Mis- and Disinformation…
Tag: disinformation
UN Launches Task Force to Combat Global “Disinformation” Threat
The United Nations has unveiled its first Global Risk Report, placing what it terms “mis- and disinformation” among the most serious threats facing the world.
Tucked into the report is the announcement of a new task force, formed to address how unauthorized narratives might disrupt the UN’s ability to carry out its programs, particularly its centerpiece initiative, the 2030 Agenda.
Rather than encouraging open discourse or transparency, the organization has taken a route that centers on managing what information gets seen and heard.
While the language used suggests a concern for public welfare, the actual emphasis lies on shielding the UN’s agenda from interference.
According to the report, survey respondents that included member states, NGOs, private companies, and other groups overwhelmingly called for joint government action and multistakeholder coalitions to deal with the highlighted risks.
Yet there is no clear endorsement of more open communication or free expression. The dominant solution appears to be top-down control over public narratives.
This newly established task force has a single focus. Its job is to assess how so-called mis- and disinformation affect the UN’s ability to deliver on its goals.
The report does not describe how this benefits the public or strengthens democratic values. Instead, the team’s mission is about insulating UN operations from disruption, particularly as they pertain to the Sustainable Development Goals.
The SDGs, which make up the foundation of the 2030 Agenda, touch nearly every aspect of governance and development, from climate to education to healthcare.
From Moscow to Malmstrom: Russian-Style Disinformation Tactics Target U.S. UFO Transparency Efforts
In 2016, RAND analysts Christopher Paul and Miriam Matthews coined the term ‘firehose of falsehood’ for Russia’s modern propaganda style: bombard every channel with a torrent of messages – some true, many half-true, others outright fiction – until audiences stop trying to separate fact from noise.
Paul and Matthews found that Russia’s method has four tell-tale features:
- High-volume, multichannel delivery
- Rapid, continuous repetition
- No commitment to objective reality, mixing truth, half-truth and fabrication at will
- No commitment to internal consistency – mutually contradictory stories are launched simultaneously without embarrassment.
Nearly a decade on, that very playbook appears to be running again, not in Moscow’s backyard but in America’s escalating fight over Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) transparency.
Russian propaganda ranks among the world’s most formidable, especially within the murky battlespace of disinformation and psychological operations.
Russia’s truth-plus-fiction approach was evident after Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine in July 2014.
Russian outlets began with genuine uncertainties – conflicting radar tracks, chaotic eyewitness accounts, and an admitted lack of hard data in the first hours, which primed audiences to accept a flood of speculative narratives.
Within days, Russian-connected sources offered mutually exclusive theories: a Ukrainian Su-25 fighter jet, a CIA plot, a missile fired at President Putin’s aircraft, even pre-loaded corpses on board the Boeing 777.
By anchoring each false claim to the genuine early chaos, Russia made every theory sound plausible – and drowned the facts in noise.
Put simply, a single verifiable fact can clear the path for multiple Trojan horses of disinformation.
Having Solved All of California’s Problems, Gavin Newsom Announces He’s Launching a Substack to Fight ‘Disinformation’
California Governor Gavin Newsom sure seems to have a lot of free time on his hands.
In addition to launching a podcast earlier this year, Newsom just announced that he is launching a Substack site to fight disinformation. What’s next? A TV talk show?
It’s not as if the state of California has thousands of homes to rebuild after wildfires ravaged the state earlier this year. And who cares if there is a riot raging in downtown Los Angeles that has been going on for more than a week?
How does this man still have his job?
The Hill reports:
Gavin Newsom launches a Substack
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) launched a page on Substack this week, using his first entry on the platform to blast President Trump amid recent tension in Los Angeles over immigration enforcement efforts in the state.
Newsom’s op-ed, which was first published by Fox News Digital, is titled “Trump is trying to destroy Democracy. Do not let him.”
“Our system of democracy was created in direct opposition to the monarchy and designed to bolster individual freedom and liberty so that we are never again subjugated to a king. It is that idea, that sacred value, that is being destroyed,” Newsom wrote in the piece.
“But our greatest strength has always been with the people. It’s time for all of us to stand up,” he continued.
Newsom said in a short video posted before the piece he was joining the platform to “break through the noise and engage in real conversations.”
Federal DC prosecutor accuses Wikipedia of spreading propaganda and disinformation to Americans
Interim United States attorney for Washington, D.C., Ed Martin, on Thursday sent a letter to the parent company of Wikipedia, accusing it of possibly violating its nonprofit obligations by allowing editors to publish disinformation aimed at the American people.
Martin, an ally of President Donald Trump, accused Wikimedia of engaging in activities that negatively impact the neutrality of the online project.
The Wikipedia website was founded in 2000 to “create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language,” according to one of the company’s co-founders.
