment figure whose private equity firm Vitruvian Partners found Darktrace worthy of receiving a multi-million-pound investment as part of a push into cybersecurity.
Fascinating as this is, such matters gather steam and huff on looking at Arbuthnot’s family ties. Take Arbuthnot’s mother and Westminster chief magistrate, one Lady Emma Arbuthnot. The magistrate presided over part of the lengthily cruel and prolonged extradition proceedings of Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks and hounded for alleged breaches of the US Espionage Act. (Assange recently pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information under the Espionage Act of 1917.) Any conflict of interest, actual or perceived, including her husband’s own links to the UK military community as former UK defence minister, were not declared during the legal circus. Establishment members tend to regard themselves as above reproach.
With such a tight tangle of links, it took another coincidence to send the amateur sleuths on a feverish digital trawl for sauce and conspiracy. On August 17, a few days prior to Lynch’s drowning, his co-defendant was struck while running in Cambridgeshire. Chamberlain died in hospital from his injuries, with the driver, a 49-year-old woman from Haddenham, assisting at the scene with inquiries.
Reddit and the platform X duly caught fire with theories on the alleged role of hidden corporate actors, disgruntled US justice officials robbed of their quarry, and links to the intelligence community. Chay Bowes, a blustery Irish businessman with an addiction to internet soapbox pontification, found himself obsessed with probabilities, wondering, “How could two of the statistically most charmed men alive meet tragic ends within two days of each other in the most improbable ways?”
A better line of reflection is considering the influence and power such corporations exercise in the cyber military-industrial complex. In the realm of cyber policy, the line between public sector notions of security and defence, and the entrepreneurial pursuit of profit, have ceased to be meaningful. In a fundamental sense, Lynch was vital to that blurring, the innovator as semi-divine.
Darktrace became an apotheosis of that phenomenon, retaining influence in the market despite a scandal spotted record. It has, for instance, survived claims and investigations of sexual harassment. (One of those accused at the company was the most appropriately named Randy Cheek, a sales chief based in the San Francisco office.)
In 2023, its chief executive Poppy Gustafsson fended off a stinging report by the US-hedge fund Quintessential Capital Management (QCM) alleging questionable sales and accounting practices intended to drive up the value of the company before it was floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2021. This sounded rather typical and seemed eerily reminiscent of the Autonomy affair. “After a careful analysis,” QCM reported, “we are deeply sceptical about the validity of Darktrace’s financial statements and fear that sales, margins and growth rates may be overstated and close to sharp correction.”
QCM’s efforts did no lasting damage. In April this year, it was revealed that Darktrace would be purchased by US private equity firm Thoma Bravo for the punchy sum of US$5.32 billion. The Darktrace board was bullish about the deal, telling investors that its “operating and financial achievements have not been reflected commensurately in its valuation, with shares trading at a significant discount to its global peer group”. If things sour on this one, Thoma Bravo will only have itself to blame, given the collapse of takeover talks it had with the company in 2022. Irrespective of any anticipated sketchiness, Lynch’s troubled legacy regarding data-driven technology and its relation to the state will remain.
The post Mike Lynch, Probability and the Cyber Industrial Complex first appeared on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
As Donald Trump’s aides and right-wing media supporters fret about pop singer Taylor Swift’s influence in the 2024 election, the former president has said that he is more popular than she is. Testing that belief could very well cost Trump the election against President Joe Biden. Swift, who made a casual endorsement of Biden in the 2020 race, hasn’t yet endorsed the current occupant of the White…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
During the Republican presidential debate Wednesday night, pharmaceutical entrepreneur and former hedge fund manager Vivek Ramaswamy spread a number of discredited conspiracy theories, including one falsely purporting that the attack on the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, 2021, was an “inside job” by government leaders loyal to Democrats. Ramaswamy, who was criticized by other candidates on…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Before being named speaker of the House in October, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) penned the foreword to a book written by a far right blogger in his home state that espouses a number of conspiracy theories. The book, “The Revivalist Manifesto,” written by blogger Scott McKay, also includes derogatory comments about LGBTQ people and condemns the Movement for Black Lives. Johnson’s foreword for…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Journalists and media workers have criticised comments made by Aotearoa New Zealand’s newly-elected Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters — who claimed that a 2020 Labour government media funding initiative constituted “bribery” — as a threat to media freedom.
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) reports that it has joined its union affiliate, E Tū, in strongly disputing Peters’s comments, and urging the minister and other politicians to uphold New Zealand’s “proud tradition of press freedom”.
Peters has repeatedly accused reporters of receiving bribes and engaging in corrupt practices.
Peters’ remarks relate to the participation of several media outlets, public broadcasters, and media initiatives in the Public Interest Journalism Fund (PIJF), a media support programme established in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic.
Speaking to journalists covering the first cabinet meeting of New Zealand’s new government on November 28, Peters asked journalists what they “had to sign before they get the money”, criticising the media professionals present for their perceived lack of transparency.
That same day, Peters claimed he was “at war” with the mainstream media, reports the IFJ.
On November 27, Peters accused the state-owned broadcasters Radio New Zealand (RNZ) and Television New Zealand (TVNZ) of accepting bribery, questioning their editorial independence and calling the funding initiative indefensible.
On November 24, Peters criticised media covering the new coalition’s signing ceremony for failing to give enough media coverage before the election, calling the journalists “mathematical morons”.
Avoided reporters’ questions
Since the release of the final election results on November 3, Peters has avoided questions from political reporters.
Peters is the only coalition leader to have not engaged with political reporters since the results were confirmed.
The PIJF was designed to address the dramatic ad revenue drop-off in 2020. The fund provided NZ$55 million (US$34 million) from 2021 and 2023 and was designed to support local news initiatives, specific projects, trainings, and public interest media.
On November 23, Peters, alongside the conservative National Party leader Christopher Luxon, who is now Prime Minister, and the libertarian ACT party, announced the formation of New Zealand’s sixth National-led government, following elections in October.
The E Tū said in a statement: “By spreading misinformation and supporting conspiracy theories, Mr Peters is placing journalists at risk. We urge Mr Peters, as well as other senior politicians and public figures, to support and protect our independent media, not attack it.
“While journalists strongly reject Mr Peters’ claims, we will all continue to cover him, New Zealand First, and all parties in an unbiased way.
“The media has an important role to play in a democracy, holding politicians to account and acting as a watchdog for the community.
“Our journalists’ daily work helps support and protect an environment of free debate and wide-ranging input, and we hope and trust all our political leaders’ efforts do, too.”
The IFJ said:“Peters’ ‘war’ on journalism is deeply concerning, especially from the deputy leader of a democratic nation.
“Misinformation spread by a senior political leader can validate dangerous conspiracy theories, and can endanger journalists and media workers. The IFJ strongly urges New Zealand’s senior politicians to uphold press freedom.”
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
Republican contender for president Donald Trump is preparing to go on the attack against Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in light of Kennedy’s announcement that he is running as an independent in the 2024 race. Kennedy announced his presidential run on Monday. Conventional wisdom would suggest that, as a member of the family that has been synonymous with Democratic Party politics for the last 60 years…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
RNZ News
Hundreds of protesters have marched to Aotearoa New Zealand’s Parliament in Wellington today, where streets were closed and the precinct blocked off in preparation.
The march was met by a smaller group of counter protesters from Pōneke Anti-Fascist Coalition.
About 600 protesters had gathered at Civic Square before setting off, according to RNZ reporters on the scene.
There is an extra police presence in the capital, roads have been closed and bus routes diverted with police saying officers were “prepared and on alert” and would be “highly visible across Wellington city”.
The protest has been organised by a diverse range of groups including Brian Tamaki’s Freedom Rights Coalition, the Convoy Coalition and Stop Co-Governance protesting against the UN’s “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”.
New Zealand faces a general election on October 14.
Fact checks on UN claims
For context, RNZ reports multiple news organisations have repeatedly debunked claims that the UN’s Agenda 2030 and a “Great Reset” is some sort of plan for global domination.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
RNZ News
Hundreds of protesters have marched to Aotearoa New Zealand’s Parliament in Wellington today, where streets were closed and the precinct blocked off in preparation.
