#pro russia network

[tilos-tagebuch]

This is the Ukrainian pro-Russian disinformation list - which of course will be shared all across NATOstan. Very pleased to see scores of dear friends. Do follow all of us - and have a wonderful life.

Source: Pepe Escobar on Telegram

[charlesoberonn]

Fascist and pro-Putin propagandists Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk are trying to exploit the fact there're no good English sources on Gonzalo Lira to pass off their narrative that he's some brave dissident persecuted by a cruel tyrannical Zelensky.

Gonzalo Lira isn't a journalist. He's a YouTuber. He wasn't arrested for criticizing the Zelensky government (he's been doing it for years), he was arrested on suspicion of collusion with the Russian government.

The fact he's been spreading pro-Russia propaganda and disinformation since the before the war, appeared on Russian state-owned networks, and has a Russian official pleading on his behalf, makes me suspect the same thing.

As for the torture, that is just a straight up fabrication. No source for it whatsoever.

I know the Ukraine war has been bumped off the radar of a lot of people by newer flashier conflicts, but it's still extremely important to support Ukraine and the Ukrainian people against Putin's invasion and his many cronies like Tucker and Elon.

[contemplatingoutlander]

TIMOTHY SNYDER: I am sending around "Oligarchs’ Island" again, in the immodest conviction that this little satire will have more analytic and predictive power than most of what you read or watch this coming year. snyder.substack.com/p/oligarchs-...

"Oligarchy is an island.  Aristotle knew that oligarchs from various countries will have more in common with one another than they will with their own people.  This is all too true of Trump and the oligarchs he brings to power in America." --Timothy Snyder

Timothy Snyder creates an unusual metaphor in "Oligarchs' Island," that nevertheless works. Below is the "cast."

Gilligan = Elon Musk, "the South African Putinist oligarch.... Like Gilligan, Musk bumbles with language and relationships and everything else, but has an undeniable centrality to the plot and to life on the island." 

The Skipper = David Sachs, "the South African Putinist venture capitalist.... Sachs is, of all of our characters the most devoted proponent of the Russian dream.... If anyone on Oligarchs’ Island diverges from the Putinist line, they can expect humorless discipline from Sachs." 

Thurston Howell (The Millionaire) = Peter Thiel, "the American investor with New Zealand citizenship, born in Germany and raised in South Africa.... Just as Thurston Howell was disturbed by Gilligan's frantic activity, Thiel can be displeased with Musk.... Howell refuses to work; Thiel activates others to do destructive one another." 

 Lovey Howell (The Millionaire's wife)= JD Vance--"Lovey is a subordinate character to Thurston on Gilligan's Island, just as Vance is Thiel's client.... Both Lovey and JD are vain about appearance and correspondingly bold in their cosmetic choices."

Ginger Grant = Donald Trump--"these two characters share character and career. Both are vain entertainers.... Both are sensitive to the appearance that they might not matter that much to the overall plot."  

The Professor = Vladimir Putin, "Russian dictator and in all likelihood the world's wealthiest man. Whenever the people stranded on Gilligan's Island have a problem, they turn to the Professor.... The Professor has a dark secret: he is not as competent as the others think.... Putin also has secrets.... He knows that the Russia of its own propaganda does not exist, that the oligarchs' dream is a nightmare.  He also knows that today's oligarchs are tomorrow's victims."  

 Mary Ann = Usha Vance--"Mary Ann is the forgotten character on Gilligan's Island, the one who is perhaps more than she seems.  She knows how to remain in the background, but in fact has skills that the men around her lack.... she develops plans and cultivates allies."

Here's an excerpt showing how "Oligarch's Island" works as a metaphor:

I suspect that... thinking of an Oligarchs' Island sitcom episode will accurately predict what these people will do.  Consider what is happening right now as episode 1 of season 1: Ginger (Trump) has the idea that she should make her own decisions about the members of her cabinet (cue recorded laughter).  Some Americans not involved in Russian networks such as Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley share the belief (cue recorded laughter) that they might join Ginger's cabinet (more cued laughter here, obvious misunderstanding of the Putinist logic of Oligarchs' Island).  Those two Americans maintain that Russia was wrong to invade Ukraine, and so are predictably rejected by the Russian-South African oligarchy.  The Skipper (Sachs) is on the case with a stern tweet: Ginger's appointments must be pro-Russian.  Ginger follows with her own submissive tweet, discarding Pompeo and Haley.  Ginger hopes to at least get her instructions directly from the Professor (Putin).  Ginger claims that she was able to call the Professor (cue laughter).  The Professor denies the call took place (cue more laughter).  Ginger says she asked the Professor not to escalate in Ukraine.  The next day Ukraine suffered one of the biggest drone attacks of the war.  Then the Russians blew up another dam in Ukraine. Those things happened.  The ridiculous and the criminal.

[edited]

____________________ NOTE.:The Gilligan image was modified from its original Bluesky source to emulate the typical formatting of substack's automated quotes.

[sonyaheaneyauthor]

Tulsi Gabbard’s history with Russia is even more concerning than you think

“What happened in Syria is what allowed the Russians to feel that they could do the very same in Ukraine,” he said.

“And what she is doing with Ukraine shows that it goes beyond her maybe misunderstanding one conflict. She is, hook, line and sinker, a Russian puppet.”

In the summer of 2015, three Syrian girls who had narrowly survived an airstrike some weeks earlier stood before Tulsi Gabbard with horrific burns all over their bodies.

