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UK students urged to report ‘propaganda’

Samizdat | June 3, 2022

The University of Edinburgh in Scotland has urged its students to report “misinformation” after one of its teachers was accused of spreading false Russian narratives.

According to The Times and the BBC, while stating that it was committed to freedom of expression and creating a “safe space for staff and students to discuss controversial topics,” the university noted that it has a “strong view against the spread of misinformation” and asked students to report concerns they might have about teachers.

The academic in question – Tim Hayward, a professor of environmental political theory at the University of Edinburgh – had retweeted a statement made by a Russian representative to the UN, who claimed that the alleged Russian bombing of a maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine was a false flag operation.

In March, Hayward also shared a link to an article questioning the reported Russian attack on a theater in Mariupol, and asked “what do we know of the reality?” The article suggested that the assault may have also been a false-flag operation carried out by Ukrainians in an attempt to generate public outrage and provoke a military intervention from the West.

Kvitka Perehinets, a Ukrainian student at the university, who says she has family members fighting now, told the BBC that she was deeply concerned over the professor’s social media activity, stating that: “The moment we start to equate the two sides in the story is the moment we lose our humanity. The oppressor — in this case Russia — should not be given the same kind of platform as those who are being oppressed.”

Perehinets told the outlet that she alerted the university to Professor Hayward’s tweets.

Another student, Mariangela Alejandro, expressed concern over Hayward’s statements on the alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria, and his critical view of the White Helmets organization, which he shared with students during a lecture.

According to a lecture obtained by the BBC, Hayward told his students that there were two prevailing narratives surrounding the alleged attack in Douma, Syria in 2018: “One narrative says the White Helmets helped rescue victims, provided evidence and gave witness statements about the chemical attack on Douma on 7 April 2018. The critics say the White Helmets were responsible for staging a false flag event to spur the West to attack the Syrian government.”

“In fact, dispute about this case is still current,” he noted.

The BBC wrote that Alejandro said she came away from Hayward’s lecture “thinking ‘it could be true’ that the attack was faked, until she spoke to a Syrian friend.” The article, however, did not specify what her friend said.

Hayward has defended his teaching by stating that his course simply asks whether a claim should be accepted solely on the basis of someone’s authority, adding that the concept extends to his own words as well.

He hit out against the BBC for what he considers to be attacks on him and other academics who are challenging the prevailing narrative. Following the BBC’s article, Hayward wrote on Twitter: “Academia should support open discussion of propaganda, not be constrained to tow an official line in an information war.”

June 3, 2022 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Sri Lanka seizes Russian plane

Samizdat | June 3, 2022

The authorities in Sri Lanka have grounded a civilian aircraft belonging to Russian carrier Aeroflot, and arrested the plane, local newspaper News First reported on Friday.

The Colombo High Commercial Court reportedly issued the arrest warrant following a complaint filed by Irish company Celestial Aviation Trading Limited, which is affiliated with aircraft lessor GECAS.

After Western states placed sanctions on Russia, aircraft lessors demanded that Moscow return leased planes for fear of secondary sanctions, and as the restrictions barred them from pursuing financial relations with Russian air carriers.

Russia, however, kept the majority of the planes, stating that the demand to return them violated lease contracts. It also started registering the planes in the country so they could continue to operate. According to the Airfleets portal, the aircraft detained in Sri Lanka received Russian registration at the end of April, and was registered in Bermuda before that.

Aeroflot announced that a hearing on the release of the aircraft is scheduled for June 8.

Russian tour operator Intourist told the press that people who were waiting to fly home on the detained plane were accommodated in a nearby hotel.

EU sanctions introduced in February banned the supply of civil aircraft and spare parts to Russia, as well as their maintenance and insurance. In addition, the sanctions obligated lessors to terminate their existing contracts with Russian airlines.

In early March, the Federal Air Transport Agency notified airlines of cases of cancelation of airworthiness certificates for aircraft registered abroad, while in mid-March, the Bermuda Civil Aviation Authority (BCAA) suspended the airworthiness certificates of aircraft from Russian airlines registered in Bermuda. Russian attempts to re-register the planes in the country were met with criticism, as some countries questioned the safety of flights on planes not checked by internationally-recognized registers.

At the end of May, the Chinese aviation authorities closed their airspace to Boeing and Airbus planes operated by Russian airlines, as “dual registration” of these aircraft does not meet international requirements.

June 3, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , | 1 Comment

US Republicans slam ‘misinformation’ tool

Samizdat | June 3, 2022

Republicans in Congress are sounding alarms over a partnership agreement between the NewsGuard ‘disinformation’ service and a major teachers’ union, arguing the tool is prone to bias and the union is deliberately politicizing American students.

In letters sent to both NewsGuard and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), GOP Representatives Virginia Foxx (North Carolina), Jim Banks (Indiana), and Burgess Owens (Utah) slammed the two organizations for a “history of demonstrating left-wing bias,” according to Fox News.

“We can’t let this kind of left-wing propaganda into our schools, or let groups condemn so-called ‘misinformation’ while peddling it themselves,” Foxx – the ranking Republican on the House Education Committee – said during a recent interview.

“AFT has long demonstrated that its priority is politics, not education. It is painfully clear that NewsGuard does not have the judgement necessary to teach our nation’s children how to tell truth from fiction.”

According to NewsGuard’s website, the paid service offers “trust ratings” for thousands of publications, appending color-coded icons to news articles depending on their ‘reliability’, as determined by “real journalists.” The New York-based organization has worked with major institutions in the past, including Bing, Microsoft, MSN, the US State Department, the Pentagon, and the World Health Organization. It declared its new partnership with the AFT earlier this year, with the union’s president, Randi Weingarten, saying the tool would be a “game-changer” for helping “middle, high school and postsecondary students separate fact from fiction.”

However, some House Republicans are now echoing concerns previously raised by a number of education and tech policy groups, who said the tool posed “a new threat to the principles of free expression, open dialogue, diversity of political thought, and freedom from harassment in our classrooms.”

In a statement, Rep. Banks said “the left” is “obsessed with indoctrinating kids,” arguing that political advocacy groups “have no place in taxpayer funded public schools,” while Owens stated the partnership with the AFT “is not an honest attempt to separate fact from fiction. It’s yet another coordinated effort to politicize our academic institutions.”

NewsGuard has come under fire from conservative critics for “amplifying,” rather than “discrediting,” disinformation, some noting that the tool gave perfect ratings to a series of news outlets that dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop story first unearthed by the New York Post in 2020. While many mainstream publications have since acknowledged that the laptop was authentic, NewsGuard continues to dole out rock-bottom credibility scores to the Post and other right-leaning outlets.

The tool has also earned the ire of some on the left, including Joe Lauria, chief editor at Consortium News. In a story published on Thursday, Lauria said the investigative news outfit is now being “reviewed” by NewsGuard for allegedly “false” reporting on the conflict in Ukraine.

“It calls ‘false’ essential facts about Ukraine that have been suppressed in mainstream media,” he wrote, including US involvement in the country’s 2014 coup, as well as the influence of far-right groups and “neo-Nazism” within the Ukrainian government.

“NewsGuard considers these facts to be ‘myths’ and is demanding Consortium News ‘correct’ these ‘errors,’” Lauria added.

June 3, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

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