Slashdot Mirror
Russian Fake News Ecosystem Targets Syrian Human Rights Workers (securityledger.com)
chicksdaddy shares a report from The Security Ledger: Kremlin linked news sites like RT and Sputnik figure prominently in an online disinformation campaign portraying Syrian humanitarian workers ("White Helmets") as terrorists and crisis actors, according to an analysis (PDF) by researchers at University of Washington and Harvard. An online "echosystem" of propaganda websites including Russia backed news outlets Sputnik and RT is attacking the credibility of humanitarian workers on the ground in rebel occupied Syria, according to a new analysis by researchers at The University of Washington and Harvard University. Online rumors circulated through so called "alternative" media sites have attacked the Syrian Civil Defense (aka "White Helmets") as "crisis actors" and Western agents working on behalf of the U.S. and NATO. Statistical analysis of the online rumors reveal a tight network of websites sharing nearly identical content via Twitter and other social media platforms, wrote Kate Starbird. Starbird is an Assistant Professor of Human Centered Design & Engineering at University of Washington and a leading expert on so-called "crisis informatics."
In activity reminiscent of the disinformation campaigns that roiled the U.S. Presidential election in 2016, articles by what Starbird describes as "a few prominent journalists and bloggers" writing for self described "alternative" news sites like 21stCenturyWire, GlobalResearch, MintPressNews, and ActivistPost are picked up by other, smaller and more niche websites including both left- and right-leaning partisan news sites, "clickbait sites," and conspiracy theory websites. Government funded media outlets from Syria, Iran, Hezbollah and Russia figure prominently in the Syrian disinformation campaign, Starbird's team found. In particular, "Russian government-funded media outlets (i.e. SputnikNews and RT) play a prominent and multi-faceted role within this ecosystem," she wrote.
In activity reminiscent of the disinformation campaigns that roiled the U.S. Presidential election in 2016, articles by what Starbird describes as "a few prominent journalists and bloggers" writing for self described "alternative" news sites like 21stCenturyWire, GlobalResearch, MintPressNews, and ActivistPost are picked up by other, smaller and more niche websites including both left- and right-leaning partisan news sites, "clickbait sites," and conspiracy theory websites. Government funded media outlets from Syria, Iran, Hezbollah and Russia figure prominently in the Syrian disinformation campaign, Starbird's team found. In particular, "Russian government-funded media outlets (i.e. SputnikNews and RT) play a prominent and multi-faceted role within this ecosystem," she wrote.
For millennials (particularly the one that posted this): 'fake news' is only a concern if you, the dumbass, believe it. 'Fake news' has been with us under its former name, 'propaganda' since human beings have had the ability to relay information to one another, and yet, time and humanity have marched on. Is there anything, anything at all, that folks 35 and under are capable of applying critical thought to? Is there a single millennial out there that wasn't molded into just a human-robot-victim hybrid by their parents? If this is representative of your 'higher education', you are right: your degrees are worthless. Just because you invent a name for something and start a meme does not mean you have personally discovered anything or that your style of sharing is anythng resembling accute or profound. Your parents have created the most epic failure of intelligence, consciousness, and presence of mind or heart the world has ever seen.
Do we really have to have an anti-russia or anti-potus post every. single. fucking. day. on a tech news website?
You are not changing anybody's mind and you never will.
the "Russian Fake News Ecosystem" differs from the media in the United States, specifically NBC, ABC, FOX, CBS, CNN, Washington Post, New York Times, Snapchat, Facebook, Yahoo, etc? Thanks.
This isn't about Democrats, Republicans, Hillary or Trump. Russia didn't care about our politics, they cared about destabilizing us. They did so by making us turn against each other. Over 50 million ad impressions per week. If you're on Facebook, you saw them. And they were designed so that the people who saw them would be most likely to engage (like/comment/share). https://www.usatoday.com/story...
For context:
3,393 advertisements purchased (a total 3,519 advertisements total were released after more were identified by the company);
More than 11.4 million American users exposed to those advertisements;
470 IRA-created Facebook pages;
80,000 pieces of organic content created by those pages; and
Exposure of organic content to more than 126 million Americans.
Half of Americans saw their content.
It's good, then, that the previous administration repealed the government propaganda ban law for the current administration to allow them to fight against it.
Ezekiel 23:20
There are no "moderate rebels" and there are no knights in white hats. There are terrorists of varying degrees of viciousness, funded, trained and armed by the US and UK, trying to overthrow another government. The real propaganda is the US media, working on behalf of the oligarchs, OWNED by the oligarchs, who are the real power in our broken government.
