[DrCaleb]

$1:

Some Dawson Creek, B.C., residents concerned about normalization of far-right group

Dawson Creek, B.C., is famous for being "Mile 0" of the Alaska Highway, but some residents of this community of 11,000 are worried it could gain a reputation for something else entirely: the presence of the Soldiers of Odin, a white-supremacist, anti-immigrant group.

The original chapter of the Soldiers of Odin was founded by a known neo-Nazi in Finland several years ago. In 2017 and 2018, men wearing Soldiers insignia took part in Take Back the Night walks in Dawson Creek, which were organized by the South Peace Community Resources Society, a local non-governmental organization.

The marches are meant to symbolize safe spaces for women, LGBTQ and other minorities who may find it dangerous to wander out alone after dark.

In recent years, Soldiers chapters across Canada have built a reputation by appearing at anti-immigration rallies from Montreal to Vancouver, and sometimes clashing with counter-demonstrators.



The RCMP has downplayed the threat posed by the group in Dawson Creek, but anti-hate activist Stephanie Goudie is not convinced. She has been surprised by the lack of response from Dawson Creek political leaders, and has been trying to draw attention to the matter since last fall.

"I think any group that has views that are hateful, that discriminate against any groups, should not be tolerated," Goudie said.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton ... -1.5166422

[DrCaleb]

$1:

The latest disinformation threat online? Old news stories

Legitimate news stories are playing a role in the spread of disinformation online. The problem isn't the source, but the date: the stories were published years ago and are being shared as if they're new.

An analysis of traffic to the CBC News site shows that old stories are frequently recirculated online, and often shared without noting the age.

Many resurrected stories are benign — like this one about a knife-stealing crow that recently saw a spike of traffic — but some cover divisive or political topics. Without the context of when the story was published, online posts that share these stories can be misleading — and may stoke discord ahead of Canada's federal election in October.

"This is different from fake news, but still misleading," said Jonathan Anzalone, the assistant director for the Center for New Literacy at Stony Brook University in New York. "Taking something that's true and taking it out of context can change its meaning, and can cause people to be misinformed."

Take this story about an RCMP study that identified hundreds of cases of police corruption. It was published in 2014, but toward the end of May this year, the story began circulating on social media. It was shared on multiple popular Facebook groups, generating thousands of interactions, according to the social media monitoring site CrowdTangle.

$1:

The United Conservative Movement of Canada Facebook group posted the story without noting that it was more than five years old. (Screengrab/Facebook)

. . .

It's difficult to determine when old stories are resurfaced in an attempt to mislead readers, and when they're circulated due to an honest mistake. But Anzalone said there are some examples that are more obvious.

In April, when a fire broke out at Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, several Facebook pages recirculated an unrelated 2016 story about gas tanks and a note with Arabic writing that were discovered in a car near the cathedral.

"I think that was shared with the express purpose to demonize Muslims," Anzalone said. "In some cases, the first sharer may know what they're doing."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/old- ... -1.5172449

[DrCaleb]

$1:

In prelude to war room, Alberta's energy minister targets media outlets

. . .
The rhetoric could already be having an unintended impact.

The letters were released on the same day that Tzeporah Berman, an environmental activist who was selected to sit on an Alberta government advisory committee by the previous NDP government, said she has been receiving death threats.

The threats, she says, started on Friday after Kenney held a press conference to talk about developments in the war room plan. During that event, Berman's photo and resume were held up.

"When someone in a position of leadership says, 'This is the enemy, attack this person' and creates that sense of, really, fearmongering and hate, people attack because they're scared," she said on Tuesday.

"I understand that because this is a difficult time of change, but what Premier Kenney is doing is not leadership, it's bullying."

Questioning government's approach

Kenney has argued that a more aggressive approach is required to support Alberta's oil and gas industry because "keeping your head down" hasn't worked.

But political scientist Laurie Adkin from the University of Alberta in Edmonton says that's not an accurate representation of what's been happening.

"It's not true that the energy industry has kept its head down," she said on Alberta@Noon on Wednesday. "It has, in fact, been aggressively campaigning and lobbying for its interest for decades."

Adkin questions why governments — including the previous NDP government, which spent $31 million promoting the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion — should be spending money defending an industry with plenty of money in its pockets.

"I think the actual balance of power here has been kind of inverted in the way the issue is being presented to the public," said Adkin.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/ ... -1.5172515

[DrCaleb]

Another 'old news story' article.

$1:

Researchers discover “Fishwrap” influence campaign recycling old terror news

Researchers at Recorded Future have uncovered what appears to be a new, growing social media-based influence operation involving more than 215 social media accounts. While relatively small in comparison to influence and disinformation operations run by the Russia-affiliated Internet Research Agency (IRA), the campaign is notable because of its systematic method of recycling images and reports from past terrorist attacks and other events and presenting them as breaking news—an approach that prompted researchers to call the campaign "Fishwrap."

