Tag: propaganda

Officials Erased from Existing Photos After North Korea’s National Humiliation

Welcome to North Korea, where making a very public mistake can potentially cost you your life.

That’s at least the worry for two senior officials involved with the sinking of a destroyer during its botched loss last month. According to multiple reports, the two men have been erased from state photos — and many fear they’ve been killed.

The ship was the second of a new class of destroyer to be launched by the hermit state from the shipyard in Chongjin — only things didn’t go as planned, as indicated by the fact they tried to cover it up with tarps.

And heads weren’t going to roll figuratively, but literally. The state-run Korea Central News Agency described the damage as “not serious” (going to disagree there) but “an unpardonable criminal act” (which, in North Korea, it definitely is).

Kim Jong-un, who was in attendance and watching when the sinking happened, said that the act “severely damaged the [country’s] dignity and pride” and resulted from “absolute carelessness, irresponsibility and unscientific empiricism.”

Now, according to the New York Post, two of the high-ranking officials involved have been retconned out of existence in old photos — a clear sign that wherever they are, things ain’t good.

Admr. Kim Myong Sil and Hong Kil Ho — who are responsible for operating the shipyard in Chongjin — have been “expunged from the North Korean photographic record on orders of Kim — who blames them for the hermit kingdom’s inability to launch,” the Post reported on June 18.

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Far-Left Panic: Dark Money NGO Floods Baltimore Airwaves With Propaganda To Save Governor 

A local journalist at Fox Baltimore is starting to dive into the same rabbit hole we’ve explored for years—tracing the dark money networks funneling cash into left-wing nonprofits tied to the Democratic Party machine. Whether it’s funding anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles or quietly backing political campaigns, the funding network is vast, coordinated, and often concealed behind leftist law firms that create a web of pop-up nonprofit organizations.

Gary Collins of Fox Baltimore and the Baltimore Sun recently flagged a mysterious multi-week propaganda blitz—radio ads flooding the airwaves across the Baltimore metro area with praise for far-left Gov. Wes Moore’s supposedly ‘stellar’ economy. Collins noted that the campaign is now expanding to television.

The commercial, funded by America Works USA—a dark money-funded nonprofit affiliated with the Democratic Governors Association (DGA)—promotes Moore’s potentially misleading claims of economic growth, job creation, and a budget surplus. 

Even Democrats in the state dispute these claims. Ed Hale, a Democrat and former banker who founded the defunct 1st Mariner Bank, called the entire ad misleading, citing Maryland’s first credit downgrade in half a century and other economic setbacks.

Republican Senate Minority Whip Justin Ready labeled the ad a major economic distortion funded by a DGA-aligned group using dark money. 

“I think it’s fear that they’ve touched the third rail, they passed and signed the largest tax increase in the history of the state of Maryland,” Ready said, adding, “Whether you’re a middle-class family, whether you’re wealthy, or whether you’re poor, you’re paying more under Wes Moore.” 

According to public records, America Works is just one spoke in the Democratic Party’s massive network of affiliated NGOs waging an informational war on the American people. 

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‘Gaza must be eliminated’: Israel’s airwaves are filled with pro-genocide propaganda

“Strikes on Iran ease pressure on Israel to end starvation in Gaza.” That, in case you missed it, is a recent headline from the Guardian from Saturday. It’s the sort of statement that might have once shocked people but is now just another news bulletin.

Following Israel’s ‘pre-emptive strike’ on Iran earlier this month, which happened just as more people started speaking up about the genocide, attention has been averted from Gaza. But Israel’s assault on Gaza (and the West Bank), is continuing apace.

With the pressure off, the fear is that some of the most extreme voices in Israel will get exactly what they want in Gaza. Which, as retired Maj Gen Giora Eiland wrote in an Israeli paper on 12 October 2023, is to turn into “a place where no human being can exist”.

To remind you of what some of these voices have planned for Gaza, below is a collection of some of the more outrageous statements by Israeli lawmakers or influencers since 7 October 2023.

I’ve limited the collection to 20, but there are databases online with hundreds of statements which show a blurring of Hamas and the population of Gaza (including children) and a desire to inflict collective punishment. The end goal of all this is not the removal of Hamas from Gaza, but the removal of all Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank.

