#Sputnik News

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Caroline Orr Bueno at Weaponized Spaces Substack:

More than 100 people have died in the devastating Hawaii fires, and officials expect that figure to go up as search and rescue efforts continue, making this the deadliest wildfire in modern U.S. history. But as people fled for their lives on the ground, a coordinated campaign on Twitter was exploiting their personal tragedy to undermine support for Ukraine, which is facing a crisis of its own.

Last week, I noted that a particular talking point about the Hawaii wildfires — specifically, one that used the phrase “Hawaii, not Ukraine” to pressure the Biden administration to send relief funds to Hawaii instead of Ukraine — was gaining traction on Twitter and appeared to have been the product of a narrative that was initially seeded with inauthentic activity. The narrative, which started on Aug. 9 with a tweet from a low-follower account created in July 2023, was quickly picked up by a network of right-wing influencers and became so voluminous that it showed up in the results of nearly every Hawaii-related hashtag or trending keyword. The purpose of the campaign was clearly to promote divisiveness and make people think that the U.S. was neglecting Hawaii while sending continuing aid to Ukraine — with the ultimate goal of undermining public support for providing continued assistance to Ukraine. It’s all based on a false narrative, as I explain later, but before we get into that, let’s look at the coordinated activity driving it. To explore this campaign further, I analyzed a sample of 200 tweets containing the phrase “Hawaii not Ukraine,” and also purposively sampled the earliest tweets using that phrase to investigate the origins of the phrase and determine where it came from and how it spread throughout this network of right-wing accounts (and later, Russian state media), and also to assess whether there was any evidence of inauthentic activity, coordination, or platform manipulation. [...]

Russian State Media Amplifies Narrative

A few days after this narrative was seeded and picked up by right-wing influencers, Russia joined in and started boosting the same talking points. In a series of tweets and articles this week, Russian state media outlets RT and Sputnik promoted a variety of narratives claiming that Biden is ignoring Hawaii while giving his attention to Ukraine. RT used one of its favorite tactics — quoting an American to convey a Russia-friendly talking point — by highlighting Ron Paul’s criticism of Biden’s “indifference over the Maui fires” even as he pushed for more aid for Ukraine, while Sputnik promoted narratives that framed Biden as dishonest and uncaring.

This is unsurprising, of course, given that the entire point of the narrative is to criticize Biden’s response to the fires and undermine support for Ukraine by convincing people that continuing to support Ukraine means not supporting Hawaii, or at least not giving it the support it needs. However, even though it’s predictable that Russia would propagate this narrative, trends like this are always important to observe and document, given the close ties between Russian state media and Russian intelligence. These public activities provide a relatively reliable indicator of Russia’s priorities and strategic interests, as well insight into the narratives they believe are helpful and the tactics they use to propagate and expand on those narratives.

As I noted on Twitter a few days ago, Russia’s involvement in amplifying propaganda aimed at fostering isolationism and undermining public support for continuing to provide aid to Ukraine is just a small part of its long-running information war targeting the West. Russia is quite effective at identifying and exploiting existing tensions and divisions in the U.S. and other Western nations, often using a combination of information-laundering, cross-platform persona accounts, outward-facing propaganda sites like RT and Sputnik, and paid local media. This has allowed them to continue engaging in the narrative wars even as many of their official accounts have been banned or restricted on major social platforms due to their invasion of Ukraine and subsequent involvement in war crimes and human rights violations. Russia is known to have a large number of dormant social media accounts on various platforms that they can (and do) activate when necessary, for a variety of purposes, including posing as citizens of other countries and seeding pro-Russia narratives in a way that looks homegrown and local.

For example, if Russia wanted to spread a conspiracy theory to blame the U.S. military for starting the Hawaii fires by experimenting with directed energy weapons, they may deploy networks of fake personas to start expressing concerns about this on social media, knowing that it will eventually get picked up by local bloggers and fringe media. Or, they may use their extensive network of proxy websites — i.e., sites that are not obviously Russian state media, but are linked to Russian intelligence — to publish ghostwritten articles that are sometimes even authored by personas created by Russia’s military intelligence agency. In a similar form of information-laundering, Russia may publish an article about directed energy weapons through a proxy website or state media outlet, then wait for people to start commenting about it on social media, and then use those social media comments as the basis to write articles about how Americans are worried that the Hawaii fires were started by directed energy weapons controlled by the military. By laundering Russian propaganda so that it appears to be homegrown, local, and organic, Russia is able to manufacture more convincing, persuasive narratives — and in many instances, those narratives are then echoed by the likes of Fox News, Tucker Carlson, Tulsi Gabbard, etc., at which point Russia knows that it has succeed in injecting foreign propaganda into the bloodstream of America. [...]

Of course, there’s room for legitimate criticism of the government’s response to the Hawaii fires. Survivors describe the response as “slow, inadequate, and uncoordinated,” according to the Washington Post.