Gabbard, then a US congresswoman on a visit to the Syria-Turkey border as part of her duties for the foreign affairs committee, had a question for them.

“How do you know it was Bashar al-Assad or Russia that bombed you, and not Isis?’” she asked, according to Mouaz Moustafa, a Syrian activist who was translating her conversation with the girls.

It was a revealing insight into Gabbard’s conspiratorial views of the conflict, and it shocked Moustafa to silence. He knew, as even the young children did, that Isis did not have jets to launch airstrikes. It was such an absurd question that he chose not to translate it because he didn’t want to upset the girls, the eldest of whom was 12.

“From that point on, I’m sorry to say I was inaccurate in my translations of anything she said,” Moustafa told The Independent. “It was more like: How do I get these girls away from this devil?”

Even before Gabbard left the Democratic Party, ingratiated herself with Donald Trump and secured his nomination to become director of National Intelligence, she was known as a prolific peddler of Russian propaganda.

In almost every foreign conflict in which Russia had a hand, Gabbard backed Moscow and railed against the US. Her past promotion of Kremlin propaganda has provoked significant opposition on both sides of the aisle to her nomination.

Her journey from anti-war Democrat to Moscow-friendly Maga warrior began in Syria. The devastating conflict was sparked by pro-democracy uprisings in 2011, which were brutally crushed by the Assad regime. It descended into a complex web of factions that drew extremist Islamists from around the world and global powers into the fray.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based monitoring group with a network of sources on the ground, documented the deaths of 503,064 people by March 2023. It said at least 162,390 civilians had died in that same time, with the Syrian government and its allies responsible for 139,609 of those deaths.

But Gabbard, a veteran of the Iraq War, viewed it all as a “regime-change war” fueled by the West and aimed at removing the dictator from power. She saw Assad – and Russia, when it entered the conflict – as legitimate defenders of the state against an extremist uprising.

In 2015, when Russia entered the Syrian war on the side of the dictator Assad, Gabbard expressed support for the move, even as the civilian toll from Moscow’s devastating airstrikes grew into the thousands.

“Al-Qaeda attacked us on 9/11 and must be defeated. Obama won’t bomb them in Syria. Putin did. #neverforget911,” she wrote on Twitter.

It was precisely because of her support for Assad and Russia’s war that Moustafa was keen for her to attend the congressional delegation to southern Turkey to meet the victims of the conflict.

“From experience, everyone that we bring over to the border, and they see the victims, they always come back with a realistic view of what’s happening and who is behind the mass displacement and killing and atrocities and so on, and so that was the objective,” he said. “What was shocking was her lack of empathy. She’ll sacrifice the facts, even when it came to little girls in front of her telling her they got bombed by a plane – it didn’t matter.”

Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute who testified twice on Syria to the House Foreign Affairs Committee when Gabbard was a member, spent years debunking her various conspiracy theories about the war.

“Her consistent denial of the Syrian regime’s crimes is so wildly fringe that her potential appointment as DNI is genuinely alarming,” he told The Independent.

Lister said her views “appear to be driven by a strange fusion of America First isolationism and a belief in the value of autocratic and secular leaders in confronting extremism.”

They included a suggestion that Syrian rebels staged a false-flag chemical weapons attack against their supporters to provoke Western intervention against Assad — something the US intelligence agencies she will soon lead had concluded was false. She declined to call Assad a war criminal when pressed, despite masses of evidence, and used a video of Syrian government bombings to criticize US involvement in the war.

“Her descriptions of the crisis in Syria read like they were composed in Assad’s personal office, or in Tehran or Moscow – not Washington,” Lister added.

Gabbard was not swayed by meeting the victims of Assad’s airstrikes in 2015. In fact, two years later, she went to Damascus to meet the Syrian president in person and came away even more convinced of her opinions.

The congresswoman said her visit to meet Assad – the first by a sitting US lawmaker since the conflict began – was aimed at bringing an end to the war.

“I felt it’s important that if we profess to truly care about the Syrian people, about their suffering, then we’ve got to be able to meet with anyone that we need to if there is a possibility that we could achieve peace,” she told CNN at the time.

Fire rises following a Syrian government airstrike in Aleppo in 2016 (AP)

Gabbard was forced to defend her embrace of Assad and other dictators during her 2020 run for the Democratic presidential nomination. During the Democratic primary debate, she clashed with Kamala Harris, who accused her of being “an apologist for an individual – Assad – who has murdered the people of his country like cockroaches.”

“She has embraced and been an apologist for him in a way that she refuses to call him a war criminal. I can only take what she says and her opinion so seriously and so I’m prepared to move on,” added Harris, who would subsequently drop out of the race and later be selected as Joe Biden’s running mate.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, Gabbard again defended Russian aggression.

“This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if Biden Admin/Nato had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns,” she posted on Twitter in 2022.

Gabbard appeared to fall for various conspiracy theories about the conflict that were promoted by Russia, as she had done in Syria. One of those conspiracy theories was a Russian claim about the existence of dozens of US-funded biolabs in Ukraine that were supposedly producing deadly pathogens.

She later walked back on those remarks, suggesting that there might have been some “miscommunication and misunderstanding.”

Gabbard’s frequent echoing of Kremlin talking points has earned her praise in Russian state media. Indeed, an article published on 15 November in the Russian-state controlled outlet RIA Novosti went so far as to call Gabbard a “superwoman.”

