#ANI linked to #India’s anti-#Pakistan #disinformation campaign is reporting that #Pakistani intelligence agency #ISI influenced #US #Elections2020. #fakenews | Business Standard News


https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/us-on-alert...


The United States and the Nevada government have been put on alert by an Anti-Voter Fraud group after a suspicious link was found between the state government website and a Lahore-based company allegedly linked to the Pakistani intelligence services.

According to an article by Kristina Wong titled 'Anti-Voter Fraud Group Finds Suspicious Link Between Nevada State Website and Intelligence-Linked Pakistani Company' published in Breitbart News on December 5, "The organization, True the Vote, alerted state and federal authorities after it requested a Nevada voter registration list through the Nevada secretary of state's website, and received an email back with a downloadable voter file. That email arrived with an employee of Pakistani company Kavtech carbon copied."


Catherine Engelbrecht, 'True the Vote' President, informed John C. Demers, Assistant Attorney General for National Security in a letter, obtained exclusively by Breitbart News, that upon receiving the email, "I was shocked to see the inclusion of another email address in the CC line."

"The address was waqas@kavtech.net. Waqas Butt is the CEO of Kavtech Solutions Ltd.. Kavtech is a Pakistani owned company, located in Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan, with ties to Pakistani intelligence, military, and the interior," she said in the letter.

Meanwhile, the election researchers familiar with the incident has opined that the inclusion of another email address in the CC line could either be an "an accident by a contractor who worked on the Nevada secretary of state's website" or even an indication of the involvement of an unauthorised company allegedly linked to Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) into the backend of the Nevada government's website system.

"Such an intrusion could be problematic if downloading the voter registration list also worked as a phishing attack, where hackers could gain entry into the servers of those requesting the lists, or if hackers had access to state government email communications," Kristina said.

"The fact that this company was cc'ed on an email containing access to the Nevada voter registration database appears to be evidence of a breach within the Nevada Secretary of State's email system," Engelbrecht told Demers.

"Obviously, the problems that such a breach may evidence include access to at least the voter registration information of Nevada residents. At worst it could reveal a breach that gives a foreign power access to not only the State of Nevada's systems, but also to the email systems of anyone whom the State communicates with via email," she added.

Post the incident, Engelbrecht said in an interview with Breitbart News, "Why would they [Pakistani company] be getting this information? Why would they show up on a cc line? There's no good way to look at that should make anyone feel confident in the security of this process."

"Further, all we can speak to is our experience. Who knows where else that is showing up and what else they're tracking? If it's embedded in a form like that, they could be doing that for any number of things," she further said.

"The implication here that a foreign national company with known ties to the intelligence community in Pakistan -- there's no way to overlook that. It's inexplicable and it should be investigated," she added.

Should Secular Democracies Get Away With Acts Of Subversion And Fabrication? – OpEd
Hamza Rifaat Hussain

https://ipripak.org/should-secular-democracies-get-away-with-acts-o...


Open source investigations can be a tedious and cumbersome task and ‘Indian Chronicles’ a report published by the EU’s DisinfoLab which details the fifteen year operation conducted by the Srivastava Group and Asian News International (ANI) is no exception. Since 2005, the operation continued unabated with astonishing tactics of subversion at the international level involving identity thefts, fake media outlets and domain names. This included Former President of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz as well as photo of James Purnell, a former UK Minister who became subjects of egregious fabrication with close to 750 fake media outlets covering 119 countries or 61% of the global population as well as over 550 domain names being registered. The sole objective was to promote India’s narrative at the expense of transparency and authenticity to claim that this is ordinary is to claim that Albert Einstein was solely a scientist. It reveals a criminally bare story.

What the evidence does demonstrate is that New Delhi, through the Srivastava Group employed underhand tactics such as activating side events and demonstrations in support of minority rights in various countries as well as impersonating distinguished UN accredited NGOs with the aim of promoting ‘India- centric’ narratives and muzzling out divergent voices at the international level. Solid evidence has implicated organizations created by the Srivastava Group, which successfully organized trips to Brussels in Belgium for members of the European parliament (MEPs) to Kashmir, Bangladesh and even the Maldives. The delegates purportedly attending these conferences were not EU officials per say, given that they lacked sanctioning from the European Parliament but impersonations and fake profiles as per the Commission to Study the Organization of Peace (CSOP), a US based NGO had become inactive in the late 1970s yet in 2005, its identity had been hijacked by actors from the Srivastava Family given that the deceased Professor Louis B Sohn, had actually passed away in 2006 and apparently attended both attended both a UN Human Rights Council Meeting in 2007 and participated in the ‘Friends of Gilgit Baltistan’ event in Washington D.C. in 2011.

Furthermore, informal groups such as the ‘South Asia Peace Forum’ and ‘The Baloch Forum’ were also considered integral components of the European Parliament with press conferences and events taking place worldwide These shocking revelations cannot be simply contested as attempts by India’s adversaries, Pakistan or China to deflect blame, but are realistic attempts which threaten the very foundations of diplomatic initiatives in Western democracies as well as states which are grappling with issues such as terrorism on their shores.

Despite this moral bankruptcy, the Srivastava Group continued its operations unabashedly and unabatedly given that they fell below the global radar. The recent launch of the ‘EU Chronicle’ which is a fake EU outlet spread disinformation and reached out to world capitals to promote fabricated narratives and muzzle out dissenting voices, particularly from India’s staunchest adversaries such as Pakistan and China. Recently, India’s nuclear armed rival, shared a dossier on India’s terror campaign with the United Nations Secretary General which mentions New Delhi’s sponsorship of groups such as the Tehrik I Taliban and Jamaat Ul Ahrar which are terrorist organizations of which the former was responsible for the heinous 2014Army Public School attack in Peshawar six years ago. The setting up of a dedicated cell to sabotage the China Pakistan Economic Corridor, an economic lifeline for cash strapped Pakistan with investments worth Rs 500 million as well as subversive tactics in Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan underlines how Beijing’s influence was also viewed as a threat and had to be targeted through disinformation campaigns and systematic investments. All this was emanating from a secular democracy and not rogue dictatorships such as Iran or Russia with a history of attempts to hijack, dissuade, project and subvert international norms for promoting Moscow or Tehran’s global ambitions.

There is a catch for states which have not been provided with international platforms to voice their concerns. India’s rival and the most brutalized victim, Pakistan has long been considered to be partly complicit in regional terrorism and for its failure to crack down on militants on its soil. Islamabad has also been significantly berated at the United Nations with less than convincing counter narratives to truly depict the country as a victim instead of a sponsor of terrorism. The report by DisinfoLab however, has vindicated such positions, given that disinformation campaigns launched by New Delhi has not implicated fledgling dictatorships but Western democratic, diplomatic representatives which have been championing the cause of transparency and curbing cybercrime across the globe.

Numerous analysts, scholars, academics and practitioners and even the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan had pointed to the campaigns initiated by Indian lobbies in the United States, Europe and Asia and their ability to garner widespread support for its narrative as a key factor in promoting wider Indian designs. The multiplication of repetitive negative content online has resulted in global audiences to consume the fact that they were not being diplomatically represented in august forums given that the profiles of their representatives were fabricated and personal information was tapped into which is nothing short of state sponsored clandestine, propaganda warfare.

The evidence is undoubtedly damning, revealing and shocking and requires international attention given that transparency, the right to privacy, curbing cybercrime, stymying defamation campaigns and acts of subversion, have long been advocated for as globally inviolable norms. What the international community’s response to the EU DisinfoLab’s revelations will hence be the real challenge given that this emanated from a secular democracy not a rogue dictatorship.

Has a ‘fifth generation war’ started between India and Pakistan?
What do recent revelations about an Indian disinformation campaign against Pakistan tell us about regional dynamics?

Ahsan I Butt

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/1/4/are-india-and-pakistan-...

The symbiosis between the Indian government and its media is not new. Just eighteen months ago, India and Pakistan found themselves in the midst of a dangerous crisis that risked nuclear war. In those nervy and tense times, the Indian media, according to a Polis Project study, “largely ascribed to itself the role of an amplifier of government propaganda”, regurgitating baseless claims and pouring jingoistic fuel on to a raging nationalistic fire.

Simlarly, the EU DisinfoLab report has proffered evidence that India’s “private” mainstream media is in many ways an arm of the Indian state. In so doing, it has strengthened Pakistan’s position regarding the degradation of India’s national political institutions. India’s reputation as a democracy, so crucial to its soft power, has already taken a battering under Modi. This report does not help.

