“Disinformation”

Russia Russia Russia!

Major Russian disinfo site featuring anti-Trudeau articles prompts calls for new focus at public inquiry

A website at the heart of an international Russian disinformation operation has produced more than a dozen articles about Canadian politics in an apparent attempt to undermine support for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and boost his chief rival, Pierre Poilievre.

The website Reliable Recent News has been identified by officials in Europe and the U.S. as a repository for pro-Kremlin articles that are distributed through a network of affiliated sites disguised to appear as legitimate news outlets.

Also Russia Russia Russia!

LILLEY: Canadian taxpayers funded Russia propaganda

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Disinformation", "Russia! Russia! Russia!", Canada, Canada's Corrupt Liberal Government

CBC Caught Pimping Trudeau’s Mass Immigration Scam

CBC ombudsman slams host for immigration comments on broadcast

CBC Ombudsman Jack Nagler has criticized radio host Ian Hanomansing for expressing what was perceived as a value judgment on immigration during a 2023 episode of Cross Country Checkup.

Blacklock’s Reporter says in the episode, Hanomansing made statements that implied strong support for increased immigration, which some listeners found unbalanced, prompting a review by the ombudsman.

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Disinformation", "Mass Immigration - Follow the money", "Mass Immigration is Class War", "Societally Destructive Immigration Policy", Canada, Canada's Corrupt Liberal Government

Expanding WHO’s Role: Canadian Stakeholders Eye “Misinformation” Control

Canada wants to expand the scope of the World Health Organization, WHO’s global pandemic agreement (treaty) by adding more censorship measures.

The initiative is to add social media “misinformation” (and censorship thereof) to the discussion of the draft treaty. In anticipation of the “next pandemic,” Canada also wants more attention to be paid to what it considers diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The treaty’s purpose is to give WHO an active role in directing how the United Nation’s 193 member countries deal with pandemics or other health crises. However, the negotiators failed to agree on the text of the document by the May deadline this year.

h/t patthedog

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Deep State", "Disinformation", WHO

$10 Million and a Fake Investor: How the Kremlin Allegedly Built a Conservative U.S. Media Startup

WASHINGTON—In January 2023, a representative claiming to work with a European finance professional named Eduard Grigoriann shared instructions with a popular U.S. conservative media influencer to start a new YouTube channel.

“Find a personality that could serve as the face of the channel,” Grigoriann’s representative said. “For the right candidate we’re willing to pay around $1-2 million per year.”

The representative was a fictitious persona, as was Grigoriann, U.S. prosecutors said this week. They were fake identities being secretly operated by two Russian nationals seeking to advance Moscow’s desires to interfere in the 2024 presidential election.

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Disinformation"

Meet the right-wing Canadian influencers accused of collaborating with an alleged Russian propaganda scheme

The social media accounts of two of Canada’s most vocal far-right pundits have fallen unusually silent after U.S. officials accused them of being collaborators of a covert Russian propaganda campaign.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Justice Department unsealed an indictment against two Russian nationals, accusing them of setting up a conservative media outlet as a front for pro-Kremlin propaganda.

True thing: I never heard of Lauren Chen or Tenet media before this story broke.

All of the other “right wing influencers” in Tenet’s stable have issued statements claiming to have been duped by Chen and her husband.

That Southern has not issued a public statement or responded to a CBC request for comment does not imply complicity as CBC hopes.

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Disinformation"

Media Pretend That Systematic Government Censorship Is a Nothingburger

Few things in modern news media are as useless as the journalist who insists a legitimate news story is not, in fact, a legitimate news story.

There’s a lot of this going around these days.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg claimed last week that the federal government “pressured” his company, Meta, into censoring political content during the 2020 election and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Criminalizing Dissent", "Deep State", "Disinformation"

Recent bot campaign backing Poilievre shows AI easily accessible for political messaging: report

A suspected bot campaign surrounding a recent Pierre Poilievre event shows that generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools are easily accessible to anyone looking to influence political messaging online, researchers have found.

In July, the social media platform X was inundated with posts following the Conservative leader’s tour of Northern Ontario.