The possibility that Trump would tap someone with Gabbard’s history to be America’s top intelligence official shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who followed the president-elect’s first four years in the White House.

During his 2018 summit with President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, the then-president was asked if he believed the US intelligence community’s assessment, which stated that Russia had interfered in the 2016 presidential election on his behalf.

That assessment was based on analysis of what was determined to have been state-sponsored campaigns of fake social media posts and ersatz news sites to spread false stories about his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, as well as cyberattacks targeting the Democratic National Committee and prominent operatives associated with the Clinton campaign.

But Trump, who’d just spent several hours in a closed-door meeting with Putin, stunned the assembled press and the entire world by declaring that he trusted the Russian leader’s word over that of his own advisers.

​​"President Putin says it’s not Russia. I don’t see any reason why it would be," he replied.

Trump would go on to repeatedly clash with his own intelligence appointees during the remainder of his term. He sacked his first DNI, former Indiana senator Dan Coats, after Coats repeatedly declined to back away from the government’s assessment of what Russia had done during the 2016 presidential race.

Larry Pfeiffer, the director of George Mason University’s Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy, and International Security, said Gabbard’s apparent susceptibility to foreign disinformation and her affinity for strongmen will give pause to American allies with whom the US routinely shares intelligence on common threats.

Intelligence services, he explained, are notoriously territorial and tight-lipped on sources and methods – particularly when it comes to so-called human intelligence, or Humint, which refers to information collected by and from spies and sources within hostile governments.

Pfeiffer said foreign allies are likely already concerned about how a second Trump administration will handle intelligence, given the president-elect’s record. He also predicted that Gabbard’s confirmation as DNI would cause even more problems among skittish partners.

“I think they wouldn’t feel like they’ve got an American confidant that they can deal with on a mature level,” he said. “I can guarantee you that the foreign intelligence services of Europe, including the Brits, are all having little side conversations right now about … what is this going to mean, and how are we going to operate, and what are we going to do now.”

Gabbard has taken the side of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad as well as the Russian president (AP)

The former US intelligence veteran also said Gabbard’s record of spreading foreign talking points calls into question whether she will be able to carry out the DNI’s important responsibility of briefing the president on threats to the nation.

He told The Independent: “Somebody like Tulsi Gabbard, you look at her long history of statements that seem to come out of the Kremlin’s notebook, her propensity to be influenced by their viewpoint – [it] raises questions as to whether she has the ability to present the intel community’s perspective as it is, or is she going to be one who’s going to want to discount it, influence it, color and change it, or ignore it and just present her own view?

“I think it also raises questions of judgement. You know, here’s an individual who seems very prone to misinformation, prone to conspiracy theory. That should worry anybody who’s worried about America’s national security,” he added.

Trump’s selection of the former Hawaii congresswoman could be a problem for the senators tasked with confirming her, on several different levels. For one, the position is unique among cabinet agencies in that there are strict requirements for who can serve in the director’s role.

The text of the 2004 law which established the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks on New York and Washington and the intelligence community’s failures leading up to the US invasion of Iraq, specifically states that any person who serves in the DNI job “shall have extensive national security expertise.”

The first person to serve as DNI, John Negroponte, was a widely respected foreign service veteran who had served as US ambassador to Iraq, Mexico, Honduras and the Philippines, as the country’s ambassador to the United Nations, and as a deputy national security adviser during the Reagan administration. The next three people to hold the office were flag-rank military officers with significant intelligence experience.

Pfeiffer, a US intelligence veteran of three decades’ standing who once ran the White House Situation Room and served as chief of staff to then-CIA director General Michael Hayden, told The Independent that Gabbard’s experience in the House and her military service, while admirable, do not match the standards envisioned by the authors of the 2004 law which established the office.

“That’s national security experience … but she was a freaking military cop … operating at a largely tactical level, not that strategic, long-term national security perspective that one would expect,” he said.

Gabbard may have left the Syrian conflict behind, but Moustafa still works with its victims every day. And he believes the connection between her views on Syria and Ukraine is clear.

“What happened in Syria is what allowed the Russians to feel that they could do the very same in Ukraine,” he said.

“And what she is doing with Ukraine shows that it goes beyond her maybe misunderstanding one conflict. She is, hook, line and sinker, a Russian puppet.”

[welcometoqueer]

Meanwhile, in Russia:

According to the Russian News Agency, in an interview, Putin's presidential aide Nikolay Patrushev claims Russia helped Trump win the Presidential election and makes a veiled threat that Trump must now deliver the agreed-upon quid pro quo.

His exact words: "To achieve success in the election, Donald Trump relied on certain forces to which he has corresponding obligations. As a responsible person, he will be obliged to fulfill them."

No mainstream media source or U.S. elected official has addressed this interview as of yet (Nov. 11, 2024).

This all comes after a Russian TV network aired nude photos from Melania Trump’s modeling days seemingly as a way of showing Trump who’s pulling the strings.

[ID:

A screenshot of an article by the Russian News Agency. The headline reads "Trump to rely on forces that brought him to power — Russian presidential aide."

