Entertainment
How the war in Ukraine threw a wrench in Russia’s disinformation machine
Weaponizing all method of media is a specialty of Vladimir Putin’s, however now, two weeks into his unprovoked assault on Ukraine, Russia’s president is dropping the data conflict.
Putin’s international minister, Sergei Lavrov, drove the purpose dwelling Thursday when he claimed, absurdly, that Russia had not attacked Ukraine in any respect. However that was simply the most recent, if most pointedly Orwellian, in Russia’s weird missteps because it has tried, and failed, to manage the narrative of the conflict.
On Wednesday, the Metropolis Council of the southern Ukrainian metropolis of Mariupol posted video of a devastated kids’s and maternity hospital, claiming Russian forces bombed it from the air. The report was picked up by shops across the globe, and journalists arrived on the scene, accelerating the story’s unfold on social media and including to a mountain of visible and audio proof — pictures of useless Ukrainian households, the sounds of crying Russian troopers — that has reaffirmed Putin’s standing as an unstable strongman, geopolitical pariah and lethal thug.
It’s not the propaganda marketing campaign the Kremlin envisioned on the eve of its Feb. 24 assault on the Japanese European nation, when Putin characterised the invasion as a “particular operation” launched to avoid wasting Ukrainians from the “band of junkies and neo-Nazis” that was their authorities. The false declare would have been laughable if misleading messaging, purple herrings and false flags weren’t lethal weapons in Putin’s arsenal, used to redirect consideration as Russia waged wars on- and offline — or invaded a neighboring nation. However this time round, Moscow’s makes an attempt to cloud the image have been thwarted.
As a substitute, the Ukrainian folks and a military of worldwide journalists are there to counter the spin, bearing witness to Russian aggression (bombing residential buildings, focusing on refugee corridors) and civilian resistance with a velocity and ferocity that has outpaced, and in lots of instances overshadowed, Moscow’s disinformation marketing campaign. Their tenacity and bravado, and the huge sources information shops are allocating to cowl the conflict, are breaking a propaganda machine that — whereas not the one one in all its sort on the worldwide stage — appeared too practiced and profitable to fail.
In any case, Russia beneath Putin has been masterful at promulgating its message and obfuscating the info, within the fog of conflict and the warmth of elections alike. The previous Soviet state ginned up false flag operations forward of its 2014 seizure of Crimea and its 2015 army intervention within the Syrian civil conflict, then made the conflicts seem so difficult that many observers discovered them too tangled to unravel. For instance, pro-Russian and Syrian brokers launched a web-based conspiracy marketing campaign linking the humanitarian rescue group referred to as the White Helmets (formally the Syria Civil Defence) with Al Qaeda. The declare gained traction within the West, whilst Russian forces, allied with Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, perpetrated horrific conflict crimes towards the area’s inhabitants.
Muddling the story in Syria — Who’s the peacekeeper? Who’s the terrorist? — allowed for widespread shock and shock when Russia started killing ladies and youngsters on the bottom in Ukraine, however sadly, the scenes of a bloodied baby’s mattress or rows of corpses in mass graves had been all too widespread within the conflict in Syria. Russia was simply adept at hiding its complicity, and, blinded by Putin’s distortions, the West typically seen the destruction “over there” as a part of nonstop battle within the area. A tragedy, sure, however one that might by no means contact Anglo-Christian Europe.
Russia additionally sowed division throughout Brexit and, most prominently, the 2016 race for the U.S. presidency. However Donald Trump and his supporters, who had been singing Putin’s praises simply weeks in the past, tempered their phrases or modified their tune altogether as soon as stay reporting started pouring in from Ukraine. Beneath the disinfecting highlight of an engaged worldwide press, cheerleading for Vlad abruptly grew to become too wicked, even for Tucker Carlson.
That Putin, the supposed evil genius, has fumbled the media conflict so quickly within the battle factors to one of many key variations on this conflict, versus different conflicts and assaults: He wasn’t capable of plan at nighttime. The Biden administration alerted the world of Russia’s invasion plans nicely upfront in order that, by early February, Kyiv and environs had been stuffed with worldwide journalists and digicam crews anticipating the strikes. Ukraine was open to international press, so networks didn’t should rely as closely on their Moscow bureaus as that they had prior to now for breaking information out of the encircling area. Now, they’re not even reporting on Russia from inside Russia.
The Russian authorities has shut down remaining impartial media shops, restricted social media and imposed new laws that threatens a prolonged jail sentence for journalists who dare to explain the assault on Ukraine as a “conflict.” Now, a number of Western media organizations have suspended operations in Russia due to the crackdowns.
Fb and Twitter have taken steps to take away Russian and Belarusian disinformation, or label it as such. The cyber offensives began weeks earlier than the invasion, replete with computer-generated customers sharing the work of faux anti-Ukraine columnists throughout platforms. (In response to a current report from ProPublica, although, fact-checking websites that declare to debunk doctored Russian video are themselves a part of “a novel and disturbing marketing campaign that spreads disinformation by disguising it as fact-checking.”) State TV community RT (previously Russia At present), banned in Ukraine since 2014, is now banned by the EU, and its American arm lately shuttered.
