globalresearch.ca

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Global Research – Bias and Credibility

CONSPIRACY-PSEUDOSCIENCE

Sources in the Conspiracy-Pseudoscience category may publish unverifiable information that is not always supported by evidence. These sources may be untrustworthy for credible/verifiable information; therefore, fact-checking and further investigation is recommended on a per-article basis when obtaining information from these sources. See all Conspiracy-Pseudoscience sources .

• Overall, we rate GlobalResearch a Tin Foil Hat Conspiracy and Strong Pseudoscience website based on promoting unproven information, such as the dangers of Vaccines and 9-11, as a false flag operation .

Detailed Report

Bias Rating: CONSPIRACY-PSEUDOSCIENCE Factual Reporting: LOW Country: Canada MBFC’s Country Freedom Rating: EXCELLENT Media Type: Website Traffic/Popularity: Medium Traffic MBFC Credibility Rating: LOW CREDIBILITY

Founded in 2001 , GlobalResearch, or Centre for Research on Globalization is a Canadian conspiracy website. It was founded by Michel Chossudovsky , who is currently the President of GlobalResearch and professor emeritus of economics at the University of Ottawa. The website does not have an about page, but they list the people involved with the operation .

Read our profile on the Canadian government’s influence on media .

Funded by / Ownership

Although GlobalResearch does not state ownership, it is assumed Michel Chossudovsky is the owner. Revenue is derived through donations and advertising.

Analysis / Bias

In review, GlobalResearch publishes a combination of real news and conspiracy theories. We will focus on the not-so-real news. GlobalResearch often reports unfavorably about Israel, such as this: The Zionist Idea Has Never Been More Terrifying than It Is Today . This unlabeled opinion piece does not provide a single source of evidence for their claims. When it comes to politics, they are strongly anti-capitalist and anti-Globalist , as their name suggests. While GlobalResearch does promote legitimate humanitarian concerns, its views on science, economics, and geopolitics are questionable. For example, GR promotes anti-vaccination propaganda , 9-11 as a false flag operation , GMOs are harmful , and Chemtrails . Finally, during the Covid-19 pandemic, they have routinely promoted disinformation as evidenced in the failed fact checks.

In general, this website purports to be concerned for humanity yet routinely publishes false information that misleads humanity.

Failed Fact Checks

• “The most likely triggering cause of (microcephaly)” is the “DTaP shot, a vaccine that had been recently mandated by the Brazilian government to be injected into pregnant women.” – False
• Are hospitals inflating the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths so they can be paid more? – False
• “There are no reliable tests for a specific COVID-19 virus” – Inaccurate
• “vaccines had cancer enzymes in them” – Inaccurate
• “The WHO Confirms that the Covid-19 PCR Test is Flawed: Estimates of ‘Positive Cases’ are Meaningless. The Lockdown Has No Scientific Basis.” – False

Overall, we rate GlobalResearch a Tin Foil Hat Conspiracy and Strong Pseudoscience website based on promoting unproven information such as the dangers of Vaccines and 9-11 as a false flag operation.  (D. Van Zandt 7/20/2016) Updated (11/24/2022)

Source: https://www.globalresearch.ca/

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Last Updated on May 24, 2023 by Media Bias Fact Check

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Canadian website criticized as Kremlin mouthpiece depicts Russian invasion as 'peacekeeping mission'

The globalresearch.ca defence of the attack on Ukraine adds to an online influence that experts already consider large and troubling

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Article content

The world’s media and many of its leaders depicted Russia’s invasion of Ukraine this week as an unprovoked, brazen attack on a sovereign and democratic nation.

Canadian website criticized as Kremlin mouthpiece depicts Russian invasion as 'peacekeeping mission' Back to video

A Montreal website with surprising reach offered a rather different take on the events.

Articles on globalresearch.ca insisted that it was not an invasion at all but a war Russia didn’t want. It was a “peacekeeping mission” to protect people of Ukraine’s restive Donbas region, even as Moscow’s forces poured into the country from multiple directions.