The march was met by a smaller group of counter protesters from Pōneke Anti-Fascist Coalition.
About 600 protesters had gathered at Civic Square before setting off, according to RNZ reporters on the scene.
There is an extra police presence in the capital, roads have been closed and bus routes diverted with police saying officers were “prepared and on alert” and would be “highly visible across Wellington city”.
The protest has been organised by a diverse range of groups including Brian Tamaki’s Freedom Rights Coalition, the Convoy Coalition and Stop Co-Governance protesting against the UN’s “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”.
New Zealand faces a general election on October 14.
Fact checks on UN claims
For context, RNZ reports multiple news organisations have repeatedly debunked claims that the UN’s Agenda 2030 and a “Great Reset” is some sort of plan for global domination.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
By David Robie
Two researchers examining responses to conspiratorial pandemic narratives have warned Aotearoa New Zealand not to be complacent over the risk of fringe views over climate crisis becoming populist.
Byron C. Clark, a video essayist and author of the recent book Fear: New Zealand’s Hostile Underworld of Extremists, and Emmanuel Stokes, a postgraduate student at the University of Canterbury, argue in a paper in the latest Pacific Journalism Review that policymakers and community stakeholders need to be ready to counter politicised disinformation with a general election looming.
They say that in their case study, Intersections of media influence: Radical conspiracist ‘alt-media’ narratives and the climate crisis in Aotearoa, has demonstrated that “explicit references to US narratives about stolen elections, communist plots and existential dangers to society – many of which bear the hallmarks of American far-right narratives, such as those of the John Birch Society” – are part of the NZ climate discourse.
“Tellingly, these were often linked with wider sets of issues into which the climate challenge was crudely bundled,” the authors say.
Their paper argues that “complex matters of national importance , such as climate change or public health emergencies, can be seized upon by alternative media and conspiracist influencers and incorporated onto emotionally potent, reductive stories that are apparently designed to elicit outrage and protest”.
The authors cite examples in the Pacific, saying that they “suspect that a danger exists that . . . the appetite for this kind of storytelling could increase in tandem with growing social disruption caused by the climate crisis, including a large-scale refugee influx on our shores”.
Such a scenario would need to be covered with “a high degree of journalist ethics and professionalism” to prevent “amplifying hateful, dehumanising narratives”.
‘Concerning’ statements
In an interview with Asia Pacific Report, Clark highlighted how various fringe parties in New Zealand were all making “concerning” statements about climate change as the October 14 election drew closer.
“New Conservatives begin their environment policy with ‘There is no climate emergency’. Then they pledge to ‘end all climate focused taxes, subsidies, and regulations’,” he said.
“DemocracyNZ wants to repeal the Climate Change Response Act and veto any new taxes on farming. Elsewhere in their policy they appear to downplay the impact of methane (Aotearoa’s largest source of emissions),” Clark said.
The FreedomsNZ party had not yet released detailed policy but promised to “end climate change overreach”.
Clark found the comments from DemocracyNZ on methane particularly interesting as Groundswell recently sponsored a tour by American scientist Dr Tom Sheahen, who — in contrast to the scientific consensus on climate change — made the claim that methane was an “irrelevant” greenhouse gas.
Dr Sheahen also appeared on the Reality Check Radio show Greenwashed, hosted by former Federated Farmers president Don Nicholson and Jaspreet Boparai, a dairy farmer and member of Voices for Freedom, who was last year elected to the Southland District Council.
“Greenwashed is the kind of alt-media that could influence how people vote,” Clark said.
“While none of these parties I’ve mentioned are likely to get into Parliament, if they get, say, 50,000 votes between them, more mainstream parties could look at how they could appeal to the same constituency in the future, as 1 percent of the vote can be the difference between being in government and being in opposition.
Mainstreaming of misinformation
“That could lead to the mainstreaming of misinformation about climate change.”
However, Clark believes Pacific nations are “less susceptible to climate change disinformation as they’re experiencing the direct effects of climate change.
“In Aotearoa, many people remain insulated from it (notwithstanding events like Cyclone Gabrielle) and many people’s livelihoods, as well as the economies of some regions, are dependent on activity that contributes to the greenhouse effect (such as dairy farming) which makes downplaying the significance of the crisis appealing.”
But Clark admits that misinformation about covid and the vaccine has spread in the Pacific. Also competition between large powers in the region – such as China and the US — could lead to more disinformation targeting the Pacific, potentially including climate change disinformation.
I think Pacific nations are less susceptible to climate change disinformation as they are experiencing the direct effects of climate change, while in Aotearoa many people remain insulated from it (notwithstanding events like Cyclone Gabrielle) and many people’s livelihoods, as well as the economies of some regions, are dependent on activity that contributes to the greenhouse effect (such as dairy farming) which makes downplaying the significance of the crisis appealing.
Targeting the Pacific
However, misinformation about covid and the vaccine has spread in the Pacific, and competition between large powers in the region (the US and China for example) could lead to more disinformation targeting the Pacific, potentially including climate change disinformation.
In his book Fear, Clark devoted two out of the 23 chapters — “The Fox News of the Pasifika community” and “Counterspin Media” — to examining the impact of misinformation on the Pasifika community in Aotearoa.
APNA Television cancelled the Pacific Fox News-style programme Talanoa Sa’o, although the show is still recorded and uploaded to YouTube.
“Its reach appears to be smaller than it was. Counterspin Media also looks to have a declining reach. The show originally aired on GTV, a network operated by the dissident Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui and former Trump advisor Steve Bannon.
“While there has not been any explicit evidence to suggest that Guo or his businesses were funding Counterspin, they have appeared to be struggling since Guo filed for bankruptcy, having to find a new studio.
Are there any new trends — especially impacting on the Pacific communities, or perceptions of them?
“The biggest chance in the disinformation landscape since I wrote Fear has been the arrival of Reality Check Radio, which produces 9 hours a day of content on weekdays (unlike Talanoa Sa’o or Counterspin Media, which would produce an hour or two a week).
“None of their content is designed to appeal in particular to a Pacific audience, however.
“Another development is organisations like Family First and some evangelical churches campaigning against LGBT+ rights and sex education in schools, with the New Conservatives continuing to campaign on these same issues.”
Affecting democracy
Clark remains convinced that mis- and disinformation are going to continue to be an issue affecting New Zealand’s democracy.
“The networks established during the pandemic remain and are starting to pivot from covid and vaccine mandates to other issues — climate change being a significant one, but also co-governance and LGBT+ rights,” he said.
“This means journalism will be increasingly important.”
In a separate paper in Pacific Journalism Review, the journal editor, Dr Philip Cass, examines the impact of conspiracy theories on Pacific churches and community information channels, drawing a contrast between evangelical/Pentecostal and mainstream religious institutions.
He said that “in spite of the controversial behaviour of [Destiny Church’s] ‘Bishop’ Brian Tamaki, most mainstream Pacific churches were highly alert to the reality of the virus and supportive of their communities”.
Dr Cass called for further research such as an online study in Pacific languages to gauge any difference between diasporic sources and home island sources, and a longitudinal study to indicate whether anti-vaccination and conspiracy theory messages have changed — and in what way — since 2020.
Dr David Robie is an editor of PJR and convenor of Pacific Media Watch.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
ANALYSIS: By Claire Rioult, Monash University and Romain Fathi, Flinders University
For a lot of people, mention of the French Revolution conjures up images of wealthy nobles being led to the guillotine.
Thanks to countless movies, books and half-remembered history lessons, many have been left with the impression the revolution was chiefly about chopping off the heads of kings, queens, dukes and other cashed-up aristocrats.
But today what’s known in English as Bastille Day and in French as Quatorze Juillet — a date commemorating events of July 14 in 1789 that came to symbolise the French Revolution — it is worth correcting this common misconception.
Bonne fête nationale aux Française! The Régiment de Service Militaire Adapté always steals the show at Noumea’s Bastille Day parade, with their moving song in the Negone language. I was very proud a marching pipe band of fellow Aussies participated too – recognise this song? pic.twitter.com/jMZRKEakAL
— Annelise Young
(@AusCGNoumea) July 14, 2023
In fact, most people executed during the French Revolution — and particularly in its perceived bloodiest era, the nine-month “Reign of Terror” between autumn 1793 and summer 1794 — were commoners.