Of course, the West maintains good relations with India not because of its democratic status, but rather because of its potential to balance China and fuel economic growth. It would be unreasonable to expect this report to fundamentally alter this trajectory.

---------------


For instance, the Soviet Union and the United States sponsored propaganda and misinformation against each other during the Cold War. The US eagerly expanded the scope of its propaganda and psychological operations under President Dwight Eisenhower and went on to build an impressive infrastructure of institutions, such as Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, that were devoted to the task.

For its part, the USSR enjoyed focusing on racism in the US. Propaganda posters would often juxtapose symbols of American democracy, such as the Statue of Liberty, with emblems of slavery, racism, and domestic terrorism, such as the Ku Klux Klan or the police.


The point here is not merely to dispute the nomenclature of “fifth-generation war”. Rather, by considering disinformation and perception management as tools of war rather than “normal” politics and diplomacy, states risk exaggerating the severity of the threats they face. Though all war is politics, as Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz famously observed, not all politics is war.

India-Pakistan Engage In 5th Gen Warfare As Propaganda War Erupts Over Kashmir, Balochistan


https://eurasiantimes.com/india-pakistan-engage-in-5th-gen-warfare-...


An article by Ahsan I Butt, an associate professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, in Al Jazeera, states Pakistan is being ignorant in not accepting the security threats while gleefully hailing the report.

Butt says “there is little doubt that such a vast enterprise could and would exist only with the government’s knowledge”. He underlines the emerging argument of Pakistan facing a “new type of holistic war” but at the same time, speculates if this could lead to a fifth-generation war between the two neighbors.

India’s ministry of external affairs has already refuted the allegations made by the EU report. In response to Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan and Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi’s charge of India peddling fake news, Anurag Srivastava, spokesperson for MEA, said: “As a responsible democracy, India does not practice disinformation campaigns”.

“In fact, you are looking at disinformation, the best example is the country next door which is circulating fictional and fabricated dossiers and purveys a regular stream of fake news,” he said.

Pakistan Releases Dossier
While India has shrugged off such claims, Pakistan itself has been leading the “war of narratives” from its side. In November 2020, Pakistan made public a dossier containing “proofs” of the “India-sponsored” terrorism in Pakistan.

Foreign Minister Qureshi, accompanied by military spokesman Maj Gen Babar Iftikhar, backed the allegation of India aiding and abetting terrorism for destabilizing the region with specific evidence of financing, training, harboring, and weapons supply in the shape of copies of correspondence, bank transactions, and communication intercepts.

Hassan Aslam Shad, a practicing international lawyer, writing in an article for The Diplomat also speculates these developments between India and Pakistan mark “a new war of narratives” between the two nuclear powers.

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, ever since he has come to power in 2018, has played an important role in leading a campaign against India on the Kashmir issue on international platforms.

Exposing #India's #fakenews war against #Pakistan: EU DisinfoLab Executive Director Alexandre Alaphilippe stated that it was the ‘largest network’ of disinformation they have exposed. #IndianChronicles #disinformation https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2021/01/09/exposing-the-fake-news-war...

For nearly 15 years, a network comprising over a thousand mostly Indian news outlets and domains operating across the world systematically influenced international opinion against Pakistan. Unquestioned by key officials in the United States and Europe, these sources of motivated information and disinformation constituted an essential part of a pro-India group’s campaign against Pakistan.


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Without really figuring out the ‘movers and shakers’ behind the negative publicity against it, Pakistan has struggled to manage Shia–Sunni rivalries, terror outfits and disgruntled ethnic Pashtun and Baloch movements. Islamabad failed to focus on how Indian networks — ANI, Zee News and New Delhi Times, as well as hundreds of their partners abroad — were exploiting these internal fault-lines.

These three news organisations specifically focused on Balochistan, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and religious minorities when reporting on Pakistan, serving as primary sources of information for their partners in Europe and the United States.

‘Not stopping this sort of malicious activity says a lot about the Indian government’, says the ANU’s Claude Rakisits. New Delhi may not have been behind the campaign, but they certainly turned a blind eye to it.

The Indian Chronicles report may now represent an opportunity for Pakistan — whose image is reeling from the consequences of the long-term campaign from India mounted against it — to set things right through astute diplomacy.

This affair reveals a deliberate and targeted disinformation campaign from within the world’s largest democracy. British jurist Nazir Gilani argues it is more than a fit case for Pakistan to raise in the European Union and on the floor of the United Nations. India’s self-interest trumped when it acquiesced in — even if not directly supported — a massive disinformation campaign on its neighbour.

Industrialized Disinformation
2020 Global Inventory of Organized
Social Media Manipulation
Samantha Bradshaw . University of Oxford
Hannah Bailey . University of Oxford
Philip N. Howard . University of Oxford

https://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/127/2021/01/C...

Excerpts of Oxford Disinformation Report 2020:

By looking comparatively across the behaviours, expenditures, tools, and resources cyber troop employ, we can begin to build a larger comparative picture of the global organization of social media manipulation. National contexts are always important to consider. However, we suggest it is also worth generalizing about the experience of organized disinformation campaigns across regime types to develop a broad and comparative understanding of this phenomenon. We have begun to develop a simplistic measure to comparatively assess the capacity of cyber troop teams in relation to one another, taking into consideration the number of government actors involved, the sophistication of tools, the number of campaigns, the size and permanency of teams, and budgets or expenditures made. We describe cyber troop capacity on a three-point scale (High, Medium, Low):

High cyber troop capacity involves large numbers of staff, and large budgetary expenditure on psychological operations or information warfare. There might also be significant funds spent on research and development, as well as evidence of a multitude of techniques being used. These teams do not only operate during elections but involve full-time staff dedicated to shaping the information space. High-capacity cyber troop teams focus on foreign and domestic operations. They might also dedicate funds to state-sponsored media for overt propaganda campaigns. High-capacity teams include: Australia, China, Egypt, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Myanmar, Pakistan, Philippines, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Venezuela, and Vietnam.
----------------

One example of this phenomenon is the human networks of cyber troops in Pakistan, who both artificially boost political campaigns, but also mass report tweets that oppose their agenda as spam, causing the Twitter algorithm to block that issue’s access to the trending panel (Poplzaj & Jahangir, 2019). Recently, however, Twitter has maintained a 0% compliance rate with government requests to take down content that would fall under cyber troop activities (Twitter Transparency Report, 2019). Twitter is not the only platform involved. Facebook and Google have also been a focus of cyber troops in Pakistan: on Facebook, Pakistan successfully restricted more than 5,700 posts between January and June 2019 (Facebook Transparency Report, 2019) and on Google more than 3,299 posts were requested to be removed between January and June 2019 (Google Transparency Report, 2019). Facebook, Twitter and Google have expressed their concern at these restrictive activities and have also recently threatened to remove their services from Pakistan in response to legislative attempts to censor digital content, but they have yet to act on this threat (Singh, 2020)

#Socialmedia #algorithms amplify the incendiary—the attacks, the misinformation, the conspiracy theories. What you see in your feeds isn’t up to you. That needs to change. @JoannaStern explores some solutions. #disinformation https://www.wsj.com/articles/social-media-algorithms-rule-how-we-se... via @WSJ

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when we lost control of what we see, read—and even think—to the biggest social-media companies.

I put it right around 2016. That was the year Twitter and Instagram joined Facebook and YouTube in the algorithmic future. Ruled by robots programmed to keep our attention as long as possible, they promoted stuff we’d most likely tap, share or heart—and buried everything else.

Bye-bye, feeds that showed everything and everyone we followed in an unending, chronologically ordered river. Hello, high-energy feeds that popped with must-clicks.

At around the same time, Facebook—whose News Feed has been driven by algorithms since 2009—hid the setting to switch back to “Most Recent.”

No big deal, you probably thought, if you thought about it at all. Except these opaque algorithms didn’t only maximize news of T. Swift’s latest album drops. They also maximized the reach of the incendiary—the attacks, the misinformation, the conspiracy theories. They pushed us further into our own hyperpolarized filter bubbles.

India source:

Pakistan plans to set up international media channel funded by China to build narrative: Report (India Today) The leaked documents that Indian agencies have laid their hands on from Pakistan's security establishment show that Pakistan wants to collaborate with China to carry out an information war campaign globally, with Beijing providing finances and guidance.

https://thecyberwire.com/newsletters/daily-briefing/10/118

The leaked documents that Indian agencies have laid their hands on from Pakistan's security establishment show that Pakistan wants to collaborate with China to carry out an information war campaign globally, with Beijing providing finances and guidance.