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The Russians were simply trying to “liberate” parts of eastern Ukraine held by Russian-backed separatists, globalresearch.ca writers said, their main targets being “Ukrainian Nazi groups and movements.”

The articles, some by the website’s own authors and others from partner sites, both mirrored Russia’s own propaganda about the invasion and disseminated misleading or false information.

For the site run by a retired University of Ottawa economics professor, in other words, it was business as usual.

Those are the type of narratives that add fuel to fringe extremists

Globalresearch.ca has been repeatedly criticized for perpetuating conspiracy theories on everything from airline contrails to killer vaccines and spreading untrue Russian-government spin on world events.

A 2020 U.S. State Department report singled it out as the most impactful of seven “proxy sites” that disseminate Russian disinformation, while the NATO-allied Strategic Communications Centre criticized it for “information laundering” — giving a supposedly respectful Western sheen to the Kremlin’s fake news.

Seven authors responsible for 108 articles on the site were identified by Facebook as pseudonyms created by GRU, Russia’s foreign military intelligence agency.

Get a dash of perspective along with the trending news of the day in a very readable format.

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The globalresearch.ca defence of the attack on Ukraine adds to an online influence that experts already consider large and troubling.

“We have to take this extremely seriously as a threat to our information environment,” said Marcus Kolga, director of the DisinfoWatch organization and a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. “Those are the type of narratives that add fuel to fringe extremists.”

The site is tied to the Centre for Research on Globalization, founded by retired professor Michel Chossudovsky, once a left-leaning member of the University of Ottawa economics department.

He won the institution’s Excellence in Teaching award in 2001 but some of his extra-curricular exploits have been more contentious, and not just the website.

According to slobodan-milosevic.org , he offered himself up as a witness in the defence of the Serbian leader when Slobodan Milosevic was tried over Bosnian war crimes. After a 2010 interview with Fidel Castro, Chossudovsky described the late autocratic leader of Cuba as a man of “tremendous integrity” and committed to “the advancement of humankind.”

He once appeared regularly on Russia Today, the state-controlled television network often accused itself of disseminating propaganda and disinformation. A book of his outlining a conspiracy theory about the 9/11 attacks was found on Osama bin Laden ’s bookshelf after his death.

Chossudovsky is still listed on the university’s website as a professor emeritus, an honorary title given to superannuated faculty members.

Ironically, the university recently launched what it calls the Information Integrity Lab , a project dedicated to “the preservation of truth and countering the ill effects of disinformation.”

“If I were running a large university, a nationally recognized university, I would certainly be kind of concerned about my reputation,” said Kolga about Chossudovsky’s online presence.

University spokeswoman Isabelle Mailloux did not comment on why Chossudovsky is still listed among faculty of the economics department, but said he no longer has ties with the school.

“The University of Ottawa is aware of recent statements made by retired professor Chossudovsky and does not support the views expressed in them, nor does it endorse the contents of his website,” she said in a statement.

Chossudovsky himself could not be reached for comment. He has said little in the Canadian media about the website but did tell The Globe and Mail through a lawyer in 2017 that he is not affiliated with or supported by Russia’s government or any other.

Begun in 2001, globalresearch.ca lists a stable of its own writers and posts articles from other online sources, some of which are also listed by the State Department as Russian proxy sites. The overall tone is anti-U.S. and anti-West and often supportive of authoritarian adversaries of America and its allies.

Authors have promoted falsehoods that 9/11 was a U.S.-fabricated operation to justify American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, that COVID vaccines could cause permanent genetic damage and lead to humans being “owned,” and that an American climate-change project will harvest “life molecules” from the atmosphere and render the earth inhospitable to plant life.

In the first months of the pandemic, it posted articles suggesting the coronavirus was actually introduced to China by U.S. soldiers , contrary to the findings of Chinese and foreign scientists. The claim was then repeated in tweets by China’s foreign ministry spokesman.