“Masking propaganda that influences public opinion under the guise of providing informational material is antithetical to Wikimedia’s ‘educational’ mission,” Martin wrote in a four-page letter. He also accused it of “allowing foreign actors to manipulate information and spread propaganda to the American public.”
The letter did not specify what foreign actors were manipulating information on Wikipedia, and did not give examples of alleged propaganda, but Martin claimed Wikimedia is directed by a board “that is composed primarily of foreign nationals,” according to the Free Press.
We Reap the Harvest of Lies
Public life has become disorienting. Most people, by and large, previously expected to hear the truth, or some semblance of it, in daily life. We would generally expect this from each other, but also from public media and authorities such as governments or international agencies set up ostensibly for our benefit. Society cannot function in a coherent and stable way without it, as so much in our lives requires us to place trust in others.
To navigate the complexity of existence, we generally look for guidance to certain trusted sources, freeing up time to sift through the more questionable ones. Some claim they always knew everything was fake, but they are wrong, as it wasn’t (and still isn’t). There were always liars, campaigns to mislead, and propaganda to drive us to love or to hate, but there was a core within society that had certain accepted norms and standards that should theoretically be followed. A sort of anchor. Truth is indestructible but the anchor cable connecting us to it, ensuring its influence, has been cut. Society is being set adrift.
This really broke in the past four or five years. We were already in trouble, but now public discourse is broken. Perhaps it broke when governments elected to represent the people openly employed behavioral psychology to lie to their constituencies on a scale we had not previously seen. They combined to make their peoples do things they rationally would not; accept bans of family funerals, cover faces in public, or accept police brutality and the isolation and abandonment of the elderly. The media, health professionals, politicians, and celebrities all participated in this lie and its intent. Virtually all our major institutions. And these lies are continuing, and expanding, and have become the norm.
We are now reaping the harvest of untruth. The media can openly deny what they said or printed just months earlier about a new candidate for presidency or the efficacy of a mandated vaccine. A whole political party can change its narrative almost overnight about the fundamental characteristics of its leader. People paid as “fact-checkers” twist reality to invent new facts and hide the truth, unflustered by the transparency of their deceit. Giant software companies curate information, filtering out truths that run contrary to the pronouncements of conflicted international organizations. Power has displaced integrity.
Internationally, we are pummeled by agencies such as the UN, World Bank, G20, and World Health Organization to give up our basic rights and hand their new masters our wealth on claims of threats that can unequivocally be shown to be false. Paid-off former leaders, grasping legitimacy through the legacy of greater minds, reinforce mass falsehoods for the benefit of their friends. Once aberrations that a free media might highlight, fallacies have become norms in which the same media is openly complicit.
The frightening part is not the lies, which are a normal aspect of humanity, but the broad disinterest in truth. Lies can stand for a time in the presence of a people and institutions that value truth, but they will eventually fail as they are exposed. When truth loses its value, when it is no longer even a vague guide for politics or journalism, then recovery may not occur. We are in an incredibly dangerous time, because lies are not just tolerated but are now the default approach, at the national and international level, and the fourth estate that was to shed light on them has embraced the darkness.
Rachel Maddow and Her Co-Stars Made ‘Verifiably False’ Statements About a Doctor They Called the ‘Uterus Collector.’ Now His $30 Million Lawsuit Is Headed For Trial.
NBCUniversal is headed for trial after a judge ruled in favor of a Georgia doctor who MSNBC’s biggest stars accused of performing “mass hysterectomies” on women at a Trump-era immigration facility in Georgia. The judge ruled that Rachel Maddow, Nicolle Wallace, and Chris Hayes made “verifiably false” statements about the doctor, who is suing NBC for $30 million.
The discovery process in the lawsuit, which has received little attention, has drawn back the curtain on the inner workings of MSNBC, revealing how the liberal cable network works hand in hand with NBC News, which seeks to portray itself as nonpartisan. NBCUniversal’s standards department reviewed and approved the reporting on the Georgia doctor, before it was published on NBCNews.com and then broadcast on MSNBC programs. The NBC News correspondents, Jacob Soboroff and Julia Ainsley, worked closely with a standards executive during their reporting. Soboroff is also an MSNBC correspondent.
Furthermore, Maddow—who was deposed for the lawsuit—and Hayes were personally involved in the off-camera vetting and editorial conversations around the segment to an extent that can be unusual for on-camera hosts.
Maddow is reportedly paid about $30 million a year by NBCUniversal to host her show one evening a week and work on longer-range projects.
In her ruling last month, the judge, Lisa Godbey Wood of the Southern District of Georgia, found that Maddow, Hayes, and Wallace made 39 “verifiably false” allegations about Mahendra Amin, a gynecologist who treated detainees at a Georgia Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.
A nurse at the facility had made a whistleblower complaint alleging that Amin was performing “mass hysterectomies,” many of which were medically unnecessary, and that he was known as “the uterus collector.” The nurse’s claims, which she admitted were based on hearsay, were later found to be false.
