Fediverse vs Disinformation

Quick Take

President Donald Trump said his administration blocked $50 million for condoms to be sent to Gaza through its pause on foreign aid. But it has provided no evidence that $50 million was ever directed toward condoms for Gaza. The contractor identified by the State Department said it has not used U.S. aid “to procure or distribute condoms.”

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A constant narrative evolution

The Kremlin’s take on peace has evolved over the last three years. During the early days of Russia’s full-scale war, there was no space for narratives about peace, only for an ill-advised tone of triumphalism. Then, realising the Ukrainian resolve to defend their homes would not be easily broken, the Kremlin started talking about peace while its bombs rained down on Ukrainian civilians. Moscow quickly devised ‘peace proposals’ that were merely empty PR stunts, deploying the narrative of peace to support Russia’s war, masking Moscow’s true imperial ambitions.

As the war raged on, the Kremlin’s disinformation peddlers continued to spin their twisted tale of peace, increasingly reaching out to more global audiences and depicting Russia’s war against Ukraine as a noble fight to dismantle the ‘Western hegemony’ and establish a ‘truly multipolar’ world order.

But, there was a complication in maintaining this knight-in-shining-armour image. Ukraine and its supporters interested in just and lasting peace were already working toward their goal, including building a global community to support real peace. The Kremlin then pivoted from polishing its own image to disparaging the West or any proposals for peace that were not rooted in Russian imperialist ultimatums. This dichotomy – disguising Russia’s aggression as attempts for peace and accusing the West of not being serious about peace – has now become the Kremlin’s go-to tactic to manipulate the public perception of achievable peace in Ukraine. [...]

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cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/1839567

Here is the link to the report: https://graphika.com/reports/chinese-state-influence

A Chinese social media operation that aims to whip up political anger in the West has called for the overthrow of a foreign government when impersonating protesters criticising flood relief efforts in Spain, online analysis outfit Graphika said.

Graphika said an operation dubbed Spamouflage, which it believed was linked to the Chinese state, posed this month as human rights group Safeguard Defenders to spread online calls for the government to be toppled in response to the catastrophic floods in October that killed 224 people.

"This is the first time we have seen Spamouflage directly calling to overthrow a foreign government," Graphika said in its latest report.

...

The report also finds:

• Chinese covert influence operations have impersonated human rights organizations critical of Beijing, almost certainly in an effort to discredit their activities and disrupt domestic political conversations in Western countries. The state-linked Spamouflage operation, for instance, has repeatedly targeted the Spain-based non-profit Safeguard Defenders and in January posed as the organization to spread online calls for the Spanish government to be overthrown in response to deadly floods in Valencia. This is the first time we have seen Spamouflage directly calling for the overthrow of a foreign government.
• Chinese state influence actors and pro-China communities continue to leverage international trade issues in their efforts to advance Beijing’s strategic interests. In recent weeks, this has included attempts to orchestrate a boycott of Japanese retail brand Uniqlo due to the company’s reported refusal to use cotton from China’s Xinjiang region, and efforts to exacerbate tensions between the U.S. and Japan over a blocked steel company merger.
• Chinese officials and state media have used social media and other online platforms to dismiss and deflect allegations of Chinese state hacking activity. After Japan accused China in January of orchestrating a years-long hacking campaign against Japanese government agencies and companies, for example, Chinese state actors spread statements dismissing the allegations as groundless and disseminated cartoons casting Tokyo as an agent of U.S. “disinformation.”
• Overt and covert Chinese state influence actors have engaged in a sustained effort to advance narratives that reinforce Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea and attempt to legitimize its activities in the region. In November, these actors amplified comments by an international law scholar that appeared to support China’s position.

As Robert F. Kennedy Jr. faces a Senate vote to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, right-wing media are split on whether to support his nomination.

Some claim the nominee — who has a long history of undermining scientific research and promoting health misinformation — is a “bipartisan” solution for “Making America Healthy Again,” while others have highlighted his past extremism, Democratic affiliations, and pro-abortion beliefs. Some right-wing media have also covered for Kennedy’s extremism in the past, largely ignoring his vaccination views.

Kennedy has a history of pushing harmful policies and embracing extremism — and right-wing media have played cover for him [...]

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The post available on LinkedIn (archived) and Facebook (archived) was a response to Musk's controversial gesture at U.S. President Donald Trump's inauguration rally, which many observers called a Nazi salute. The post said Low had known Musk for 14 years and that they texted frequently and went to each other's birthdays before they had a falling out. Part of the post reads:

Elon is not a Nazi, per se.

He is something much better, or much worse, depending on how you look at it.

Nazis believed that an entire race was above everyone else.

Elon believes he is above everyone else. He used to think he worked on the most important problems. When I met him, he did not presume to be a technical person — he would be the first to say that he lacked the expertise to understand certain data. That happened later. Now, he acts as if he has all the solutions.

[…]

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Even before Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, he professed that Russia only wanted peace, if only Ukraine and Western countries would give him the peace he wants. Towards the end of 2021, he made unrealistic and unreasonable security demands whose conditions, if fulfilled, would have made NATO allies feel profoundly insecure. Just a few days before Russia’s invasion, he sent a low-level official to present Ukraine with conditions for peace that it could not possibly meet. Since then, his negotiation proposals have insisted upon the ’denazification’ of Ukraine, an impossible demand since the Kremlin considers any Ukrainian who believes in Ukraine’s sovereignty to be a Nazi.

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“We’re thinking in terms of 25% on Mexico and Canada because they’re allowing vast numbers of people … to come in and fentanyl to come in,” Trump told a reporter who asked about the tariffs while Trump was signing executive orders in the Oval Office on Jan. 20.

The following day, in a press conference from the White House, Trump again explained why he may move forward with the tariffs.