It was a classic example of how globalresearch.ca acts as a sort of information laundering service, recycling disinformation and propaganda often devised by Russian agents, then having its articles quoted back by Kremlin-controlled media  — or Beijing in the COVID case, said Janis Sarts, head of StratCom, in a 2020 National Post interview .

“When Russia needs to refer to a Western source, this is typically the site that is quoted,” he said.

Its impact became apparent in 2017 after the website Donbas News International claimed erroneously that the U.S. was sending 3,600 tanks to Europe for “war preparation against Russia.” That post gained limited traction initially. But it received a “significant boost” after globalresearch.ca ran the article, adding a reference to former U.S. president Barack Obama’s “political insanity,” reported the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab.

“The decision to include an obvious fake fits its editorial stance,” the Washington, D.C.-based organization commented.

The State Department Global Engagement Center’s report described globalresearch.ca as “deeply enmeshed in Russia’s broader disinformation and propaganda ecosystem.”

And it stood out among those seven proxy sites, the report noted. With 350,000 potential readers per article, it had more than twice as much reach as the other six in 2020.

Its reach this week included Kim Dotcom, the New Zealand-based Internet entrepreneur facing fraud charges in the U.S. He tweeted to his 727,000 followers that Russia’s invasion was a result of American foreign policy and linked to a globalresearch.ca article on “U.S. foreign policy disasters.”

To Kolga, the real impact of the site is in spreading fake news among a relatively small group of credulous readers who can — as shown by the QAnon movement or the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol — cause considerable harm.

It mirrored Russian-created falsehoods about the pandemic and COVID-19 vaccines, helping divide North American society, and it’s clear how it will portray Moscow’s war against Ukraine, he said.

“Anything that can make the Russians and Vladimir Putin look good and make the Ukrainians and NATO, the West and democracy look bad, that’s what’s going to get promoted.”

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NATO research centre sets sights on Canadian website over pro-Russia disinformation

This article was published more than 6 years ago. Some information may no longer be current.

A man carries a child following a suspected chemical attack in the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun in April. In the week after the attack, globalresearch.ca’s 10-most-tweeted articles were about the attack, including some that spread conspiracy theories. Edlib Media Center/The Associated Press

In an upscale condo in Old Montreal owned by a retired University of Ottawa professor sits the headquarters of a website that is now in the sights of NATO's Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, as it investigates, among other things, the online spread of pro-Russia propaganda and of disinformation that props up the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

The website, globalresearch.ca, is ostensibly the online arm of the Centre for Research on Globalization, which has the trappings of a think tank and styles some of its regular contributors as "senior fellows." But it is the media that matters: Its online content and its amplification on social media form the core of its activities.

The site has posted more than 40,000 of its own pieces since it was launched in 2001, according to one long-time contributor. But it does more: It picks up reports from other, often obscure websites, thus giving them a Global Research link. Those reports often get cross-posted on a series of other sites or aggressively spread across Facebook and Twitter by followers who actively share or retweet them, including a number of social botnets, or bots – automated accounts programmed to spread certain globalresearch.ca content.

Globe joins global Trust Project, creating higher standards for journalism

The site has disseminated articles that claimed the Assad regime was not behind the April chemical weapon attack that drew a punitive U.S. missile strike, also suggesting it was a hoax and that the deadly nerve agent sarin was not used. It spread other false reports, such as a claim that NATO was preparing to deploy 3,600 tanks near the Russian border as part of a mission to Eastern Europe.

The site initially drew attention for claiming that the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States were a false-flag operation orchestrated by the CIA.

But what once appeared to be a relatively harmless online refuge for conspiracy theorists is now seen by NATO's information warfare specialists as a link in a concerted effort to undermine the credibility of mainstream Western media – as well as the North American and European public's trust in government and public institutions.

