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While international audiences saw images of besieged Ukrainian cities and thousands of civilians fleeing the country through humanitarian corridors that have faced Russian bombardment, Chinese viewers were shown Russian aid convoys bringing supplies to beleaguered Ukrainians.

China's People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party, posted a video on March 9 on Weibo, the popular Chinese social-media platform, showing Russia providing humanitarian aid to Ukrainians outside Kharkiv, a Ukrainian city near the Russian border that has faced artillery and rocket attacks since Moscow's February 24 invasion. The video received more than 3 million views.

In other coverage, the Moscow correspondent of China's Phoenix TV has issued reports while embedded with Russian troops outside of Mariupol, a strategic port city that is the scene of stiff fighting. In a recent clip he speaks with soldiers about their steady advance and talks to civilians allegedly welcoming the presence of Russian forces.

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, China's tightly controlled media and heavily censored Internet have provided increasingly skewed coverage, omitting details on civilian casualties and the widespread international condemnation of Moscow, while quoting Russia's own state-backed networks and broadcasting the views of Russian officials -- without verification or pushback -- to its domestic audience.

While Beijing is threading the needle diplomatically and looking to put breathing room between it and its close ties with the Kremlin in the face of mounting international pressure over its invasion of Ukraine, China's state media and vocal officials are increasingly converging with Moscow's distorted narrative of the war -- even beginning to push conspiracy theories against Ukraine and the West in the process.

"U.S. biolabs in Ukraine have indeed attracted much attention recently," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said on March 8, echoing a conspiracy theory regularly pushed by Russian media and online accounts that some Western officials charge could be part of an effort by the Kremlin to justify its invasion by saying that Ukraine is working on biological or nuclear weapons.

"All dangerous pathogens in Ukraine must be stored in these labs and all research activities are led by the U.S. side," Zhao added, without providing evidence to support the claim. U.S. and Ukrainian officials say the allegation is baseless.

China, Russia, And The Ukraine War

The biolab theory has been a mainstay of Russian state media -- and even some embassy accounts on social media -- with a recent report by Foreign Policy magazine highlighting how it has taken hold among American far-right online conspiracy networks and spread to other countries as well.

It is also not the first time it has been referenced by Chinese officials, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying first raising the claim about biolabs in Ukraine during a May 2021 press conference.

Chinese diplomats have also frequently pointed to Fort Detrick -- a U.S. military facility in Maryland that the Soviet Union falsely claimed in the 1980s was the source of the virus causing AIDS and has often been a target of Russian disinformation -- to deflect questions when asked about the origins of COVID-19.

But the timing and renewed push of the theory could be part of a wider strategy, with Britain's Defense Ministry tweeting on March 8 that while the baseless claims are long-standing (Ukraine has stated that it has no such facilities), they "are currently likely being amplified as part of a retrospective justification for Russia's invasion of Ukraine."

The biolab story also fits with a growing trend of convergence between Chinese and Russian sources that has accelerated since the war in Ukraine, with false and misleading stories echoed by Chinese media and receiving hundreds of millions of views on Weibo in the process.

Throughout the war, Chinese media have helped spread dubious Russian-state narratives about Ukrainian forces using civilians as human shields while also saying the Russian military only goes after other military targets, despite the shelling of dozens of apartment blocks and other civilian structures.

WATCH: CCTV video has surfaced showing a car carrying two pensioners being blown apart by an armored column at a crossroads in Makariv in the Kyiv region on February 28.

Chinese networks have also magnified and spread Russian disinformation, such as when Chinese state broadcaster CCTV quoted Russian officials to falsely claim that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had fled the capital, or when the state-backed Global Times, citing the Russian state network RT as its only source, said many Ukrainian soldiers had surrendered on the first day of the invasion.

Taken together, this highlights a different version of the war that viewers and online users are seeing in China compared to most of the world and how Chinese authorities have allowed the Kremlin's propaganda networks to shape its public's perception of the war with few restrictions.

For instance, the Kremlin-backed Sputnik has over 11.6 million followers on Weibo and other Russian outlets also have large and engaged followings inside China, where access to many other foreign media outlets and major information sites are blocked or restricted.

This has contributed to Russian claims about Ukrainian officials being extremists and neo-Nazis to be regularly adopted online and also picked up by Chinese-language outlets, which often reference the Azov Battalion -- a fringe unit of the Ukrainian National Guard known for having neo-Nazi sympathizers in its ranks -- and show it as representative of wider Ukrainian society.