The article reads:

Nikolay Patrushev agreed that Trump, when he was still a candidate, "made many statements critical of the destructive foreign and domestic policies pursued by the current administration" MOSCOW, November 11. /TASS/. In his future policies, including those on the Russian track US President-elect Donald Trump will rely on the commitments to the forces that brought him to power, rather than on election pledges, Russian presidential aide Nikolay Patrushev told the daily Kommersant in an interview. "The election campaign is over," Patrushev noted. "To achieve success in the election, Donald Trump relied on certain forces to which he has corresponding obligations. As a responsible person, he will be obliged to fulfill them."

/end ID]

[mariacallous]

A Russian-aligned propaganda network notorious for creating deepfake whistleblower videos appears to be behind a coordinated effort to promote wild and baseless claims that Minnesota governor and vice presidential candidate Tim Walz sexually assaulted one of his former students, according to several specialists tracking the disinformation campaign.

Experts believe that the campaign is tied to a network called Storm-1516, which has been linked to, among other things, a previous effort that falsely claimed vice president Kamala Harris perpetrated a hit-and-run in San Francisco in 2011. Storm-1516 has a long history of posting fake whistleblower videos, and often deepfake videos, to push Kremlin talking points to the West.

The propaganda unit’s work has successfully reached the highest levels of the Republican party, with vice presidential candidate JD Vance repeating at least one of their narratives. NBC reported this week that the group has pushed at least 50 false narratives in this manner since last fall, which comes amid a broader Russian government effort to disrupt next month’s election with the aim of helping former president Donald Trump return to the White House.

Numerous figures in MAGA world boosted the Tim Walz assault claims, including Jack Posobiec, the Pizzagate promoter who is now a member of Trump’s campaign team, and Candace Owens, the popular right-wing podcaster. The claims went viral on X last week, when an anonymous account called Black Insurrectionist posted screenshots of emails from a purported victim. Other X users quickly debunked the claims, citing formatting errors in the images that suggested the emails were fake, but days later another conspiracist posted a video on X claiming he had spoken to one of Walz's supposed victims on the phone—without providing any proof. The video racked up millions of hits.

Then, on Wednesday, a video claiming to show a former student of Walz describing abuse by the former football coach spread widely on X. According to a WIRED analysis using several deepfake detector tools, the video was created using AI. The video, shared by a prominent anonymous QAnon-promoting account, garnered over 4.3 million views before it was deleted.

The campaign to attack Walz predates the video; it traces back to John Dougan, a former Florida cop who now lives in Moscow and runs a network of pro-Kremlin websites. Dougan appeared on Zak Paine’s QAnon show RedPill78 on October 5 with an anonymous man named “Rick,” who said he was a foreign exchange student at Mankato West High School in 2004 when Walz was a teacher there. “Rick” then claimed Walz assaulted him. Dougan did not respond to a request for comment.

The claims, however, didn’t go viral until last week and the release of the deepfake video.

Darren Linvill, codirector at Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, tells WIRED that he immediately recognized this tactic as part of Russia’s well-established disinformation playbook.

“There is little doubt this is Storm-1516,” says Linvill, whose team uncovered the network last fall.

Linvill says the account that first shared the AI-altered video bears all the hallmarks of previous Storm-1516 campaigns. “It is standard for them to create an X or YouTube account for initial placement of stories,” says Linvill.

The campaign orchestrated by Storm-1516 often begins with the posting of a fake story and video from a whistleblower or citizen journalist, the US mission to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe outlined in July. Disinformation is “amplified by other seemingly unaffiliated online networks,” the US mission stated. The claims then take on a life of their own, shared and reposted by unwitting social media users who likely have no idea of where the videos originated.

The fake stories can also be picked up by other media outlets that cover viral social media stories. In the case of the Walz claims, they ended up on MSN, a news aggregation site owned by Microsoft.

In the past, Storm-1516 has relied on a network of fake news websites run by Dougan to push its narratives. On Saturday, a story that referenced the RedPill78 interview, the Black Insurrectionist posts, and the deepfake video was published on over 100 of Dougan’s websites simultaneously.

This was first discovered by Alex Liberty, a researcher who tracks the activity of Russia’s propaganda networks and who agrees with Linvill’s assertion that the deepfake video bears all the hallmarks of a Storm-1516 campaign.

“We believe that it might be a coordinated campaign in [an] attempt to bring numerous false accusations of the same nature against Tim Walz through different channels and in different formats in order to bring an image of legitimacy to the narrative,” Liberty tells WIRED.

McKenzie Sadeghi, the AI and foreign influence editor at NewsGuard, agrees.

“The false narrative appears to be part of a wider campaign pushed by pro-Kremlin media and QAnon influencers ahead of the November 5, 2024, US elections aimed at portraying Walz, whose political appeal is as an everyman schoolteacher and coach, as a pedophile who had inappropriate relationships with minors,” Sadeghi wrote in an analysis of the deepfake video.

From the very beginning, the allegations against Walz were easily debunked. In his interview on the RedPill78 QAnon show, Dougan’s source claimed he was in the US thanks to the State Department–funded Future Leaders Exchange program, which allows students from countries formerly under the control of the Soviet Union the chance to study in the US for a year.

However, a spokesperson for the US State Department, told NewsGuard that it has no record of any Future Leaders Exchange student from Kazakhstan in Mankato area schools from 2000 through 2020. Mankato Area Public Schools communications director Mel Helling told NewsGuard the allegations were “outlandish.”

The baseless claims were shared by some far-right accounts in the days after the episode was published, but they didn’t really take hold until a week later, when the X account known as Black Insurrectionist posted a clip from Dougan’s RedPill78 episode. The clip was viewed over 800,000 times.