The present failings of Putin’s vaunted disinformation equipment don’t imply that Russia received’t discover a option to pull forward within the PR conflict, obtain its army goals in Ukraine or proceed to inflict untold devastation within the area. However they didn’t anticipate a military of Ukrainians and worldwide reporters of their path, prepared to inform one other story.
The entire world is watching.
Movie Reviews
'Cunk on Life' movie review: Laugh-out-loud mockumentary on life’s big questions
‘Cunk on Earth’ (2023), a mockumentary series on BBC, was hailed for its laugh-aloud mockery of pretentious documentaries and Morgan’s razor-sharp comedic timing — British droll at its very best.
Entertainment
Brenton Wood, 'Oogum Boogum Song' crooner who captivated Latino listeners, dies at 83
In 1967, Brenton Wood looked as if he was on the cusp of mainstream success.
The Compton crooner’s single “The Oogum Boogum Song” became a hit and ranked 34th and 19th on the Billboard’s Hot 100 and Top Selling R&B Singles charts, respectively. A few months later, Wood debuted his second hit, “Gimme Little Sign,” which peaked at No. 9 on Billboard’s Hot 100.
Wood, who was born Alfred Jesse Smith, died Friday of natural causes at his home in Moreno Valley, his manager and assistant Manny Gallegos confirmed to Variety. He was 83.
Wood’s slinky and upbeat tunes are infectious. His seductive and affable manner of describing the essence of a budding romance in layman’s terms is inviting. Whether solo or with a partner, it’s easy to groove to the beat.
Wood continued releasing tracks but none ever garnered similar success. Frustrated with the music industry, he quit for a couple of years, then inched back onto the club circuit. There, he found an audience that would sustain him for decades: Latinos.
He would play major California cities, then travel through Mexico and into Arizona before returning home. As his audience aged, Wood began to perform on themed cruises and at festivals with Chicano musical luminaries including Los Lobos, Thee Midniters and Ozomatli. Wood’s romantic oldies resonated with a new generation of lovebirds, becoming a soundtrack of Southern California life — literally, as Wood found a third career as a performer at weddings, quinceañeras and anniversary parties.
Bob Merlis, a former executive for Warner Bros. Records and co-author of “Heart & Soul: A Celebration of Black Music Style in America 1930-1975,” described the artist as a “local hero” to L.A. — a “standard bearer for the Southern California pop soul scene.”
“Nothing else sounded like them,” said Merlis, who now runs a public relations and consulting firm. “It was so different and that instrumentation is very unusual.”
“They’ve kind of picked me out of the whole batch, and they keep me going,” Wood told The Times in 1992. “I appreciate it, because if I was waiting for the big boys to call, I’d have died a long time ago.”
Wood’s lyrics captured the cat-and-mouse chase of a first love, the kind of infatuation that makes people act a fool. He encapsulated that all-too-familiar yearning to whisk away a lover to bask in their honeymoon paradise. But he also wrote about heartache — and the triumphant moment when the pain wears off.
“Latinos like to dedicate songs, and his songs are good for that,” radio veteran Art Laboe told The Times in 1992. “It’s not the big hits they like. It’s songs like ‘Take a Chance,’ ‘I Think You’ve Got Your Fools Mixed Up’ — if a girl’s having trouble with her boyfriend, she’ll dedicate that to him.”
The songwriter was born July 26, 1941, in Shreveport, La., and moved west to San Pedro when he was 3. He moved throughout L.A.’s inner cities, selling papers and fish and shining shoes until he created a career in the music industry.
Wood was 7 when a pianist mesmerized him. Without a television set at home, he spent hours at the park, watching and mimicking the performer, using two fingers to tap on imaginary keys until he got his own piano. At 10, Brenton Wood wrote his first song about a man who wanted to be a bird. It was cheerful and rhymed but lacked oomph.
He found his groove when he met his first girlfriend. Then, the words flowed out.
The Compton High School graduate enrolled at East Los Angeles College and sang in local R&B groups such as Little Freddie and the Rockets and the Quotations in the 1950s before he went solo. He took on his stage name, Brenton Wood, from the wealthy L.A. enclave of Brentwood, where a manager lived.
Wood’s “The Oogum Boogum Song” came entirely by accident. He was working the graveyard shift at Harvey Aluminum in Torrance when the melody came to him.
“It took me about six weeks, because I had to switch the verses around about a hundred times,” he told the San Diego Union-Tribune in 2000. “That was a song about fashion changes in the ’60s with bell-bottom hip-huggers and high-heeled boots and all the different styles of clothes the girls were wearing — hot pants and all that stuff.”
The bouncy track was later featured in Cameron Crowe’s “Almost Famous” and Olivia Wilde’s “Don’t Worry Darling.”
“It was one of the best feelings you could have,” Wood told Cal State Fullerton’s Titan TV in 2014.
By 1970, he founded Mr. Wood Records and produced other artists’ singles. Latino listeners were already embracing him as one of their own.
