[cjsheps]

Self-explanatory title really: how many of you have recognised"fake news" popping up on your facebook etc. I've heard a lot about it, but only seen one particular instance.

"Q: Did Donald Trump tell People magazine in 1998 that if he ever ran for president, he’d do it as a Republican because “they’re the dumbest group of voters in the country” and that he “could lie and they’d still eat it up”?

A: No, that’s a bogus meme."

I bought into this one for quite a while!

[Oldmanmatt]

Yes, tons of it. Mainly though, only when linked to by American friends and always on sites I'd never heard of. I think, more from East Coast friends than West, too. They were invariably calling it out as fake.


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[Fultonius]

I'm currently struggling a lot with what's real,  what's fake,  what's biased,  what's pure propaganda.

For example,  Aleppo. Who are the good guys? Why is the news ( BBC etc) plastered with stories about the "unverified" mass killing of civilians by Syrian loyalist troops? Should they not wait till it *is* verified? When did the rebels suddenly become the good guys,  I thought they were ISIS? Or are ISIS now good because Assad = Russia = Iran = the bad guys?

I don't trust the BBC anymore,  so can I turn to for verified fact?

Same with the Russian hacking thing. CIA "unverified" reports,  yet Craig Murray says he's physically met the US "insider" who leaked the emails. Is *that* fake news (I certainly entertain the possibility of either truth being true).

Too much information,  too difficult to verify,  now I trust no one.

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[J.Kydd]

When did the rebels suddenly become the good guys,  I thought they were ISIS? Or are ISIS now good because Assad = Russia = Iran = the bad guys?
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In Syria there are 3 groups in military operation.

1- Assad's Government forces, supported by Russia and Iran
2- Anti-government rebel forces, supported by the USA
3- ISIS/ISIL/Daesh or whatever term people are using at the moment, who are 'officially' supported by no-one.

[Duma]

Where do the kurds fit in?

[Fultonius]

When did the rebels suddenly become the good guys,  I thought they were ISIS? Or are ISIS now good because Assad = Russia = Iran = the bad guys?
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In Syria there are 3 groups in military operation.

1- Assad's Government forces, supported by Russia and Iran
2- Anti-government rebel forces, supported by the USA
3- ISIS/ISIL/Daesh or whatever term people are using at the moment, who are 'officially' supported by no-one.

Wow,  way to simplify!

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[Fultonius]

And Turkey.

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[slackline]

Browser plugin : BS Detector (Farcebook temporarily blocked links to this at one stage)

FactCheck.org : How to Spot Fake News


A big thing to be wary of, particularly in forums (no idea about Farcebook never signed up), is when people just write "I read XXX".

My personal filtering on forums goes along the lines of "I'd like to check the sources myself and read more about that" and if people can't or won't include such a link, I don't pay much attention to what is being claimed.  It doesn't take long to insert a link into a post, you don't even need to use markup and if its a site that you visited in the past few days and you can't remember where you read it then you can always use googles tracking (if you don't block it) to see what you were looking at.  All pretty simple if you want to be taken seriously in reasoned debate.

[SA Chris]

Where do the kurds fit in?

Kurdistan?

[petejh]

The kurds (YPG) fit in to the rebel forces.

'Anti Assad government. 'Rebels' (or 'terrorists' according to Syrian government and Russia/Iran)
Kurdish YPG. Kurds in Syria opposed to Assad. Supported by the Kurdish PKK (who are considered a terrorist group by Turkey and the West due to their actions against Turkey (latest bombing was them), where they want to establish a separate Kurdish state.
Free Syrian Army - an assorted 'people's militia'. The only anti-government group supported by the west.
Syria Revolutionaries Front. Secular groups fighting for the Free Syrian Army.
Al Nusra Front. Islamists opposed to Assad. Less extremist than IS. Still difficult for West to support them.
Mujahideen. Islamists. Fighting against IS and goverment. This is the group who have just lost Aleppo - fairly hardline islamist and hence difficult for the West to support. (hence why Aleppo wasn't stopped).
Daesh/IS. Everyone's favorite bogeymen. Fighting against every other group in Syria, and the West.

Pro Assad government forces.
Syrian People's Army. Supported by Russia and Iran, (and tacitly by China?)



