#document type: disinformation

[eoinmcgonigal]

disinformation campaign

[kenobihater]

these are my three fave cards from the "our tarot", a feminist deck i picked up a while ago. i like the devil and the tower cards bc of how spot on the historical figures are with the meaning of the cards, and i adore the eight of wands bc lyudmila pavlichenko is one of my fave historical figures of all time

[kesarijournal]

Twittersphere Turmoil and Miami Mayhem: The Unending Chronicles of Tucker and Trump

In the world of political satire, there are few characters as ripe for parody as Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump. Picture this: In a world where Twitter has become the last bastion of free speech, Tucker Carlson, the ousted Fox News star, has taken to the platform with a vengeance. His new series, “Tucker on Twitter,” is a hit, much to the chagrin of his former employer. Fox News, in a desperate…

[dalekofchaos]

JK Rowling is in full Holocaust denial now.

Harry Potter fans, here is your favorite author doing Holocaust denial that I've only ever heard from the most farthest of far right idealogues. She's been posting about this continually after being presented with documentation of repression and murder.

There is evidence that it happened.

The source of the article

The Nazis targeted and burnt valuable trans research. This is fact. It’s concerning how far she’s falling down the extreme anti-trans rabbit hole & denying reality. She encourages disinformation that’s harming trans people.

“In the midst of the burning, Joseph Goebbels gave a political speech to a crowd of around 40,000 people”

They literally had a political rally in the middle of burning the institutes library. The fact that Rowling would try to deny this is really sick.

But at this point I'm not surprised about anything this vile woman says. She surrounds herself around with Neo-Nazis and her beliefs has led to actual deaths of Trans people.

Let me be perfectly clear. If you are denying the Holocaust in any shape or form, you are a fucking Nazi. JK Rowling is a fucking Nazi.

Update. George Takei came for her ass

[fairuzfan]

hey what's an esim

Esims are digital Sim cards (as opposed to the physical Sim cards you put in your phone) that provide you regional network access. Buying esims for gaza and sudan, for example, will help people whose internet is restricted, or unavailable, connect to the regional network, thereby the internet and phone network. The esims are used specifically in Gaza because Israel consistently bombs the telecommunications areas so it acts as a substitute for regional specific communications networks like paltel (the Gaza specific communications company). People in Gaza use the esims in cases like if they're under rubble and still alive, and need people to get them out of the rubble so they call someone using the esim access. They're also used by journalists and other social media users to document instances of violence by Israel by using the electronic Sim card to gain access to internet. In other words, esims save lives and directly contribute to fighting disinformation.

I hope this answers your question. If not feel free to send in another ask.

If you'd like to learn more about esims and how to purchase them, please visit gazaesims.com

I believe there is something for sudan as well. There is currently a blackout there right now:

I don't know if there's currently a drive for Sudan as well, if someone finds something please add on to this post.

[qqueenofhades]

I really really REALLY need to see more people makimg the connection between trump and his russian handlers tbh.......like i know we've somehow gone through the looking glass of putin apologia but that piece abt the NYT you just posted, the bots, the interference: in the bag for trump? Yes. But i dont believe its due to his or even republican power or popularity or forcefulness.......this is a man with so much debt and kompromat thats only getting worse!! Not to sound kwazy BUT WE ARE BEING FULLY INFLITRATED and at the risk of conspiracizing i think the russians are ALSO behind the Times's demise along with so many other information centers etc. Like i KNOW these leftists love him but like. Wouldnt they care a LITTLE abt being manipulated like this???