As historian Donald Greer wrote:
[…] more carters than princes were executed, more day labourers than dukes and marquises, three or four times as many servants than parliamentarians. The Terror swept French society from base to comb; its victims form a complete cross section of the social order of the Ancien régime.
The ‘national razor’
The guillotine was first put to use on April 15 1792 when a common thief called Pelletier was executed. Initially seen as an instrument of equality, however, the guillotine soon acquired a grim reputation for its list of famous victims.
Among those who died under the “national razor” (the guillotine’s nickname) were King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette, many revolutionary leaders such as Georges Danton, Louis de Saint-Just and Maximilien Robespierre. Scientist Antoine Lavoisier, pre-romantic poet André Chénier, feminist Olympe de Gouges and legendary lovers Camille and Lucie Desmoulins were among its victims.
But it wasn’t just “celebrities” executed at the guillotine.
While reliable figures on the definitive number of people guillotined during the Revolution are hard to find, historians commonly project between 15,000 and 17,000 people were guillotined across France.
The bulk of it occurred during the the Reign of Terror.
When the decision was made to centralise all (legal) executions in Paris, 1376 people were guillotined over just 47 days, between June 10 and July 27, 1794. That is about 30 a day.
The guillotine wasn’t the only method
However, the guillotine represents just one way people were executed.
Historians estimate around 20,000 men and women were summarily killed — either shot, stabbed or drowned — during the Terror across France.
They also estimate that in just under five days, 1500 people died at the hands of Parisian mobs during the 1792 September massacres.
More broadly, around 170,000 civilians died in the civil Wars of the Vendée, while more than 700,000 French soldiers lost their lives across the 1792-1815 period.
The vast majority of these people killed were ordinary French men and women, not members of the elite.
Overall, Greer estimates 8.5 percent of the Terror’s victims belonged to the nobility, 6.5 percent to the clergy, and 85 percent to the Third Estate (meaning non-clerics and non-nobles). Women represented 9 percent of the total (but 20 percent and 14 pecent of the noble and clerical categories, respectively).
Priests who had refused to take the oath of loyalty to the Revolution, émigrés who had fled the country, hoarders and profiteers who made the price of bread much dearer, or political opponents of the moment, all were deemed “enemies of the Revolution”.
Why was so much blood shed during the Reign of Terror?
The paranoia of the regime in 1793–94 was the result of various factors.
France fought at its borders against a coalition led by Europe’s monarchs to nip the revolution in the bud before it could threaten their thrones.
Meanwhile, civil war ravaged the west and south of France, conspiracy rumours circulated across the country, and political infighting intensified in Paris between opposing factions.
All these factors led to a series of laws voted up in late 1793 that enabled the expedited judgment of thousands of people suspected of counterrevolutionary beliefs.
The measures contained in the infamous “Law of Suspects” were, however, relaxed in the summer of 1794 and completely abolished in October 1795.
How the focus came to be on beheaded nobility
For many people, however, mention of this period of French history leads to the vision of a bloodthirsty Revolution indiscriminately sending to their death thousands of nobles.
This is largely influenced by the fate of Queen Marie-Antoinette and its many depictions in pop culture.
British counter-revolutionary propaganda in the 1790s and 1800s also helped popularise the idea that aristocrats were martyrs and the main victims of revolution executioners.
This representation was mostly forged via the abundant publication in the 19th century of memoirs and diaries of survivors and relatives of victims, usually from the social and economic elite fiercely opposed to the Revolution and its legacy.
A broader legacy
Beyond the guillotine and the Reign of Terror, the legacies of the revolution run far deeper.
The revolution abolished entrenched privileges based on birth, imposed equality before the law and opened the door to emerging forms of democratic involvement for everyday citizens.
The Revolution ushered in a time of reforms in France, across Europe and indeed across the world.
Claire Rioult, is PhD candidate in early modern history, Monash University, and Dr Romain Fathi, senior lecturer, History, Flinders University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
By Russell Palmer, RNZ News digital political journalist
Unprecedented levels of disinformation will only get worse this election in Aotearoa New Zealand, but systems set up to deal with it during the pandemic have all been shut down, Disinformation Project researcher Dr Sanjana Hattotuwa has warned.
He says the levels of vitriol and conspiratorial discourse this past week or two are worse than anything he has seen during the past two years of the pandemic — including during the Parliament protest — but he is not aware of any public work to counteract it.
“There is no policy, there’s no framework, there’s no real regulatory mechanism, there’s no best practice, and there’s no legal oversight,” Dr Hattotuwa told RNZ News.
He says urgent action should be taken, and could include legislation, community-based initiatives, or a stronger focus on the recommendations of the 15 March 2019 mosque attacks inquiry.
Highest levels of disinformation, conspiratorialism seen yet
Dr Hattotuwa said details of the project’s analysis of violence and content from the past week — centred on the visit by British activist Posie Parker — were so confronting he could not share it.
“I don’t want to alarm listeners, but I think that the Disinformation Project — with evidence and in a sober reflection and analysis of what we are looking at — the honest assessment is not something that I can quite share, because the BSA (Broadcasting Standards Authority) guidelines won’t allow it.
“The fear is very much … particularly speaking as a Sri Lankan who has come from and studied for doctoral research offline consequences of online harm, that I’m seeing now in Aotearoa New Zealand what I studied and I thought I had left behind back in Sri Lanka.”
The new levels of vitriol were unlike anything seen since the project’s daily study began in 2021, and included a rise in targeting of politicians specifically by far-right and neo-Nazi groups, he said.
But — as the SIS noted in its latest report this week — the lines were becoming increasingly blurred between those more ideologically motivated groups, and the newer ones using disinformation and targeting authorities and government.
“You know, distinction without a difference,” he said. “The Disinformation Project is not in the business of looking at the far right and neo-Nazis — that’s a specialised domain that we don’t consider ourselves to be experts in — what we do is to look at disinformation.
“Now to find that you have neo-Nazis, the far-right, anti-semitic signatures — content, presentations and engagement — that colours that discourse is profoundly worrying because you would want to have a really clear distinction.
No Telegram ‘guardrail’
“There is no guardrail on Telegram against any of this, it’s one click away. And so there’s a whole range of worries and concerns we have … because we can’t easily delineate anymore between what would have earlier been very easy categorisation.”
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson said she had been subjected to increasing levels of abuse in recent weeks with a particular far-right flavour.
“The online stuff is particularly worrying but no matter who it’s directed towards we’ve got to remember that can also branch out into actual violence if we don’t keep a handle on it,” she said.
“Strong community connection in real life is what holds off the far-right extremism that we’ve seen around the world … we also want the election to be run where every politician takes responsibility for a humane election dialogue that focuses on the issues, that doesn’t drum up extra hate towards any other politician or any other candidate.”
Limited protection as election nears
Dr Hattotuwa said it was particularly worrying considering the lack of tools in New Zealand to deal with disinformation and conspiratorialism.
“Every institutional mechanism and framework that was established during the pandemic to deal with disinformation has now been dissolved. There is nothing that I know in the public domain of what the government is doing with regards to disinformation,” Dr Hattotuwa said.
“The government is on the backfoot in an election year — I can understand in terms of realpolitik, but there is no investment.”
He believed the problem would only get worse as the election neared.
“The anger, the antagonism is driven by a distrust in government that is going to be instrumentalised to ever greater degrees in the future, around public consultative processing, referenda and electoral moments.
“The worry and the fear is, as has been noted by the Green Party, that the election campaigning is not going to be like anything that the country has ever experienced … that there will be offline consequences because of the online instigation and incitement.
“It’s really going to give pause to, I hope, the way that parties consider their campaign. Because the worry is — in a high trust society in New Zealand — you kind of have the expectation that you can go out and meet the constituency … I know that many others are thinking that this is now not something that you can take for granted.”