We dodged a bullet not letting Clinton take us to war with Russia, but Trump is just a patsy. If they can't get him into a war in Syria, they'll do it in Iran.
One great revolution caused by Internet is the collapse of media monopolies. And it is a good thing. Media monopolies were used to engineer public opinion. One example is "Weapons of Mass Destruction" fake news which was publicized by almost all main stream media to justify a war with terrible consequences. I do not automatically trust any news coming from any source. I check at least one contrary argument before making my mind.
who gave the software developers right to vote in the first place? It is like trusting a monkey to play with a hand grenade.
Fuck the White Helmets, and all aid organizations trying to help them topple Syria. The last thing we need is yet more refugees pouring in to Europe.
For context:
3,393 advertisements purchased (a total 3,519 advertisements total were released after more were identified by the company);
More than 11.4 million American users exposed to those advertisements;
470 IRA-created Facebook pages;
80,000 pieces of organic content created by those pages; and
Exposure of organic content to more than 126 million Americans.
Half of Americans saw their content.
I have to think that the MSM is partly to blame here.
There is really no trusted news authority one can go to for verification or accurate information any more. I suppose there used to be only a *perception* of accurate reporting, but even that has vanished in the age of internet fact-checking.
During the run-up to the presidential election, otherwise legitimate news sources spewed a torrent of contempt, insults, and partisan framing. After the election, those same news sources went absolutely ballistic over the results.
Even today, highly regarded sources such as MSNBC and CNN post factually incorrect statements and politically misleading facts, that have to be quietly walked back a few days later.
Is it any wonder that people look to alternate sources?
You used to be able to go to online fact-checking sites such as Snopes.com and politifact, but even these have been taken over by partisan views. I've researched a couple of Snopes articles myself and found them to be either completely wrong, whitewashed, or highly misleading.
You used to be able to trust polling results: the polling companies made it their business to be accurate. Even now polls that report inconvenient truths are being suppressed.
If the news organizations started simply reporting what happened, instead of trying to get emotional engagement by emotionally framing the facts, people might leave the fringe sources and go back to regular news.
(Of note: CNN's ratings are down 20% compared to a year ago. I cannot understand how they believe what they're doing is in their best interests. I thought it was the fiducial responsibility of a corporation to make money, and pushing a political agenda seems to be a poor strategy for that.)
In activity reminiscent of the disinformation campaigns that roiled the U.S. Presidential election in 2016
[At the cost of some karma....]
I looked through about 100 of the Facebook ads in the dump and got bored. They were targeted at anything polarizing. Presumably later ones were around the two candidates, but I didn't see it.
The early ones were all inciting LGBTxxx, Black Racist, White Racist, Pro/Anti Immigration, Anti-Police passions. Most of the ads had almost no exposure receiving on the order of 0-10 clicks and a few dozen views, although a few received over 1k views and dozens of clicks.
Seems to be a long running low level propaganda operation aimed at dividing the US into camps/sowing dissent/keeping wounds open. Considering the polarization in the country, it could well be working in the long run, but I don't think we can honestly blame our woes on external actors.
It would be more accurate to state that the -reaction- to the disinformation campaigns roiled the post election year.
Definitely worth seeing if anything can be done about them because of the long term damage they are designed to do, but not significant in a single election. I am not terribly optimistic about countermeasures however, Russia will just get a bit better at hiding their connection to ads and everything will continue on as it has.
--- Mercutio was right.
Even if you aren't a ShareBlue paid shill, you unfortunately are propagating their ideas. You should really consider signing up with them and picking up a paycheck for doing nothing more than posting your views on your 12 year old account. They pay extra for that kind of authenticity. ShareBlue is the flagship of progressive anti Trump opposition and if you're not on board with them, you should be. You're just working for free, which makes you a sucker. :(
Lets back up a little.
The OP expressed a very common and valid viewpoint.
The AC replied accusing the OP of being a member of a policial advocacy group, seemingly Shareblue, and made a fairly strong implication that the OP was astroturfing.
The OP denied the ridiculous charges.
And now you jump in and suggest... I don't even understand what your argument actually is. That the OP is no longer supposed to advocate for their beliefs because there exists a progressive news site, that you accuse of astroturfing?
I stole this Sig
On corportations; screw the average citizen.