The concept paper, reviewed by India Today, is titled ‘Building capacity to contest inimical narratives through counter on alternative narratives.’

The paper says the projects looks at truth and factual aspects with a view to quashing misperception.

Internal dynamics in Pakistan are favourable for open media but financial challenges are a hurdle, the paper says while justifying the need to team up with China.

“There is a need for a media house of the stature of Al Jazeera and RT to propel amenable narrative. A media house by Pakistan and funded by China will achieve the stipulated objectives,” the document states.

https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/pakistan-china-international-...

#Pakistan #Army Chief Gen Bajwa: “Our enemies are...using non-traditional means including propaganda and disinformation to achieve their nefarious objectives". We must deal “strictly with some internal elements spreading chaos.” #DefenceDay2021 #Disinfo https://www.newsweekpakistan.com/no-room-for-any-kind-of-extremism-...

“No individual or group will be allowed to blackmail the state on the basis of area, ethnicity, ideology or religion,” he said during an event commemorating Defense Day at General Headquarters in Rawalpindi, adding that no individual or group aside from the armed forces and law-enforcement agencies would be allowed to display weapons or use them.

Urging the nation to unite to make Pakistan a “progressive, peaceful and a modern Islamic and welfare state,” he said the country’s strength and longevity lay with a democratic setup. “To make it more stable, we will have to follow the principles of following the Constitution, justice, tolerance and equality,” he said, adding that “negative attitudes like criticism for the sake of criticism, hatred and intolerance” should be discouraged.

“If Pakistan has to progress, we will have to bury our ego and self-interest … According to [former] U.S. president John F. Kennedy, ‘Do not ask what the country can do for you, ask what you can do for the country’,” he said. In light of the requirements of the 21st century, Gen. Bajwa said the state should strive for people’s progress and happiness, regional cooperation and acquiring modern technology instead of the negative traditional geopolitical thought against each other.” He said education, health, infrastructure development, population control and climate change should be national priorities.

The Pakistan Army chief also reiterated his concerns with the changing nature of warfare, stressing that modern technology and ways of communication had replaced large-scale conflict to weaken a nation’s unity and ideological boundaries, spread chaos in different sectors, and demoralize people. “Our enemies are also using non-traditional means including propaganda and disinformation to achieve their nefarious objectives,” he said, and warned that authorities also had to deal “strictly with some internal elements spreading chaos.”

Referring to hybrid, or fifth-generation, warfare, he said: “It is a moment of reflection for all of us that some people are being used by anti-state elements.” He warned that this was intended to “make Pakistan’s roots hollow and damage the country’s unity.” However, he added, such negative objectives would not be allowed to succeed.

#Indian news channels use Arma 3 gameplay footage to claim #Pakistan bombed #Panjshir #Afghanistan.
The footage first appeared on Indian news channels including Republic TV, Times Now Navbharat, Zee Hindustan, and TV9 Bharatvarsh. #fakenews | PC Gamer
https://www.pcgamer.com/arma-3-pakistan-footage/

It's easy to see how the deceptive edit was made. In Compared Comparison's YouTube video, zoomed-in shots of the attacking aircraft do look moderately convincing, at least until the video zooms out to show the digital anti-air vehicle firing and later blowing up in a not-so-realistic fashion.

------------

During Republic TV's broadcast, the anchor can be heard repeating the claim that the Pakistani airforce performed an airstrike in Panjshir. The claim was originally recognized as fraudulent by Boom, a group that calls itself India's "first and leading fact checking website and initiative," and is a member of the Poynter Institute's International Fact-Checking Network initiative.

Republic TV meanwhile has a sordid history of far right-wing reporting and supporting India's prime minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist policies, according to Aljazeera. Vikas Khanchandani, CEO of ARG (owner of Republic TV) was arrested in December 2020 for allegedly rigging ratings in order to charge advertisers more.



--------------
In a bizarre development, some Indian news broadcasts claimed that the Pakistani airforce attacked the Panjshir valley, an Afghanistan mountain province home to about 170,000 people, which is currently the last major holdout of anti-Taliban forces.

The only problem? The footage used to report the supposedly pro-Taliban airforce attack came from the popular military simulation game Arma 3.

The footage first appeared on Indian news channels including Republic TV, Times Now Navbharat, Zee Hindustan, and TV9 Bharatvarsh. The original video was credited to a source called "Hasti TV" on Facebook, which has since been deleted. These Indian news sources claimed the video showed a military jet attempting a bombing run on Panjshir.

In fact, the footage came from this January Arma 3 video from the YouTube channel Compared Comparison, which has now been viewed 23 million times. The gameplay shows players engaging in a ground-to-air battle between a jet and a vehicle-mounted anti-air turret with tracer rounds seen firing through the sky at the jet.

In a statement to PC Gamer, a representative for Arma 3 developer Bohemia Interactive confirmed that the original footage does indeed come from the game.

"Strangely, we've seen this particular game footage be used several times by certain media outlets in support of their real-life news coverage," the Bohemia Interactive rep said. "We know this because we've been previously approached regarding similar occurrences by fact-checkers from organizations such as Agence France-Presse, Check Your Fact, PolitiFact, and if I remember correctly, also Reuters."

Bohemia Interactive added that the game footage used in the erroneous Indian news broadcasts may also have come from two other Arma 3 gameplay clips.

"The clip in the [original viral tweet] is so cropped and low-res that I find it hard to compare and say for sure which it is, but I'm confident it is Arma 3 footage," Bohemia Interactive's rep said.

F16 Shot Down? How #Indian #Media Again ‘Downed A #Pakistan #F16 Jet’ & Triggered A #SocialMedia Storm. Fact-checkers and independent journalists debunked the claim and said the image in question was a #US Airforce F-16 Fighting Falcon https://eurasiantimes.com/f-16-shot-down-how-indian-media-again-dow... via @THEEURASIATIMES


An image of a downed F-16 fighter aircraft had been repeatedly shown by a section of Indian TV news channels earlier this week, creating a social media storm.

The picture originated from an unverified Twitter handle claiming to be operated by Ahmad Massoud, the son of a legendary Afghan rebel commander, Ahmad Shah Massoud.

The viral tweet with the caption, “The Pakistani Jet Plane that was shot down by the lion cubs” gave the impression that the aircraft was shot down by the Afghan resistance fighters in Panjshir valley.

However, fact-checkers and independent journalists debunked the claim and said the image in question was a US Airforce F-16 Fighting Falcon.

Fact vs Fiction
A 2018 news report by the US-based publication Military Factory confirms that an F-16 had taken off from the Luke Airforce Base in Arizona following which it met with an accident near the Arizona-California border.

The report noted that the pilot had managed to eject in the nick of time and was stable. The jet in question was an F-16C assigned to the 56th Fighter Wing. It seemed the aircraft diverted from its predestined route as the pilot tried to land it inside the Lake Havasu Municipal Airport around 10:50 am local time.

Following the ejection, the pilot was rushed to the Havasu Regional Medical Center. Witnesses in proximity to the crash site posted pictures on social media. A Facebook group in particular called Air Force amn/nco/snco posted pictures of the crash.

Another F-16 operated by the 162nd Wing of the Air National Guard, which trained Iraqi pilots, had also crashed a year before this incident. This marked two F-16 crashes within a year.

The Fighting Falcon
America’s Vietnam debacle led policymakers in Washington to consider designing and developing a light fighter aircraft. USAF’s bulky F-4 Phantom delivered a lackluster performance against the North Vietnamese Airforce.

This led to some soul searching, which eventually resulted in the development of the F-16 Fighting Falcon by aerospace giant Lockheed Martin.

F-16s were USAF’s first multi-role jet and have been considered one of the most prolific fighter platforms in military aviation history. The service currently has a fleet of over 2,000 F-16s while another 2,500 are operational in 25 countries including Pakistan.

Colonel Vinay B Dalvi (Retd), author, former Associate Editor of the Fauji Magazine and Chief Editor of Mission Victory India told The EurAsian Time, “While I have never operated aircraft, which is obvious given my humble background as an infantry officer, I have spoken to numerous Indian Air Force officers and aviation veterans during the research of my books. What I have learned is that the F-16 is a highly potent aircraft platform and an excellent war machine.

“Veterans from military aviation circles have often lauded its aerial performance in conversations. Based on this input, I have been able to gauge that the F-16 is incredibly fast, has extreme levels of operational agility, and whatever its pitfalls get made up by its lower cost.”