Possible countermeasures
Dr Hattotuwa said countermeasures could include legislation, security-sector reform, community-based action, or a stronger focus on implementing the recommendations of the Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCOI) into the terrorist attack on Christchurch mosques.
“There are a lot of recommendations in the RCOI that, you know, are being just cosmetically dealt with. And there are a lot of things that are not even on the government’s radar. So there’s a whole spectrum of issues there that I think really call for meaningful conversations and investment where it’s needed.”
National’s campaign chair Chris Bishop said the party did not have any specific campaign preparations under way in relation to disinformation, but would be willing to work with the government on measures to counteract it.
“If the goverment thinks we should be taking them then we’d be happy to sit down and have a conversation about it,” he said.
“Obviously we condemn violent rhetoric and very sadly MPs and candidates in the past few years have been subject to more of that including threats made to their physical wellbeing and we condemn that and we want to try to avoid that as much as possible.”
Labour’s campaign chair Megan Woods did not respond to requests for comment.
Ardern’s rhetoric not translating to policy
Former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern spoke during her valedictory farewell speech in Parliament on Wednesday about the loss of the ability to “engage in good robust debates and land on our respective positions relatively respectfully”.
“While there were a myriad of reasons, one was because so much of the information swirling around was false. I could physically see how entrenched it was for some people.”
Ardern is set to take up an unpaid role at the Christchurch Call, which was set up after the terror attacks and has a focus on targeting online proliferation of dis- and mis-information and the spread of hateful rhetoric.
Dr Hattotuwa said Ardern had led the world in her own rhetoric around the problem, but real action now needed to be taken.
“Let me be very clear, PM Ardern was a global leader in articulating the harm that disinformation has on democracy — at NATO, at Harvard, and then at the UN last year. There has been no translation into policy around that which she articulated publicly, so I think that needs to occur.
“I mean, when people say that they’re going to go and vent their frustration it might mean with a placard, it might mean with a gun.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Unprecedented levels of disinformation will only get worse this election, but systems set up to deal with it during the pandemic have all been shut down, Disinformation Project researcher Sanjana Hattotuwa has warned.https://t.co/LUVAbALjGD
— RNZ (@radionz) April 8, 2023
Jacinda Ardern will largely be remembered in Aotearoa New Zealand as the prime minister whose pandemic-era policies saved thousands of Kiwi lives, according to former prime minister Helen Clark.
And she will also be considered an example of how to govern in the age of social media and endless crises, political experts say, while also achieving more than her critics might give her credit for.
Ardern was set to deliver her valedictory speech later today, having stepped down as prime minister earlier this year after just over five years in the job.
“I think that while I’m happy for Jacinda that she’s going to get a life and design what she wants to do and when she wants to do it, you can’t help feeling sad about her going,” Clark, herself a former Labour prime minister, told RNZ Morning Report ahead of Ardern’s speech.
“Leaders like Jacinda don’t come along too often and we’ve lost one.”
Ardern has played down suggestions online vitriol played a part in her decision to stand aside — but acknowledged on Tuesday she hoped her departure would “take a bit of heat out” of the conversation.
Clark said she “fundamentally” believed the hatred got to Ardern, powered by “populism and division” generated by former US President Donald Trump and his supporters.
‘Conspiracies took hold’
“Conspiracies took hold and suddenly you know, as the pandemic wore on here, I think the sort of relentless barrage from America — not, not just through Trump himself and the reporting of him, but through the social media networks — we have the anti-science people, the people who completely distrusted public authority, the QAnon conspiracies and hey, it played out on our Parliament’s front lawn and it still plays out and it’s very, very vitriolic and divisive.
“So I think that that spillover impact was really quite, well, not just unpleasant — it was horrible.”
Researchers have found Ardern was a lightning rod for online hate.
The perpetrator of the 2019 mosque shootings used the internet to connect with and learn from other extremists, which led to Ardern setting up the Christchurch Call movement to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online.
Her post-parliamentary career will include continuing that work, as New Zealand’s Special Envoy for the Christchurch Call, reporting to her replacement, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins.
“The mosque murders was just the most horrible thing to have happen on anyone’s watch, and she rose to the occasion, and I think the international reputation was very much associated with initially the empathy that she showed at that time,” said Clark.
But “one of New Zealand’s darkest days”, as Ardern put it at the time, was not the only near-unparalleled crisis she had to deal with in her time as prime minister.
“The White Island tragedy was another that needed, you know, very empathetic and careful handling. But then comes covid, and there’s no doubt that thousands of people are alive today because of the steps taken, particularly in 2020.
‘Would we have survived?’
“You know, I mean, I’m obviously in the older age group now which is more vulnerable. My father is 101 now and has survived the pandemic. But would we have survived it if it had been allowed to rip through our community, like it was allowed to rip through others?
“I think that there’d be so many New Zealanders not alive today had those steps not been taken.”
Data shows New Zealand has actually experienced negative excess mortality over the past few years — the elimination strategy so successful, fewer Kiwis have died than would have if there was no pandemic.
Former Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said that was “unique, virtually unique around the world”.
Despite that, it was New Zealand’s aggressive approach towards covid-19 in 2020 and 2021 that arguably drove much of the polarisation and online vitriol.
“There’s no doubt that those measures did save lives. They also drove people into frenzied levels of opposition and fear and isolation,” said Clark. “They felt polarised, they felt locked out.”
But she said Ardern bore “very little” responsibility for that.
Political scientist Dr Bronwyn Hayward of the University of Canterbury said Ardern’s Christchurch Call to eliminate extremist content will have a long-lasting impact on not just New Zealand, but the world.
“There’s been a lot made about the fact that she resigned under pressure from the trolls, which is completely missing the point that what she’s saying is that in this era where we’ve got particularly Russian, but also other countries’ bots that are attacking liberal leaders,” Dr Hayward told Morning Report, saying Ardern was the first global leader to “really understand” how what happens online can spill over into the real world.
“She understands that democracies are now under attack, and the front line is your social media, where we’ve got a propaganda war coming internationally.
“So she’s taken a very systemic approach to thinking about how to tackle that, so that in local communities it feels like you’re reeling from Islamophobia, to racism to transphobia, but actually, when we look internationally at what’s happening, naive and quite disaffected groups have been constantly fed this material and she’s taken a systemic approach to it.”
Clark said one of the biggest differences in the world between Ardern’s time as prime minister and her own, was that she did not have to deal with social media.
“I didn’t have a Twitter account, didn’t know what it was really. We had texts, that was about it. We used to have pagers, for heaven’s sake.”
Ardern’s domestic legacy
One of the first things Hipkins did when he took over as prime minister was the “policy bonfire” — but critics have long said the Ardern-led government has had trouble delivering on its promises.
Interviewer Guyon Espiner reminded Clark that her government had brought in long-lasting changes like Working for Families, the NZ Super Fund and Kiwibank — asking her what Ardern could point to.
Clark defended Ardern, saying the coalition arrangement with NZ First in Ardern’s first term slowed any reform agenda she might have had, and then there was covid-19.
“Looking back, there needs to be more recognition that the pandemic blindsided governments, communities, publics around the world. It wasn’t easy.”
Dr Hayward pointed to the ban on new oil and gas exploration and child poverty monitoring, “which before that was ruled as impossible or too difficult”.
Dr Lara Greaves, a political scientist at the University of Auckland, said it was “incredibly hard to really evaluate” Ardern’s legacy outside of covid-19.
“Ultimately … she is the covid-19 prime minister.”
The future
Clark said Ardern would be emotional during her valedictory speech.
“You have very close relationships with colleagues, you have relationships with others of a different kind — with the opposition, with the media, with the public — and you’re walking away, you’re closing the door on it.
“But you know that a new chapter will open, and that life post-politics can be very rewarding. I’ve certainly found it so. I have no doubt that Jacinda will get back into her stride with doing things that she feels are worthwhile for the the general public and worthwhile for her.”
After losing the 2008 election, Clark rose the ranks at the United Nations. She said while that was an option for Ardern, there is plenty of time for the 42-year-old to do other things first.