On corportations; screw the average citizen.
Because representing something other than yourself and keeping promises is for suckers -- the man never met an agreement that he wouldn't break the moment that it was to his personal advantage.
and never met a situation that he wouldn't claim credit for after carefully ensuring that he didn't invest anything until it was a certain win.
President Moon Jae-in is the one bringing peace to Korea.
Fake news, literally.
But the unemployment rate is a fraud -- Trump said so himself. There's "massive unemployment" that's not reflected in the unemployment rate. Obviously he's only continued the fraud... The difference between 4.8% and 3.9% is almost nothing.
Lip service. See the tax cut.
Every once in a while, a story comes up on /. that makes me question the authors sanity. This is one of them.
There is plenty of reason to doubt the neutrality and motives of the White Helmets, outside of and being shared around long before any Russian news stories. There are plenty of pictures where the same people are seen as victims in different locations, and the curious fact that the White Helmets are routinely at the scene immediately and seemingly active exclusively in islamist-controlled territory.
So what is this story? FUD? Did too many questionable details about these guys surface recently?
From an outside perspective, two things seem to be obvious: One, the White Helmets are doing humanitarian work and providing emergency services to civilian victims in a war zone. Two, they are clearly aligned with one of the sides in this conflict.
Neither of these diminishes the importance of the other.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
They did so by making us turn against each other.
As if you needed any help in that area.
What is turning people against each other is the doctrine of total competition that neo-liberalism has brought to every aspect of modern life. It used to be limited to sports and the workspace and even there we had rules of fair play.
During the cold war, there was a balance between capitalism and socialism in most western countries, because it was understood that releasing the full barrage of unrestricted capitalism on people would make them turn towards communism. After communism (rightfully) fell, that balance wasn't necessary any longer.
Really, the biggest thing Russia ever did to regular Americans was crumbling down and dropping communism. The ripple effect of that is still showing itself today with every year the poor getting poorer and the rich getting richer while employee rights get demolished, regulations abandoned, any echos of the New Deal or similar compromises in other western countries are lost and the future of future generations is sold for the benefit of next quarters profits.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
"just real Nerds" who only created their Slashdot account today are complaining about spammers.
The Internet Research Agency must be having a hard time hiring good people.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I've been reading this site for years, writing as AC on and off for more than a decade. Joined slash today as I was annoyed at what I can see going on here. I urge other ACs to do the same. Anyway, that's me.
These are the same organizations who, when Russia deliberately bombs hospitals or civilians standing in bread lines in Syria, claim "terrorists" were targeted. And then, when the white helmets show up to do their work, Russia bombs them again so pictures and news of the deliberate attacks will be suppressed.
These are the same organizations who reported on the killing of a 10-year old girl in Eastern Ukraine when the Ukrainian military and volunteers were fighting the Russian invasion in 2015. The claim was she was killed outright in an artillery attack.
Only problem, the girl never existed. It was the literal embodiment of fake news. In fact, when a BBC news crew tracked down some of the Russian news teams who reported on the "incident", they asked why the Russians reported the fake news. On camera one guy said the girl never existed while another guy said, "We had to broadcast it."
Who is saying that Putin is a nice guy? He's a dictator. That doesn't change the fact that the US is causing far more trouble on the global stage.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
That's what they all say.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I don't know why the ones who write the article talk about some kind of secret network.
These stories are on Russia today and Sputnik since weeks. These are known Russian state websites.
The White helmets are portrayed as the ones who fabricated the proof for the chemical attacks. I don't know if anyone has a proof of what is true or not.
Given that they can walk through areas that have just been hit by a sarin gas, a lethal neural toxin, wearing nothing more than a cheap dusk mask and no gloves and not immediately be incapacitated or otherwise or die.
Yup, that makes perfect sense.
CNN's ratings are down 20%...I cannot understand how they believe what they're doing is in their best interests.
You have to stop thinking about "the news" as a business. I have an article that will help:
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos signed the $250 million Washington Post deal with no due diligence
The objective isn't to earn money selling advertising, needing viewership/readership to accomplish that. The objective is to dictate what people think about...everything. It's mind control, not business. It has a financial payoff, but it's not as direct as subscriber numbers or advertising revenue.
Of course US will say they're the good guys and Russia will say they're the bad guys. Who is right? There are no independent journalists on the ground. You will never know.
Faith is all you have to go on.