The F-16 has earned the distinction of being one of the most sophisticated aircraft of its kind and has remained an economically viable option for air forces around the world.

While the F-16 falls short when it comes to range and payload capacities as compared to the specifications offered by twin-engine fighter jets like the F-15 Eagle, it is considered an acceptable tradeoff, given the aircraft’s economic viability which plays a crucial role in procurement.

Ex-Indian army officer shares picture from movie set as 'truth' about Pakistan Army's presence in Panjshir
Former Indian major general believes picture showing Pakistani actors Shaan Shahid and Umair Jaswal is of soldiers in Afghanistan.

https://www.dawn.com/news/1645991


A retired Indian army officer became the butt of a joke on Twitter after he mistook a photo from a Pakistani military-themed film as showing Pakistani soldiers who he falsely claimed were martyred in Afghanistan's Panjshir valley.

The apparent confusion started after another former Indian army officer, Maj Gen GD Bakshi, posted a tweet claiming that the Pakistan Army had "suffered very heavy casualties" in Panjshir, where the Taliban and resistance fighters engaged in heavy fighting earlier this month.

Without sharing any evidence, Bakhsi tweeted that dozens of Pakistani soldiers had lost their lives and many others were wounded while supporting the Taliban in Panjshir. He wrote that a certain "Maj Gen Adil Rehmani has come back to organise discreet funerals in [the] dead of night." Even though the account is not verified by Twitter, Bakshi's tweets have been carried by Indian media on multiple occasions in the past.

Bakshi, who had a long career in the Indian army and holds a PhD in military history, is known for peddling fake news and rhetoric on Indian TV. An article by Indian publication The Print last year referred to him as the "shrillest warmonger in the media".

Responding to his latest claims about Pakistani soldiers, a Pakistani account with the handle @Fauji_Doctor shared a picture from the set of the 2017 Pakistani movie *Yalghaar* — ostensibly to poke fun at the Indian ex-officer, and wrote: "My class fellow from school days Maj Aijaj 2nd from left and Capt Jufar 1st from left embraced martyrdom in Panjshir. They were buried yesterday in Peshawar. ISPR is trying to hide these casualties. They fought bravely and should be honoured as such. This is injustice by Pak Army."

In fact, the two uniformed men he referred to are renowned Pakistani actors Shaan Shahid and Umair Jaswal - neither of whom are members of the armed forces.

Unaware of this and apparently without having done any investigation, former Indian Maj Gen Harsha Kakar shared a screenshot of @Fauji_Doctor's reply to Bakshi as "the truth on #PanjshirValley and Pak casualties".

"As expected [National Security Adviser Moeed Yusuf] lied and Pak disowned its dead," he alleged.

Pakistanis were amused by the Indian ex-officer's apparent naivete, with Shaan himself replying to Bakshi's original tweet with posters from Yalghaar. "Hello from the other side," he wrote with the pictures.


Jaswal too found the mix-up hilarious, responding to Bakshi with a picture of him in commando gear and writing: "Hello dear [laughing emoji] from Pakistan."

Jumping at the opportunity, other Pakistani users also shared spoof images of Pakistani actors in uniform to add to the joke.

Fake news about Pakistan's military involvement in Afghanistan surfaced as the Taliban said on Monday they had taken control of Panjshir province north of Kabul, the last holdout of anti-Taliban forces in the country and the only province the Taliban had not seized during their blitz across the country last month.

The anti-Taliban forces had been led by the former vice president, Amrullah Saleh, and Ahmad Massoud, whose father was killed just days before the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US.

With Taliban fighters advancing into Panjshir, Indian media outlets during the previous week ran unverified claims of Pakistan Air Force planes hovering over Panjshir valley and dropping bombs on resistance fighters in support of the Taliban.

Watch Indian fake news anchor Arnab Goswami claim that Pakistani Army officers retreating from Panjshir Valley are now on the 5th floor of the Serena Hotel in Kabul, Afghanistan. Fact: There are only three floors, including ground floor, in Kabul Serena hotel building. In 'The Debate' on Republic World TV last week, Goswami invited Indian analyst General G.D. Bakshi and PTI spokesperson Abdul Samad Yaqoob — to represent Pakistan. Goswami to Yaqoob: "You go and check today ... on the fifth floor of the Serena Hotel, I am telling you, please check, fifth floor of the Serena Hotel in Kabul, how many Pakistani army officers are there?" Yaqoob: " "What I got to know from my sources [is that] Serena has only two floors. There are no third, fourth or fifth floors."

Maria Ressa interview: You can’t negotiate peace if you don’t agree on the factsInterview/ Maria Ressa, CEO, RapplerRiyad Mathew By Riyad Mathew

https://www.theweek.in/theweek/cover/2021/10/22/maria-ressa-intervi...

You said the media lost its gatekeeping powers to technology. How do you take back control and regain the trust of people?


The hard part for journalists is that that’s not within our control anymore. In this new world, you say a lie a million times, it’s a fact. In the old world, you say a lie ten times, journalists can catch up, facts can catch up. But when it’s a million times, exponentially pounded, we don’t stand a chance. If you don’t have facts, you can’t have truths. Without truth, you can’t have trust. The incentive schemes of the internet and social media don’t encourage facts and journalism. They encourage information operations. This is why it’s not a surprise that your government, my government, Russian disinformation, Iranian disinformation, Saudi Arabia… there have been many countries. Oxford University’s computational propaganda research project said, at the beginning of the year, that there are at least 81 countries where cheap armies on social media are rolling back democracy. Meaning, they are insidiously manipulating their people. In which democracy is that okay?


These tech platforms tell us, “Well if you don’t like it, mute it or block it.” Can you imagine a journalist saying that? If you don’t like a fact, ignore it, but the rest of the world can still see it. This is why our public sphere is so broken. The idea behind a tech platform is that we can all have our own realities. It's like we’re living in the matrix, or in our own illusions. This is what is tearing down democracy. You go to the Nobel Peace Prize; you can’t negotiate peace if you don’t agree on the facts, if you don’t agree on your shared reality. I’ll shut up, I think I’ve had too much Coke Zero.

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You mentioned how some journalists could have succumbed under pressure. For you, getting arrested made you a stronger person and more committed to the cause. In India, five years ago, there were 10.3 lakh journalists; today it has come down to 2.3 lakh. Around 70 per cent either lost their jobs or left the industry. What do you say to that section of disillusioned journalists?


This is a disruption of our industry. So here’s the biggest problem. To paraphrase the Nobel committee, they said freedom of expression is necessary for a democracy, [and that] the quality of journalists of a democracy is indicative of the quality of its democracy. (Sighs) the problem is, the business model of news has crumbled. And that goes hand in hand with the rise of the technology platforms, which are the very same places that are tearing down the credibility of news. It’s a virtuous horrendous cycle. Part of the reason journalists have been laid off globally is that news organisations have lost their revenue stream, the advertising revenue stream. And where did they flock to? They flocked to the technology platforms that have enabled the attacks against journalists. And yet, as the Nobel committee pointed out, you need journalists to get the facts, especially in conflict areas, especially when authoritarian governments growing into dictatorships, growing into fascism, need to be curbed. I go crazy when people call journalists content creators, because we’re not! It would be very easy to just create content. It isn’t easy to be a good journalist. To stake your life at times if you’re in a war zone, [to stake] your reputation when you’re challenging power. It isn’t easy to go up to somebody who has all the power in your world and demand answers. That takes courage. And that is the commodity that no one can really pay for. That is what the mission of journalism creates. So I worry… sorry, I’m hyper, I’ll tone it down (laughs).

Prominent female #Indian journalists critical of #Modi government targeted by online scammers. Lured with fake job offers from #Harvard University in #Cambridge #Massachusetts. #BJP #Hindu #Hindutva #India https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/16/technology/harvard-job-scam-indi...

Nearly a year later, it is still uncertain why Ms. Razdan and the other women were targeted. Although the scammers expressed support online for the Hindu nationalist movement in India, they shed little light on their decision to trick reporters.

The perpetrators have successfully covered their tracks — at least, most of them. The New York Times reviewed private messages, emails and metadata the scammers sent to the women as well as archives of the scammers’ tweets and photos that the scammers claimed were of themselves. The Times also relied on analysis from researchers at Stanford University and the University of Toronto who study online abuse, and from a cybersecurity expert who examined Ms. Razdan’s computer.

The identities of the scammers remain a secret.

“It’s not like anything I’ve ever seen,” said Bill Marczak, a senior research fellow at Citizen Lab, an institute at the University of Toronto that investigates cyberattacks on journalists. “It’s a huge amount of effort and no payoff that we’ve identified.”