Trump is 100% an active, willing, and eager Russian agent. That's not even paranoid conspiracy theory, that's just the only reasonable interpretation of the facts:

NOT TO MENTION that in the next two years after the Helsinki conference where Trump kowtowed to Putin in every way, the CIA admitted to losing huge and unusually high numbers of classified informants around the world (not CIA agents, but people secretly working for the American government in often-hostile countries):

Once again, this all happened when Trump was in office, when he was actively handing over CIA intel to the Kremlin against the wishes of the entire national security establishment, and which other experts have suggested was directly as a result of Trump handing over the identities of American informants to Russia, including those stationed in Russia itself:

Now, I could go on, but you get the point. Not to mention that Trump just lost a major UK-based lawsuit against Christopher Steele, the former MI6 agent who was the first to provide documents linking Trump to Russia in the controversial "Steele dossier":

And now: Trump is deeply in hock for hundreds of millions in legal fees and punitive judgments that are only increasing by the day, he somehow just came up with $90 million to appeal the judgment against E. Jean Carroll (nobody knows where he got this money either), and Russian state TV spends all their time openly salivating for Trump's return to the presidency (so he can hand over Ukraine and the rest of NATO and, as he literally said, "let Russia do whatever the hell they want.") I know we're largely numb to all the awful treasonous shit that Trump does, but like. This isn't a conspiracy theory, this is just what's going on in plain sight, and while the Online Leftists have recently become so stupid that I honestly can't tell if it's just terminal brainworms or active Russian psyops, it's strongly indicated that it is in fact a mix of both:

So, like. Just some food for thought.

[insert-witty-user-name-here]

Random Plot Points

A little about me as a writer, I love daydreaming about adventure stories. I usually know the general set up and larger plot points but oftentimes struggle with the how, how do characters get from point A to point B. 

So, I made a list of random challenges for my characters that I look at when I'm stuck.

Sharing in case helpful to others! (intended for adventure, sci-fi, fantasy stories) 

characters are delayed/blocked/experience a natural disaster (storm, fire, flood, avalanche, earthquake, epidemic, etc) (BONUS and forced to take a detour from the original path)

character(s) is trapped (quick sand, fall through ice, in room filling with poison, on sinking ship, in a trash compactor on the Death Star, etc) (BONUS- fall into hidden room and discover something) 

characters go to a festival/ball/party/political summit (where inevitably it all goes wrong)

character(s) overhears a secret (at bar, at party, from a whispered conversation below them in a stairway, etc) 

characters are attacked by an animal or mysterious force 

characters(s) caught in a mob/riot

character wins/loses something in a bet

character is brainwashed or possessed 

character is stranded/lost

character is poisoned 

character succumbs to injury or illness 

characters are chased/ attacked by antagonists 

character is captured or arrested (and needs to be rescued)

character is kidnapped and kidnappers make a demand for their release (financial ransom, exchange of information, prisoner exchange, etc) 

character(s) go undercover to retrieve information

characters decide to steal something they need for their quest (weapon, magical object, money, information, etc). (BONUS- time for a well-planned heist!) 

characters need to protect/ retrieve/ destroy something 

characters uncover a network of spies (up to you if they're unexpected allies or antagonists)  

characters discover hidden passageway, room, ruins etc that leads to an important clue

characters forced to hide from someone/something

characters need to escape 

characters lured into trap set by villain (BONUS if the villain doesn't even care who wins but only goaded them to learn how a magical object works, the extent of heroes powers, emergency response system of a government, etc) 

characters set trap for villain (BONUS- use someone or something important as bait) (if in Act 2, they fail) 

characters reveal critical information to villain in disguise 

a character is mistaken for someone else (and then is wrongfully arrested, receives information not intended for them, etc) 

characters receive help (hitch a ride, get help hiding from captors, get help escaping somewhere, etc) from an unlikely new ally 

characters forced to team up with an unlikely ally/ morally grey character, etc

characters learn something from simple library research (an oldie but a goodie)

characters just literally just stumble upon or witness something important (secret weapon, secret society etc) 

characters uncover a secret map/ coded message on the back of an old unassuming document (time for a classic treasure hunt!) 