More Than Censorship

Control of all Chinese media by the Communist Party and intensive Internet censorship make it difficult to gauge public opinion, while pervasive censorship also means the pro-Russian sentiment online in China is likely not representative of the country as a whole.

But the types of content that are allowed online or published by state-backed media show what Chinese authorities want their population of 1.4 billion people to think.

China's government has neither condemned nor condoned Russia's war in Ukraine and has even refrained from calling it an "invasion." Both expressions of sympathy for Ukraine and support for Russia appear online and in social media, but criticism of Moscow is regularly censored, according to China Digital Times, a group that tracks Chinese censorship and online discussion at the University of California, Berkeley.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin have grown closer in recent years and heralded a new era in their ties during a joint meeting in Beijing on February 4.

While Russia's invasion of Ukraine has left Beijing awkwardly distancing itself diplomatically from the Kremlin, the shared messaging from both countries' state media shows that ties are still intact and they could be growing in the information space, an area where many experts say cooperation has been developing in recent years.

Xi and Putin have signed a variety of media-cooperation agreements over the years and have held a Sino-Russian media forum annually since 2015.

A December report by the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) found that both China and Russia had played a central role in spreading COVID-related disinformation and propaganda throughout the pandemic. However, the report did not find clear-cut evidence of direct cooperation between Beijing and Moscow, instead noting that they "borrowed from and amplified each other's campaigns."

Similarly, a June report from the Carnegie Moscow Center found that while both countries' state-backed media and officials often echo similar talking points and narratives on world events, this is largely due to Beijing and Moscow having shared "strategic objectives" in global affairs.

"Chinese and Russian online behavior are largely the result of Chinese actors' careful but independent study of and creative adaptations of the Kremlin's tools, rather than an expression of active, ongoing cooperation between the two governments," the report noted.

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China's Censorship, Propaganda Push Russian Version Of The War In Ukraine - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty

In times of war, free speech suffers. Right and wrong appear indisputable. There is moral certainty that God is on our side. When we are convinced that the enemy is producing only dangerous lies and propaganda, we want to bar their entry into the marketplace of ideas.

The war between Russia and Ukraine is the latest test of our commitment to free speech. Vladimir Putin does not hesitate to censor his people, but Western democracies, and specifically the United States, are required to defend free speech. So far, they have done so. Today private actors do the censoring. Social media companies, under pressure to control disinformation, are bumbling along, blocking too much and too little. And now major cultural players in the US and Europe are canceling Russian artists, performers and anything else coming from Russia.

Cultural boycotts have mostly symbolic goals aimed at a Western audience. Any practical effect on Russia itself is hard to conceive. Artist cancellations will not further squeeze Russia financially. Russia lives on the export of oil and gas, not art. And the message of Western disapproval only entrenches Putins domestic narrative of a hostile West.

Cultural institutions in the US and Europe have the right, of course, to express their symbolic opposition to the war by blacklisting Russian artists. However, they must consider the full implications. Todays cultural institutions are full of artists and performers from countries across the globe. Should all these artists be held responsible for the misdeeds of their political leaders? Should they be asked to publicly condemn these leaders when doing so puts them and members of their family at risk of retaliation by their governments? Banning Russian artists based on their political views or, worse, solely because of their nationality, while welcoming artists from China and other repressive regimes undermines any moral high ground an institution can claim.

The people of a nation are not identical with its leadership and should not be equated with it. On the contrary, they can be allies in opposing a repressive regime from within. Among the Russian artists blacklisted today are people who have been critical of the war.

US institutions have so far limited their action to artists who refuse to condemn the regime, the more restrained path still fraught with questions likely to haunt these institutions for a long time. Blacklisting artists based solely on their political views is a tactic associated with the Cold War and the McCarthy era. That era also demanded loyalty oaths similar to current demands on artists to denounce the Putin regime or be canceled. Only this time artists are also asked to face risks in their home country by making such denunciations.

There are better ways for cultural institutions in Western democracies to get involved in the current political crisis. Rather than banning artists associated with Putin, they should support dissident cultural workers within Russia, as well as Ukrainian artists and institutions, by highlighting their work and offering them platforms to amplify their voices. If, after 30 years of open global cultural exchange, an iron curtain falls again, art and cultural institutions should not be complicit.