“I was, you know, 58 when I left being prime minister. And Jacinda’s leaving in her early 40s and she has a young child, so who knows? She may want Neve to grow up with a good old Kiwi upbringing.
“And she may want her, you know, involvement internationally to be more, you know, forays out from New Zealand. That’s for her to decide. I mean, the world’s her oyster, if she chooses to follow that.”
Dr Greaves also pointed to Ardern’s relative youth.
“It seems like she’s going for a period of sort of recovery and reflection and figuring out what to do next. But of course, she’s got another 20 years in her career, at least — the world’s her oyster.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
As Jacinda Ardern gets ready to deliver her valedictory speech in the Parliament today, former prime minister Helen Clark says she will largely be remembered as the prime minister whose pandemic-era policies saved thousands of Kiwis’ lives. https://t.co/LhKPSZulpW
— RNZ (@radionz) April 5, 2023
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
Far right conspiracist and Infowars founder Alex Jones made the lives of the families of the child victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting a “living hell” for a decade — and now, he is reportedly hiding and giving away his wealth to avoid an over $1 billion legal bill that he has been ordered to pay the families. According to a new report by The New York Times, as Jones has faced…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Listen to a reading of this article:
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My sources corroborate Seymour Hersh’s report that the US was behind the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage. (My sources are logic, common sense, and public statements by US government officials.)
If Putin and senior Russian officials had said what Biden and senior US officials have been saying about how much they hate the Nord Stream pipelines and how great it is that they were bombed, every member of the western political/media class would blame Russia for the bombing, and we would never hear the end of it.
class=”twitter-tweet” data-width=”550″>FLASHBACK: BIDEN:“If Russia invades — that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine — then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it”
REPORTER: “How will you do that?”
BIDEN: “I promise you, we'll be able to do it.”pic.twitter.com/XGmFV4c9Qm
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) February 9, 2023
class=”twitter-tweet” data-width=”550″>According to @SecBlinken, the Nord Stream pipeline bombing "offers tremendous strategic opportunity for the years to come." Too bad that this tremendous opportunity for DC bureaucrats will come at the expense of everyone else, especially this coming winter. pic.twitter.com/T2eacQUuBF
— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) October 1, 2022
class=”twitter-tweet” data-width=”550″>At a Senate hearing, top US diplomat Victoria Nuland celebrated the Nord Stream 2 pipeline bombing:
"Senator Cruz, like you, I am, and I think the administration is, very gratified to know that Nord Stream 2 is now, as you like to say, a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea." pic.twitter.com/KS5OM4N165
— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) January 27, 2023
class=”twitter-tweet” data-width=”550″>Pompeo says US will 'do everything' to stop Nord Stream 2 project https://t.co/gnARiIAUhi pic.twitter.com/VZg6HIWrFM
— American Military News (@AmerMilNews) August 1, 2020
Russia would stand nothing to gain by bombing its own pipeline whose gas flow it could control on its own end, while US officials are openly acknowledging that the US benefits from it directly. It’s just so silly how imperial spinmeisters are falling all over themselves to dismiss a claim they all privately know is true because it’s so glaringly obvious.
class=”twitter-tweet” data-width=”550″>In this video I discuss Seymour Hersh's bombshell report that the US blew up Nord Stream
I also look at other evidence he didn't mention
Norway & Poland opened their own Baltic pipeline hours after the sabotage
US is now the world's largest LNG exporterhttps://t.co/8RCoWWwXni
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) February 9, 2023
The Nord Stream sabotage is like what 9/11 would look like if before 9/11 you had top US officials saying “Yeah we’re definitely going to bring an end to the World Trade Center” and then after 9/11 they were saying “It’s good that the World Trade Center was destroyed because it advances our interests.” The compilations of evidence we’ve been seeing that the US was behind this attack look a lot like the evidence compiled by 9/11 conspiracy analysts, except the evidence is way stronger and US officials are pretty much saying they did it in plain English.
It’s just a basic fact that conspiracies happen. Powerful people do conspire with each other, and they are often able to keep their conspiring secret for a very long time. It really is a cruel joke how our rulers hide their actions behind thick veils of government secrecy, punish anyone who tries to look behind those veils with harsh prison sentences, and then have the gall to smear those who try to form theories about what they’re doing behind those veils as “conspiracy theorists”.
Just something to keep in mind as the mad narrative management scramble to brand Sy Hersh a “conspiracy theorist” continues.
class=”twitter-tweet” data-width=”550″>Love how Reuters calls it a "blog post" to imply that Sy fucking Hersh is just some rando with a Tumblr account. pic.twitter.com/1BIu0Y1ysw
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) February 8, 2023
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The empire has been frantically ramping up propaganda and censorship because its “great power competition” against Russia and China is going to require economic warfare, massive military spending, and nuclear brinkmanship that no one would consent to without lots of manipulation.
Economic warfare, exploded military spending and nuclear brinkmanship all harm/threaten the interests of the rank-and-file public. Nobody’s going to consent to being made poorer and less safe over some global power struggle that doesn’t benefit them without being manipulated to.
That’s why the media have been acting so weird lately, that’s why dissident voices are getting harder and harder to find online, and that’s the purpose of the new “fact-checking” industry and other forms of narrative control. Controlling the narrative is growing more crucial.
It would never occur to a normal person that China needs to be made to submit to US interests and that economic sacrifices must be made to attain this goal which make their wallet lighter, for example. That’s the kind of change you can only get consent for if you manufacture that consent. The fact that the empire’s “great power competition” happens to be occurring at the same time as widespread access to the internet means that drastic measures must be made to ensure the empire’s information dominance so it can march the public into playing along with this agenda.
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So many Americans in my social media notifications bought fully into the shrieking hysteria about a fucking balloon the other day. Doesn’t bode well for how critically they’ll be thinking once the anti-China propaganda campaign really gets going.
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Still blows my mind how the empire can rob Americans blind, keep them poor, deprive them of all normal social safety nets, oppress them, exploit them, throw them into the largest prison system on earth, work them into the ground, and then convince them to be angry at China.
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All major US foreign policy maneuvers in today’s world are ultimately about preventing China from becoming an obstacle to US planetary rule. That’s all its shenanigans with Russia, Iran etc are ultimately about, and it’s what Ukraine is about too. If you don’t see this, you’re not seeing anything.
If you say you oppose US foreign policy toward Russia but not toward China, then you don’t really oppose US foreign policy toward Russia, because it’s the same foreign policy. They’re just two aspects of the same one agenda.
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Rank-and-file Australians are so pathetically aligned with US interests in their opinions because we have the most concentrated media ownership in the western world — a huge amount of it by Murdoch, who has been intimately intertwined with US government agencies for many decades.
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A sizeable percentage of the people who shriek at me for criticizing US foreign policy are Bernie Sanders progressives and self-described “anarchists”. Very few of the people who think of themselves as fighting the power and opposing tyranny actually do.
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The best measure of character for a journalist, analyst or commentator is whether they spend their time punching up or punching down. Are they always throwing shots at the world’s top power structure, or are they punching at weaker governments, other commentators, “tankies”, marginalized groups, etc?
This is the best measure of character because consistently throwing punches at the very top is the least effective way to rise in influence and build a brand, because those who facilitate the interests of the powerful will be uplifted and amplified by the establishment power structure while those who work against those interests will not be. Someone who’s only ever punching up as high as possible — never down or laterally — is more likely to be in it for nobler reasons than fame and fortune.
This is also a good way to evaluate your own character. Are you always punching up as high as your arms can reach? Or are you getting lost in sectarianism, social media drama, or power-serving attacks on parts of the rank-and-file public? How high are your fists going? It’s a good habit to check in on this from time to time.
_____________________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal, or buying an issue of my monthly zine. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
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Feature image via Danish Defense.
On Saturday, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado) claimed that Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff (California) and Eric Swalwell (California) should be barred from serving on the House Intelligence Committee, saying that they are “conspiracy theorists.” Boebert is an election denier and loyalist to former President Donald Trump who has repeatedly peddled false conspiracy theories tied to QAnon. Her comments…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Listen to a reading of this article:
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The western political/media class has been dismissing as “conspiracy theories” all claims that the US is likely responsible for last month’s sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, even while leveling the exact same accusations against Russia without ever using that term. Which probably says a lot about the way that label has been used over the years, if you think about it.