“In the end, we are left with this: NBC investigated the whistleblower letter’s accusations; that investigation did not corroborate the accusations and even undermined some; NBC republished the letter’s accusations anyway,” Wood wrote in a scathing 108-page ruling on June 26. She ordered a jury trial to determine if MSNBC engaged in “actual malice,” the standard to determine defamation.
With Stanford Out, UW Steps Up for 2024 Election “Disinformation” Research
If it looks like a duck… and in particular, quacks like a duck, it’s highly likely a duck. And so, even though the Stanford Internet Observatory is reportedly getting dissolved, the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public (CIP) continues its activities. But that’s not all.
CIP headed the pro-censorship coalitions the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) and the Virality Project with the Stanford Internet Observatory, while the Stanford outfit was set up shortly before the 2020 vote with the goal of “researching misinformation.”
The groups led by both universities would publish their findings in real-time, no doubt, for maximum and immediate impact on voters. For some, what that impact may have been, or was meant to be, requires research and a study of its own. Many, on the other hand, are sure it targeted them.
So much so that the US House Judiciary Committee’s Weaponization Select Subcommittee established that EIP collaborated with federal officials and social platforms, in violation of free speech protections.
What has also been revealed is that CIP co-founder and leader is one Kate Starbird – who, as it turned out from ongoing censorship and speech-based legal cases, was once a secret adviser to Big Tech regarding “content moderation policies.”
Considering how that “moderation” was carried out, namely, how it morphed into unprecedented censorship, anyone involved should be considered discredited enough not to try the same this November.
However, even as SIO is shutting down, reports say those associated with its ideas intend to continue tackling what Starbird calls online rumors and disinformation. Moreover, she claims that this work has been ongoing “for over a decade” – apparently implying that these activities are not related to the two past, and one upcoming hotly contested elections.
And yet – “We are currently conducting and plan to continue our ‘rapid’ research — working to identify and rapidly communicate about emergent rumors — during the 2024 election,” Starbird is quoted as stating in an email.
NIH Scrambled After ZeroHedge Report On Fauci Beagle Experiments, Scrubbed Database, Then Fed WaPo Disinformation
Last week, Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene took a detour from grilling Anthony Fauci over COVID-19, to confront him with photos of beagles who had been subjected to animal testing experiments widely reported to be funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) under the National Institutes of Health (NIH), following a 2021 investigation series by the group White Coat Waste Project.
“We should be recommending you to be prosecuted,” Greene told Fauci. “We should be writing a criminal referral because you should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity. You belong in prison,” she continued, adding “That man does not deserve to have a license. As a matter of fact, it should be revoked and he belongs in prison.”
NIH Was Feeding Gain-Of-Function Disinfo To Journalists: Documents
House investigators on the Energy and Commerce Committee released a 73-page report yesterday documenting NIH officials lying about dangerous gain-of-function virus research to reporters and withholding information from Congress. These latest revelations follow reporting last week that Tony Fauci lied to the New York Times about his involvement in a Nature Medicine piece that advanced the theory that the pandemic could not have started in a lab Fauci himself was funding in Wuhan, China.
The House began the investigation following a September 2022 article in Science Magazine that reported on the dangers of monkeypox virus, spreading across the globe with the potential to adapt to humans and become more transmissible or deadly. Bernard Moss, a veteran poxvirus researcher at the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), told Science Magazine that monkeypox evolves to replicate faster in humans.
Science noted that Moss had begun gain-of-function experiments—swapping out genes from various variants—to understand why some are more dangerous or transmissible than others.
Moss has been trying for years to figure out the crucial difference between two variants of monkeypox virus: clade 2, which until recently was found only in West Africa and is now causing the global outbreak, and clade 1, believed to be much deadlier, which has caused outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of Congo for many decades. He’s found that clade 1 virus can kill a mouse at levels 1000 times lower than those needed with clade 2. To find out why, Moss and his colleagues swapped dozens of clade 2 genes, one at a time, into clade 1 virus, hoping to see it become less deadly, but with no luck so far. Now, they are planning to try the opposite, endowing clade 2 virus with genes from its deadlier relative.
Moss’s disclosure that he planned to insert genes from the more deadly clade 1 monkeypox strain into the more common and transmissible clade 2 monkeypox virus triggered a second story in Science Magazine with scientists expressing alarm at the study’s dangers.
On the other hand, Ohio State University researcher Linda Saif told Science Magazine’s Jocelyn Kaiser that she was worried that excessive regulation could “greatly impede research into evolving or emerging viruses” and drive research overseas, where U.S. regulations don’t apply or are looser. Oddly enough, I previously reported that Saif helped orchestrate a February 2020 essay ghostwritten by Shi Zhengli of the Wuhan Institute of Virology that called the possibility of a Wuhan lab accident a “conspiracy.”
Hellbound and Down 
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