Information on resources and support for Ukrainian artists here

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Free Speech and the War in Ukraine - Blogging Censorship

The Dartmouth chapters of the College Republicans and Turning Point USA were scheduled to host conservative journalist Andy Ngo (pictured) and activist Gabriel Nadales to discuss left-wing political violence in the United States. Then the college cancelled the in-person event. (Gage Skidmore / Flickr.com)

by Zach Greenberg

Dartmouths eleventh-hour cancellation of a student event featuring journalist Andy Ngo due to safety concerns immediately raised suspicion, especially after precious few protesters actually showed up. Now, police department records cast even greater doubt on Dartmouths security rationale and demonstrate how university administrators ignored law enforcement when they censored their students.

In the weeks leading up to a Jan. 20 in-person campus event featuring Ngo and activist Gabriel Nadales about left-wing political violence in the United States, the student organizers alerted Dartmouth to online groups threatening to disrupt their event. Communications between the student groups, public safety officials, and Dartmouth show the university was well-prepared for potential violence, as it had enlisted the local Hanover Police Department to help safeguard the campus discussion.

Despite the online fervor, few came out on the blustery, New England night to protest the event. Even so, right before the event was set to begin, Dartmouth forced the student organizers to hold it online, or not at all.

If such threats did exist, Dartmouth has not shown them to the student organizations, FIRE, or the general public.

Dartmouth claimed it based its decision on concerning information from the Hanover police, yet refused to provide any details. Responding to FIREs Jan. 26 letter calling on the college to explain these alleged security concerns, university President Philip J. Hanlon furnished no additional information and instead curtly remarked that Dartmouth prizes and defends the right to free speech.

FIRE didnt buy it. Something stunk, and it wasnt the smell of stale beer emanating from Keggy the Keg the anthropomorphic barrel that serves as Dartmouths unofficial mascot. We filed an open records request for all communications logged by Hanover police about threats against the event.

Our skepticism yielded results: It turns out the Hanover police did not make a recommendation to Dartmouth College regarding the January 20th event. In fact, Hanover police chief Charles Dennis stated, With the information we had, we were as operationally prepared as best we could to handle the event and protest. He also added that we were not provided a reason or reasons for Dartmouths decision to cancel the event. Likewise, the daily crime logs of campus and local police detail no threats to the event.

Records of police communications to university administrators describe online posts about mythological Antifa supersoldiers, opposition to Ngos views, and some discussion of violence, but no explicit threats of harm to Ngo or students. If such threats did exist, Dartmouth has not shown them to the student organizations, FIRE, or the general public.

Dartmouths conduct is far from that of an institution that prizes and defends the right to free speech. When faced with illiberal attempts to use violence to squelch speech, a commitment to expressive freedom requires universities to address the disruption, protect the speaker, and ensure that events can go on as planned. Dartmouth did the exact opposite punishing the student groups by altering the venue and format of their event at the last minute despite no evidence of severe disruption, and law enforcements extensive preparations to ensure public safety.

In our letter to Dartmouth today, we explain why bogus safety concerns must not be used to excuse canceling students expressive events:

Sacrificing free speech rights when faced with actual violence is seldom justified; restricting expressive activity in the absence of substantial disruption is inexcusable. Far from protecting free speech, Dartmouths actions will only prompt future threats and will deter speakers from coming to campusto the detriment of campus safety and students expressive freedoms.

FIRE once again calls on Dartmouth to explain what specific security concerns necessitated the cancellation of the Jan. 20 event. We urge the college to recommit itself to free speech by promising to make genuine, serious, and transparent efforts to protect students expressive rights when threatened with disruption going forward.

FIRE defends the rights of students and faculty members no matter their views at public and private universities and colleges in the United States. If you are a student or a faculty member facing investigation or punishment for your speech, submit your case to FIRE today. If youre faculty member at a public college or university, call the Faculty Legal Defense Fund 24-hour hotline at 254-500-FLDF (3533).

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Dartmouth's 'safety' rationale crumbles as records reveal censorship as the primary motivator in canceling event with Andy Ngo - Foundation for...

We need to talk about campus debate. I put that term in quotes because it has become so tortured that the terms actual meaning is hard to discern. But many people seem to link it closely to college learning, and this is a real problem.