Google search trends data shows a huge spike in people searching for “Tim Walz pedophile” and “Tim Walz abuse” on October 13, the day the Black Insurrectionist account began posting their claims.

The Black Insurrectionist account is anonymous and launched a year ago; its followers include Donald Trump Jr. and former Trump adviser Roger Stone. The account’s bio reads: “I am MAGA.” It rose to prominence weeks before the Walz post, when it claimed to have been in contact with a whistleblower at ABC who said Harris had been provided with the questions ahead of her September debate with former president Donald Trump. Those claims were widely debunked by multiple major fact-checking and media organizations.

Last week, the Black Insurrectionist account shared screenshots of email correspondence the account had with an alleged victim on X. Almost immediately, the evidence was questioned when X users spotted a text cursor in one of the screenshots, suggesting that Black Insurrectionist was editing the document. Others pointed out that the date and time format shown in some of the screenshots was inconsistent with how they are displayed on real emails.

Black Insurrectionist initially defended itself before going silent. The account was deleted on Thursday.

The two dozen posts from Black Insurrectionist laying out their alleged evidence have been viewed over 33 million times, according to X’s own metrics, and have been shared on numerous other platforms, including Truth Social, Instagram, Telegram, and TikTok.

Among those sharing Black Insurrectiont’s claims was Paine, who hosted Dougan on his QAnon show. “I have no reason to doubt the veracity of this story,” Paine wrote on X.

The posts have also caught the attention of the wider MAGA universe in a way that Dougan’s initial claims didn’t. Prominent right-wing figures like Owens and Posobiec both flagged the “allegations” as something worth looking into.

Owens discussed the conspiracy on her top-rated podcast, with the episode racking up over 630,000 views on YouTube since it was posted on Wednesday.

Posobiec wrote on X that there were “lots of allegations going around regarding Tim Walz sexually abusing young student(s).” While he added that he didn’t “know about any of the recent allegations being made,” he did share a link to Dougan’s claims from earlier in the month.

When Harris replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee for president in July, Russian-aligned propaganda networks struggled to mount effective disinformation campaigns targeting the vice president and her team.

But as Microsoft reported in the summer, those campaigns have started to find their footing. "The shift to focusing on the Harris-Walz campaign reflects a strategic move by Russian actors aimed at exploiting any perceived vulnerabilities in the new candidates," Clint Watts, head of Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center, wrote in August.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

A website at the heart of an international Russian disinformation operation has produced more than a dozen articles about Canadian politics in an apparent attempt to undermine support for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and boost his chief rival, Pierre Poilievre. The website Reliable Recent News has been identified by officials in Europe and the U.S. as a repository for pro-Kremlin articles that are distributed through a network of affiliated sites disguised to appear as legitimate news outlets. Earlier this month, U.S. authorities seized a domain that hosted Reliable Recent News (RRN), though it continues to operate on another domain. In an affidavit, authorities describe RRN as a tool to "further the malign influence campaign" waged by Russia in support of its invasion of Ukraine.

Continue Reading

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

[meret118]

The Russian disinformation plot revealed in a Justice Department indictment this week may just be the tip of the iceberg, according to newly unsealed court documents.On Wednesday, the DOJ announced it would seize 32 internet domains linked to a larger Kremlin scheme to promote disinformation and influence the 2024 election. The Russian campaign, known as Doppelganger, uses AI-generated content to create “fake news” boosted through social media with the aim of electing Donald Trump.

“Today’s announcement exposes the scope of the Russian government’s influence operations and their reliance on cutting-edge AI to sow disinformation,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement about the charges. According to records, the plan was well known at even the highest levels of the Russian government—and Russian President Vladimir Putin himself may have been aware of the campaign.

Of particular note, the documents released Wednesday included an affidavit that noted a Russian company is keeping a list of more than 2,800 influencers world wide, about one-fifth of whom are based in the United States, to monitor and potentially groom to spread Russian propaganda. The affidavit does not mention the full list of influencers, but is still a terrifying indicator of how deep the Russian plot to interfere in U.S. politics really goes.

The Doppelganger program and its “Good Old USA Project” aimed to mimic mainstream media outlets to push pro-Russian policies through fake social media accounts. Documents show that the Kremlin specifically targeted Trump supporters, minorities, gamers, and swing-state voters by spreading far-right conspiracies and capitalizing on existing divisions in U.S. politics.

[porterdavis]

The short answer is yes. So is the long answer.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Dave Whamond

* * * *

A false claim circulating on social media that Kamala Harris was involved in an alleged hit-and-run in San Francisco in 2011 is the work of a covert Russian disinformation operation, according to new research by Microsoft.

Researchers found that the group created a video, paid an actor to appear as the alleged victim, and spread the claim through a fake website for a nonexistent San Francisco news outlet named KBSF-TV. The Russian group responsible, which Microsoft dubs Storm-1516, is described as a Kremlin-aligned troll farm.

Microsoft said the discovery was a sign of Russia ramping up its foreign influence efforts ahead of the 5 November presidential election. A spokesperson for the Russian embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment from Reuters.

“Russian influence operations initially struggled to pivot operations aimed at the Democratic campaign following president Biden’s departure from the US 2024 presidential race,” a blog published on Tuesday by Microsoft said.