Chicano music historian Gene Aguilera recalls being “glued up” to his little transistor radio as a teen, listening to Wood’s “Gimmie Little Sign” mixed in with the Beatles and the Supremes on KRLA-AM 1110 all within an hour. Walking his neighborhood, he would hear Wood’s voice along with Thee Midniters wafting in the background, emanating from nearby parties or from lowriders cruising down Whittier Boulevard, bumping his tunes.
“Even though he wasn’t born here, he’s just forever going to be etched in our consciousness,” said Aguilera, who last saw the artist perform at a local park in Baldwin Park before the pandemic.
“His music was really accepted by East L.A. because of the slow groove he’s got, very soulful, that people from East L.A. just love.”
Vega is a former Times staff writer.
Movie Reviews
The Love Scam movie review & film summary (2025) | Roger Ebert
Times are tough, even in the world of romantic comedies. In Umberto Carteni’s “The Love Scam,” two brothers in Naples face almost certain eviction just as Vito (Antonio Folletto) tries to secure solo custody of his son after his partner left for her home country. His brother, Antonello (Vincenzo Nemolato), a lovable but irresponsible goof, ignored bills that have now put their family’s old home in the hands of a wealthy developer. In an effort to stay in the home their grandfather built and not lose custody of Vito’s infant son Napoleon, the two men devise a scheme to woo the daughter of the developer, Marina (Laura Adriani), in order to pay off her father’s company with their own money–but only if Vito can transform into Carlo, a wealthy man-about-town looking for investors for his phony charity.
Mistaken identity and lying to impress a potential partner is a well-tread territory in the rom-com genre. For instance, Tom Hanks tries to hide his identity from Meg Ryan in their enemies-into-lovers internet-age classic “You’ve Got Mail.” James Stewart hid his identity even though he knew Margaret Sullavan was his long-suffering pen pal in the original 1940 film version of this beloved story, “The Shop Around the Corner.” Robert Downey Jr. pretends to be someone he’s not to spend time with Marisa Tomei in Rome in Norman Jewison’s “Only You.” Even in the Disney version of “Aladdin,” our hero pretends he’s a rich suitor to get close to his love interest, Jasmine, even though the opulent act isn’t what she’s really interested in. Although this familiar trope of courting by deception might inspire horror in any real-life situation, somehow it still works because they’re still making these kinds of movies. Maybe the reveal is so innocuously satisfying that the audience knows something one of the other characters doesn’t. Then, we watch our heroes make the right choices and fall in love despite the odds–at least until the credits roll.
Although “The Love Scam” follows these recognizable story beats, it ends up feeling deceptively charming thanks to its cast and crew. Writers Caterina Salvadori and Ciro Zecca manage to fit in a few surprises, overthrowing our expectations along the way to the anticipated ending. Director Carteni captures a nuanced view of Southern Italy, showing off its natural beauty, idyllic sunsets, and historic art and architecture, but also the struggles that some of Vito and Antonello’s neighbors endure as their home crumbles around them. Carteni leads a cast of endearing performers, all of whom work well together even when the narrative gets a little silly.
As Vito and Carlo, Folletto juggles the duties of two different personas with a few eccentric quirks and fatherhood duties in between. He acts so effortlessly, even when his character feels self-conscious; you can see Adriani’s Marina let her guard down in real-time. Their chemistry makes this movie memorable. Her character is flustered with expectations and stress, so to watch her grow from a frightening boss to a down-to-earth character who embraces life is a thrill, allowing Adriani to show off her range. I was less enamored by the storyline that Marina’s true dream was to become a chef over a businesswoman. While that fits with the genre’s sometimes more conservative gendered expectations, the writers incorporate it by giving Vito the night cleaning shift at a restaurant he then tries to pass off as his own to entice her to cook with him, so it feels less like a lesson in returning to domesticity. Although they feature heavily in the beginning, Vito’s brother Antonello and Napoleon step aside when Carlo begins to win over Marina’s attention. Still, the odd pairing of an ill-equipped uncle and adorable baby makes for some good jokes. In addition to Marina’s initial no-nonsense personality, her suspicious boyfriend Federico (Loris De Luna) is the power-hungry foil to Folletto’s kindhearted, would-be scammer. It gives him something of an invisible enemy to fight for Marina’s love.
While “The Love Scam” isn’t breaking new rom-com ground, it sufficiently checks the expected boxes and features a formidable romantic pair with Folletto and Adriani. The scam-within-a-scam house of cards narrative is just scaffolding for the movie’s real stars. Although many recent romantic movies also use cutesy gimmicks for their backdrop, their leads lack the heat to deliver something resembling a believable yet expected happy ending. In “The Love Scam,” there are scenes where Vito longingly looks at Marina in such a way that we understand why she would give this stranger the time of day, why they bring out the best in each other, and why we want to keep watching to see what happens to them, even if we kind of already know where their story is headed. Adding just a dash more sincerity than your average streaming romantic movie goes a long way.
On Netflix now.
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