someone escapes from prison (an old villain or an old ally) that changes the quest 

someone is being blackmailed (or otherwise forced to act against the protagonists)

someone is discredited (rumor, disinformation campaign etc) 

something stolen from your characters 

something (document, magical object, money) turns out to be fake

OR, something unassuming turns out to have special powers or meaning  

something is hacked (defense system, infrastructure, bank, private records, etc)

something critical is attacked (important bridge, port, bank/ financial system, safehouse, capitol building, character's familial home, etc.)

a computer virus is unleashed 

a biological weapon is unleashed 

a piece of information the characters believed was true, is false 

an ancient myth turns out to be true 

a secret is made public 

A law is changed or a vote on a critical piece of legislation loses/wins 

a political opponent wins an election/ a political ally loses an election 

character(s) help a passerby (from raiders, local tyrant, beast, mystical force, etc) 

characters "follow the money" and realize someone who was thought to be their ally is actually working for... (crime syndicate, villain, local tyrant etc) 

[odinsblog]

Caveat Lector 🚨🚨🚨

Donald Trump supporters have been creating and sharing AI-generated fake images of black voters to encourage African Americans to vote Republican.

BBC Panorama discovered dozens of deepfakes portraying black people as supporting the former president.

Mr. Trump has openly courted black voters, who were key to Joe Biden's election win in 2020.

But there's no evidence directly linking these images to Mr. Trump's campaign.

The co-founder of Black Voters Matter, a group which encourages black people to vote, said the manipulated images were pushing a “strategic narrative” designed to show Mr. Trump as popular in the black community.

A creator of one of the images told the BBC: “I'm not claiming it's accurate.”

The fake images of black Trump supporters, generated by artificial intelligence (AI), are one of the emerging disinformation trends ahead of the US presidential election in November.

Unlike in 2016, when there was evidence of foreign influence campaigns, the AI-generated images found by the BBC appear to have been made and shared by US voters themselves.

One of them was Mark Kaye and his team at a conservative radio show in Florida.

They created an image of Mr. Trump smiling with his arms around a group of black women at a party and shared it on Facebook, where Mr. Kaye has more than one million followers.

At first it looks real, but on closer inspection everyone's skin is a little too shiny and there are missing fingers on people's hands - some tell-tale signs of AI-created images.

“I'm not a photojournalist,” Mr. Kaye tells me from his radio studio. “I'm not out there taking pictures of what's really happening. I'm a storyteller.”

Disinformation tactics in the US presidential elections have evolved since 2016, when Donald Trump won. Back then, there were documented attempts by hostile foreign powers, such as Russia, to use networks of inauthentic accounts to try to sow division and plant particular ideas.

In 2020, the focus was on home-grown disinformation - particularly false narratives that the presidential election was stolen, which were shared widely by US-based social media users and endorsed by Mr. Trump and other Republican politicians.

In 2024, experts warn of a dangerous combination of the two.

(continue reading)

[eoinmcgonigal]

disinformation campaign

also directly @ all fans of the show :')

[allthecanadianpolitics]

A report newly tabled at the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference shows Canadian authorities have been monitoring bots and fake accounts linked to India’s governing party that have been observed interfering in Canada’s “digital information ecosystem,” including through coordinated harassment campaigns targeting Canadian activists, journalists and politicians.

According to a report by Rapid Response Mechanism Canada, a subsection of Global Affairs Canada set-up to monitor foreign disinformation, “pro-BJP” influencers and media outlets “worked in concert” and were linked to a network of “covert or automated accounts” on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube targeting an activist from Canada’s Sikh community.

The report notes the data was collected by the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab, which had been contracted by Global Affairs Canada. [...]

Coordinated targeting and online harassment of Sikhs in Canada has been well documented over the years, including misinformation campaigns by Indian nationalists. [...]

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

Notes from the poster @el-shab-hussein: Hm. I think this is a hate crime by proxy aimed at Jagmeet Singh. Like I think we shouldn't ignore the fact that Justin Trudeau was bolstered by a regime that is currently creating hate campaigns targetting people like Jagmeet Singh specifically for their faith. Specifically during election campaigns where he had to go up against Singh. I don't think this should be overlooked at all and I don't think it's a coincidence.