It's the same deal as Bosnia was, with more sand. Local thugs, psychos, powerful cunts and militias recruited into a loose coalition of scum supporting one agenda or another. Basically a large nation-sized version of the final scene of Reservoir Dogs where all the different self-interested psychos kill each other. No chance of anyone wining or peace breaking out until everyone is spent. Meanwhile the civilians sit in the middle, or escape.

From the Carnegie Middle East Centre:

''THE "SHABIHA" PHENOMENON

The slow “militiafication” of Assad’s Syrian state has been going on since the start of the conflict in 2011, when so-called Popular Committees spawned spontaneously or were recruited by intelligence services and pro-Assad businessmen all over Syria, mirroring the mobilization of anti-government demonstrators. The opposition (and much of the international media, which at the time listened to no one else) called these militias "shabiha," a vague term meaning approximately pro-Assad thugs, and dismissed them as a few thousand paid gangsters or members of the Alawite sect, the minority group to which Assad also belongs. But this was an underestimation of the Assad regime’s social roots. The "shabiha" phenomenon was no mere Alawite militia, but representative of a genuine popular mobilization of a significant minority of Syria’s population in favor of the regime, partly—but by no means exclusively—on a sectarian basis.

Very early in 2011, the government began to use money and services to buy the allegiance of unemployed youth, and to distribute guns, cars, and security clearances to trusted loyalists and their families, essentially weaponizing the vast web of client networks constructed over four decades of Assad family rule.

Recruits included army families, Baathist true believers, intelligence-backed goon squads, religious minority communities, certain Sunni Arab tribes, and other local interests that either depended on the Assad regime or feared a takeover by the Sunni Arab–dominated rebellion. Initially tasked with putting down demonstrations and patrolling their own neighborhoods for signs of dissent, the Popular Committees—sometimes armed only with bats and knives—gradually took on local authority and developed into armed militias, as the state shrank from view and the opposition became militarized.

To this was added, especially after 2013, an influx of highly effective Shia Islamist foreign fighters trained and supported by Iran and its regional proxies. Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia is the best known and probably the most important of these groups, but it is far from the only one. Iraqi factions have also sent fighters to Syria, including the Badr Organization, which currently controls the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior and holds sway over much of Iraq’s internal security apparatus, as well as the Asaib Ahl al-Haqq, a splinter group from the Shia movement led by Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, and many others.

SYRIAN PRO-ASSAD MILITIAS

For the most part, however, the militias are made up of locally recruited Syrians organized into a perplexing variety of groups:

The National Defense Forces (NDF): By far the largest militia network in Syria, the NDF was created through the rebranding, restructuring, and merging of local Popular Committees and other pro-Assad armed groups starting in 2012. Numerous reports point to Iranian funding and training of NDF factions, including Alawite- and Christian-dominated groups in the Homs region, and even some Sunni Arab tribal groups in the far east of the country. The NDF network is organized under provincial commanders like Fadi Saqr, who runs the NDF in the Damascus region, but seem to be loosely overseen by a national coordinator—reportedly Brigadier-General Ghassan Nassour, a powerful officer based in Damascus. Reflecting the bottom-up organization of the movement, local branches seem to act with considerable autonomy and to be less than cohesive on the provincal level, though the state of NDF forces varies considerably across the country. While some NDF units are heavily armed with tanks and rocket launchers, and appear to function like military formations, others are poorly disciplined semi-criminal or sectarian gangs in civilian attire.

The Baath Battalions: The only militia apart from the NDF that seems to have any real national level organization, the Baath Battalions is organized as an armed wing of Syria’s ruling party. The Baath Battalions was created by former Aleppo party chief Hilal Hilal, the Baath Party’s current deputy head, when he was co-organizing the defense of the city against the rebels in summer and autumn of 2012. The group remains strongest in Aleppo, but branches have since been created in Damascus, Latakia, Tartous, Hasakah, and probably other governorates too.

The Jerusalem Brigade: Now one of the main pro-government militias in the Aleppo region alongside the Baath Battalions, the Jerusalem Brigade was formed through the reorganization of Palestinian auxiliaries from the Neirab refugee camp in northwest Syria. No longer an exclusively Palestinian militia, it has grown into a powerful frontline force in Aleppo.

The Syrian Resistance: In northern Latakia, a Turkish exile known as Ali Kayali (his real name is Mihrac Ural) organized a small militia called the Syrian Resistance, which—even if overshadowed on the ground by the local NDF—runs a very active media campaign. While it publicly espouses the far-left ideology and the Syrian nationalist demands of its founder, it seems to function as an Alawite sectarian group.

The Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP): In the Homs region and elsewhere, a branch of the small, pseudo-Fascist Syrian Social Nationalist Party, which operates in both Lebanon and Syria, has come to the aid of the regime, implanting itself particularly among the region’s Christians.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC): In the refugee camps of Damascus, Ahmed Jibril’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, a 1968 splinter from the Palestinian Marxist group known as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, has kept up its long-standing alliance with the Syrian Baathist regime. PFLP-GC members started out by quietly policing dissent in the refugee camps in 2011 alongside smaller, pro-Assad Palestinian groups like al-Saiqa (the Palestinian branch of the Baath Party) and Fatah al-Intifada (a 1980s splinter from Yasser Arafat’s Fatah), but they now operate as an armed formation alongside the army, the NDF, and the pro-Assad Shia militias.

This is far from an exhaustive list. Other militias include the Desert Falcons, reportedly led by Colonel Mohammed Jaber; the Commandos, a Sunni Arab tribal militia in the Qamishli-Hasakah region; various Druze non-NDF groups in the Sweida Province; the secular pan-Arabists of the Arab Nationalist Guards; and many others. There are also haphazardly organized clan-based or semi-criminal groups and units of hired fighters with no name or fixed structure, and auxiliary forces organized by individual commanders from the regular army or by one of the regime’s many intelligence services. All in all, the various pro-Assad armed groups probably number in the hundreds, although many formally operate under the NDF or another umbrella.''

[Oldmanmatt]

And Turkey.

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And Hezbollah/Iran.


Probably the Salvation Army and Girl Guides, too.


All posts either sarcastic, tongue-in-cheek or mildly mocking-in-a-friendly-way unless otherwise stated. I always forget to put those smiley things...

[galpinos]

No chance of anyone wining or peace breaking out until everyone is spent. Meanwhile the civilians sit in the middle, or escape.

I was listening to a The Briefing Room (BBC) podcast and one of the contributors, as well as discussing all the different factions and the issues that creates, had an interesting point about civil wars. They either finish because one side wins or because they run out of resources
/men/will. In the case of Syria, neither Russia/Iran or the west have funded their respective sides enough to win, but they have funded them enough so that they don't run out of resources so it has kept the war going indefinitely.

[Oldmanmatt]

No chance of anyone wining or peace breaking out until everyone is spent. Meanwhile the civilians sit in the middle, or escape.

I was listening to a The Briefing Room (BBC) podcast and one of the contributors, as well as discussing all the different factions and the issues that creates, had an interesting point about civil wars. They either finish because one side wins or because they run out of resources
/men/will. In the case of Syria, neither Russia/Iran or the west have funded their respective sides enough to win, but they have funded them enough so that they don't run out of resources so it has kept the war going indefinitely.

I think you're on the money there.

Makes you wonder why, if you're a cynic...

What we're getting I'm not sure, but I think Russia is just loving the EU struggling with refugees. Iran, (obviously?) is looking for Shia hegemony, as are the Sunni states, in mirror.
Kurds just want autonomy.
And is this all, really, about Iraq (for the non-Syrian participants)? So, another oil war, fought next door, because nobody has a valid excuse to invade Iraq, again?



All posts either sarcastic, tongue-in-cheek or mildly mocking-in-a-friendly-way unless otherwise stated. I always forget to put those smiley things...

[Teaboy]

For example,  Aleppo. Who are the good guys? Why is the news ( BBC etc) plastered with stories about the "unverified" mass killing of civilians by Syrian loyalist troops? Should they not wait till it *is* verified?  [...]

I don't trust the BBC anymore,  so can I turn to for verified fact?

Are you referring to this report? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-38301629

It seems strange you don't trust the BBC as they are just reporting what the UN has said.

[fatneck]

Can't work out if this is fake or not...

https://zwnews.com/2016/12/08/news-from-mzansi-today/

[andy_e]

If you see a news story involving sharks climbing oak trees it's fake.

[slackline]

There's a distinction to be made between...

• Fake News which is just lies, with no basis beyond pushing a particular agenda (viz. recent US elections and a fair portion of the Brexit propaganda e.g. £350million/week lets spend it on the NHS)
• Accurate news about complicated situations the current situation in Syria being a good example.
• Satire see DailyMash/NewsThump/The Onion
• The Daily Mail

4 is easy to ignore and 3 should be easy to spot too.