In a recent New York Times piece, Emma Camp, a student at the University of Virginia, complains that she came to college seeking classrooms full of energetic debate where students could say what we really think, but instead found ideological conformity and self-censorship. There are lots of issues here to discuss (Self-censorship is a very important skill! State legislatures are actually banning universities from discussing racism!), but I want to focus on what energetic debate actually means.

Theres a great misperception in discussions about higher education that somehow college campuses are a site for robust debate between competing ideas and that this is the essence of university education. Some of this misperception has been fostered by interest groups like the Steamboat Institute, which pushes for debates to bring conservative ideals onto campus. But more generally, there are op/eds like the recent Times one that simply suggest that universities are places where people just argue all day over ideas in the public square and the best ideas survive.

Debate is a skill, not knowledge. It is sometimes used in the classroom along with many other techniques designed to teach, but it only works well within some set of parameters, and steeped in class material. Generally, what we want in a classroom is discussion, rather than debate. Debates have winners and losers; discussion, ideally, leaves everyone better off.

For example, I teach about political parties. Ill sometimes give students some readings and lecture materials on how party leaders seek to control nominations. And then well talk about questions of how democratic parties should be. Should it be easier for someone like Bernie Sanders to compete in Democratic primaries? What about Donald Trump competing in Republican primaries? Are party leaders doing their job when they pressure people out of congressional contests or are they making the whole system less democratic?

This is honestly more like a structured discussion than a debate. But these sorts of questions and debates help students dig into the readings more and may challenge some of their prior beliefs. There are no obviously right or wrong answers, but I want students to engage with the material and think through some of the merits and problems with competing views.

This is generally not the form of debate that is being pushed, however. Instead, groups like Steamboat and Turning Point bring a liberal and a conservative to campus to debate hot-button issues like social justice and identity politics, whether college campuses are free-speech zones, socialism versus capitalism, and more. People attend these events and cheer for their side and boo the other side, but very little learning occurs. Basically, its a sporting event. And thats fine, but it doesnt really enhance the intellectual life of a campus, and it doesnt deepen students knowledge.

Similarly, many campuses have debate teams, and students prepare arguments and rebuttals on various topics and travel to other schools to compete against other students. And thats fine, too it can be a useful skillset, and students can do research and develop a great deal of expertise on a topic in their preparation. But its largely a team sport that students who enjoy that activity select into. It doesnt necessarily translate into a broader classroom teaching technique.

Again, a lot of the push for more debate on campus comes from the right, who seem to feel that conservative intellectual ideas are being somehow canceled on university campuses. Its certainly true that college students and professors tend to lean left relative to the rest of the population. But that doesnt mean that conservative ideas get no hearing. I cant speak broadly for the discipline, but quite a few of my colleagues teach the ideas of Buckley, Schlafly, Friedman, Smith, Hayek, Reagan, and others not to indoctrinate students either for or against those ideas but because understanding those ideas is essential to understanding American political discourse and development. Students then get opportunities to interpret modern political events in light of what these writers had to say. This is how learning happens.

What we generally do not do is just turn over our classrooms to students who have a piece to speak. Thats a recipe for chaos. Campuses are not an incubator for all forms of speech, no matter how inane or offensive. And if you say things that demean your fellow students or suggest that they do not belong there, you may encounter criticism for that.

Our primary task as educators is to ensure that students are learning the material we have assembled for our courses. Well pursue a variety of techniques to get them there, including lectures, group discussions, written assignments, presentations, and, yes, sometimes forms of debate. But debate absent structured learning is, at best, a form of entertainment. And you dont need college for that.

Seth Masket is a professor of political science and director of the Center on American Politics at the University of Denver. He is the author of Learning from Loss: The Democrats 2016-2020.

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Masket: The problem with campus debate - The Denver Post

Issued on: 03/03/2022 - 16:19

Sending push notifications through a face-swapping app, adding pictures of the devastation from the bombings in Ukraine to Google Maps, hacking electric chargers These are some of the tricks that are being used by Ukrainians to bypass Russian President Vladimir Putins strict censorship, and to make sure that accurateinformation about thewarin Ukraine reaches everyday Russians.

President Putin has blocked or limited access to foreign news coverage in Russia about the war in Ukraine, including Facebook and Twitter. Russias state communications and media watchdog Roskomnadzor has also passed a censorship law forbidding Russian journalists from using the words war, invasion or offensive when talking about the special operation in Ukraine.