The campaign was identified by researchers applying Recorded Future's "Snowball" algorithm, a machine-learning-based analytics system that groups social media accounts as related if they:

Post the same URLs and hashtags, especially within a short period of time
Use the same URL shorteners
Have similar "temporal behavior," posting during similar times—either over the course of their activity, or over the course of a day or week
Start operating shortly after another account posting similar content ceases its activity
Have similar account names, "as defined by the editing distance between their names," as Recorded Future's Staffan Truvé explained.

$1:

A faked story about a protest in Sweden, written in Russian...

$1:

...and recycled by right-wing UK accounts.

Influence operations typically try to shape the world view of a target audience in order to create social and political divisions; undermine the authority and credibility of political leaders; and generate fear, uncertainty, and doubt about their institutions. They can take the form of actual news stories planted through leaks, faked documents, or cooperative "experts" (as the Soviet Union did in spreading disinformation about the US military creating AIDS). But the low cost and easy targeting provided by social media has made it much easier to spread stories (even faked ones) to create an even larger effect—as demonstrated by the use of Cambridge Analytica's data to target individuals for political campaigns, and the IRA's "Project Lakhta," among others. Since 2016, Twitter has identified multiple apparent state-funded or state-influenced social media influence campaigns out of Iran, Venezuela, Russia, and Bangladesh.

https://arstechnica.com/information-tec ... rror-news/

[BartSimpson]

I hear on Facebook that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor!!!

[BartSimpson]

And British troops just killed five protesters in Boston!!!

[BartSimpson]

President Eisenhower will address the nation later tonight as to his response.

[DrCaleb]

Does he have a detailed plan, start to finish, on how to win the coming war with Japan?

[BartSimpson]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

Does he have a detailed plan, start to finish, on how to win the coming war with Japan?

I don't know. I'm just hoping we have enough battleships and cavalry. The idiots who cut the budget for battleships and horses deserve to be inundated with telegrams protesting their decisions.

[stratos]

Wow just seen a web cast that there is some sort of revolution going on in Russia. I wonder if the Czar and his family are okay. Anyone got any more info on this?

[BartSimpson]

stratos stratos:

Wow just seen a web cast that there is some sort of revolution going on in Russia. I wonder if the Czar and his family are okay. Anyone got any more info on this?

There's already a breaking news report!!!

[BeaverFever]

Hmm right wingers recycling old news...seems to happen here sometimes I think

[BartSimpson]

BeaverFever BeaverFever:

Hmm right wingers recycling old news...seems to happen here sometimes I think

Who are you to complain? You're still hoping for Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin to rescue Canada from the unending hell of peace and prosperity.

And aren't you supposed to be going for a carriage ride with Archduke Franz Ferdinand?

You don't want to be late!

[DrCaleb]

$1:

Fake online stories claim Trudeau begged foreign leaders 'to send him a million immigrants'

"Canada's Prime Minister begs Nigeria President for one million immigrants," reads the headline on an article published in April on the website CBTV.

The article claims that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had announced the creation of a new employment and migration program for immigrants.

But the program doesn't exist. Trudeau never had any such discussions with the president of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari.

The fabricated story has been shared about 2,600 times and drew negative reactions from the Yellow Vests Canada Facebook group, which is attached to the Canadian arm of the Yellow Vests, a mass movement of protests in France against taxation and high gas prices.

The article also circulated on social media, including WhatsApp groups in Nigeria. It's impossible to determine how many times it was shared on WhatsApp because the messaging app is encrypted and the conversations aren't public. But AFP Fact Check — a service of the international news wire service that debunks online hoaxes — and the High Commission of Canada to Nigeria both felt compelled to deny the story.

. . .



Another site called City News — which imitates a local Canadian news site — also published several of these articles. The site seems to be managed by the same person or people who run CBTV; a Radio-Canada analysis determined both sites share the same Google Analytics ID.

$1:

Tactics to confuse readers

These sites use the same visual codes as news media and sometimes even publish real news on their sties. According to Herman Wasserman, a media studies professor at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, this serves to confuse the reader.

It's a popular tactic with the people who run fake news sites. In 2017, Radio Canada discovered imposter websites that looked like Quebec media sites but were actually based in Ukraine, and those sites used the same tactic.

A spokesperson for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) confirmed that the ministry is aware of the story.

"IRCC regularly surveys online disinformation. When false information is distributed, like in this case, we try to act quickly to provide the facts," said Rémi Larivière. He said that the ministry published a tweet and posted on Facebook to counteract the story.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/false- ... -1.5174319

[stratos]

OMG don't do it, don't send a million Philippine immigrants to Canada. Who the heck will all the cruise lines get to work for them. Seems like half the people working on a cruise line are Philippine. That's not a complaint either. They worked hard and did a great job on the cruise I took last year.