At a UN Security Council meeting on Friday, US envoy Richard Mills repeatedly accused Russia of promoting “conspiracy theories” in its Nord Stream accusations against the United States, saying that “our Russian colleagues have decided to instrumentalize the Security Council meeting to spread conspiracy theories and disinformation.”
“It’s important that we use this meeting not to foster conspiracy theories, but to focus our attention on Russia’s blatant violation of the Charter and its crimes in Ukraine,” Mills argues, after saying that “the United States categorically denies any involvement in this incident” and that there is no justification for “the Russian delegation raising conspiracy theories and mass disinformation in this Council.”
Mills then hilariously spends the remainder of his remarks insinuating that it is actually Russia who perpetrated the attacks, mentioning the word “infrastructure” no less than nine times in his arguments to establish that in Ukraine, Russia has a history of attacking critical civilian infrastructure similar to the pipelines.
“Sabotage of critical infrastructure should be of concern to us all,” Mills says. “In the context of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, we have seen numerous Russian attacks damaging civilian infrastructure. We witnessed Russia recklessly seize control of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, risking a nuclear disaster in Europe. We saw countless attacks destroying civilian electricity infrastructure.”
“Despite efforts that we heard today to distract us from the truth, to distribute more disinformation and slightly wacky theories, the facts on the ground in Ukraine speak for themselves,” Mills concludes.
class=”twitter-tweet” data-width=”550″>The sabotage of gas pipelines were a 'warning shot' from Putin to the West, and should brace for more subterfuge, Russia experts warn https://t.co/IvH6YmFh4b
— Military and Defense Insider (@MilDefInsider) October 3, 2022
Business Insider has a new article out titled “The sabotage of gas pipelines were a ‘warning shot’ from Putin to the West, and should brace for more subterfuge, Russia experts warn.” The “experts” in question are as follows:
That’s it; that’s all the experts. Two lying warmongers and a history professor.
Nowhere in the Business Insider article do the words “conspiracy” or “theory” appear. Contrast this with the recent Associated Press article titled “Russians push baseless theory blaming US for burst pipeline,” which was so frantic to spin accusations of US Nord Stream sabotage as a crazy conspiracy theory that it framed it as something only QAnon cultists believe.
“The suggestion that the U.S. caused the damage was circulating on online forums popular with American conservatives and followers of QAnon, a conspiracy theory movement which asserts that Trump is fighting a battle against a Satanic child-trafficking sect that controls world events,” AP wrote.
class=”twitter-tweet” data-width=”550″>Still laughing at how frantically over the top AP went with its "blaming the US for sabotaging Russian pipelines is a baseless conspiracy theory" article. pic.twitter.com/avXgXYM5yP
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) October 1, 2022
Over and over again we see the pejorative “conspiracy theory” applied to accusations against one nation but not the other, despite the fact that it’s the exact same accusation. They are both conspiracy theories per definition: they’re theories about an alleged conspiracy to sabotage Russian pipelines. But the western political/media class consistently applies that label to one and never the other.
Here’s a link to another Business Insider article applying the “conspiracy theory” label to accusations of US Nord Stream sabotage. Here’s one from The Independent doing the same. Here’s one from The Washington Post. Here’s one from Newsweek. Here’s one from Vox. Here’s one from The Atlantic Council think tank. Here’s one from the Brookings Institution think tank. Here’s one from Media Matters for America, founded by the Center for American Progress think tank.
Do you get the message? Are you receiving the messaging loud and clear? Accuse the US of sabotaging the Nord Stream pipelines and it’s called a conspiracy theory. Accuse Russia of doing the exact same thing and it’s called news.
And of course by pointing out this cartoonish double standard I do not mean to suggest that both theories are equally well-evidenced. One wouldn’t expect them to be in a contest in which one party had their own energy infrastructure sabotaged.
class=”twitter-tweet” data-width=”550″>According to @SecBlinken, the Nord Stream pipeline bombing "offers tremendous strategic opportunity for the years to come." Too bad that this tremendous opportunity for DC bureaucrats will come at the expense of everyone else, especially this coming winter. pic.twitter.com/T2eacQUuBF
— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) October 1, 2022
For example, there’s the fact that Secretary of State Antony Blinken explicitly said that the sabotage of pipelines delivering Russian gas to Germany offers a “tremendous opportunity” to end Europe’s dependency on Russian energy. There’s also the fact that a 2019 Pentagon-commissioned study by the RAND Corporation on how to overextend and weaken Russia explicitly stated that the US would benefit from stopping Nord Stream 2. There’s also the fact that both President Biden and his Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland explicitly said that Nord Stream 2 would be brought to an end if Russia invades Ukraine, the fact that the US sanctioned those who built Nord Stream 2, the fact that former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice is on record saying the US wants Europeans to be more dependent on North American energy than on pipelines from Russia, the fact that Germans had just been angrily demanding an end to US-led sanctions on Russia and a reopening of Nord Stream gas, the fact that US naval forces were recently conducting unmanned underwater vehicle drills right where the pipelines were attacked, the fact that unmanned underwater vehicles have been found carrying explosive charges near Russian pipelines in the past, the fact that Poland literally just inaugurated a gas pipeline that will transport gas from Norway through Denmark and the Baltic Sea, the fact that US military helicopters were reportedly recorded traveling between the blast points and along the Nord Stream 2 pipeline shortly before the explosions, and the fact that the CIA has a known history of blowing up Russian gas pipelines.
But sure, if you think the United States could have any responsibility for this attack at all, you’re a crazy conspiracy theorist and no different from QAnoners who think pedophile Satan worshippers rule the world.
Okay, empire. Message received. Does make me wonder about some of those other “conspiracy theories” you’ve told us to ignore, though.
_______________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, buying an issue of my monthly zine, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
Feature image via Danish Defense.
By Loreben Tuquero in Manila
On social media, Ferdinand Marcos Jr needed to have all pieces in place to stage a Malacañang comeback: he had a network of propagandist assets, popular myths that justified his family’s obscene wealth, and narratives that distorted the horrors of his father’s rule.
He had even asked Cambridge Analytica to rebrand his family’s image.
The living component among these pieces was Rodrigo Duterte — an ally who, when elected president, normalised Marcos’ machinery, painting over a picture of murders and plunder to show glory and heroism instead.
“I think that really, if we are to make a metaphor [to] describe the role of Duterte to Marcos’ win, it’s really Duterte being the sponsor or a ninong to Marcos Jr…. I think Duterte ultimately is the godfather of this all,” said Fatima Gaw, assistant professor at the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman.
The alliance
Marcos’ disinformation machinery that was years in the making was complemented by his longtime ties to the Duterte family. Before “Uniteam,” there was “AlDub” or Alyansang Duterte-Bongbong.
Marcos courted Rodrigo Duterte in 2015, but Duterte chose Alan Peter Cayetano to be his running mate. Even then, calls for a Duterte-Marcos tandem persisted.
Gaw said Duterte played a part in driving interest for Marcos-related social media content and making it profitable. The first milestone for this interest, according to Gaw, was when Marcos filed his certificate of candidacy for vice-president in 2015.
They saw an influx of search demand for Marcos history on Google.
“There’s interest already back then but it was amplified and magnified by the alliance with Duterte. So every time there’s a pronouncement from Duterte about, for example, the burial of Marcos Sr. in the Libingan ng mga Bayani, that also spiked interest, and that interest is actually cumulative, it’s not like it’s a one-off thing,” Gaw said in a June interview with Rappler.
Using CrowdTangle, Rappler scanned posts in 2016 with the keyword “Marcos,” yielding over 62,000 results from pages with admins based in the Philippines. Spikes can be seen during key events like the EDSA anniversary, the Pilipinas 2016 debate, election day, and instances after Duterte’s moves to bury the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.
On February 19, 2016, Duterte said that if elected president, he would allow the burial of the late dictator at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. On August 7, 2016, Duterte said that Marcos deserved to be buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani for being a soldier and a former president.