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One at a time, the scammers selected their prey.

The first known target: Rohini Singh, an outspoken female journalist who had broken some big stories that powerful men in India didn’t like.

Ms. Singh delivered a blockbuster article in 2017 about the business fortunes of the son of India’s current minister of home affairs. She is a freelance contributor to an online publication called The Wire that is among the most critical of the Hindu nationalist government in India. She has also amassed nearly 796,000 Twitter followers.

-------

The next target was another female journalist, Zainab Sikander. An up-and-coming political commentator, Ms. Sikander campaigns against discrimination toward Muslims, a growing problem under the Hindu nationalist government. She has also written and posted many critical observations of the administration of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

On Aug. 22, 2019, Ms. Sikander, too, received a Twitter message from Tauseef Ahmad, inviting her to participate in a high-powered media conference at Harvard. It was the same message sent to Ms. Singh, though neither woman knew the other had been targeted.

-----------

Just like in Ms. Singh’s case, Tauseef connected her to Alex Hirschman. What she didn’t know was that Alex and Tauseef were likely fake personas — a search of Harvard’s student directory showed no students by either name.

Ms. Sikander also didn’t know that Tauseef’s Twitter account was one of several online personas that were interlinked. Tauseef and Alex seemed so friendly, sending her compliments — and confirmations for the flights and hotels they claimed to have booked.

--------------
The next target was another female journalist working at a prominent Indian publication, who spoke with The Times on the condition that she was not identified. Suspicious about the scammer’s U.A.E. phone number, she quickly broke off contact too. But the scammers didn’t give up. By the time they communicated in November 2019 with Nighat Abbass, a spokeswoman for India’s ruling political party, known by its acronym, the B.J.P., they had copied email signatures from real Harvard employees and swiped official letterhead from the university’s website.

An investigation sheds light into #India’s PM #Modi’s machinery of online #hate and manipulation. #BJP uses #TekFog app to make hate-filled messages and anti-#Pakistan #fakenews go viral. #Hindutva #Islamophobia ⁦
@RanaAyyub
⁩ - The Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/01/18/the-wire-sheds-l...


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Tek Fog: An App With BJP Footprints for Cyber Troops to Automate Hate, Manipulate Trends

https://thewire.in/tekfog/en/1.html


The Wire investigates claims behind the use of ‘Tek Fog’, a highly sophisticated app used by online operatives to hijack major social media and encrypted messaging platforms and amplify right-wing propaganda to a domestic audience.


Over a series of tweets in April 2020, an anonymous Twitter account @Aarthisharma08 claiming to be a disgruntled employee of the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP's) Information Technology Cell (IT Cell) alleged the existence of a highly sophisticated and secret app called 'Tek Fog'. They claimed this app is used by political operatives affiliated with the ruling party to artificially inflate the popularity of the party, harass its critics and manipulate public perceptions at scale across major social media platforms.

The Twitter handle's mention of Tek Fog – a 'secret app' that they said was able to 'bypass reCaptcha codes' allowing fellow employees to 'auto-upload texts and hashtag Trends' – caught the attention of the authors of this piece, who reached out to the individual behind the account in order to investigate the existence of this hitherto unknown app.

Over subsequent conversations, the source claimed their daily job involved hijacking Twitter's 'trending' section with targeted hashtags, creating and managing multiple WhatsApp groups affiliated to the BJP and directing the online harassment of journalists critical of the BJP, all via the Tek Fog app.

The source went on to allege that they had decided to come forward after their supposed handler – Devang Dave, ex national social media and IT head, Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (the youth-wing of the BJP) and current election manager for the party in Maharashtra – failed to deliver on a lucrative job offer promised in 2018 if the BJP was able to retain power in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

Over the next two years, a process of correspondence followed where the team at The Wire set out to test what could and could not be verified in the allegations made by the whistleblower, in addition to investigating the broader implications of the existence of such an app on the public discourse and the sanctity of the country's democratic processes.

Each of the allegations made by the whistleblower were subjected to a process of independent verification through which the team sought to learn more about the different functionalities of the app, the identity of the app creators, its users and the organisations enabling its use. Via encrypted emails and online chat rooms, the individual behind the Twitter account sent several screencasts and screenshots demonstrating the app's features. The source also shared payslip and bank statements to establish their identity (on this condition that this not be made public) and that of their employers.

The source did not provide The Wire direct access to the Tek Fog app. They claimed that this was due to the presence of various security restrictions – including the requirement of three one-time passwords (OTPs) to login to the app dashboard and the use of a local firewall that prevents access outside of the facility. They were, however, able to connect us via email to a BJYM official who provided code scripts that helped the team identify the various external tools and services connecting to the secure server hosting the Tek Fog app. The same script also led The Wire's team to one of the servers hosting the app, allowing us to independently verify that the app was functional at the time of publication and was not just a prototype.

In addition to the primary evidence provided by the source, the team at The Wire also employed a wealth of open-source investigative techniques to conduct an extensive forensic analysis of the various social media assets provided by the source, and to corroborate the network infrastructure underpinning the use of the app. The team also interviewed other independent experts and current employees at the organisations implicated in the broader operation in a bid to glean more insight into the network.

Through this process, The Wire was able to build upon these first shreds of evidence and uncover a vast operation pointing towards the existence of a group of public and private actors working together to subvert public discourse in the world's largest democracy by driving inauthentic trends and hijacking conversations across almost all major social media platforms.

The screencasts and screenshots of Tek Fog provided by the source highlighted the various features of the app and helped the team gain further insight into the operational structure of the network of cyber troops using it on a daily basis to manipulate public discourse, harass and intimidate independent voices, and perpetuate a partisan information environment in India.

One of the primary functions of the app is to hijack the 'trending' section of Twitter and 'trend' on Facebook. This process uses the app's in-built automation features to 'auto-retweet' or 'auto-share' the tweets and posts of individuals or groups and spam existing hashtags by accounts controlled by the app operatives.

This feature is also used to amplify right-wing propaganda, exposing this content to a more diverse audience on the platform, making extremist narratives and political campaigns appear more popular than they actually are.

One of the hashtags – #CongressAgainstLabourers – was shared 3by the source at 8:25 pm IST on May 4, 2020, as part of a screenshot revealing their 'daily task' list for that day. According to the same screen, the source was tasked with making the hashtag appear in at least 55,000 tweets and reach the 'trending' section of the platform.

An analysis of the on-platform activity of the hashtag via Meltwater Explore, a social media analysis tool, revealed that the hashtag had first appeared two hours prior on Twitter, eventually peaking at around 9 pm, half an hour after the source had shared the screen. The trend went on to accumulate 57,000 mentions, surpassing their assigned goal by 2,000 tweets. Moreover, the screen also showed how the source had posted the hashtag using 1,700 accounts in the first two hours after 'activating' the task, a fact that was corroborated by this independent analysis with exactly 1,700 accounts posting the hashtag at around 6:30 pm IST.

Sharechat's Response

Your story seems to insinuate certain relationships between the creators of the alleged ‘Tek Fog’ application and Mohalla Tech Private Limited. These are completely incorrect and false, and no such relationships exist between us. We would like to reiterate in absolutely no uncertain terms that we are not aware of, nor have we assisted (financially or otherwise) at any point in time and in any manner, the group of persons related to this ‘Tek Fog’ application. Further, we have no relationship (currently or in the past) with Persistent Systems of any manner whatsoever.

In the interest of transparency, we would request that you share further details of the claims made by you in your article for our teams to investigate.

As a platform, we invest significantly in countering hate speech, misinformation and other forms of harmful content on our platform. This is an ongoing issue that social media platforms across the world are working to solve, and it is well known that such operators spread similar content across platforms as a part of their activities.

To address this specifically, we take the following measures:

We partner with multiple third party fact checkers including BoomLive, Factly, NewsChecker and others to help identify and tag misinformation on the platform in 12 Indic languages including Marathi and Hindi, that covers more than 98% of the content posted on the platform.
We have developed and incorporated technology based tools that help us flag and takedown such content on a regular basis.
Our users also actively participate in the process of content moderation by reporting content on the platform that may violate our rules.
We have large teams both internally and externally that aid us on content moderation and responding to these user reports.
In the month of November 2021 alone, we removed 7,037,688 pieces of content from our platform that were against our community standards. We also aggressively take actions against accounts and in many instances permanently ban user accounts that attempt to spam or otherwise misuse the platform in violation of our terms of service and community guidelines. In the month of November 2021 alone, we took action against 319,701 accounts on the platform.