The spread of online disinformation had become a heated political concern amid U.S. intelligence reports that Russia sought to use it to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In May, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland warned that such tactics could be used here. On Monday, British Prime Minister Theresa May accused Russia of seeking to "weaponize information." In October, Facebook released a sampling of political ads bought by Russians that were aimed at U.S. audiences – many were not about candidates but sought to gin up divisions, including ads that supported and attacked the anti-racism movement Black Lives Matter.

Global Research is viewed by NATO's Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence – or StratCom – as playing a key accelerant role in helping popularize articles with little basis in fact that also happen to fit the narratives being pushed by the Kremlin, in particular, and the Assad regime.

At its headquarters in Riga, StratCom researchers consider globalresearch.ca to be a link in a network that reposts such stories. "That way, they increase the Google ranking of the story and create the illusion of multisource verification," said Donara Barojan, who does digital forensic research for the centre. But she said she did not yet have proof that Global Research is connected to any government.

The site's founder, Michel Chossudovsky, has long been an iconoclast, a leftist University of Ottawa economics professor who challenges mainstream capitalist economics. Locally, he gained brief notoriety when his theories of Israeli cabals sparked allegations of anti-Semitism. His site, globalresearch.ca, tends to view the United States as a militaristic aggressor and NATO as its warmongering tool – views also promoted by Russia. It also asserts the United States is behind extremists such as the Islamic State and its allies, a view promoted by the Assad regime.

So is globalresearch.ca just an outlet for views that happen to align with those of the Kremlin and Damascus? Or is it affiliated?

Mr. Chossudovsky didn't want to discuss that. He has spoken occasionally to reporters over the years to expound his political theories, but when The Globe and Mail went to his waterfront home in L'Île-Cadieux, Que., in May, he declined to speak about how globalresearch.ca functions and whether it is aligned with Moscow or any other government.

"Not on that topic," he said, insisting "it would not be appropriate," without explaining further. He then said he had an appointment and had to go.

This week, after The Globe made another attempt to ask questions about the website, Mr. Chossudovsky responded through a lawyer, Daniel Lévesque. In a letter, Mr. Lévesque said the Centre for Research on Globalization denies that it is part of a network of pro-Russia or pro-Assad sites or that it is "affiliated with governmental organizations or benefits from their support."

Global Research has from the beginning espoused conspiracy theories, including that the United States and its allies continue to support and fund Islamist extremists, including al-Qaeda and IS, and has taken the view that the U.S.-led NATO alliance is fomenting war around the world. But it took on those themes long before it was common to accuse Mr. Putin of mounting a disinformation war.

Global Research has developed unusual reach for a site that specializes in conspiracy-heavy anti-Western articles on international relations.

It uses that reach to push not only its own opinion pieces, but "news" reports from little-known websites that regularly carry dubious or false information. At times, the site's regular variety of international-affairs stories is replaced with a flurry of items that bolster dubious reportage with a series of opinion pieces, promoted on social media and retweeted and shared by active bots.

The Global Research site is prolific, and of course the editors don't necessarily agree with all the content that is posted.

In the case of the April 4 sarin-gas attack on the rebel-held Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun that killed more than 80 people – and which sparked U.S. President Donald Trump to order a cruise-missile strike on the Syrian air base from which the attack was launched – globalresearch.ca was among the first to carry a story that claimed the Syrian regime was innocent of the attack and that terrorists hoping to lure the United States into the war against Mr. al-Assad were to blame.

The article first appeared in al-Masdar News, a pro-Assad website that appears to be run from Beirut. It was written by Paul Antonopoulos, who now writes for the pro-Russia Fort Russ news portal. But after globalresearch.ca republished the same article word for word, it rippled out widely through the internet. Global Research's Facebook counter shows it was shared more than 6,000 times. On Twitter, it was mentioned hundreds of times. The article's assertions were soon quoted in or republished by a dozen other outlets identified by StratCom as either "pro-Kremlin or anti-Western." Among them was the influential InfoWars website, which is widely read among the so-called "alt-right" movement – a loose confederation of U.S. white supremacists and nativists – that supported Mr. Trump's run for the White House. The hashtag #syriahoax began trending on Twitter.

