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Pekka Kallioniemi Profile picture
@P_Kallioniemi
Jan 20, 2023 • 12 tweets • 7 min read • Read on X
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In today's #vatnik soup I'll be introducing an Australian propagandist and ex-news reporter, Mary Kostakidis (@MaryKostakidis). She's best known for her storming out from the SBS newsroom in 2007, after which she's been mostly doing hot takes on the US & NATO, Russia & China.1/11
Mary was setting up the SBS Television in the early 80s, and presented World News on the channel until 2007. In Aug, 2007, she stormed out of the SBS newsroom, protesting the increase in advertising time during the program and never looked back.

2/11
She's a former Chair of the Sydney Peace Foundation, a non-profit that's associated with the University of Sydney. They present the annual "Sydney Peace Prize", and some of the winners of this trophy include John Pilger and Noam Chomsky.

3/11
On 20, Feb, 2022, she was one of the signees in an open letter to the Australian government, calling for "US de-escalation" on the situation in Ukraine. The letter stated that "for more than a month now we have been subjected to cries of 'an imminent invasion of ...

4/11
... Ukraine by Russian forces' by the western press. We have been told that Putin has an invasion plan but no evidence of that has been given. Putin has consistently said that no invasion by Russia is planned or intended."

Russia invaded Ukraine four days later.

5/11
Her online presence is mostly on Twitter, where she retweets and comments on most prominent pro-Russian propagandists, including Caitlin Johnstone, Vanessa Beeley, Patrick Lancaster, George Galloway, Eva Bartlett, the Grayzone bloggers and Cameron Leckie.

6/11
I think that the most unbelievable thing about Kostakidis is that she worked almost thirty years in the newsroom, and today pretty much the only news she quotes come from fake news blogs and disinformation mills, or from paid pro-Russian propagandists.

7/11
But tweets speak louder than words, so here's some of the gems from her timeline (yes, I went through the thing and yes, it was painful):

8/11
- Mary celebrates BRICS collaboration with Putin and friends
- Mary shares the made-up story of "genocide in Donbas", as reported by the fake news blog CovertAction Magazine
- Mary shares Russian disinformation with paid actors in Mariupol

9/11
Naturally she has also parroted the Russian revisionism of NATO expansion.

10/11
Also, she's shared straight-up conspiracy theories about the MH17 plane shot down by the Russians, lies about "thousands of young Ukrainians" being tied to poles and tortured, and of course some high quality TASS propaganda.

11/11
Support my work (and get some AI art!): buymeacoffee.com/PKallioniemi

Related soups:

Lancaster:
The Grayzone:
George Galloway:
NATO expansion:

• • •

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More from @P_Kallioniemi

Pekka Kallioniemi Profile picture
Jul 7
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce an American national security policy professional and the current under secretary of defense for policy, Elbridge Colby (@ElbridgeColby). He’s best-known for fighting with cartoon dogs online and for halting military aid to Ukraine.

1/21 Image
Elbridge "Cheese" Colby earned his bachelor’s degree from Yale and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School. Before entering government, he worked at top think tanks and in the intelligence community, focusing on nuclear policy and strategic planning.

2/21 Image
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Cheese quickly became a key voice for a “China First” strategy, arguing the US must prioritize military buildup in Asia over commitments in Europe or the Middle East. He sees (or saw, rather) Taiwan as the core test of US credibility.

3/21 Image
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Read 23 tweets
Pekka Kallioniemi Profile picture
Jul 6
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’m going to talk about… Vatnik Soup! As some of you know, we also have a website where you can find every soup ever published. The site also has other useful resources, making it the most comprehensive resource on Russian disinformation & vatniks.

1/15 Image
Unfortunately, Elon has flagged the website as malware, as he might not be very happy about the soups I wrote about him - so far, they have garnered over 60 million views on X/Twitter.

The “freedom of speech” spokesperson doesn’t seem too keen on free speech, after all.

2/15 Image
The heart & soul of the website is of course the soups page. There you can find all 360+ soups, which can be sorted chronologically, by popularity, etc. You can also search for soups by title or even in the soup text:

3/15

vatniksoup.com/en/soups/
Read 15 tweets
Pekka Kallioniemi Profile picture
Jul 1
In today’s Wumao Soup, I’ll introduce how and where the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) online propaganda and influence operations work. Due to China’s massive population and advances in AI, CCP-aligned online content has become increasingly visible.

1/20 Image
Like Russia’s troll farms, China has its own troll army: the “50 Cent Party” or “Wumao” refers to state-linked online commentators who are reportedly paid ¥0.50 per post to steer discussions away from criticism and amplify CCP narratives on social media.

2/20 Image
Back in 2017, a research paper estimated that the Wumao produced almost 500 million fabricated comments annually to distract readers and shift topics. In that sense, Wumao operates very similarly to the Russian “Firehose of Falsehood” model:

3/20

Read 21 tweets
Pekka Kallioniemi Profile picture
Jun 26
In today’s Vatnik Soup and the “Degenerate Russia” series, I’ll show you the brutal reality of Russian war crimes, in particular the horrific tortures and sexual abuses of children, women and men.

Buckle up, this one is not for the faint-hearted.

1/24 Image
For over a decade now and as part of their “firehose of falsehood” propaganda strategy, Russia has been spreading false narratives targeted at right-wing/conservative audiences, portraying russia as a bastion of Christian, traditional,family values.

2/24

In the previous “degenerate Russia” series we discussed Russia’s insanely high divorce rates, rampant domestic violence, high murder rates, thriving neo-Nazi culture, corruption of the Orthodox Church, and their massive demographic problem:

3/24

Read 26 tweets
Pekka Kallioniemi Profile picture
Jun 24
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll explore how Russia is working with Iran, and how the recent Israel–US strikes on Iran could affect the war in Ukraine. Iran has been one of Russia’s key allies in their genocidal war, but in reality the partnership is deeply one-sided.

1/21 Image
Historically, Russia/USSR has been involved in numerous wars in the Middle East, invading Afghanistan for nearly a decade and desperately trying to keep Syria’s authoritarian leader, al-Assad, in power before his eventual downfall.

2/21 Image
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While initially supportive of Israel, the Soviet Union quickly pivoted to backing its enemies, fueling antisemitism, terrorism, and chaos in an already tense region. At times, this meant near-open war, like when Soviet Air Force MiG-21s were shot down by Israel over Egypt.

3/21 Image
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Read 22 tweets
Pekka Kallioniemi Profile picture
Jun 20
In today’s Vatnik Soup REBREW, I’ll re-introduce a Latvian politician and former MEP, Tatjana Ždanoka. She’s best-known for her history in the Communist Party of Latvia, for her pro-Russian politics in the country, and her connections to Russian intelligence.

1/22 Image
Based on Ždanoka’s speeches and social media posts, she has a deep hatred towards the people of Latvia. The reason for this can only be speculated, but part of it could be due to her paternal family being killed by the Latvian Auxiliary Police,…

2/22 Image
…a paramilitary force supported by the Nazis, during the early 1940s. Ždanoka became politically active in the late 80s. She was one of the leaders of Interfront, a political party that supported Latvia remaining part of the USSR.

3/22 Image
Read 23 tweets

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