Holy shit! You Russian trolls are really losing it. Your blatant, "But who knows what's real?" is your last, pathetic, desperate attempt to say something, anything, to make it seem there is no truth to the situation.
The fact is the white helmets are like the Red Cross. Neutral people whose sole job is rescue people after Russia bombs a hospital or civilians in bread lines. To claim otherwise is simply the latest propaganda to come out of your St. Petersburg location.
Now scurry along and get your bottle of vodka. Vlad will be proud of you for putting out another lie. It's all Russia is good for.
Please get the facts straight.
The White Helmets are US-UK-Turkish funded emergency first responders who seem to do their work only in jihadist infested rebel areas in Western Syria (but not for example in Kurdish areas). In the places where they're seen, a "human rights worker" would have his head chopped off.
The Telegraph
The Guardian
It is undeniable that the White Helmets and the Syrian American Medical Society are western funded yet operate only in jihadi held territory. Their videos are staged. Their claims are questionable. The fog of war is thick in the mainstream media.
I've been reading this site for years, writing as AC on and off for more than a decade.
Prove it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
First, prove you're not a Russian bot or a nazi homophobic misogynist, or a transvestite penguin who moonlights doing variety shows! What? You don't want to as the request is asinine or otherwise can't? Obviously you're one of THEM!!!!
Given the long history of American 3 letter agencies doing exactly this to third world countries, you'd think they would have spent some effort protecting America against the exact same attack vector.
First, prove you're not a Russian bot or a nazi homophobic misogynist,
Read my posting history.
You don't want to as the request is asinine or otherwise can't?
It's not a matter of wanting to; I don't have to do anything, because my long and hallowed posting history speaks for itself.
The request is not asinine; it proves a point. And that point is that nobody will ever believe that you lurked here for years before posting. Assuming you did, you were too cowardly to log in, and now you're paying for that. But it's safer to assume that you didn't.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
What a bunch of crap. How about you use a bit of critical thinking for a change?
Yes, RT certainly bought ads, like all news media. And yes, RT certainly use subjects that could raise passion, as that's the best way to make people click on those ads and then share RT as a source of information. So what? I live in Canada. Do you think the CBC didn't do the same? Will you also accuse Canada of trying to destabilize the US?
I check RT's website every day. I subscribed to RT's channel on YouTube. The reality is I like RT a lot because I get (real) news that is otherwise censored in Western media, and because there is a real diversity of opinion, something I do not see in Western media. This diversity of opinion is why, for example, people like Jill Stein and Ron Paul were regularly on RT. Will you also accuse Jill Stein and Ron Paul of being part of a Russian conspiracy to destabilize the US?
Stop playing the fucking victim of a bogeyman. I can assure that Americans are well able to destabilize themselves. I mean just look at the left who is still calling over and over anyone who supports the current US president as "racist", "misogynistic", "homophobic", and pretty much any insult they can think of. Look at how Kanye West is now insulted over and over by the left because he said he liked Trump. Do you think this bellicose and anti-democratic attitude from the left is because they saw some ads from RT?
If the white helmets are like the Red Cross, then why do they operate only in regions under jihadist control? Why don't they help the people who are the victims of those jihadists?
Yeah, yeah, I know, you will now say I'm a Russian bot.
So if "destabilizing us" is the problem, doesn't that mean that #resist are unwitting (?) Russian agents?
I mean, here's an album of what the Russian trolls were posting.
Apparently the Russians were colluding with BLM, who knew? Is that why you guys always call out to your buddy Ivan?
I think the joke is the same as everyone who calls an AC they don't want to bother addressing the content of "Vlad" or "Ivan." The next comment down from here is DRJlaw doing just that.
Funny how much you complain when the shoe is on the other foot.
Something about Assad and ISIS shooting everyone who isn't absolutely on their side.
You keep trotting this out like some kind of talisman. You're not Vlad, or a Russian bot. You're an idiot.
in key districts. So it's not fair to say there was no impact. The election was so close it's entirely possible this was the proverbial straw. Also, there's strong evidence that Russia got ahold of tons of voter demographics during the election during one of the hacks. At the very least they would have used these to target ads. There's also some evidence they shared that data with the Republican party.
All that said, if Hilary hadn't been so damn arrogant and had just campaigned in the Rust belt none of this would be happening. She really was the worst candidate in history.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
If they are neutral why aren't they rescuing people after the US bombs a hospital or civilians in bread lines?
Oh right, they aren't neutral, they support the terrorist side of the Syrian civil war.