The al-Masdar article repeated the Syrian government's claim that it has no chemical weapons. It suggested "terrorist forces have once again created a false flag scenario," asserting the casualties could not have been caused by sarin gas, as was believed, because photographs showed rescue workers without gloves near the bodies of the victims, and that "local sources" said the bodies were those of people kidnapped by al-Qaeda a week earlier. Alternatively, it stated, the deaths might have been the result of the Syrian air force bombing a warehouse where the local al-Qaeda affiliate had been manufacturing chemical weapons.

The latter is the version of events the Kremlin has been advancing, although a reporter from Britain's The Guardian newspaper who visited Khan Sheikhoun two days after the attack found that the building Moscow identified as a chemical-weapons warehouse was only "half-destroyed silos reeking of leftover grain and animal manure."

The United States says it has satellite evidence showing the Syrian air force deliberately carried out the chemical attack on the town. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has charged that Russia either knew of or was willfully blind about the attack. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which is based in The Hague, found that sarin was indeed used in the attack. In September, a UN commission of inquiry reported that Syria's military was responsible.

The Khan Sheikhoun story was an example of globalresearch.ca amplifying a story from an obscure source. Janis Sarts, the director of StratCom, said globalresearch.ca repeatedly played a role in disseminating "disinformation" by giving pro-Russia and pro-Assad stories a wider audience and a veneer of credibility by publishing them through an authoritative-sounding Canadian source.

He said it would be "very difficult" for larger news organizations such as Russian and Iranian state news agencies to pick up an article from an obscure source such as al-Masdar, but when it is circulated through Global Research, "then they say, 'Oh! In the West they're saying this!'"

Unlike al-Masdar News, which Mr. Sarts said had a limited reach, globalresearch.ca claims to have more than 2.7 million unique visitors a month.

Among the 25,000 accounts that follow the Centre for Research on Globalization on Twitter are Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Russian embassy in Canada and the Russian International Affairs Council, a Kremlin think tank.

It is not only a site that reposts articles from little-known sites for its wider readership. It pushes the narrative. In the case of the sarin attack, it quickly supplemented the al-Masdar hoax story with a series of articles and opinion pieces that took the false flag and mistaken-blame narrative for granted – both before and after the April 7 U.S. missile strikes.

In the week after Khan Sheikhoun, the 10 most-tweeted globalresearch.ca articles were about the gas attack, according to social-media analytics tools. In addition to the al-Masdar story, they included a piece with the headline, Did Hillary approve sending sarin to rebels?, and several that argued the attack was a false flag to justify a regime change operation.

They were spread on Twitter by a mix of far-right, alt-left and anarchist groups – and bots. In fact, this is now a feature of globalresearch.ca's reach: It is being aggressively amplified by Twitter users pushing its content, including automated accounts. Because Twitter allows users anonymity, it's hard to say with certainty which accounts are bots, but some exhibit the hallmarks of automation, such as excessively heavy tweeting or a high percentage of retweets.

The now-suspended account @YOUNGFiREBRAND, which uses the name "God's Lion," appeared to take a fire-and-brimstone view of the world and mentioned globalresearch.ca more than 700 times the week after the Khan Sheikhoun attack. Another prolific retweeter, @Col_Connaughton, is a virulently anti-Israel, pro-Iran account that tweets more than a human can: Its 1.5 million tweets amount to 600 a day, every day, for seven years.

The account @elzi0n, whose Twitter bio claims he is Australian and, among other things, a truth-seeker, activist and hip-hop purist, is a heavy retweeter of globalresearch.ca stories. The account has 182,000 followers, but many, if not most, are automated corporate or PR accounts that makes @elzi0n look more influential than it is. Its tweets are rarely its own. Mostly it retweets posts and stories from other sources, especially RT – the state-funded TV and online service formerly called Russia Today – British conspiracy blogger David Icke and Global Research.