We would urge you to refer to our monthly transparency reports available at https://help.sharechat.com/transparency-report for greater details.

We reiterate that our company has no connections with this application, persons or companies mentioned by you and such claims are unfounded.

Praveen Swami’s legacy of “sources” journalism

https://caravanmagazine.in/media/praveen-swami-india-pakistan-balak...


By Praveen Donthi

In 2013, I reported for The Caravan on India’s compromised national security beat. I noted in the piece that reporting on the “natsec” beat in India has always been a murky business, centred on a transactional relationship between the reporters and their sources in the security establishments. The glamorous nature of natsec reporting also ensures that they keep their sources completely anonymous, and are rarely questioned by editors. These reporters rely heavily on leaks, and the price for access is publishing information without much regard for its provenance. The beneficiaries of these dynamics are India’s security establishment and its government, which, on matters of national security, prefer to function without public scrutiny and accountability.

Swami, whose work I analysed in the 2013 report, fits neatly into this pattern. “If there is one infallible indicator of what the top Indian intelligence agencies are thinking or cooking up, it is this: Praveen Swami’s articles,” a 2010 report by the Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Association, a human-rights group, said.

Swami’s reports are based mostly on unnamed sources in intelligence agencies, and make big claims with recurring narrative patterns. I wrote in 2013 that his pieces often flaunted details that would have been difficult for any journalist to discover first-hand, all presented in neat, confident narratives. His work has since continued along similar lines. On 26 February, as the foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale announced that India had conducted an airstrike in Balakot, Firstpost had carried one of the first reports on the strikes. The article claimed that, “according to defence sources, IAF fighter jets not only targeted the JeM camp, but also Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hizbul Mujahideen camps near Muzaffarabad.” These sources further claimed that there were six more targets “including Chakothi, Balakot and Muzaffarabad” and that five terror camps were also “targeted at Kangar in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.” The article was attributed to “FP staff.”

A week after the government claimed Indian forces had carried out surgical strikes on terror-training camps in Pakistan-administered Kashmir on 29 September 2016, Swami wrote a story for The Indian Express, where he was Strategic and International Affairs editor at the time. The story claimed to include “information which the governments of India and Pakistan have not made public.” The article, however, only confirmed India’s claims of the strikes. Swami claimed in the report that he sent questions to five people, “using a commercially available encrypted chat system,” who visited the villages that were apparently attacked during the strikes and spoke to the residents. Swami described them as “eyewitnesses.”

One of the stories Firstpost published after the recent fracas was by Francesca Marino, an Italian journalist. Marino’s story claimed that 35 people were killed in the strikes and mentioned that “the eyewitnesses were contacted by this correspondent using encrypted communication.”

Swami’s 2016 Indian Express story included this bit about a vengeful sentiment among the ranks of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, following the surgical strikes:

Friday prayers at a Lashkar-affiliated mosque in Chalhana, another eyewitness said, ended with a cleric vowing to avenge the deaths of the men killed the previous day. “The Lashkar men gathered there were blaming the Pak Army for failing to defend the border”, he said in one message, “and saying they would soon give India an answer it would never forget”.

He authored a Firstpost story on 1 March this year, which spoke of a similar sentiment among the leadership of the Jaish-e-Mohammed, whose training camp is believed to be target of India’s recent Balakot strike:

RSF’s 2022 World Press Freedom Index : a new era of polarisation


https://rsf.org/en/rsfs-2022-world-press-freedom-index-new-era-pola...


The invasion of Ukraine (106th) by Russia (155th) at the end of February reflects this process, as the physical conflict was preceded by a propaganda war. China (175th), one of the world’s most repressive autocratic regimes, uses its legislative arsenal to confine its population and cut it off from the rest of the world, especially the population of Hong Kong (148th), which has plummeted in the Index. Confrontation between “blocs” is growing, as seen between nationalist Narendra Modi’s India (150th) and Pakistan (157th). The lack of press freedom in the Middle East continues to impact the conflict between Israel (86th), Palestine (170th) and the Arab states.

Media polarisation is feeding and reinforcing internal social divisions in democratic societies such as the United States (42nd), despite president Joe Biden’s election. The increase in social and political tension is being fuelled by social media and new opinion media, especially in France (26th). The suppression of independent media is contributing to a sharp polarisation in “illiberal democracies” such as Poland (66th), where the authorities have consolidated their control over public broadcasting and their strategy of “re-Polonising” the privately-owned media.

#Google picks former #Modi think-tank official as #India policy head. Last year, #Meta Platforms Inc (#Facebook) hired Rajiv Aggarwal - who spent years working in India's federal and state governments. #BJP #Hindutva #SocialMedia https://www.reuters.com/world/india/google-picks-former-modi-think-...


NEW DELHI, May 4 (Reuters) - Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Google has hired a new public policy head in India, Archana Gulati, who previously worked at Prime Minister Narendra Modi's federal think-tank and the country's antitrust watchdog, a source with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

A number of Indian government officials have been hired by Big Tech companies which are battling tighter data and privacy regulation, as well as competition law scrutiny, under Modi's federal government.


Gulati is a long-term Indian government employee, having worked until March 2021 as a joint secretary for digital communications at Modi's federal think tank, Niti Aayog, a body that is critical to government's policy making across sectors.

Before that, between 2014 and 2016, she worked as a senior official at India's antitrust body, the Competition Commission of India, according to her LinkedIn profile.



A Google India spokesperson confirmed the development to Reuters, but did not elaborate. Gulati did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The source declined to be named as the hiring decision was not public.

India's antitrust watchdog is currently looking into Google's business conduct in the market of smart TVs, its Android operating system as well as its in-app payments system.

Last year, Meta Platforms Inc (FB.O) hired Rajiv Aggarwal - who spent years working in India's federal and state governments - as its head of policy.


Another former Indian antitrust and federal government official, Anand Jha, in 2019 joined Walmart (WMT.N) as India public policy officer. He currently manages government relations for Blackstone in India.

Video: Indian Film Festival IFFI Jury Head Calls 'Kashmir Files' "Vulgar"
Calling it "propaganda" and a "vulgar movie", Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid, who headed the IFFI jury, said "all of them" were "disturbed and shocked" to see the film screened at the festival.

https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/film-festival-iffi-jury-head-calls-...

New Delhi: The jury of 53rd International Film Festival in Goa has slammed the controversial movie "The Kashmir Files", which revolves around the killings and exodus of Kashmiri Pandits in 1990 from Kashmir Valley. Calling it "propaganda" and a "vulgar movie", Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid, who headed the IFFI jury, said "all of them" were "disturbed and shocked" to see the film screened at the festival.
"It seemed to us like a propagandist movie inappropriate for an artistic, competitive section of such a prestigious film festival. I feel totally comfortable to share openly these feelings here with you on stage. Since the spirit of having a festival is to accept also a critical discussion which is essential for art and for life," Mr Lapid said in his address.

The Anupam Kher, Mithun Chakraborty and Pallavi Joshi starrer, directed by Vivek Agnihotri, was featured in the "Panorama" section of the festival last week.


The film has been praised by the BJP and has been declared tax-free in most BJP-ruled states and was a box office hit. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah have praised on the movie.

Many, however, have criticised the content, calling it a one-sided portrayal of the events that is sometimes factually incorrect and claiming the movie has a "propagandist tone".

In May, Singapore banned the movie, citing concerns over its "potential to cause enmity between different communities".

"The film will be refused classification for its provocative and one-sided portrayal of Muslims and the depictions of Hindus being persecuted in the ongoing conflict in Kashmir," read a statement from the Singapore government, reported news agency Press Trust of India.

Mr Agnihotri has alleged an "international political campaign" against him and his film by foreign media.

He claimed this was the reason his press conference was cancelled by the Foreign Correspondents Club and the Press Club of India in May.

Hindu Nationalists often quote known fake sites set up by their Hindutva friends. These sites have now been fully exposed.

Both Op India and thedisinfolab.org are part of the Hindutva disinformation campaigns to spew hatred against Muslims.

OpIndia is a propaganda outlet controlled by BJP.

OpIndia: Hate speech, vanishing advertisers, and an undisclosed BJP connection
Ashok Kumar Gupta, the director of OpIndia’s holding company, has had affiliations with the Sangh Parivar.

https://www.newslaundry.com/2020/06/23/opindia-hate-speech-vanishin...