The impression I got from cjsheps original post was that they're asking about distinguishing between 1 and 2.   The links I posted above should help with discounting genuine fake news, but 2 is still important and what Fultonious focused on when asking who to turn to for 'verified facts'.  Would it have made a difference to him if the BBC hadn't included the caveat that the reports were 'unverified' (i.e. you didn't know)?

Perhaps using a number of varied news sources provides a good overview (if you've time), because as with everything there is rarely (ever?) a single 'best' solution.

[cjsheps]

The impression I got from cjsheps original post was that they're asking about distinguishing between 1 and 2.

I'm not sure I was asking anything in particular. It was more like: "Fake news - discuss".

I'm genuinely surprised by how professional and "informed" people around me are getting duped by this stuff. I mean, it's understandable but unnerving.

[slackline]

Fair-do's, just thought what Fultonious was describing (comprehension of a very complicated situation) didn't really fit under the umbrella of 'Fake News', for me at least.

You might find this article interesting...

 Google, democracy and the truth about internet search

Well worth reading it all and worrying that the algorithms that are shaping lives and society are not open and accountable.

Its worth considering, I think, whether to continue allowing Google and other sites to follow you around the net as you browse.  There are some suggestions in the links in this thread as to how to stop being tracked.

[Fultonius]

There's a distinction to be made between...

• Fake News which is just lies, with no basis beyond pushing a particular agenda (viz. recent US elections and a fair portion of the Brexit propaganda e.g. £350million/week lets spend it on the NHS)
• Accurate news about complicated situations the current situation in Syria being a good example.
• Satire see DailyMash/NewsThump/The Onion
• The Daily Mail

4 is easy to ignore and 3 should be easy to spot too.

The impression I got from cjsheps original post was that they're asking about distinguishing between 1 and 2.   The links I posted above should help with discounting genuine fake news, but 2 is still important and what Fultonious focused on when asking who to turn to for 'verified facts'.  Would it have made a difference to him if the BBC hadn't included the caveat that the reports were 'unverified' (i.e. you didn't know)?

Perhaps using a number of varied news sources provides a good overview (if you've time), because as with everything there is rarely (ever?) a single 'best' solution.

Aye slackers,  totally right there. I kind of hijacked this thread a bit.

Your fake news BSblocker seems to me to have potential,  but surely it's efficacy depends on how well the "database of fake news sites" is maintained. It makes them the arbiters of what's considered "fake" which may harm genuine dissent.

The CIA hack is a great example. Twitter and Facebook both "ghost censored" Craig Murray as he was identified as promoting fake news. Who's to say he's the liar and not the CIA... It gets murky!

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[slackline]

Your fake news BSblocker seems to me to have potential,  but surely it's efficacy depends on how well the "database of fake news sites" is maintained. It makes them the arbiters of what's considered "fake" which may harm genuine dissent.

Yep, perfectly true.

However, the project itself and the 'database' is an open-source and collaborative project hosted on GitHub so you can always go and check whats on there and report issues such as sites to add, or sites that shouldn't be on the list.  In this case 'the arbiters' is whoever can be bothered to be involved rather than any one editor/site, which obviously is open to subversion, but would be fairly rapidly corrected by the nature of the collaboration.

If you're concerned then its worth reading the comments from the author (user selfagency) in the Reporting Issues thread, in particular they write...

This plugin does not promote censorship, it promotes media literacy. We do not filter out articles, we do not block links, we do not deny access to content. We simply provide warnings to keep your guard up while reading. No one is behind this plugin but me and the volunteer contributors to the repo. I myself am a donor to the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Freedom of the Press Foundation, as well as the EFF and ACLU, and have given to both Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning's defense funds. I'm also, in fact, a former donor to Wikileaks. Thus your insinuations are kind of hilarious to me.

[jwi]

There's a distinction to be made between...

• Fake News which is just lies, with no basis beyond pushing a particular agenda (viz. recent US elections and a fair portion of the Brexit propaganda e.g. £350million/week lets spend it on the NHS)
• Accurate news about complicated situations the current situation in Syria being a good example.
• Satire see DailyMash/NewsThump/The Onion
• The Daily Mail

4 is easy to ignore and 3 should be easy to spot too.

[..]

Given what we currently know about how our brain functions, there is very little difference between 1 & 3. If satire or fake news are easier to memorise than some complicated or nuanced report (which they usually are) that's what we will recollect later rather .