And then there is cross-posting. Global Research frequently republishes articles that first appeared on RT or the Kremlin-run Sputnik news agency, which also frequently quotes Mr. Chossudovsky as a source. And it gives content from obscure sites exposure.

"There's this whole system of cross-posting articles, where you generate views for another website and you start doing favours," said Guillaume Kress, who worked as an editorial assistant at Global Research. "I don't know much about the system itself, but it's very, very interesting."

Mr. Chossudovsky is treated as an esteemed researcher when he appears on RT and its op-ed website, which carries a bio that calls him "an award-winning author, professor of economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, founder and director of the Centre for Research on Globalization."

Other writers for the site are similarly lionized by RT. F. Willam Engdahl, whose writing includes reports that the CIA is behind pro-democracy movements in Hungary and that genetically modified organisms are part of a conspiracy designed just after the Second World War to control the world's food supply, has written for publications of the conspiracy-minded Lyndon LaRouche political movement, which sees Prince Charles as the leader of an evil international plot, and for Global Research. His RT bio calls him "an award-winning geopolitical analyst and strategic risk consultant" and a "Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization in Montreal."

Among globalresearch.ca's listed "partner websites" is the Moscow-based Strategic Culture Foundation, known for promoting the Kremlin narrative that the ouster of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych was a Western-backed coup d'état rather than a popular revolution. Its contributors include pro-Russian authors such as Andrew Korybko, a former journalist with Sputnik who now works for pro-Russian think tank Katehon, and Jerome Corsi, now the Washington bureau chief for the U.S. conspiracy site InfoWars.

It is clear that Global Research is in some sense now part of an online network. What's not clear is whether Mr. Chossudovsky's site is trying to amplify the views of the Kremlin and the Assad regime or whether his views are being amplified by pro-Russia, pro-Assad networks who favour globalresearch.ca's storylines.

Mr. Kress, who started working for Global Research as a kind of intern just after graduating from Concordia University, quickly became a paid employee who woke early every day, including weekends, to post stories. He believes it is the latter – that Global Research's political leanings mean its content is "in line with Russian media in general.

"It shouldn't be surprising to anyone, given what the big themes are for Global Research. I mean, anti-U.S., NATO," he said. "That kind of sounds like Russia to me."

Tracing firm links is difficult. Those Facebook ads were linked to Russian operatives, not a direct Kremlin purchase. Russian state news sites such as RT and Sputnik have overt links to Moscow. There are sites with less direct links, such as The Duran, whose founders include former RT pundits. But there are also a number of alternative sites that regularly post views in line with Moscow's but assert they are independent. Sites such as ProporNot.com, which identify what they believe to be Russian propaganda sites – including globalresearch.ca – have led to counterallegations that there is a McCarthyist attempt to marginalize their politics.

Phil Butler, a Sputnik International blogger, published a book called Putin's Praetorians: Confessions of the Top Kremlin Trolls , in which pro-Russia writers such as Global Research's Mr. Engdahl try to debunk the notion of Kremlin-backed propaganda, all the while "confessing" the reasons they admire Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Mr. Chossudovsky and his wife, retired CEGEP teacher Micheline Ladouceur, who edits the French-language version of the site, appear to have begun with a handful of contributors. Some were other retired academics, often writing opinions on matters outside their fields – usually sympathizers with the anti-capitalist or anti-war leanings of the site.

Mr. Kress, now a business student in France, said he was looking to do some form of writing or journalism after graduating from Concordia and answered a Global Research ad. He ended up working there for eight months, eventually finding the site's "heavy" content stressful. He became frustrated that it didn't really have, in his view, a consistent voice or a coherent theory, but he said he believes that Mr. Chossudovsky believes in what he's doing.

