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Background: COVID-19 has caused the worst international crisis since World War II. Italy was one of the countries most affected by both the pandemic and the related infodemic. The success of anti-COVID-19 strategies and future public health policies in Italy cannot separate itself from the containment of fake news and the divulgation of correct information.
Conclusions: COVID-19 has given a significant boost to web interest in conspiracy hypotheses and has made it more uniform across regions in Italy. The pandemic accelerated an already-growing trend in users' interest toward some fake news sources, including the 500,000-subscriber YouTube channel ByoBlu, which was removed from the platform by YouTube for disinformation in March 2021. The risk perception related to COVID-19 vaccines has been so distorted that vaccine side effect-related queries outweighed those relating to pollution and climate change, which are much more urgent issues. Moreover, a large amount of fake news has circulated about COVID-19 vaccines, remedies, and origin. Based on these findings, it is recommended that the Italian authorities implement more effective infoveillance systems, and that communication by the mass media be less sensationalistic and more consistent with the available scientific evidence. In this context, Google Trends can be used to monitor users' response to specific infodemiological countermeasures. Further research is needed to understand the psychological mechanisms that regulate risk perception.
With the accelerating presence of conspiracy narratives in modern politics in mind, this lecture analyzes wartime conspiracy narratives and myths promoted by the Fascist regime. Fascist propaganda evolved and drew on national as well as international, religious as well as secular, conspiracy theories.
Between 1936 and 1945, Fascist conspiracy narratives shifted from a focus on an international communist plot to destroy the Catholic Church, murder clergy, and force the faithful into states of mortal sin to a conspiracy narrative close to that promoted by Nazism.
By the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, Italian Fascism devised its own version of Nazi Judeo-Bolshevism, stressing Soviet/Russian barbarism and its plan for global destruction, as well as the plotting and racial pollution of the Jews who the Fascists claimed controlled the Soviet Union.
This Friends of the Library Lecture, to be presented in person at the Academy as well as on Zoom, is free and open to the public. To watch on Zoom, please sign up in advance. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.
For access to the Academy, guests will be asked to show a valid photo ID. Backpacks and luggage with dimensions larger than 40 x 35 x 15 cm (16 x 14 x 6 in.) are not permitted on the property. There are no locker facilities available.
Marine hose is a flexible rubber hose used to transfer oil between tankers and storage facilities. During the conspiracy, the prices for hundreds of millions of dollars worth of marine hose and related products were affected by the cartel worldwide. The victims of this conspiracy include companies involved in the off-shore extraction and/or transportation of petroleum products and the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD). Gillespie is charged with participating in the conspiracy from at least as early as 2000 until as late as May 2007. The Department charged that during the conspiracy Gillespie and his co-conspirators:
Attended meetings or otherwise engaged in discussions in the United States and elsewhere by telephone, facsimile and electronic mail regarding the sale of marine hose, agreeing to allocate shares of the marine hose market among the conspirators; Agreed during those meetings and discussions to a price list for marine hose in order to implement and monitor the conspiracy;
Provided information received from customers in the United States and elsewhere about upcoming marine hose jobs to a co-conspirator who was not an employee of any of the marine hose manufacturers, but who served as the coordinator of the conspiracy, acted as a clearinghouse for information to be shared among the conspirators, and was paid by the manufacturers for coordinating the conspiracy;
Eight foreign executives were arrested on May 2, 2007, in Houston and San Francisco and charged for their role in the marine hose cartel, following their participation in a cartel meeting in Houston. On Dec. 12, 2007, Bryan Allison and David Brammar, executives with Dunlop Oil & Marine Ltd., a manufacturer of marine hose located in Grimsby, U.K., pleaded guilty to participating in the marine hose conspiracy. Under the terms of their plea agreements, Allison agreed to serve 24 months in jail and Brammar agreed to serve 20 months in jail. Peter Whittle, a former Dunlop employee now the sole proprietor of PW Consulting (Oil & Marine) Ltd., pleaded guilty for his leadership role in the conspiracy and agreed to serve 30 months in prison. The three agreed-upon sentences represent the longest sentences ever agreed to by foreign nationals for antitrust offenses. Under the terms of the plea agreements, Allison, Brammar and Whittle were returned in custody to the U.K. on Dec. 18, 2007, where they were arrested and criminally charged with cartel offenses by the U.K. authorities.