  • “All of Gaza’s infrastructures must be destroyed to its foundation and their electricity cut off immediately. The war is not against Hamas but against the state of Gaza,” said May Golan, minister for social equality and the advancement of the status of women of Israel on 7 October 2023.
  • “Flatten everything [in Gaza] just like it is today in Auschwitz,” David Azoulay, council leader for the northern Israeli town of Metula, said in an interview with an Israeli radio station, December 2023.
  • “[I]t’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. it’s not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware not involved, it’s absolutely not true …” Isaac Herzog, Israel’s president, said at a press conference on 13 October (in English).
  • “Now we all have one common goal – erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the Earth” Nissim Vaturi, deputy speaker of the Israeli parliament, wrote on X 7 October 2023. Vaturi also wrote: “The war will never end if we don’t expel everyone.” (2 November 2023) and “To wipe out Gaza. Nothing else will satisfy us … Don’t leave a single child there, expel all the remaining ones in the end, so they have no chance of recovery.” (9 October 2023)
  • “The children and women must be separated and the adults in Gaza must be eliminated. We are being too considerate,” Vaturi said during an interview with Kol BaRama radio in February 2025, when he also called Palestinians “subhumans” and said the West Bank would be turned into Gaza next.
  • “The Gaza Strip should be flattened, and for all of them there is but one sentence, and that is death,” Yitzhak Kroizer, a member of national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit party, said in a radio interview. This did not get much international coverage but was cited in the letter sent to the attorney general at the end of 2023 accusing the country’s judicial authorities of ignoring incitement to genocide.
  • “Gaza won’t return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything,” Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant, said October 2023. (Gallant was in this position at the time of the statement but is no longer in government)
  • “I’m not sure you’re speaking for us when you say we want to treat every child and every woman. I hope you don’t stand behind that statement either. When fighting a group like this, the distinctions that exist in a normal world don’t exist,” said Likud parliament member Amit Halevi in the Knessest, in response to a statement from an Israeli doctor saying suffering children should get painkillers, May 2025.
  • “The children in Gaza have brought this upon themselves,” said Meirav Ben-Ari from Yair Lapid’s opposition party Yesh Atid in response to a Palestinian lawmaker bemoaning the loss of civilian life on 16 October 2023.
  • “There should be 2 goals for this victory: 1. There is no more Muslim land in the Land of Israel … After we make it the land of IL, Gaza should be left as a monument, like Sodom …” said Likud member of the Knesset Amit Halevi on 16 October 2023.
  • “They [the children] are our enemies,” said Simcha Rothman, a member of the Knesset for the National Religious party, part of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition. Rothman was responding to a question from a Channel 4 (UK) interviewer asking “the children are your enemies?”

The following statements were all made on Channel 14: a far-right TV station that used to be a niche outlet but has morphed into one of the most watched news sources in Israel. Three civil rights organization have asked for an investigation into Channel 14 for its normalization of genocidal statements.

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UK Gov’t Secretly Used BBC & ITV Soaps for ‘Underhanded’ Vaccine ‘Propaganda’ to Covertly Shape Public Opinion, Coerce Compliance

New Freedom of Information (FOI) documents confirm what many long suspected: The UK government secretly used popular soap operas like EastEnders and Coronation Street to push vaccine propaganda during the pandemic, raising urgent questions about how much influence the state holds over British media, and how far officials are willing to go to manipulate public thought, opinion and behavior under the guise of public health.

The findings echo May 2021 revelations that scientists on the UK government’s behavioral advisory committee admitted they used fear-based “totalitarian” tactics to control public behavior during COVID-19, describing the approach as “unethical,” “dystopian,” and a form of “mind control.”

They also mirror an October 2024 U.S. House investigation that found the CDC and Biden administration used a $900 million COVID campaign to “manipulate Americans” with “deeply flawed” messaging, “overpromising” vaccines “without evidence,” and funding Big Tech companies to “track and monitor Americans.”

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The AI Slop Fight Between Iran and Israel

As Israel and Iran trade blows in a quickly escalating conflict that risks engulfing the rest of the region as well as a more direct confrontation between Iran and the U.S., social media is being flooded with AI-generated media that claims to show the devastation, but is fake.

The fake videos and images show how generative AI has already become a staple of modern conflict. On one end, AI-generated content of unknown origin is filling the void created by state-sanctioned media blackouts with misinformation, and on the other end, the leaders of these countries are sharing AI-generated slop to spread the oldest forms of xenophobia and propaganda.

If you want to follow a war as it’s happening, it’s easier than ever. Telegram channels post live streams of bombing raids as they happen and much of the footage trickles up to X, TikTok, and other social media platforms. There’s more footage of conflict than there’s ever been, but a lot of it is fake.