The site, according to Mr. Kress, is operated by a small support staff, with the articles chosen by Mr. Chossudovsky from other sites or contributors who submit articles in a "constant inflow" from around the world. Mr. Kress said it's a "small organization" but didn't want to say how many people work for Global Research or talk about them. He did not explain why. He said he worked from home, posting articles using the open source software WordPress, but did not say if others worked from Mr. Chossudovsky's L'Île-Cadieux home, a wooded property with an assessed value of $1.1-million, or his Old Montreal condo.

The size of the organization is surprisingly hard to discern, especially since Mr. Chossudovsky did not want to discuss it. The website lists "research associates" and "correspondents," who are essentially its regular contributors, and a group of four or five editors and administrators. In addition to Mr. Chossudovsky and his wife, there is an office manager, Alex Vlaanderen, and typically one or two others. For a year, Mr. Kress was listed as a "consultant."

He said the site has revenue from ads and believed it may also benefit financially from cross-posting content from other sites, but he did not know. The site's web traffic helps it earn revenue from display ads through online ad resellers.

But it appears Global Research's traffic was hit by Google's efforts to reduce the "viral" impact of fake news and purveyors of unsubstantiated conspiracy theories. The site touts itself as one of the 15,000 most-visited in the world, according to Alexa, a web-traffic analytics site; but by November, Alexa said it was not even in the top 24,000.

(Some sites have complained that Google's search-engine change has also hit the traffic of left-wing websites that aren't known for spreading false information. For instance, the World Socialist Web Site, a Trotskyite site, complained in July that its traffic had plummeted after Google's changes.)

In October, Mr. Chossudovsky made an online appeal for help. Global Research, he said, "is facing financial difficulties.

"To reverse the Tide of Media Disinformation, we Need your Support."

Jules Dufour, a former university geography professor in Saguenay, Que., was one of Mr. Chossudovsky's longest-serving contributors. Before he died in August, he told The Globe and Mail in an interview that he was an anti-war activist who saw globalresearch.ca as having a mission to "denounce lies," notably about conflicts.

What about its conspiracy theories? "Well, there are certainly conspiracies. History demonstrates it," Mr. Dufour said. The justification for going to war with Saddam Hussein was false, he said, and so was the assertion that the Assad regime was behind the chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun. Mr. Dufour didn't seem very worried that Global Research was spreading false information from obscure sources, either. "There may be things like that, but it's hard to control everything," he said.

The false information is not limited to topics that fit the site's purported international-relations mission. During the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, globalresearch.ca published a piece by a Florida anesthesiologist who claimed that Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton had Parkinson's disease – a claim that was circulated on far right and pro-Russia conspiracy sites and repeated by Trump supporters until it was mooted in mainstream tabloids and debunked by fact-checking site Snopes and physicians with knowledge of the disease.

StratCom first took note of globalresearch.ca in January, when it was the first website to republish an article – originally carried by the Donbass International News Agency, a pro-Kremlin news service that operates out of separatist-controlled eastern Ukraine – alleging that the United States had 3,600 tanks ready to deploy near the Russian border as part of a NATO mission.

The real number of tanks deployed to Poland and the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia under Operation Atlantic Resolve was 87.

Despite the dubious nature of the source and the easily checked facts (the United States only has 8,848 tanks worldwide), globalresearch.ca carried the Donbass story verbatim, with Mr. Chossudovsky penning an introduction hypothesizing that the large military buildup could be departing U.S. president Barack Obama's retribution for Russia's alleged hacking attacks during the U.S. election.

The article then spread through some of the same websites that republished the Syria hoax story, before a toned-down version of the tale – mentioning 200 U.S. tanks – appeared on the RT website.

"What we found was that Global Research was essential in getting the '3,600 tanks' story more mainstream attention. Once it was picked up by them, it was picked up by their network of loyal allies," said StratCom's Ms. Barojan, who also does digital research for the Atlantic Council, a U.S.-government-affiliated think tank.