“In late August, however, elements of prolific Russian actor Storm-1516 began producing content implicating vice-president Harris and governor Walz in outlandish fake conspiracy theories,” Microsoft said, referring to Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz.

Storm-1516 is known for producing misleading videos featuring on-screen or voice actors who impersonate whistleblowers or journalists that share false, scandalous information, experts say.

A website for KBSF-TV was created shortly before publishing its first related article about the alleged driving incident, according to online registration records. The false claim – that the Democratic presidential candidate left a 13-year-old girl paralysed in a hit-and-run – circulated on social media platforms, including X, formerly known as Twitter using the hashtag #HitAndRunKamala.

In total, it is estimated the video has been viewed more than 2.7m times.

“Many entities within the pro-Russian ecosystem advanced the video and its claims,” said Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center.

Earlier this month the US justice department filed money-laundering charges against two employees of Russian state media network RT for what officials said was a scheme to hire an American company to produce online content to influence the election.

US officials say Russia’s goal is to exacerbate US political divisions and weaken public support for American military aid to Ukraine. Harris says if elected she will continue supporting Ukraine in its defence against Russia’s invasion.

[qqueenofhades]

This may be a stupid question but do you really believe MTG is funded by Putin? In my head she's too fucking stupid to be calculating enough to actually enrich herself.

I don't know if she is actually getting money from the Kremlin or she's just a moron who loves to believe whatever conspiracy theorist nonsense she's told, but I think it's pretty clear she is either being handled fairly directly by Russian intelligence or is closely plugged into sophisticated Russian propaganda systems. Example A, Marge submitting an amendment to the Ukrainian aid bill insisting that aid not be disbursed until the Ukrainian government allegedly stopped "oppressing Hungarians in Transcarpathia." This is a key part of the Orban regime's anti-Ukraine talking points that has in turn been directly amplified by Russia, but it is so specific and so obscure (not to mention, there's literally zero chance Marge knows what any of those words or issues mean, or could find Transcarpathia on a map) that there's no way she organically came up with it on her own. She's also been otherwise echoing word-for-word Russian propaganda about them being "the defenders of Christianity" by invading Ukraine, which is one of Putin's preferred/favorite narratives and plays into the function of the Russian Orthodox Church as a Kremlin booster. Hence, if Marge is directly repeating Putin's personal justifications, I'd say it is more likely than not that she's getting something out of it.

As I have said before, it is pretty clear that Putin is ordering Trump to get the House GOP to stall Ukraine aid in exchange for help in the election, and there is a significant chunk of the House GOP that is eager to suckle at the Russian propaganda teat in all circumstances. (See: Hunter Biden's laptop being a Russian disinformation operation from the start that got exposed when the House GOP impeachment effort went up in flames.) We have also consistently had networks of Russian agents and Russian money be exposed in Europe, where they are offering financial incentives to EU politicians to serve as Kremlin shills. Russian dirty money has beyond doubt entered the Republican Party at many, many levels; we had that whole investigation about how Trump and the Russians have been working in concert for a long time. Now, because getting Trump in power again is so important for the Russians, and the Russians' help is so important for Trump in trying to stay out of jail, the corruption is pretty systemic.

In short, I figure it is only a matter of time if/when we find out that the most stridently pro-Russian members of the Treason Caucus are actually being paid by or otherwise benefiting from Russian lobbyists, because they are fascist traitors who love money, will kiss Trump's ass in any circumstances, and are willing to do anything in the name of undermining America, Ukraine, Biden, and Western democracy in general. We know it is the way Russian destabilization, disinformation, and influence operations customarily work, and that they have previously and consistently worked in cahoots with MAGA, so yeah. If Marge and Co. aren't active Russian assets, financially or otherwise, I would be very surprised.

[tomorrowusa]

Good news and perhaps a good omen.

Moldova's pro-EU, pro-Western, and pro-NATO President won re-election despite Russian interference in the election.

In a victory for pro-EU factions in Moldova and beyond, incumbent President Maia Sandu defeated her challenger, Alexandr Stoianoglo, in the country's Nov. 3 presidential runoff. Sandu won on Nov. 3 by a margin of about 54% to 45%, with 99% of votes counted. "We proved that by uniting we can defeat those who wanted to bring us to our knees," Sandu told reporters in Chisinau in the early hours of Nov. 4. She wasn't just talking about Stoianoglo. Sandu has long insisted that the real opponent to her government and Moldova's European path is the Kremlin, which has been waging a hybrid war designed to push Chisinau back into Moscow's orbit. In what Sandu described "a fraud of unprecedented proportions," Russia allegedly had its hand in a massive effort to influence Moldova's elections, aiming to unseat Sandu and quash the nation's EU aspirations.

So Moldova's female president kicked Putin's butt. That's as it should be.

Russia's attempt to control the election outcome sounds familiar.

Moldovan lawmakers claimed that Moscow spent millions of dollars backing Stoianoglo, a former top prosecutor supported by the pro-Kremlin Party of Socialists. Over $15 million in Russian funds have reportedly been funneled to over 130,000 Moldovans, with voters instructed on how to cast their ballots in the election. Pro-Russian oligarch Ilan Shor, a Moldovan-Israeli tycoon, was accused of laundering the money and orchestrating the network. Sandu said in a press conference ahead of the referendum that up to 300,000 votes were linked to the bribery scheme. Prior to the November runoff, a Moldovan government source said that Moscow might target polling stations abroad with disruptive tactics, including bomb threats, in an attempt to suppress the staunchly pro-EU expatriate vote.