In response, ordinary Ukrainians have been finding creative ways of fighting the Kremlins disinformation campaign and informing people in Russia about what is really going on.

The face-swapping app Reface, which is based in Kyiv, has launched a global information campaign to spread the news, share photos of destruction in Ukrainian cities and encourage its users to stand with Ukraine. The FRANCE 24 Observers team spoke to the companys CEO, Dima Shvets.

When Russia first invaded Ukraine, we sent out a push notification to our users with a message: Russia has invaded Ukraine. Users who opened the app were then presented with more details about the situation on the ground, including images and videos.

Nine million notifications have currently been sent worldwide and two million have been delivered to users in Russia. We have also moved up to the seventh place in the US App store.

Our app was previously used to take the faces of users and put them onto the bodies of celebrities. Since Russias invasion, we have been encouraging everyone to swap themselves into President Zelensky.

All new videos created by the app feature a watermark that includes the Ukrainian flag and the hashtag #StandWithUkraine.

On Monday, February 28, the hacking group Anonymous incited people to leave fake reviews of Russian businesses and restaurants in Google Maps to inform citizens about the conflict in Ukraine. The group tweeted: Go to Google Maps. Go to Russia. Find a restaurant or business and write a review. When you write the review, explain what is happening in Ukraine.

The tweet quickly gained traction. Reviews have been filling up across Russia with news about the conflict in Ukraine. For example, one of the reviews for a Moscow restaurant called Romantic reads 5,800 Russian soldiers died today, 4,500 yesterday. Stop your aggression, dont let your kids suffer, if you go to war you will not come back. Another review for the same place reads Food is great, but your leader is killing innocent people in Ukraine!!! Stop this war.

Google Maps allows users to upload photos of places usually as part of a review of the spot but users have also been using this feature to get images from Ukraine into Russia.

One of the images frequently posted for these locations is a screenshot of a phone that allegedly belonged to a Russian soldier, showing an apparent text conversation with his mother (see below).

Google Maps has since disabled reviews in Russia and Ukraine after they were used as a space to protest against the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

A Google spokesperson said in a statement: "Due to a recent increase in contributed content on Google Maps related to the war in Ukraine, we've put additional protections in place to monitor and prevent content that violates our policies for Maps, including temporarily blocking new reviews, photos, and videos in the region."

In a more organised effort, Russian electric charging points for cars were hacked to show messages of support for Ukraine, which included Glory to Ukraine and Putin is a d***head.

Caption: A car charging station on Russia's M11 highway

In a Facebook post, the Russian energy company, Rosseti, claimed that the Ukrainian company which provided some of the parts had hacked the charging points to which it still had access.

This effort is part of a wave of cyber campaigns targeted at Russia. The international hacking collective Anonymous has claimed responsibility for various cyberattacks, including on Russias state broadcaster RT and over 300 Russian websites.

The moves came after Anonymous declared itself to be in a cyber warfare campaign against Putin and his allies.

Can campaigns like this have a meaningful impact? The FRANCE 24 Observers team asked Valentina Shapovalova, a specialist in Russian media and propaganda at the University of Copenhagen.

I think that its still too early to see how effective these measures will be. But its still incredibly interesting to see how many regular citizens are participating in bottom-up counter-propaganda measures and to see how creative they are getting.

But we shouldnt underestimate the strength of Putins information warfare, he has been suffocating the information space for decades and there is now very little room for anything else to get into the minds of citizens. The same narratives have been replayed in the Russian media for years, Putin has been priming Russians with his propaganda efforts. And when you tell the same story again and again people start to believe it as true. Its so deeply rooted that reviews on Google Maps may not have the impact that they should.

Another very important strategy that the Kremlin has been using is to create confusion and fog, to spit out so many stories and so many contradictory images and news that people get confused and dont know what the truth is anymore.

Some of the grand narratives that the government has been feeding to Russians include the narrative that the Ukrainian government is a Nazi government installed by the West, that the Russian-speaking people in Ukraine have been oppressed since 2014 and that the Ukrainian government is exercising genocide.

More than one million people have already fled Ukraine and hundreds of civilians are believed to have been killed as a result of the war.

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How Ukrainians are bypassing Russian censorship to share news of the war - The France 24 Observers