Mr. Kress said he thought Mr. Chossudovsky believed in his site's mission, but he clearly liked it when Global Research content went viral.

"He asked me to clickbait," Mr. Kress said.

The young editorial assistant used the internet to put together a piece that claimed the Rockefeller Foundation had patented the Zika virus – when, in fact, researchers for the foundation had merely deposited a strain of the virus with an organization that preserves micro-organisms for research. But Mr. Kress's piece "blew up the internet," in his words, spreading around a series of sites, including InfoWars.

"It was just something I did, kind of like, in my room at 1 a.m., because I noticed something on some other – I checked the Zika virus website and just kind of copy-pasted what I saw there and put quotes and linked my article to it. And basically, yeah, it worked. But he liked that. And I didn't really like it – deep down."

Campbell Clark is chief political writer with The Globe and Mail's Ottawa bureau Mark MacKinnon is The Globe and Mail's senior international correspondent.

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Geopolitics is focused on the relationship between politics and territory. Through geopolitics we attempt to analyze and predict the actions and decisions of nations, or other forms of political power, by means of their geographical characteristics and location in the world. In a broader sense, geopolitics studies the general relations between countries on a global scale. Here we analyze local events in terms of the bigger, global picture.

Opinions on GlobalResearch.ca (Centre for Research on Globalization)?

http://www.globalresearch.ca

I just recently came across this. Some of the articles come across as a little tin-foily and anti-American fear-mongering to me. I'm seeking second opinions...

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Bias of Global Research

Global Research

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Michel Chossudovksy founded the Centre for Research on Globalization in 2001 as an " independent research and media organization " that gives " analysis on issues which are barely covered by the mainstream media ." The Global Research website focuses on providing an " unspoken truth " in a time where the media distorts information. Along with news articles, the Global Research website reports on a wide range of issues with an emphasis on political, social, and economic issues. Not enough research has been conducted on Global Research, so their media bias is not rated.

More On  Global Research

The Global Research website was launched two days before the Septemeber eleventh terrorist attacks. Several days later, Global Research was a major source for news on the war on terror.  In 2003 during the invasion of Iraq, Global Research published daily independent reports from the Middle East. Since its launch in 2001, Global Research has since created Spanish, Portugese, and German pages.

Wikipedia: Michel Chossudovsky

About Global Research

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As of July 2024, people have voted on the AllSides Media Bias Rating for Global Research. On average, those who disagree with our rating think this source has a Right bias.

GlobalResearch.ca

Misfit Queen

Isle of Misfit Toys

https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/russian-disinformation-global-research-website-1.5767208 Canadian website Global Research has been outed as a Russian disinformation website. This site has been one of Metal-Brain's favorites for the many kinds of disinformation he posts here.

@Suzianne said https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/russian-disinformation-global-research-website-1.5767208 Canadian website Global Research has been outed as a Russian disinformation website. This site has been one of Metal-Brain's favorites for the many kinds of disinformation he posts here.

Sewers of Holland

@divegeester said No doubt he will have another website which debunks your claim.

Treat Everyone Equal

Halifax, Nova Scotia

Fast and Curious

slatington, pa, usa

@Very-Rusty No answer from the troll.....

@Mott-The-Hoople said This coming from the same administration that spread the russia hoax...LOL...thats pretty rich

@Suzianne It is clear Moot the hoot is a traitor, not interested in the slightest in preserving our version of democracy. I bet he is frothing at the mouth looking at what lucrative job he can get If Trump gets in and fires 50,000 fed workers who actually knew their jobs and Moot will want one where the only button on his resume is how far up trump's ass his lips are glued to.

@sonhouse said @Suzianne It is clear Moot the hoot is a traitor, not interested in the slightest in preserving our version of democracy. I bet he is frothing at the mouth looking at what lucrative job he can get If Trump gets in and fires 50,000 fed workers who actually knew their jobs and Moot will want one where the only button on his resume is how far up trump's ass his lips are glued to.

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