Bribing voters and threatening officials are par for the course regarding pro-Putin authoritarians.

[odinsblog]

Thousands of Ukrainian children put through Russian ‘re-education’ camps

New report details network of dozens of Russian camps aimed at giving children pro-Moscow views, with some children detained indefinitely

At least 6,000 children from Ukraine have attended Russian “re-education” camps in the past year, with several hundred held there for weeks or months beyond their scheduled return date, according to a new report published in the US.

Russia has also unnecessarily expedited the adoption and fostering of children from Ukraine in what could constitute a war crime, the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab report found. The report was funded by the US state department.

Since the start of the war nearly a year ago, children as young as four months living in the occupied areas have been taken to 43 camps across Russia, including in Moscow-annexed Crimea and Siberia, for “pro-Russia patriotic and military-related education”, said the report.

In at least two of the camps, the children’s return date was delayed by weeks, while at two other camps, the return of some children was postponed indefinitely.

Russian authorities sought to provide a pro-Moscow viewpoint to children through school curricula as well as through field trips to patriotic sites and talks from veterans, the report found.

Videos published from the camps by the occupying regional authorities show children in the camps singing the Russian national anthem and carrying the Russian flag. In separate videos, teachers, employed to teach the children, talk about the need to correct their understanding of Russian and Soviet history.

Children were also given training in firearms, although Nathaniel Raymond, a Yale researcher who oversaw the report, said there was no evidence they were being sent back to fight.

“Mounting evidence of Russia’s actions lays bare the Kremlin’s aims to deny and suppress Ukraine’s identity, history, and culture,” the US state department said in a statement. “The devastating impacts of Putin’s war on Ukraine’s children will be felt for generations.”

There is little information on the explanation given to children regarding delays in their return. An official at the Medvezhonok camp told a boy from Ukraine that his return was conditional: the children would be returned only if Russia recaptured the town of Izium, the report said. Another boy was told he wouldn’t be returning home due to his “pro-Ukrainian views”, the report said.

Some parents were told that their children will be released only if they physically come to pick them up. Relatives or people given power of attorney were not allowed to pick up the children. Travel from Ukraine to Russia is difficult and expensive, and men between the ages of 18 and 60 are forbidden from leaving the country, in effect meaning only the mothers of the children may retrieve them.

“A significant portion of these families are low-income and have not been able to afford to make the trip. Some families were forced to sell belongings and travel through four countries to be reunited with their child,” the report found.

One of the camps is located in Magadan oblast, roughly 6,230km (3,900 miles) from Ukraine. This puts it “roughly three times closer to the United States than it is to the border of Ukraine,” the report said.

Raymond said that Russia was in “clear violation” of the Fourth Geneva Convention on the treatment of civilians during war and called the report a “gigantic Amber alert” – referring to US public notices of child abductions.

The Russian activity “in some cases may constitute a war crime and a crime against humanity”, he told reporters.

Ukraine’s government recently claimed that more than 14,700 children had been deported to Russia, where some had been sexually exploited.

(continue reading)

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Prominent right-wing influencers Dave Rubin, Benny Johnson and Tim Pool have huge followings on YouTube and a fondness for the Trumpist talking point that allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election on the former president’s behalf are a “hoax.” That’s not all they have in common: They also reportedly enjoyed lucrative deals with a content creation company that was a front for Russian propagandists. The Justice Department indicted two employees of the Russian propaganda outlet RT on Wednesday, charging them with laundering almost $10 million through foreign shell companies and violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The DOJ alleges this was done “to covertly fund and direct” a media company that produced videos whose content and subject matter were “often consistent with the Government of Russia’s interest in amplifying U.S. domestic divisions in order to weaken U.S. opposition to core Government of Russia interests.” The company’s description matches that of Tenet Media, a Tennessee-based firm co-founded by Lauren Chen, a creator for Glenn Beck’s Blaze TV (which fired Chen on Thursday) and a contributor to Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA. Tenet Media publishes content by Rubin, Johnson, Pool and other less-prominent influencers. According to the indictment, the production companies of three unnamed commentators were paid $8.7 million through the scheme. The indictment states two of the commentators were deceived about the source of the funding; the trio all described themselves as unwitting “victims” of the operation in separate statements on social media. But the Tenet Media saga demonstrates once again that Russian election interference is not, as these commentators and their allies have insisted, a “hoax.” It is a fact, a deliberate and ongoing operation by the Kremlin to sway U.S. politics. And the Trumpist right’s yearslong quest to rebut that reality have ended up ensuring that their entire information ecosystem is honeycombed with Russian propaganda. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s 2019 final report conclusively documented the Russian government’s systematic effort to influence the 2016 presidential election in order to help Trump and the many ways Trump’s associates participated in that endeavor. This was an inconvenient finding for Trump and his political and media allies, who had spent years fabricating a complex alternate reality in which claims of Russian election interference or corrupt ties between Russia and Trump and his associates were “deep state” lies. They responded by falsely claiming Mueller’s report had found “no collusion” between Trump and Russia, and used that lie to brand the entirety of the probe as a “hoax.” [...] No one on the right has done more to push pro-Russia talking points than former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, a longtime defender of Russian president Vladimir Putin and opponent of U.S. support for Ukraine. Russian propaganda channels sought to gin up Western support for its 2022 invasion by highlighting Carlson’s nightly screeds against U.S. aid to Ukraine, and in turn served as a source for Carlson’s program. A Russian state TV host even suggested on-air that Carlson take a job at his network after Fox dropped him the following year. [...] But Russia-friendly narratives about the country’s invasion of Ukraine ultimately spread far beyond Carlson. It became widely accepted orthodoxy on the MAGA right that sending military aid to Ukraine is a waste of money, that the United States is responsible for Russia’s invasion, and that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is the real villain of the conflict. [...] Russian interests and Kremlin-connected sources also fueled the right’s obsession with Hunter Biden’s business interests and the absurd related allegation that Joe Biden accepted a bribe from a Ukrainian oligarch — both of which right-wing media and politicians treated as major stories, with House Republicans making it the heart of their impeachment case against the president..