Because the U.S. isn't bombing hospitals or bread lines in Syria so there's no need for the white helmets to do anything.
But keep up the lies. All you're doing is proving who you are. You Russians are as stupid as you are naive.
Could be a Natalia...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
If the white helmets are so great, why does no one in the liberated cities ever have anything good to say?
Why is there headquarters in the same building as ISIS?
Keep up the lies. The people the white helmets rescue are very grateful because they know if it were Assad's army the people would be killed on the spot. Oh look, your lie about the white helmetsA being associate with terrorists is false. How odd.
Oh look, an article describing how Russia deliberately bombs these rescuers so they can't help the people being killed.
Tell us again who the terrorists are? The ones who are trying to help people lead a better life or those who deliberately target civilians and rescuers? Go home comrade, you're too drunk, and stupid, to come up with anything original.
Caution: The above link is neo-nazi shit. from one of the "European Identity" cuck groups that are mad because dark-skinned types are taking all their women and their moms are on their asses to get jobs..
You are welcome on my lawn.
And it's called fake news by the very people it accuses of being intelligence assets. Odd no?
Nothing. His boss would be upset that Trump is fighting against his efforts.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Yes, that is the argument. It's an attempt to paint all views left of Mussolini as part of some great conspiracy, and push the centre of politics to the far right.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
lol 4million+ user id calling me a shill
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
snort !!!
An acquaintance here occasionally does some work for Uncle Sam in the deserts of the Middle East. In his exceptionally well-informed and thoughtful opinion, yes, the White Helmets are Al Qaeda.
Nazi-obsessed Gulag-apologist trolls sure do have a lot of repressed homoerotic feelings for "right wing" celebrities.
> And they were designed so that the people who saw them would be most likely to engage
You don't say.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Capitalists didn't invent the concept of competition - they just realised it naturally (pun intended) brought about optimal outcomes. You can rail all you want against competition, but you should pause to remember that you're a direct result and net beneficiary of it. Competition is simply a fact of life: if you don't compete, you lose.
Technically there is a middle ground. So UK contractors working with corrupt elements in the UK government, came up with the scheme to create that charity fraud. No accountability, no real records and millions from UK tax payers syphoned off and then the big payoff US funds and millions more scammed. The governments funding it think it is real but they whole thing is a big ole scam, a video charade to scam money out of the tax payer purse. This being the real reason for the failure of performance on the ground versus the hundreds of millions of tax payer dollars spent. The counter claim it was entirely a propaganda scheme but why spend over a hundred million dollars on an empty scam, makes no sense. So they believe it is 'er' cough, cough they believed it was true, now not so much. Middle ground seems very likely true, largely a scam to steal over one hundred million dollars, with a just a few million spent on creating the illusion so that UK contractors together with corrupt elements of the UK government could fill their pockets with terrors wars booty, just that the US government wasn't in on the scam because they were the ones being scammed.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Even a broken clock is right twice a day. In this case, RT and Sputnik could be those clocks. Just because they aren't trusted doesn't mean they're not right about this. The White Helmets ARE Al-Qaeda. It's been extensively investigated and documented by people on the scene in the Middle East.
the poor getting poorer
If you're going to repeat this kind of nonsense you can't really expect to be taken seriously on anything else you say.
The reality is I like RT a lot because I get (real) news that is otherwise censored in Western media, and because there is a real diversity of opinion, something I do not see in Western media.
The kind of mental gymnastics one has to be capable of in order to reach this conclusion is just incredible. You can replace RT with InfoWars or DailyKos and it would sound no more absurd.
I was amazed that they worked. The only explanation is that the people who were affected by those ads were so misinformed that they believed them. And not only misinformed but also unwilling to fact check making them doubly stupid.
That's how political propaganda works. There's very little benefit to targeting sophisticated, educated, thoughtful people, since they make up a relatively insignificant percentage of the populace and are much harder to convince. Instead you target the lowest common denominator, which massively increases your support with very little effort.
Real wages are falling or stagnant.
Yes, if you want to be pedantic, who is actually getting poorer is the middle class, which is being eroded away, while the poor simply stay poor. But the point is that the wealth gap is increasing.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
No, capitalism didn' invent competition - it merely announced that it is the magic bullet to solve all problems and should be holy and protected and most importantly: Unlimited.