[acti-veg]

Experts say the documents show the fossil fuel industry had intimate involvement in the inception of modern climate science, along with its warnings of the severe harm climate change will wreak, only to then publicly deny this science for decades and fund ongoing efforts to delay action on the climate crisis.

“They contain smoking gun proof that by at least 1954, the fossil fuel industry was on notice about the potential for its products to disrupt Earth’s climate on a scale significant to human civilization,” said Geoffrey Supran, an expert in historic climate disinformation at the University of Miami.

“These findings are a startling confirmation that big oil has had its finger on the pulse of academic climate science for 70 years – for twice my lifetime – and a reminder that it continues to do so to this day. They make a mockery of the oil industry’s denial of basic climate science decades later.”

[huariqueje]

In this special edition, we compile our reporting on Israel’s war on Gaza – documenting the information war as it has played out since October 7.

In 17 years of The Listening Post, we have never seen a story anything like Israel’s war on Gaza.

It has been a turning point for the world order as we know it and its media ecosystem – which is why, since October 7, we have covered nothing else.

In this special edition, we compiled our reporting on the Gaza war over the past 12 weeks. The extent of the brutality, a genocide unfolding in plain sight; the sheer volume of disinformation, designed to defend the indefensible; and the complicity of so many Western news outlets – repeatedly exposed for failing to question Israeli propaganda, then spreading it.

[fairuzfan]

I think it's very telling that the crowd that was so anti-disinformation had uncritically spread the idea that "Palestinian activists targeted Goldie's only cuz it was a Jewish business" and not because of the documented donations to the IDF completely unprompted lol

[leviathan-supersystem]

You seem knowledgeable on the USSR, can you do a debunking of this post, or link me a source which debunks it?

https://www.tumblr.com/sanson-ki-mala-pe/746822120828502016/soviet-antisemitism-a-hundred-years-of-recycling

i don;t have time to address every claim made here, but it jumps out to me immediately that the source they're referencing, "More than a Century of Antisemitism: How Successive Occupants of the Kremlin Have Used Antisemitism to Spread Disinformation and Propaganda" is quite literally published by the US Department of State, and that this document in turn uses as one of it's major sources the Romanian defector Ion Mihai Pacepa, a controversial figure who's various claims have been frequently called into doubt even by those sympathetic to his cause.

for example, in this book review by the national catholic register [link], the author of the review, who is plainly sympathetic to Pacepa's anti-communist goals, nonetheless casts doubt on many of the claims he makes:

In the article “Moscow’s Assault on the Vatican,” published in 2007, Pacepa  claimed he convinced legendary Vatican diplomat Msgr. Agostino Casaroli — later cardinal and secretary of state under Pope John Paul II — to let three Romanian agents, posing as priests, peruse the papal archives. Under scrutiny, Pacepa’s story began to unravel, with doubts expressed by historians and Vatican experts. Then the reason Pacepa claimed to have credibility with the Vatican collapsed: He said he had engineered a “spy trade” in 1959, exchanging jailed Romanian Archbishop Augustin Pacha for two spies caught in West Germany. But Archbishop Ioan Robu of Bucharest showed photos of the bishop’s 1954 crypt, explaining the heroic man was already dead when Pacepa claimed to have liberated him.

[...]

Vatican diplomats Cardinals Giovanni Cheli and Luigi Poggi were involved in negotiations with Romania and the Soviet bloc. Cardinal Cheli called Pacepa’s allegations “untruthful scenarios,” while Cardinal Poggi declared them “the product of a troubled mind and soul.” Archbishop Robu, who was consecrated by Cardinal Casaroli, emphatically calls the Pacepa account false: “We would know, it would be in our memories, if Romanian spies gained access to the Vatican Archives. It didn’t happen.”