Executives with Trelleborg Industrie S.A.S., Christian Caleca and Jacques Cognard, pleaded guilty in November 2007 to charges stemming from their roles in the conspiracy. In December 2007, each was sentenced to serve 14 months in prison.
Francesco Scaglia and Val M. Northcutt, executives with Manuli Rubber Industries SpA, were indicted in September 2007 in U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., for their roles in the conspiracy. The case is currently set to go to trial in May 2008.
Gillespie is charged with a violation of the Sherman Act which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years imprisonment and a fine of $1 million for individuals. The maximum fine may be increased to twice the gain derived from the crime or twice the loss suffered by the victims of the crime, if either of those amounts is greater than the statutory maximum fine.
Anyone with information concerning bid rigging or other anticompetitive conduct in the marine hose industry is urged to call the National Criminal Enforcement Section of the Antitrust Division at 202-307-6694, or the Long Beach, Calif. Resident Agency of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service at 562-256-2501.
An indictment was unsealed today in the Eastern District of Michigan charging two Italian nationals, along with a previously charged co-conspirator, for their alleged role in a conspiracy to defraud U.S. regulators and customers by making false and misleading statements about the emissions controls and fuel efficiency of more than 100,000 diesel vehicles sold in the United States by FCA US LLC.
Pasini and Sabbioni are each charged with one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States and to violate the Clean Air Act, one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and six counts of violating the Clean Air Act. If convicted, Pasini and Sabbioni each face up to five years in prison on the conspiracy count to defraud the United States and to violate the Clean Air Act, up to 20 years in prison on the conspiracy count to commit wire fraud, and up to two years in prison for each count of violating the Clean Air Act. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
According to testimony, Perry pushed hard for Jeffrey Clark, former acting assistant attorney general for the civil division, to meet with top people in the White House, including the president, and drove up internet conspiracy theories that Republican legal experts said were patently false.
The COVID-19 pandemic has created the perfect environment for conspiracy theories to flourish. Given its uncertain and inexplicable environment, people have turned to conspiracies to better understand the situation they are living in. In addition, thanks to the stay-at-home orders, people have spent the majority of their time on social media platforms, which are rife with conspiracy theories.
Myriads of radical right extremists were and continue to be extremely active on social media platforms. They spread numerous conspiracies regarding the origins of COVID-19. While some were new in nature, others were readapted old tropes which came to include the pandemic. Some of the most common conspiracies disseminated by the radical right were: anti-Asian (with many different scenarios speculating as to whether poor food hygiene was to blame or whether Asian governments intentionally created and spread the virus to secure global dominance), anti-Semitic (the Jewish population was blamed for spreading the virus to advance its financial goals), anti-immigrant (with a readaptation of the Great Replacement theory, itself often imbued with implicit anti-Semitism, in addition to anti-black and Islamophobic elements), anti-government (governments were blamed for controlling and suppressing societies by taking away individual freedoms) and anti-vaccine (governments were criticised for using them to monitor people).
Last year and early this year, Italy experienced a wave of nationwide protests, with individuals expressing their anger towards restrictions imposed by the government. The government imposed vaccinations for workers in almost every sector. Workers who refused to be vaccinated were to have their employment terminated. The Green Pass was mandatory too. Italians utilized their right to protest to express their anger against these policies. Sadly, this anger is often fuelled by nefarious, conspiratoracies. Some of these clearly encourage individuals to carry out violence during or after the protests.
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