The posts claimed to be from people who attended Poilievre’s event in Kirkland Lake, Ont., but were actually generated by accounts in Russia, France and other places, and many of them had similar messaging.

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"AI - Artificial Intelligence", "Disinformation"

The great disinformation panic

The elite crusade against ‘fake news’ is authoritarian, anti-democratic and deeply hypocritical.

The transatlantic campaign to stanch ‘misinformation’ burgeoned with the elites’ revulsion at the outcome of the 2016 Brexit referendum in Britain and the election of Donald Trump, also in that year. That campaign has intensified with the prospect of Trump’s re-election in the US and in the wake of the recent riots in the UK, which were sparked by erroneous online reports that the person who fatally stabbed three children in Southport on 29 July was an asylum seeker. In both countries, the right-on, smart take is to embrace, in the name of democracy and social justice, such doublethink as the Labour government’s new enthusiasm for the policing of and crackdown on ‘legal but harmful’ online content.

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Deep State", "Disinformation"

UK Schools To Teach Kids As Young as 5 How To Spot “Disinformation”

The plan has sparked concerns over who defines “fake news.”

Not content with its efforts to limit free speech on social media platforms, Britain’s new Labour government is also gearing schools up to “arm our children against … disinformation.”

After last week’s riots, prompted by the Southport stabbing, ministers will now include plans “to embed critical skills in lessons” in the next curriculum review, due next year. These will see pupils as young as five given what the government describes as the “knowledge and skills” to spot “disinformation” online.

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Disinformation", WTF?

The real story of the news website accused of fuelling riots

The BBC tracks down a Canadian hockey player, a dad in Pakistan and a Texan named Kevin linked to Channel3Now.

What connects a dad living in Lahore in Pakistan, an amateur hockey player from Nova Scotia – and a man named Kevin from Houston, Texas?

They’re all linked to Channel3Now – a website whose story giving a false name for the 17-year-old charged over the Southport attack was widely quoted in viral posts on X. Channel3Now also wrongly suggested the attacker was an asylum seeker who arrived in the UK by boat last year.

This, combined with untrue claims the attacker was a Muslim from other sources, has been widely blamed for contributing to riots across the UK – some of which have targeted mosques and Muslim communities.

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Disinformation"

No. This is NOT just “far right thuggery”

What the reaction to Britain’s immigration protests tell us about the elite class

“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command”, so wrote George Orwell in his classic book 1984. This is the quote that came to mind as I watched Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his Labour government struggle to respond to protests that erupted after three girls were brutally murdered by the son of Rwandan migrants.

But why this quote?

Because that’s exactly what Keir Starmer and much of the elite class are now asking us to do —reject the evidence of our eyes and ears.

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Disinformation", "Islamophobia", "Societally Destructive Immigration Policy", Islam, Islam and violence, Islamization of the West

Conservative supporters more susceptible to Russian false narratives: report

A large majority of Canadians have been exposed to Russian false narratives about the war in Ukraine — and people who support the Conservative Party are more susceptible to believing Kremlin disinformation, according to a new report.

A survey from DisinfoWatch, part of the MacDonald-Laurier Institute think tank, found that 71 per cent of Canadians polled have heard at least one Russian false narrative and that a substantial portion “believe them to be true or are unsure of their falsehood.”

h/t Mauser

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Disinformation", "Ukraine - Russia", Canada, WTF?

Sometimes conspiracy theorists get things sort of right

Spend too much time arguing on the internet, and you’re bound to come across an increasingly common phrase: “Yesterday’s conspiracy theory is today’s truth.”

I’ve seen that phrase written in comments sections and on X; under news articles noting that Greek government mismanagement may have been partially responsible for wildfires there last year; and by, in one case, Piers Corbyn, the older brother of former British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who uttered the phrase to a ravenous crowd protesting lockdowns and other aligned evils: masks, social distancing, vaccines, 5G mobile networks, and a non-binding UN sustainability resolution that some conspiracy theorists believe is a harbinger of a totalitarian one-world government imposed on mankind. Most recently, I saw it in response to a claim that Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek purposely broke the water main in order to impose tyrannical water restrictions on the populace.

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Disinformation", "Experts", "Journalists"