[...]

In Disinformation, Pacepa credits KGB operations with everything from plotting the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy to provoking the rise of Islamic extremism. In each scenario, he portrays himself as a witness to history — when his true rank and job description would never explain access to these events or decisions.

another similarly anti-communist catholic source is the catholic review, the official publication of the archdioces of baltimore. [link] they write:

Mr. Rychlak, the author of two books on Pope Pius and World War II, said he thinks Mr. Pacepa’s account needs to be verified in the Soviet archives. “Pacepa’s timing is questionable. Why hasn’t this story been revealed until now? I hope the United States government will declassify any information it has on this important matter, to spare the time a Freedom of Information Act request takes,” said Mr. Rychlak. John Cornwell, the British author of a 1999 book, “Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII,” told CNS he has never heard the claims described by Mr. Pacepa and considers them “most unlikely.” “As a supporter of NATO and the Western Alliance, it’s not inconceivable the pope could have been targeted (by the KGB). But I haven’t seen any credible documents indicating anyone doctored material,” said Mr. Cornwell, whose book was criticized by church officials for its negative portrayal of Pope Pius. Former colleagues of Mr. Pacepa, 79, expressed doubts about his story. “Between 1960 and 1962, when he pretends he ran Vatican spies, he was in Bucharest, assigned as a deputy in the techno-scientific section of Securitate (the Romanian secret police), where he stayed until he defected in 1978,” said a former high-ranking Securitate officer who would not allow his name to be used. “In the chain of command he would not have had direct communication with the KGB generals. If he did, that would make him a Soviet agent, not a Romanian one,” the source added. “In 1959, Pacepa was in Germany under diplomatic cover. He was a captain in Cologne with a degree in chemistry and belonged to the techno-scientific section. Again, the KGB generals wouldn’t have taken him into consideration,” said the source, who believes Mr. Pacepa is trying to build a “mysterious aura” for himself in his later years. “Why did he wait 29 years (since his defection) to reveal this? If it’s true, it would have made so much sense to put it on the table in 1981, after the Soviet-Bulgarian plot to assassinate Pope John Paul II,” the source said. A former Romanian diplomat of the communist era, who has advised the U.S. government, expressed “deep doubts” about the account. “Pacepa is not a serious source,” said the former diplomat. “His book ‘Red Horizons’ (1988) is about one-third fiction. He takes some real facts, and then invents. “I’m afraid he is just trying to bring attention to his persona. He invokes the Vatican because the Romanian Securitate has been exhausted and is a marginal issue,” he added. “Pacepa does not document. Given the gravity of the affirmations he makes, in order to be credible, he must unveil the source, himself, or otherwise it is fiction,” said the retired diplomat.

given Ion Mihai Pacepa's overall track record, i would certainly like to see some other source verifying the various claims that the "More Than A Century Of Antisemitism" cites from him, most especially the claim that the USSR distributed copies of the Protocols in arabic in the middle east, a claim I cannot find any other source for.

Edit: also i should note that one of the major thrusts of the "More Than A Century Of Antisemitism" document is to smear all criticism of Azov in Ukraine as somehow antisemitic, which is just ludicrous. regardless of how you feel about the war in Ukraine, there are legitimate criticisms to be made of Azov Battalion and the role they have played there.

[analogconstruct]

i see a lot of the same misconceptions in syscourse almost all the time, despite the many syscoursers who work to try and debunk that misinformation again and again. it makes me want to make some sort of syscourse FAQ or document that lists and disproves common misunderstandings/disinformation with sources/evidence, so that less people fall into the same traps (and so we can stop having to deal with correcting the same untruths over & over)

obviously it wouldnt be a cure for disinformation, because a lot of anti-endos dont care to do any actual research (the "im not reading all that" crowd), but i would hope that if i made such a document that people who actually give a fuck could read it and recognize what syscourse arguments are falsehoods, and what the truth actually is