“Some are struggling to find housing and daily necessities. Others say they lack medical aid, generators and transportation to recovery centers to hear news of their missing loved ones,” WaPo reported. “It’s often not clear who is in charge among local officials, the National Guard, the Coast Guard and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, some say.” But these failures aren’t because the U.S. is providing support to Ukraine, and the U.S. isn’t withholding money from people in Hawaii so it can go to Ukraine instead. In fact, according to the Ukraine Support Tracker, only 24% of US aid to Ukraine is purely financial, while 43% is military aid in the form of equipment and weaponry. Hawaii doesn’t need military equipment and weapons — it needs disaster response, and we’ve known for years that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is woefully unprepared, under-resourced, and understaffed given the increasing rate and severity of natural disasters in the U.S. Beyond these problems, FEMA’s policies mean that the agency often fails to help those who need it the most — and again, we’ve known about this for years. Furthermore, as we saw during COVID, there is often a lack of coordination and mutual understanding between local, state, and federal agencies, which slows down the entire process and often leaves local agencies — those with the most experience, familiarity, and knowledge of the situation on-the-ground — little choice but to sit and wait for the federal government to get there, and hope that they’ll bring the right supplies and people with them. Of course, getting those supplies to an island nearly 3,000 miles away also complicates things just a bit.

Russian media and right-wing media outlets using the "Hawaii, not Ukraine" agitprop to exploit the Hawaiian wildfires to spread anti-Ukraine aid sentiments. #HawaiiWildfires

[gvtnoticias]

Científicos regeneran los nervios de dedos con una bioimpresora 3D

BIOIMPRESIONES. Científicos japoneses regeneraron con éxito los nervios periféricos de las manos de tres pacientes con el uso de una bioimpresora 3D. El Hospital de la Universidad de Kioto informó que el uso de dichas tecnologías permitió la regeneración y mejora en la vida de tres pacientes. Según la agencia Jiji Press, los investigadores usaron una bioimpresora 3D de la empresa Cyfuse…

[atomic-chronoscaph]

1980s album covers

[sovietpostcards]

Ded Moroz arrives to a children's New Year party in a sputnik troika. Photo by A. Cheprunov (Kremlin hall, Moscow, Dec. 1958).

[please-let-this-work-oh-my-god]

We won, yaoi enjoyers

[krakenmare]

New Horizons: Mountainous Shoreline of Sputnik Planum, Pluto (July 14, 2015)

[thecosmicsailor]

“Sorry, pal. Looks like you drew th’ short straw with that information a’ yers.”

(Or: Murdering witnesses is always more fun with eyes watching, but since ze can’t risk any cameras being around, Souma just has to make do with all her paintings.)

[ozkar-krapo]

SIGUE SIGUE SPUTNIK

"Love Missile F1-11 / Hack Attack"

(7". Parlophone. 1986) [GB]

[robinwaaaaa]

Sputnik 1 is 6x as heavy as Explorer. So, it is possible that he could carry him...

Oh, totally. But Sputnik's all about surprises, so why stop there?

(They live in low earth orbit with zero-G so it technically works both ways.)

[vyorei]

Nice one Bahrain

[spaceintruderdetector]

Sigue Sigue Sputnik / Love Missile F1-11

[workersolidarity]

🇷🇺🇺🇲 🚨 SPUTNIK JOURNALIST BARRED ENTRY FROM BIDEN-ZELENSKY VISIT, DESPITE PROPER CREDENTIALS 🪪

Sputnik correspondent Pavel Zakovorotny was not allowed into the Biden-Zelensky press conference hall on the White House grounds.

The journalist registered for the event a day in advance, his name was on the list, but a White House representative told the correspondent that there were no empty seats in the hall.

At the same time, he was the only one who didn’t have enough space - dozens of other journalists waiting at the entrance for the event to start were able to get into it.

Via@RiaNovosti

#source

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[olivia2010kroth]

Новая Заря: Спутник / New Dawn: Sputnik (1958)

Новая Заря: Спутник / New Dawn: Sputnik (1958) Спутник – это аромат для женщин, он принадлежит к группе цветочные фруктовые, выпущен в 1958 году. Sputnik is a fragrance for ladies, it belongs to the floral, fruity group. This perfume came out, in 1958. Верхние ноты:цветок апельсина, персик, бархатцы и шалфей Top notes:orange blossom, peach, marigold and sage бархатцы / marigold: Средние…

[pepikhipik]

Elon Musk je spoluhráčem Kremlu a Číny

Twitter z účtů médií odstranil značku „se státem spojené médium“, a to včetně propagandy diktatur, jako jsou ruské Russia Today (RT) a Sputnik a čínské Sin-chua a Global Times.

Je nějaký problém, aby se lidé a instituce vzájemně domluvili, kam z Twitteru odejdou? Nebo jsou tak závislí na jeho Twitteru, který čím dál více slouží propagaci zla? Chytrá a nezávislé média už odešla, například: NPR a PBS, kanadské CBC, rozhlasová stanice Sveriges Radio.

Musksův Twitter smazal štítky, které uživatele upozorňovaly na to, že čtou zprávy ze státních propagandistických kanálů autoritářských vlád

Mise splněna. Zatímco se všichni rozptylovali odstraňováním modrých ověřovacích ikon, Musksův Twitter smazal štítky, které uživatele upozorňovaly, že čtou zprávy ze státních propagandistických kanálů autoritářských vlád. Potěmkinovské zpravodajské kanály nyní mohou volně vnášet dezinformace.

[73ghosts]

New Years Resolutions

Take better care of body

Go out with friends and make quality memories

Read more books (flex that library card)

Draw more or draw higher quality art

Graduate summa cum laude

Make friends outside of school

Work on being more emotionally available

Spend money on frivolous things

Write more

[krakenmare]

New Horizons: Frozen, former lake of liquid nitrogen, located in a mountain range just north of Pluto's informally named Sputnik Planum (July 14, 2015)