The burial pushed through on November 18, 2016 and became a major event that allowed the massive whitewashing of the Martial Law period.
Made with flourish
Related content would then gain views, prompting platforms to recommend them and make them more visible, Gaw said. In a research she conducted in 2021 with De La Salle University (DLSU) communication professor Cheryll Soriano, they found that when searching “Marcos history” on YouTube, videos made by amateur content creators or people unaffiliated with professional groups were recommended more than news, institutional, and academic sources.
“A big part of Marcos’ success online and spreading his message and propaganda is because he leveraged both his political alliances with [the] Dutertes, as the front-facing tandem and political partnership. And on the backend, whatever ecosystem that the Duterte administration has established, is something that Marcos already can tap,” Gaw said.
In an upcoming study on social media and disinformation narratives authored by Aries Arugay and Justin Baquisal, they identified four thematic disinformation narratives in the last election campaign — authoritarian nostalgia/fantasy, conspiracy theories (Tallano gold, Yamashita treasure), “strongman”, and democratic disillusionment.
Arugay, a political science professor at UP Diliman, said these four narratives were the “raw materials” for further polarisation in the country.
“Para sa mga kabataan, ’yung mga 18-24, fantasy siya. Kasi naririnig natin ‘yun, ah kaya ko binoto si Bongbong Marcos kasi gusto kong maexperience ‘yung Martial Law,” Arugay said in an interview with Rappler in June.
(For the youth, those aged 18-24, it’s a fantasy. We hear that reasoning, that they voted for Bongbong Marcos because they want to experience Martial Law.)
Arugay described this as “unthinkable,” but pervasive false narratives that the Martial Law era was the golden age of Philippine economy, that no Filipino was poor during that time, that the Philippines was the richest country next to Japan, among many other claims, allowed for such a fantasy to thrive.
Institutionalising disinformation
While traditional propaganda required money and machinery, usually from a top-down system, Gaw said Duterte co-opted and hijacked the existing systems to manipulate the news cycle and online discourse to make a name for himself.
“I think what Duterte has done…is to institutionalise disinformation at the state level,” she said.
This meant that the amplification of Duterte’s messaging became incorporated in activities of the government, perpetuated by the Presidential Communications Operations Office, the Philippine National Police, and the government’s anti-communist task force or the NTF-ELCAC, among others.
Early on, Duterte’s administration legitimized partisan vloggers by hiring some of them in government. Other vloggers served as crisis managers for the PCOO, monitoring social media, alerting the agency about sentiments that were critical of the administration, and spreading positive news about the government.
Bloggers were organized by Pebbles Duque, niece of Health Secretary Francisco Duque III, who himself was criticised over the government’s pandemic response.
Mocha Uson, one of the most infamous pro-Duterte disinformation peddlers, was appointed PCOO assistant secretary earlier in his term. (She ended up campaigning for Isko Moreno in the last election.)
Now, we’re seeing a similar turn of events — Marcos appointed pro-Duterte vlogger Trixie Cruz-Angeles as his press secretary. Under Duterte’s administration, Angeles had been a social media strategist of the PCOO.
Following the Duterte administration’s lead, they are again eyeing the accreditation of vloggers to let them cover Malacañang briefings or press conferences.
“So in the Duterte campaign, of course there were donors, supporters paying for the disinformation actors and workers. Now it’s actually us, the Filipino people, funding disinformation, because it’s now part of the state. So I think that’s the legacy of the Duterte administration and what Marcos has done, is actually to just leverage on that,” Gaw said.
Targeting critics
What pieces of disinformation are Filipinos inadvertently funding? Gaw said that police pages are some of the most popular pages to spread disinformation on Facebook, and that they don’t necessarily talk about police work but instead the various agenda of the state, such as demonising communist groups, activist groups, and other progressive movements.
Emboldened by their chief Duterte, who would launch tirades against his critics during his speeches and insult, curse, and red-tag them, police pages and accounts spread false or misleading content that target activists and critics. They do this by posting them directly or by sharing them from dubious, anonymously-managed pages, a Rappler investigation found.
Facebook later took down a Philippine network that was linked to the military or police, for violating policies on coordinated inauthentic behavior.
The platform has also previously suspended Communications Undersecretary and NTF-ELCAC spokesperson Lorraine Badoy who has long been targeting and brazenly red-tagging individuals and organizations that are critical of the government. She faces several complaints before the Office of the Ombudsman accusing her of violating the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act and the Code of Conduct for public officials.
“PCOO as an office before wasn’t really a big office, they’re not popular, but all of a sudden they become so salient and so visible in media because they’re able to understand that half of the battle of governance is not just doing the operations of it but also the PR side of it,” Gaw said.
Facebook users recirculated a post Badoy made in January 2016, wherein she talked about the murders of Boyet and Primitivo Mijares under Martial Law. In that post, just six years ago, Badoy called Bongbong an “idiot, talentless son of the dead dickhead dictator.”
Badoy has since disowned such views. In a post on May 2022, Badoy said she only “believed all those lies I was taught in UP” and quoted Joseph Meynard Keynes: “When the facts change, I change my mind.”
Angeles also said the same in June 2022 when netizens surfaced her old tweets criticising the Marcos family. She said, “I changed my mind about it, aren’t we entitled to change our minds?”
But the facts haven’t changed. A 2003 Supreme Court decision declared $658 million worth of Marcos Swiss deposits as ill-gotten. Imelda Marcos’ motion for reconsideration was “denied with finality”.
According to Amnesty International, 70,000 were imprisoned, 34,000 were tortured, and 3,240 were killed under Martial Law.
The rise of alternative news sources
Outside government channels, Badoy co-hosts an SMNI programme named “Laban Kasama ng Bayan” with Jeffrey “Ka Eric” Celiz — who is supposedly a former rebel — where they talk about the communist movement. SMNI is the broadcasting arm of embattled preacher Apollo Quiboloy’s Kingdom of Jesus Christ church.
SMNI has been found to be at the core of the network of online assets who red-tag government critics and attack the media. The content that vloggers and influencers produce to defend Duterte’s administration now bleeds into newscasts by organisations with franchises granted by the government.
The first report of the Digital Public Pulse, a project co-led by Gaw, found that on YouTube, leading politician and government channels, including that of Marcos, directly reach their audiences without the mediation of the media.
“This shift to subscribing to influencers and vloggers as sources of news and information, and now subscribing to nontraditional or non-mainstream sources of information that are [still considered institutional] because they have franchises and they have licences to operate, it’s part of the trend of the growing distrust in mainstream media,” Gaw said.
She said that given the patronage relationship that religious organisations have with politicians, alternative news sources like SMNI and NET25 don’t necessarily practice objective, accountable, or responsible journalism because their interest is different from the usual journalistic organisation.
“I think that in general these two are politically tied and economically incentivised to perform the role that the administration and the incoming presidency of Marcos want them to play, and exactly, serving as an alternative source of information,” she said.
A day after he was proclaimed, Marcos held a press conference with only three reporters, who belonged to SMNI, GMA News, and NET25.
Rappler reviewed NET25’s Facebook posts and found that it has a history of attacking the press, Vice-President Leni Robredo, and her supporters. The network had also released inaccurate reports that put Robredo in a bad light.
Gaw said because these alternative news channels owned by religious institutions have a mutually-benefiting relationship with the government, they are given access to government officials and to stories that other journalists might not have access to. There is thus no incentive for them to report critically and perform the role of providing checks and balances.
“They would essentially be an extension of state propaganda,” Gaw said.
For Arugay, the Marcos campaign was able to take advantage of how the state influenced the standards of journalism.
“Part [of their strategy] is least exposure to unfriendlies, particularly media that’s critical. I think at the end they saw the power of critical media. And once they were able to get an opportunity, they wanted to turn things around. And this is where democracy suffers,” Arugay said.
Under Duterte, journalists and news organisations faced a slew of attacks that threatened their livelihood and freedom. Rappler was banned from covering Malacañang, faced trumped-up charges, then witnessed its CEO Maria Ressa being convicted of cyber libel.
Broadcasting giant ABS-CBN was shut down. Journalist Frenchie Mae Cumpio is in her second year in jail.