“In India, politics and journalism attract some of the worst brains, thanks to the system that has evolved over time,” read the About Us section of OpIndia, a popular Hindu supremacist website, in December 2014, nearly a year after it was launched. “OpIndia.com is an attempt to break free of this system.”


https://thedisinfolab.org is a clone of EU Disinfo Lab set up by Hindu Nationalists to fool the world.

The real EU Disinfo Lab website is https://www.disinfo.eu/

Here's a link to the REAL Disinfo Lab: https://www.disinfo.eu/publications/indian-chronicles-deep-dive-int...

Indian Chronicles: deep dive into a 15-year operation targeting the EU and UN to serve Indian interests

Following a preliminary investigation published in 2019, the EU DisinfoLab uncovered a massive operation targeting international institutions and serving Indian interests. “Indian Chronicles” – the name we gave to this operation – resurrected dead media, dead think-tanks and NGOs. It even resurrected dead people. This network is active in Brussels and Geneva in producing and amplifying content to undermine – primarily – Pakistan.

Irony: Indians clone EU Disinfo Lab website in propaganda push

Disinformation Campaign on Twitter: Pro-India accounts ...
https://digitalrightsfoundation.pk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Disin...


Indian Chronicles: deep dive into a 15-year operation targeting the EU and UN to serve Indian interests.
https://www.disinfo.eu/publications/indian-chronicles-deep-dive-int...


Disinfo Lab: An Online Hindu Nationalist Disinformation ...
https://bylinetimes.com/2022/02/09/disinfo-lab-an-online-hindu-nati...
Feb 9, 2022 — CJ Werleman looks at evidence of a co-ordinated and sophisticated effort to smear critics of the right wing Indian Prime Minister.


Pro-Indian 'fake websites targeted decision makers in Europe'
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-50749764
Dec 16, 2019 — A global network of pro-Indian fake websites and think-tanks is aimed at influencing decision-making in Europe, researchers say.

The co-ordinated network of 265 sites operates across 65 countries, according to a report by EU Disinfo Lab, a Brussels-based NGO.

The researchers traced the websites to an Indian company, Srivastava Group.

The network was also found to involve groups responsible for anti-Pakistan lobbying events in Europe


Disinformation Campaign on Twitter: Pro-India accounts ...
https://digitalrightsfoundation.pk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Disin...
Oct 22, 2020 — On the eve and day of October 21, 2020, there was a flurry of pro-India Twitter accounts creating the narrative that there was a ‘civil war’ unfolding in Pakistan




The dead professor and the vast pro-India disinformation ...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-55232432
Dec 10, 2020 — The EU DisinfoLab researchers, who are based in Brussels, believe the network's purpose is to disseminate propaganda against India's neighbour ...


Indian Chronicles: EU Think Tank Claims to Have Uncovered 15-Year-Old Pro-India Influence Operation
https://www.newshoundindia.foundation/blog-details.asp?id=514
Dec 12, 2020 — A European Union (EU) non-profit group researching disinformation campaigns claims to have unearthed a 2005 influence operation “targeting international institutions and serving Indian interests”, which carried out by “dead media, dead think-tanks and NGOs” and in some cases, “dead people”.

“It is the largest network we have exposed,” said Alexandre Alaphilippe, executive director of EU DisinfoLab (DL) to the BBC. He added, “It was designed primarily to discredit Pakistan internationally and influence decision-making at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and European Parliament.”

That study began as a probe into possible Russian disinformation when articles published on Russia Today were republished on a website, ‘EP Today’, which led the investigators to the network of sites and NGOs, largely linked to the New Delhi-based Srivastava Group (SG).


Irony: Indians clone EU Disinfo Lab website in propaganda push
https://www.samaaenglish.tv/news/2515024
Feb 12, 2022 — Australian journalist exposes forgery, gets Twitter to remove verified status

In December 2020, the EU Disinfo Lab exposed a network of Indian websites pushing false information across the internet. In an ironic turn of events, Indians now have cloned the Disinfo Lab website to advance their propaganda, targetting Muslims and specifically Pakistanis and Kashmiris.


The Indian clone of Disinfo Lab became active soon after the EU Disinfo Lab first published a preliminary investigation in 2019 and then in December 2020 released the “Indian Chronicles,” a report detailing 750 "fake media outlest", fake editors and journalists, UN-accredited NGOs, and cases of identity theft to target Pakistan.

#Ukraine #drone attack hits 2 military bases deep inside #Russia. The unprecedented strikes were the first time Ukraine has hit so far into Russia, targeting air bases that had generally been thought of as untouchable. - ABC News

https://abcnews.go.com/International/ukraine-drone-attack-hits-2-mi...

Explosions that struck two military airbases deep inside Russia on Monday were the result of drone attacks launched by Ukraine, according to Russian and Ukrainian officials, in what appeared to be an audacious attempt to hit the long-range bombers Russia has used to devastate Ukraine’s power grid.

Russia’s defense ministry on Monday confirmed the attacks on the bases that are located hundreds of miles from the frontline, saying two of its aircraft were damaged and three military personnel killed.

The unprecedented strikes were the first time Ukraine has hit so far into Russia, targeting bases that had generally been thought of as untouchable, according to military experts.

A senior Ukrainian official from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s circle, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told ABC News that Ukrainian drones had struck the Russian military airfields Monday.

Russian media reported an explosion early Monday morning at the Engels-2 airbase in the Saratov region in southern Russia, a key airfield that houses Tu-95 and Tu-60 nuclear-capable bombers.

Hate in the Time of the Virus: Covid-19, Fake News, and Islamophobia in India

https://items.ssrc.org/covid-19-and-the-social-sciences/covid-19-fi...

Jul 28, 2022 — The Covid-19 pandemic triggered a new wave of Islamophobic rhetoric in India. Focusing on the aftermath of the March 2020 Tablighi Jamaat event, Anirban Baishya, with funding from the SSRC’s Rapid-Response Covid-19 grant, investigates how mis/disinformation and anti-Muslim messages spread through media, jumping from social media to mainstream outlets.

Fake News, Quackery Mar India's COVID Fight but Government is Doing Nothing About Infodemic - The Wire

https://thewire.in/media/fake-news-quackery-mar-indias-covid-fight-...

May 23, 2021 — While social media is full of disinformation about COVID-19, none of which has prompted corrective measures from the government, the IT ministry's only warning on 'false news' and misinformation is on the use of the term 'Indian variant' for B.1.167.

India & COVID-19: Misinformation and the Downside of Social Media

https://theasiadialogue.com/2020/04/06/india-covid-19-misinformatio...
Apr 6, 2020 — As the world fights COVID-19 (coronavirus), the online public sphere across the world is witnessing unprecedented misinformation and fake news. Misinformation is contributing to paranoia and making the fight against COVID-19 even tougher. The situation in India provides a prominent example.

Fake News, India | Zubair Home Free | 52 Documentary

https://youtu.be/V19GetIhVvk

Two engineers in India chose to leave their lucrative careers and form a media company to fight against the dangerous spread of misinformation. Despite facing abuses and threats, and even arrest and imprisonment, Mohamed Zubair and Pratik Sinha have carried on debunking all forms of misinformation, especially politically motivated misinformation.

India has more fake news than any other country in the world: Survey
https://www.businessinsider.in/india-has-more-fake-news-than-any-ot...

Nearly 60% of Indians had seen fake news against the global average of 57%, said a recent survey.
Overall, India ranked seventh in Microsoft’s ‘Digital Civility’ Index.
It found that the spread of online risks by family and friends in India have been increasing sharply by nine percentage points to 29%.
Fake news continues to be a growing menace in India, which has seen the most number of fake news incidents compared to anywhere else in the world, a recent survey by Microsoft has warned.

Over 60% of Indians said they had seen fake news online against the global average of 57%, according to findings of a survey by Microsoft.

More than half of the surveyed respondents also said they had faced Internet hoaxes, a figure that was significantly higher than the global average of 50%. While another 42% said they had witnessed phishing or spoofing, according to the survey.

Microsoft released its 3rd ‘Digital Civility Index,’ which measures patterns in online civility and behavioral risk in 22 countries including India. As per the survey, India ranked 7th in Digital Civility Index globally.

The survey studied a number of online risks such as attempts at gathering personal information, online bullying, unwelcome messages seeking sexual favours, and misinformation and fake news.

Hindutva supporters love to quote OpIndia which is among the largest purveyors of hate speech and fake news.


https://www.newslaundry.com/2020/06/23/opindia-hate-speech-vanishin...