From what I can gather partisan satire rot your brain to the same degree as fake news.

[andy popp]

Its getting deliciously convoluted over here in the US, with some pro-Trumps people now saying the whole fake news narrative surrounding the election is itself a fake news operation promoted (presumably by Clinton, from her lair under that pizza place in DC) is an attempt to discredit the legitimacy of the election

[slackline]

I'm not disputing that, but there is a clear distinction between satire which is presented as such and fake news which is being presented as true news, one is saying "We are taking the piss" the other is trying to say "This is The News"

Taglines for the three sites I mentioned make it very clear what they are...

The Daily Mash : British satire site offering funny stories on news, politics and sport, an agony aunt column and polls.
News Thump : Topical news satire from the UK and around the world. Never letting the truth ruin a good story.
The Onion : A farcical newspaper featuring world, national and community news.

...and they all seem to take the piss out of everything as far as I can tell.

[Nigel]

I'm currently struggling a lot with what's real,  what's fake,  what's biased,  what's pure propaganda.

For example,  Aleppo. Who are the good guys? Why is the news ( BBC etc) plastered with stories about the "unverified" mass killing of civilians by Syrian loyalist troops? Should they not wait till it *is* verified? When did the rebels suddenly become the good guys,  I thought they were ISIS? Or are ISIS now good because Assad = Russia = Iran = the bad guys?

I don't trust the BBC anymore,  so can I turn to for verified fact?

Same with the Russian hacking thing. CIA "unverified" reports,  yet Craig Murray says he's physically met the US "insider" who leaked the emails. Is *that* fake news (I certainly entertain the possibility of either truth being true).

Too much information,  too difficult to verify,  now I trust no one.

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I know it s a bit of a thread hijack concentrating on one example so I will try to be brief and give links. RE Aleppo, you are quite right not to trust the BBC, I would also add the Guardian (I don't read much else "mainstream" so can't comment). Neither have journalists on the ground. They are either based in Beirut in Lebanon or they get stuff second hand from agencies (Reuters, Agence France-Presse etc). They in turn get information from "rebel" held E Aleppo - provenance unknown. Basically a one-sided story coming in 2nd or 3rd hand from sources who may well have an agenda in line with "rebels". However this is also UK government narrative so this gets through. As an example there are questions over the neutrality of the White Helmets as detailed by Max Blumenthal http://www.alternet.org/world/inside-shadowy-pr-firm-thats-driving-western-opinion-towards-regime-change-syria . FYI Max is a journalist who does get on the ground and is not someone you would expect to hear this from given his background - his father is Hilary Clinton's senior advisor (!). He has obviously gone somewhat off the reservation! If you are the type to think that this sort of thing couldn't possibly go on then reading Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky, or learning that a British PR firm Bell Pottinger was making fake Al Qaeda vids in Iraq http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/us-government-pentagon-fake-al-qaeda-propganda-videos-a7348371.html is eye opening. PS I make no comment on what else in on Alternet as I don't frequent it, but Max is a genuine journalist.

I would also point you towards two recent articles from Robert Fisk. http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/aleppo-falls-to-syrian-regime-bashar-al-assad-rebels-uk-government-more-than-one-story-robert-fisk-a7471576.html http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/syrian-conflict-rebels-jabhat-al-nusra-no-rebels-a7462986.html He is someone who is also on the ground and has a long back story of genuine war reporting. His book The Great War for Civilization is essential reading for an insight into pretty much every Middle Eastern conflict for the past 40 odd years. I think reading him is essential for understanding the language used - "regime" vs "government", "al qaeda" vs "Jabhat Fatah al-Sham" (same thing).

I'll stop there but there but essentially if you take the view that the BBC and Guardian are propaganda rather than facts on this (and other issues!) then you are broadly correct. Of course it isn't "one side good, other bad" When is it ever? In essence they are the fake news on some issues. I suspect the recent attacks on fake news (some of which is probably true! Obvs alongside some blatant nonsense) is designed to muddy the waters so that no-one knows what is true any more. This could be because there are some very ugly truths which certain people / governments are worried could come to the surface (with the election of speak-first-think-later Trump?). In that regard I think some people in power would be quite happy to see a post-truth world. Its incumbent on the reader to use what critical nouse they have to try and read around and "zone in" on the truth. It is no doubt out there, and it being labelled "fake news" doesn't necessarily make it so.