But reality does not agree. Humans are social creatures and altruism evolved for equally good reasons. A total competition attitude might be appropriate for solitary predators - the self-image of many successful capitalists. But humans are not solitary predators. Social and altruistic traits benefit the survival of the group and while they might even be detrimental to the individual, in evolutionary terms they are beneficial.
The doctrine of the self-interested individual completely ignores a basic fact of what it means to be human.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I don't think we're anywhere near close enough to understanding the underlying principles behind societal or altruistic behaviour, for you to make simplistic, blanket statements about its net, as well as intended, outcomes.
There's evidence to suggest that behaviour that we might normally consider as altruistic is, in fact, ultimately selfish, when you look at organisms from the slightly more sophisticated point of view as a carrier of genes, rather than just a selfish individual: https://bmcevolbiol.biomedcent...
Certainly, when we look at recent social history, we can see that there's many examples where individuals who have purported to act in altruistic, or otherwise unselfish ways, for the benefit of others, have, in the long run, gone on to disproportionately benefit themselves, to the extreme detriment of everyone else i.e every successful Communist leader in the last century.
Interestingly, this kind of deceptive exploitation that relies on the better character (or naivety) of others might be a behaviour that develops in a subset of psychopathic individuals who, rather than simply callously acting in their own self-interest to the detriment of others, actually genuinely believe that they know what is best for other people, better than them themselves. In this way, they 'unknowingly' deceive others into thinking they are altruistic, whilst ultimately only acting selfishly, to the detriment of others, as all psychopaths do. When you look at successful Communist leaders like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc. it's almost certain that they must have been psychopaths in order to lack the empathy that enabled them to do what they did. In this sense, the success of the Communist regimes may, ironically, have been the result of evolutionary competition itself, where having a certain expression of psychopathic traits resulted in an enormous evolutionary advantage.
More horseshit. In 1990 the number of people globally living in extreme poverty was 1.9 billion. Today it is 836 million. This has induces some erosion of the middle class in "first world" nations, yeah, but a far bigger effect has been the increase in single parent households. Neither "the poor" nor the "the middle class" are earning less; people are getting compensated the same or more than they were a few decades ago, they're just making worse life choices. Meanwhile poverty on a global level is massively decreasing.
wrong. none of the strife in america has anything to do with the Russians.
we have racial problems, without the Russians.
we have class struggle, without the Russians.
we have corporations with government in their pockets, without the Russians.
Your Russian bogeyman doesn't exist.
"extreme poverty" is defined as living on less than $1.90 per day. Or about $57 per month. Or $693.50 per year.
Yes, the amount of people living in that income bracket has been reduced dramatically, and that is one of the biggests successes in the history of mankind and an incredible progress made possible by all the things both left- and right-wing extremists hate so much.
Meanwhile, as the other comment shows in abundance, the majority of new wealth generated in most of the developed countries goes to the top, not the middle or the bottom. While extreme poverty is going down, "simple" povery is going up. Don't believe me? Here's a graph from my home country:
https://de.statista.com/statis...
Here are government graphs, in case you think the source is biased:
http://www.bpb.de/wissen/GCP6X...
How can both of these be true? Because prices differ as well, and a lot. The average yearly income in Congo (~$770) would put you among the poor in the most developed countries if you had it available per month.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
when you look at organisms from the slightly more sophisticated point of view as a carrier of genes, rather than just a selfish individual:
Err... there is any other sensible way to look at them from an evolutionary position? Of course the genes matter, not the individual. That's why we evolved to have a vigorous youth and old age is nothing but an afterthought. Once you've raised your kids, the genes don't give a shit what happens to you, and their attitude is clearly visible in how we age.
i.e every successful Communist leader in the last century.
Every leader everywhere always claims that he is making sacrifices for his country. It's part of the show. You could say the same thing for every dictatorial leader anywhere on the political spectrum. What keeps leaders in developed countries away from such extremes is the checks and balances system and the fact that they don't get to enjoy the job until death, so they have to think about the time when they return to more or less ordinary life.
If you want obviousness, look back a few hundred years and notice how almost every absolute leader in the history of the world had a collection of women around him. While only the arabic leaders had official harems, kings in Europe had plenty of lovers and courtesans, some of them semi-officially (or at least openly enough to build them their own personal palaces).
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
wrong. stop at the 11.4 million seeing that nonsense. most americans didn't see it, that's what that means. and "exposed"? please, I see ads and get spam all day and don't buy or contact nigerian princes.
your "organic content" stats mean nothing, made up bullshit by people trying to get others worked up over *nothing*