OpIndia: Hate speech, vanishing advertisers, and an undisclosed BJP connection
newslaundry.com

And yet, as of June 2020, about two dozen companies have withdrawn advertisements from OpIndia, citing “insidious content” and “hateful views”, as part of a campaign by Stop Funding Hate, an advocacy group based in the United Kingdom. Moreover, despite its complaints about dishonesty and distortion in the India media, OpIndia has never disclosed that the director of the company which owns it, and its holding company, has had ties to the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

In a 2014 interview with Swarajya, Rahul Raj, one of the three founders of OpIndia, explained the website’s raison d'être in greater detail. “These days when I look into posts by the media, I can clearly see that they are manipulating people. They are working as propaganda machines,” Raj said, adding that he wanted to “decode” why news consumers had to rely on media that was out to manipulate them. OpIndia, in his words, was started to explore the gap between “what is being reported and what the facts are”.

Six years down the line, OpIndia has morphed from a “media commentary” blog tilting towards the governing BJP into a website promoting and defending Hindu supremacy and chauvinism, and a vibrant source of misinformation targeting Muslims, liberals, leftists, “the establishment”, and critics and political opponents of the BJP.

A dataset prepared by Newslaundry shows that in the last two years alone, fact-checkers and news outlets have reported at least 25 instances of false news and no less than 14 instances of misreporting on OpIndia. In 2019, Rahul Raj, no longer associated with the website, tweeted that he had “distanced” himself from the website because it became a “blind mouthpiece of BJP”.

In May, the website was booked by the Bihar police for introducing a fabricated communal angle to the death of a 15-year-old boy in Gopalganj district. OpIndia had done a series of reports alleging that the minor had been killed in a “human sacrifice” ritual, supposedly to make a local mosque more powerful. The police clarified that the village did not have a mosque. In response, Rahul Roushan, OpIndia’s CEO, sulkedthat the website was facing “harassment” and “a coordinated attack from the usual suspects” and that the “only mistake” the website’s editors made “was that they were standing on the wrong side of the ideological divide”.

The combat statistics for all the aircraft currently in use

https://migflug.com/jetflights/the-combat-statistics-for-all-the-ai...

We’ve lately been talking about aircraft which have gone for combat several times. Now we’ve been thinking of some statistics of various fighter aircraft in use. Below you can find the details – but first of all we would like to show you an overview, created by Wojtek Korsak, based on this article. Thanks for that Wojtek. Click enlarge. If it is still to small: Press and hold Ctrl and scroll up with your mouse.

The Format is:
[Name of aircraft] Air-to-air kills – Air-to-air losses – Losses to ground fire
[Name of conflict aircraft was used in]

[Nation that used aircraft in said conflict]

Air-to-air kills – Air-to-air losses – Losses to ground fire

Aircraft which were destroyed on the ground are not included in this analysis, because any plane can get destroyed on the ground no matter how good it or its pilot is.

F-16 Falcon 76-1-5
Gulf War (USA) 0-0-3
No-Fly Zones (USA) 2-0-0
Bosnia (USA) 4-0-1
Kosovo (USA) 1-0-1
Kosovo (Netherlands) 1-0-0
Kosovo (Portugal, Belgium, Denmark, Turkey) 0-0-0
Afghanistan (USA, Netherlands, Denmark, Norway) 0-0-0
Iraq (USA) 0-0-0
Syrian border clashes 1979-1986 (Israel) 6-0-0
Operation Opera (Israel) 0-0-0
Lebanon War (1982) (Israel) 44-0-0
Lebanon War (2006) (Israel) 3-0-0
Intifada (2000-present) (Israel) 0-0-0
Soviet-Afghan War (Pakistan) 10-0-0
Border clashes (Pakistan) 1-0-0
Kargil War (Pakistan) 0-0-0
Northwest border wars (Pakistan) 0-0-0
Aegean Sea clashes (Turkey) 1-1-0
Venezuelan Coup 1992 (Venezuela) 3-0-0

Mohammed Zubair
@zoo_bear
Media outlets including ANI shared the photo of a padlocked grave with the claim that parents in Pakistan were locking daughters' graves to avoid rape. The photo is from Hyderabad, India and the grave is reportedly of an aged woman.

https://twitter.com/zoo_bear/status/1652688083593330688?s=20

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The image of a padlocked grave has gone viral. In media reports and social media posts, it is being linked to rising necrophilia cases in Pakistan, with the claim that the image is an example of how mothers lock their daughters’ graves in Pakistan in order to prevent rape.

ANI Digital tweeted the image with the above claim. In their article titled ‘Pakistani parents lock daughters’ graves to avoid rape’, they cited a Daily Times article to report that parents in Pakistan guarded their dead daughters against rape by putting padlocks on their graves. The viral picture has been used in the ANI article with the caption, ‘Pakistani parents locking up graves of daughters to protect their dead bodies from getting raped’ and they have credited Twitter for the image. (Archive)


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Media misreport: Viral photo of grave with iron grille is from Hyderabad, not Pakistan

https://www.altnews.in/media-misreport-viral-photo-of-grave-with-ir...

Impact Of Fake News On Pakistan – OpEd

https://www.eurasiareview.com/10012023-impact-of-fake-news-on-pakis...

By Muhammad Usman Ghani


Pakistan, like the rest of the world, is facing a major threat from fake news. Access to news, political division, manipulation of social media conversations, trust in the news media, health information, and hate speech are all things that fake news has caused or spread.

According to a report by Media Matters for Democracy (MMfD), from 2015 to 2020, the number of Pakistani broadband Internet users went from 17 million to 83 million, which is almost a fourfold increase. The number of mobile broadband users grew the most. Despite a considerable digital divide—Internet penetration is less than 44% of the population—the availability of 3G and 4G mobile Internet has also led to a small but consistent growth in social media use. From 2013 on, political debates on the two biggest social media sites, Facebook and Twitter, became more popular in Pakistan. This followed a trend that was almost identical to the one seen in the United States. MMfD published that nine out of ten Pakistanis currently see disinformation as an issue, and seventy percent of the population thinks Facebook’s platform is utilized most often to propagate misinformation in the nation.

Fake news messages have significantly impacted the public’s opinion of Pakistan’s anti-polio vaccination campaign. In order to discourage parents from vaccinating their children, these misinformation tactics draw on existing vaccine scepticism and common religious or xenophobic stereotypes. In 2019, a fake video about how vaccinations affect children caused hundreds of thousands of Facebook users to interact with false anti-vaccine information. This may have been part of a chain of events that led to the suspension of the country’s anti-polio vaccination campaign. Similarly, press reports and public surveys revealed that COVID-19 misinformation campaigns caused many to believe the coronavirus was a foreign scheme, an overblown danger, or a fake. Such ideas seem to have directly affected people’s attitude about COVID-19 precautions, as seen by the public’s irresponsible behavior before the second coronavirus outbreak in Pakistan. The COVID-19 deception also caused some to avoid medical care and commit violent crimes against health personnel. People were getting the wrong idea from fake messages and conspiracy theories that doctors were working together to make more people die from the coronavirus.

“DisInfo Lab,” a non-governmental organization based in the EU, created a matrix of the Indian misinformation campaign in 2019 and 2020. This campaign relied heavily on fake news sources in social media and mainstream media to lobby international and civil society against Pakistan. Since 2005, the Indian news agency Asian News International (ANI) and the Delhi-based Shrivastava group have contributed to the creation of 256 anti-Pakistan websites that disseminate false information to 65 countries. Reports say that important parts of the larger syndicate were social organizations and humanitarian groups with ties to the United Nations (UN) and the European Union (EU). Nearly ten UNHRC-affiliated NGOs have been identified as spreading anti-Pakistan propaganda. During the campaign, Dr. Louis B. Sohn, a Harvard professor of International Humanitarian Law, took part in humanitarian conferences about the Baloch separatist movement in 2011.

This cyber misinformation effort, which lasted for over a decade, was reportedly signed in placing Pakistan on the “grey list” of the FATF, which carries accusations of funding violent extremism. Since then, Pakistan has worked hard to change the mix of false ideas about it. The current government of Pakistan has put out a detailed report on how India has lied and been dishonest in international affairs. Still, the United Nations Security Council and its important P5 members haven’t done much to deal with or stop the growing threat.

Prashant Bhushan
@pbhushan1
"Indian govt told Twitter to black out farmers protests&tweets by journalists critical of the govt. Threatened to shut Twitter down in India&raid the homes of Twitter employees, which they did. And India is supposed to be a democratic country!": Jack Dorsey, former CEO of Twitter

https://twitter.com/pbhushan1/status/1668351603433168924?s=20