“They’ve allowed, both of them, Canada very much so, they’ve allowed millions and millions of people to come into our country that shouldn’t be here,” Trump said. “They could’ve stopped them and they didn’t. And they’ve killed 300,000 people last year, my opinion, have been destroyed by drugs, by fentanyl. The fentanyl coming through Canada is massive. The fentanyl coming through Mexico is massive.”

Trump is exaggerating the number of fentanyl-related deaths in the U.S., and his Canada and Mexico comparison is off-base, too.

In this post, we take a quick look at the numbers to give some relative perspective. [...]

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A new memo issued by the Trump administration directing the federal government to temporarily cease disbursing billions of dollars in funds appears to draw on arguments made by Russ Vought, the president’s selectee to run the Office of Management and Budget.

Vought was a primary architect of Project 2025, a sprawling effort organized by The Heritage Foundation to provide policy and staffing recommendations for President Donald Trump’s second term. In addition to that role, Vought is also the founder of the Center for Renewing America, a MAGA-aligned think tank that has spent over a year arguing that the president can unilaterally refuse to spend funds allocated by Congress, an authority known as the impoundment power that was severely curtailed by Congress in 1974.

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This evening my uncle messaged me to let me know that Moms Across America commissioned testing that found glyphosate and heavy metal contamination in Girl Scout cookies. To be fair, he did just buy some from my kid (no refunds!) and I understand the concern about food contamination, but something is off. What's the deal with Moms Across America? Why is their CEO a vaccine skeptic hoping to get hired by RFK Jr.? It seems like an organic food/anti-vax lobbying organization, but I wonder if there's more to it than that. Is she just that effective as an individual mom influencer?

Edit: the screenshot isn't uploading correctly, so I changed it to a link to the Pixelfed post I originally made.

What the memo says

The Jan. 27 memo directs federal agencies to "temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all federal financial assistance" until officials ensure that the programs are consistent with Trump’s policies.

The memo singles out programs related to foreign aid, diversity, equity and inclusion, "woke" gender ideology and funding related to the "green new deal" pending a review. (The "Green New Deal" was a policy blueprint focusing on the environment that was backed by some Democrats in 2019 but was never enacted. Trump has used the term in the past as a catchall for green energy initiatives.)

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Visit us @ [email protected] for all the latest news on the topics of astroturfing, propaganda and disinformation.

This evening my uncle messaged me to let me know that Moms Across America commissioned testing that found glyphosate and heavy metal contamination in Girl Scout cookies. To be fair, he did just buy some from my kid (no refunds!) and I understand the concern about food contamination, but something is off. What's the deal with Moms Across America? Why is their CEO a vaccine skeptic hoping to get hired by RFK Jr.? It seems like an organic food/anti-vax lobbying organization, but I wonder if there's more to it than that. Is she just that effective as an individual mom influencer?

Visit us @ [email protected] for all the latest news on the topics of astroturfing, propaganda and disinformation.

Visit us @ [email protected] for all the latest news on the topics of astroturfing, propaganda and disinformation.

Visit us @ [email protected] for all the latest news on the topics of astroturfing, propaganda and disinformation.

Russia’s obsession with framing Ukraine as a Nazi state serves to justify the ongoing invasion and to distract from Russia’s own historical baggage. This manipulative narrative, a cornerstone of Kremlin disinformation, relies on historical revisionism to falsely depict Ukraine as a haven for fascists. This grotesque distortion of history trivialises the horrors of Nazism and manipulates public perception both at home and abroad.

The Kremlin has long played fast and loose with history to bolster its legitimacy, particularly regarding its World War II past. It insists that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a 1939 agreement between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, was merely a ‘necessity’ and should not be viewed as a complicity in fuelling Nazi war efforts and paving the way for the outbreak of World War II. By downplaying its role in enabling the Nazi regime, Russia deflects attention from its own murky historical actions, creating space to level baseless accusations against Ukraine.

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As journalism students, Allison Baker and Viviane Fairbank ran into tricky questions about fact-checking and journalism ethics that they couldn’t find answers to. Now, they lead the Truth in Journalism Project, an initiative to design and propose high standards of verification for today’s journalists. The Truth in Journalism Project’s Fact-Checking Guide offers new, inclusive ways to think about checking facts, affirming truth, and building trust in an age of disinformation.

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With the stroke of a pen, President Donald Trump on Jan. 20 granted clemency — either a pardon or commuted sentence — to all of the more than 1,500 people charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. But at an Oval Office signing event and in a Fox News interview, Trump made several misleading or false claims while explaining the reason for his decision.

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If Your Time is short

The House Select Committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol publicly released a final 845-page report and more than 100 transcripts of testimony, along with memos, depositions and documents. Much of the committee’s work remains available online.

The group didn’t release videos of witness interviews that committee members said contained "law enforcement sensitive operational details" and information that could have endangered witnesses. The committee said its actions complied with House rules.

House Republicans in March 2024 released a report accusing the committee of suppressing and deleting some pieces of evidence, but they have not gone as far as Trump in claiming that "all" evidence was destroyed.

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Fox News host Sean Hannity — President Donald Trump’s pick to provide his first Oval Office interview, which airs tonight — shattered every imaginable ethical standard during Trump’s first term as he transformed his program into a nonstop White House propagandafest.

Hannity, long a consistent mouthpiece for GOP talking points and naked partisan cheerleading, became the sitting president’s confidant and adviser. The Fox star became known within the West Wing as Trump’s “unofficial chief of staff,” shaping policy outcomes and widespread conspiracy-minded counternarratives through both his private conversations with the president and his public program, which Trump regularly watched. Hannity’s on-air propaganda and unethical actions drew outrage from his colleagues, but his bosses were largely unconcerned with his dual role as network host and Trump political operative.

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