A few days ago, Iranian news outlets reported that Iran’s military had shot down three F-35s. Israel denied it happened. As the claim spread so did supposed images of the downed jet. In one, a massive version of the jet smolders on the ground next to a town. The cockpit dwarfs the nearby buildings and tiny people mill around the downed jet like Lilliputians surrounding Gulliver.

It’s a fake, an obvious one, but thousands of people shared it online. Another image of the supposedly downed jet showed it crashed in a field somewhere in the middle of the night. Its wings were gone and its afterburner still glowed hot. This was also a fake.

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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.”

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Why is the New Yorker sucking up to Latin American tyrants?

How does a judge ban one of the world’s biggest social-media platforms, nakedly target political opponents and repress reporting on his involvement in the biggest corruption scandal in his country’s history, and still get to be portrayed as a champion of democracy? Only, it seems, if the journalist is working for the New Yorker.

In April, the leading American magazine hailed Alexandre de Moraes as ‘The Brazilian judge taking on the digital far right’. Moraes, whose most notorious achievements to date include banning X and driving political opponents into exile, was presented as the only thing standing between his country and autocracy. According to journalist John Lee Anderson, Moraes is a ‘pugnacious jurist’ who has repeatedly saved his country from ‘digital militias’. The article even described the judge as ‘conspicuously fit’ and praised his ‘sharp cheekbones’.

It’s a good thing this terrible article was published in America, rather than Brazil, which remains in a well of authoritarianism that Moraes is in no small part responsible for. For many Brazilians, Moraes’s unprecedented assault on free speech is a fresh and depressing memory.

Most Brazilians received their first taste of his authoritarian streak in 2022, the year current president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva defeated Jair Bolsonaro. Many Brazilians took to the streets to protest the result, centering on the capital, Brasilia. While the protests had an uncomfortable whiff of America’s ‘January 6’ riots the previous year, ordinary voters were right to feel a little aggrieved. ‘Lula’ had served just over 18 months of a 12-year prison term after he was convicted of corruption, before his charges were overturned by a Supreme Court that now included Moraes, a longstanding political ally.

The riots that occurred in Brasilia in January 2023 were serious, but hardly the threat to democracy and national security they were made out to be. For example, it occurred on a Sunday, meaning government buildings were largely empty. Critically, Bolsonaro wasn’t even in the country – he was in Florida, where he had been since losing the election.

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EXPOSED: Institute for the Study of War is Disinformation Factory Funded by Military Complex

The “non-profit” Institute for the Study of War (ISW) launders defense contractor cash into war-justifying disinformation, journalist and founder of Crowdsource the Truth Jason Goodman tells Sputnik, commenting on ISW’s Ukraine conflict coverage.

What Does ISW Say?

Reporting Ukrainian weakness is just Russian “disinformation”

Hit Russia harder and surge military production. Why? Because Russia seeks to “destroy NATO”.

Who Funds ISW?

Weapons-maker General Dynamics

Defense tech firm Avantus (now QinetiQ)

Global defense & intel contractor CACI International and many others

“[ISW] collected over $9 million in revenue [in 2023] alone — nearly all of it from undisclosed donors — and paid [founder] Kimberly Kagan herself over a quarter million dollars to peddle war escalation narratives under the banner of ‘trusted analysis’,” Goodman says.

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The Rise And Fall Of The West’s Propaganda Regime

Propaganda used to control Western democracies is running headlong into searchable facts freely available on the internet. As a result, the powerful cannot maintain their self-sustaining narratives and are behaving erratically and defensively, like bees when their nest is disturbed.

Opposition leaders in France, Romania, and Brazil have been barred from elections. They were accused of spreading “disinformation” and then prosecuted for unrelated crimes. In the United States, the same lawfare was attempted against President Trump, but he won anyway.

Sun Tzu’s first principle of war is “know the enemy,” but knowledge is difficult in an information war. Propaganda plants lies in every soul. In 1928, the father of modern public relations, Edward Bernay (who also happened to be the nephew of Sigmund Freud), wrote in his book Propaganda:

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.

Propaganda works by contrasting two sides. Empathy for an opponent’s position is systematically removed by control of information. Public policy filtered through propaganda is always a binary choice.

In wartime, “us versus them” in a “kill or be killed” conflict provides the necessary binary, and propaganda writes itself. Domestic propaganda in peacetime is a bit trickier but works the same way: by staking out two sides.

Mass media permits distinct information sources. Elections award one side or the other with temporary political rule, but power is never actually surrendered. Each side simply acts as a fulcrum for the other side to pivot. Wedge issues inject urgency, but they are designed to produce a stalemate.

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