MMFA's Matt Gertz for MSNBC.com on MAGA media pundits being on the Kremlin payroll via TENET Media (09.06.2024).

Matt Gertz wrote in MSNBC’s opinion section that MAGA influencers such as Tim Pool and Benny Johnson have only themselves to blame for the TENET Media debacle in which they pumped out pro-Russia propaganda.

See Also:

MMFA: How MAGA pundits who mocked the Russia “hoax” ended up the Kremlin’s payroll

Public Notice: Russia's useful idiots

[a-very-tired-jew]

That moment when you find out the anti-Zionist Jewish friend you have has been getting all their news, positions, and rhetoric from BreakThrough News. It explains so much of their sentiments towards the West in general, not just Israel. If you're unaware, The DailyBeast did a thorough report and investigation on BTN and how it's just a propaganda piece for the B, R, C, and S of BRICS. Many of its content creators are former Sputnik and RT personnel. They've downplayed the war in the Ukraine and repeatedly put out pro-Russia propaganda. They currently still put out pro-Russia/anti-Ukraine pieces, but also put out pro-Hamas/anti-Israel material as well.

They are part of an ever growing network of anti-Western media that defend the regressive policies of Russia and China while garnering support from Leftists who may find those policies bad, but are so driven by anti-Western rhetoric and belief that they're willing to make allies of of people, organizations, and governments that would likely see them stripped of their rights, imprisoned, and/or dead.

Please give their article a read.

I personally found this particular bit interesting:

BreakThrough’s filings, meanwhile, show it operates out of the People’s Forum in Manhattan, another organization that has acknowledged receiving dark money donations from Singham—whom the group praised on Twitter as “a Marxist comrade who sold his company & donated most of his wealth to nonprofits that focus on political education, culture & internationalism.” To date, Singham-linked groups have donated almost $20 million to the People’s Forum.

Sitting on the People’s Forum’s board is Claudia De La Cruz, who pulls triple duty as BreakThrough’s secretary and as a “co-coordinator/educator” for the Justice and Education Fund. An auditor’s report filed in New York shows that more of Singham’s money trickled down to BreakThrough from the Forum in the form of $80,575 in donated rent in 2021, the most recent year for which filings are available.

But when The Daily Beast visited the People’s Forum address, it found a bookstore hawking tomes by Prashad and titles from his Leftword imprint, as well as a coffee shop and an event space—but no evidence of a studio. What’s more, none of BreakThrough’s hosts appear among the staff listed in the outlet’s filings. Rather, the underlying nonprofit’s leadership consists of figures like De La Cruz who donate an hour a week to the organization, and who like De La Cruz are affiliated with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, a small far-left sect that does not appear to receive substantial donations from Singham or from anybody else. The PSL does, however, appear as an allied group to the International People’s Media Network on its webpage. Puryear and Becker, two of the BreakThrough anchors, are co-founders of the party.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I'm not surprised due to the community they are part of. But it's really telling that they'll claim Zionists are spreading propaganda, are paid propaganda shills, and all the other lines we've heard since October while they themselves are spreading stuff like this. Yes there's the cliche line that every accusation is a projection, but I think in this case, because I know the individual so well, that it's sheer willful ignorance because those unvetted sources support The Narrative.

[vague-humanoid]

A network of Russia-based websites masquerading as local American newspapers is pumping out fake stories as part of an AI-powered operation that is increasingly targeting the US election, a BBC investigation can reveal.

A former Florida police officer who relocated to Moscow is one of the key figures behind it.

The following would have been a bombshell report - if it were true.

Olena Zelenska, the first lady of Ukraine, allegedly bought a rare Bugatti Tourbillon sports car for 4.5m euros ($4.8m; £3.8m) while visiting Paris for D-Day commemorations in June. The source of the funds was supposedly American military aid money.

The story appeared on an obscure French website just days ago - and was swiftly debunked.

Experts pointed out strange anomalies on the invoice posted online. A whistleblower cited in the story appeared only in an oddly edited video that may have been artificially created. Bugatti issued a sharp denial, calling it "fake news", and its Paris dealership threatened legal action against the people behind the false story.

But before the truth could even get its shoes on, the lie had gone viral. Influencers had already picked up the false story and spread it widely.

One X user, the pro-Russia, pro-Donald Trump activist Jackson Hinkle, posted a link seen by more than 6.5m people. Several other accounts spread the story to millions more X users – at least 12m in total, according to the site’s metrics.

It was a fake story, on a fake news website, designed to spread widely online, with its origins in a Russia-based disinformation operation BBC Verify first revealed last year - at which point the operation appeared to be trying to undermine Ukraine’s government.