While the international community lauds the courageous and critical reporting of Philippine journalists, Filipinos are shutting them out.
All bases covered
While Duterte mostly used a Facebook strategy to win the election, Marcos went all out in 2022 — and it paid off.
“[The] strategy of the Marcos Jr. campaign became very complicated [compared with] the Duterte campaign because back then they were really, they just invested on Facebook. [That’s not the case here]…. No social media tech or platform was disregarded,” Arugay said.
At one point in 2021, YouTube became the most popular social media platform in the Philippines, beating Facebook. Whereas Facebook at least has a third-party fact-checking programme, YouTube barely has any strong policies against disinformation.
“I think with the Marcos campaign, they knew Facebook was a battleground, they deployed all their efforts there as well, but they knew they had to win YouTube. Because that’s where we can build more sophisticated lies and convoluted narratives than on Facebook,” Gaw said.
YouTube’s unclear policies allow lies to thrive
A study by FEU technical consultant Justin Muyot found that Marcos had the highest number of estimated “alternative videos” — those produced by content creators — on YouTube. These videos aimed to shame candidates critical of Marcos and his supporters, endear Marcos to the public, and sow discord between the other presidential candidates.
YouTube is also where hyperpartisan channels thrive by posing as news channels. These were found to be in one major community that includes SMNI and the People’s Television Network.
This legitimises them as a “surrogate to journalistic reporting”.
“That’s why you’re able to sell historical disinformation, you’re able to [have] false narratives about the achievements of the Marcoses, or Bongbong Marcos in particular. You’re able to launch counterattacks to criticisms of Marcos in a very coherent and coordinated way because you’re able to have that space, time, and the immersion required to buy into these narratives,” Gaw said.
Apart from YouTube, Gaw said that Marcos had a “more clear understanding of a cross-platform strategy” across social media.
On Twitter, freshly-made accounts were set up to trend pro-Marcos hashtags. The platform later suspended over 300 accounts from the Marcos supporter base for violating its platform manipulation and spam policy.
Ruining Robredo was a ‘coordinated effort’
Duterte and Marcos had a common target over the years: Robredo. She is another female who was constantly undermined by Duterte, along with Leila de Lima, a victim of character assassination who continues to suffer jail time because of it.
“It has been a coordinated effort of Duterte and Marcos to really undermine her, reap or cultivate hatred against her for whatever reason and to actually attach her to people and parties or groups who have political baggage, for example LP (Liberal Party) even if she’s not running for LP,” Gaw said.
The meta-partisan “news” ecosystem on YouTube, studied by researchers of the Philippine Media Monitoring Laboratory, was found to deliver propaganda using audio-visual and textual cues traditionally associated with broadcast news media.
They revealed patterns of “extreme bias and fabricated information,” repeating falsehoods that, among others, enforce negative views on Robredo’s ties with the Liberal Party and those that make her seem stupid.
Rappler found that the top misogynistic attack words used against Robredo on Facebook posts are “bobo,” “tanga,” “boba,” and “madumb,” all labeling her as stupid.
Fact-checking initiative Tsek.PH also found Robredo to be the top victim of disinformation based on their fact checks done in January 2022.
“By building years and years of lies and basically giving her, manufacturing her political baggage along the way, that made her campaign in [2022] very hard to win, very hard to convert new people because there’s already ambivalence against her,” Gaw said.
Arugay and Gaw both said that the media, academe, and civil society failed to act until it was too late. “The election result and [and where the] political landscape is at now is a product of that neglect,” Gaw said.
There is still a lack of a systemic approach on how to engage with disinformation, said Gaw, since much of it is still untraceable and underground. To add, Arugay said tech companies are to blame for their nature of prioritising profit.
“Just like in 2016, the disinformation network and architecture responsible for the 2022 electoral victory of Marcos Jr. will not die down. They will not fade.
“They will not wither away. They will just transition because the point is no longer to get him elected, the point is for him to govern or make sure that he is protected while in power,” Arugay said.
When the new administration comes in, it will be the public’s responsibility to hold elected officials accountable. But if this strategy — instilled by Duterte’s administration and continued by Marcos — continues, crucifying critics on social media and in real life, blaming past administrations and the opposition for the poor state of the country, and concocting narratives to fool Filipinos, what will reality in the Philippines look like down the line?
Loreben Tuquero is a journalist for Rappler. Republished with permission.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
Where “conspiracy theories” were once understood to be the driving force of world history (both for good or for evil), today’s dumbed-down populus has increasingly become induced to believe that the term is synonymous with either insanity at best, or domestic terrorism at worst.
The fact is that the behaviorists attempting to “nudge” humanity into a Great Reset of technocratic feudalism have set their sights on “conspiracy theories” as the primary threat to their agenda which they assert, must be destroyed and subverted through a number of techniques enumerated as early as 2008 by Cass Sunstein (counsellor to Biden’s Department of Homeland Security) in his essay “Conspiracy Theories”.
In this Canadian Patriot Review documentary produced and narrated by Jason Dahl, the true nature of “conspiracy theories” is explored from Ancient Rome, through the Golden Renaissance, American Revolution and our present age. Rather than seeing conspiracies as solely a negative term as is so often the case, we evaluate both evil as well as positive expressions of this fundamentally human process which literally means “two or more people acting together in accord with an agreed upon idea and intention”.
The film is adapted from the text written by Matthew Ehret titled “Will Conspiracy Theorizing Soon Get you Labelled a ‘Domestic Terrorist’?“
The post The Reality Behind Conspiracy Theories and Domestic Terrorism first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) sent a letter to executives of both Fox News and its parent company Fox Corporation on Tuesday, demanding that they stop promoting white supremacy on air, and citing the network’s amplification of the so-called “Great Replacement” theory that inspired a white supremacist massacre in Buffalo, New York, last weekend.
That theory, which Schumer rightly points out in his letter “has no basis in fact,” is rooted in far right ideology but is rapidly becoming more prevalent in mainstream conservative circles. Its proponents posit the lie that there is a conspiracy to replace white people with people of color in countries where white people make up the majority of the population, like the U.S.
The theory is cited in the manifesto written by the mass shooter who killed 10 individuals and injured three others in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, this past weekend.
Schumer’s letter to Fox executives — including owner Rupert Murdoch, his son Lachlan Murdoch, Suzanne Scott, CEO of Fox News Media, and Jay Wallace, president and executive editor of Fox News Media — was written in response to Fox News’s consistent promotion of the theory, particularly by its news personalities. One analysis of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” found that the primetime host has referenced the racist theory in more than 400 episodes over the past six years.
Carlson responded to criticism of his commentary in light of the horrific Buffalo attack by suggesting that his critics were using the mass shooting as a means to censor him.
“So because a mentally ill teenager murdered strangers, you cannot be allowed to express your political views out loud,” Carlson said on his program Monday night. “That’s what they’re telling you. That’s what they’ve wanted to tell you for a long time, but Saturday’s massacre gives them a pretext and a justification.”
Carlson’s rhetoric from this week alone only confirms Schumer’s point: The network, he said in his letter, is engaged in the “reckless amplification” of a “white nationalist, far-right conspiracy theory.”
“For years, these types of beliefs have existed at the fringes of American life,” the New York senator said. “However, this pernicious theory, which has no basis in fact, has been injected into the mainstream thanks in large part to a dangerous level of amplification by your network and its anchors.”
Schumer then cited a recent poll from the Associated Press, which found that nearly one-third of Americans believe in the theory. That same poll found that Fox News viewers were close to three times as likely to believe in the idea than viewers of other cable news networks.
The problem goes far beyond a single incident, Schumer went on, referencing a 2019 massacre in El Paso,Texas, in which a white man killed 23 people out of anger over a supposed “Hispanic invasion.”
Schumer also recalled a 2018 massacre in which a white man murdered 11 worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. That shooter had blamed Jews “for allowing immigrant ‘invaders’ into the United States,” Schumer wrote.
“I urge you to take into consideration the very real impacts of the dangerous rhetoric being broadcast on your network on a nightly basis,” he concluded.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
