'The European Union on Friday banned four more Russian media outlets from broadcasting in the 27-nation bloc for what it calls the spread of propaganda about the invasion of Ukraine and disinformation as the EU heads into parliamentary elections in three weeks.'
'Artificial intelligence chatbots are facing more scrutiny after an investigative report showed how they can be easily used to devise deceptive election campaigns. The report, conducted by Nieuwsuur in collaboration with AI Forensics, revealed how chatbots from tech giants Google and Microsoft provided strategies aimed at manipulating voters during the upcoming European Parliament elections.'
"On 13 April, Iran launched waves of drones, as well as missiles towards Israel ... Within seven hours of Iranian drones being launched towards Israel, 34 false, misleading or AI generated images and videos claiming to show the ongoing conflict received over 37 million views on X (formerly Twitter)."
"Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo announced on Friday an investigation into suspected Russian interference in Europe-wide elections in June, saying that his country’s intelligence service has confirmed the existence of a network trying to undermine support for Ukraine."
'...research has shown that most Americans believe conspiracy theories of some sort. Why then, if most of us believe conspiracies, do we generally think of conspiracy theorists as loony?
New research from the University of Illinois Chicago found that it’s because people are quite bad at identifying what is or isn’t a conspiracy theory when it’s something they believe.'
Nein, leider ist die Unterwanderung des Ostermarsches durch #russische Agenten weder eine Farce, noch (grundsätzlich) ein Zeichen verminderter Zurechnungsfähigkeit auf Seiten der Rädelsführer, sondern eiskaltes Kalkül von #Putins Auslandsgeheimdienst. Es ist Teil integraler Teil seines seit Jahren andauernden #hybridenKriegs des #Kreml-Regimes...
...gegen den Westen. Wie der ehemalige #Mossad-Chef über einen weiteren Bestandteil, dieses #HybridenKriesgs, die #CyberWarfare schrieb: 365 Tage im Jahr, 24 Stunden am Tag.
...#Ostblock-Überbleibsel, der #RusdischenFörderation, ist längst zurück. Sollte #Trump dieses Jahr, was nicht unwahrscheinlich ist, wiedergewählt werden, wird er die #NATO sukzessive kaltstellen und für die #Ukraine keinen Finger mehr rühren, wie er unlängst seinem anderen #autokratischen Freund und Vorbild, #VictorOrban, mitgeteilt haben soll.
...wenn man wie #Putin im #FSB groß geworden ist. Er kennt sicherlich auch die jahrtausendealten Grundprinzipien des chinesischen Generals #SunTsu zur #Unterwanderung des Feindes:
Kurzum, der Westen muss endlich aufwachen. Gewinnt die Ukraine nicht bis zur Amtseinführung des nächsten US-Präsidenten den Krieg, könnte es für die europäischen #NATO-Staten im kommenden Jahr plötzlich sehr düster...
...aussehen, wenn dann der US-Amerikanische nukleare Schutzschirm plötzlich in Frage steht.
Mit jeder Gebietsverletzung wie vergangene Woche der Überflug eines #Marschflugkörpers über das #NATO-Mitglied #Polen sägt #Putler am Zusammenhalt der Verteidigungsallianz.
Richtig. Das sind jedoch nicht die Rädelsführer, sondern die schon seit Jahrzehnten immer wieder vom russischen Geheimdienst benutzten #NütlichenIdioten:
Ich bin kein Strafrechtler, aber es wäre schön, wenn diese propagandistische #TäterOpferUmkehr den Tatbestand der #Volksverhetzung erfüllen würde.
Die #EU-...
...Staaten haben m.W. zum Glück größtenteils nicht ein so absolutistisches Primat der #FreienMeinungsäusserung wie in den #USA (#1A).
Es darf nicht gelogen werden, dass sich die Balken biegen.
Des weiteren hoffe ich, dass die europäischen Geheimdienste nun weiter effektiv #russischen Agenten entlarven, wie diese Woche.
Definitiv gehören alle "Anführer" und Schilderträger "NATO...Agressor" nachrichtendienstlich...
...durchleuchtet. Wir sind im Krieg. So fundamentalkirchlich schön es sein mag, die "andere Wange" hinzuhalten: dieser Feind wird auch auf sie mit voller Wucht draufschlagen...man muss sich nur die Berichte der freigelassen, misshandelt #ukrainischen Gefangenen und Kinder anhören.
...mit dem illegalen ("#PräsidentschaftsWahlen!" 🤣) kollaboriert, hat sein Demonstrationsrecht verwirkt und gehört nicht mehr auf die Straße, sondern zumindest unter Beobachtung.
Und noch ein weiterer Aspekt, den wir alle aus #Orwells "1984" über den Totalitarismus in der #Sowjetunion kennen: #NewSpeak: "Krieg ist Frieden und Frieden ist Krieg". Genau das gleiche, auch im #Nationalsozialismus, v.a. auch durch #Goebbels,...
'With looming elections this fall, Republican Richer and Democrat Fontes are taking more aggressive steps than ever to rebuild trust with Arizona voters, knock down disinformation and immediately address threats.
They said they are hoping it’s enough to counter an onslaught they know is coming in November.'
'Across the nation, and especially in states such as California with large communities of immigrants and people with limited knowledge of English, the government needs to help these groups identify and avoid disinformation.'
"Groups with ties to the Kremlin continue to float new narratives when old ones fail to stick or grow stale, using fake or altered videos or recordings and finding or creating new outlets to spread disinformation, including ones purporting to be American news sites."
"A couple of months ago, [Olga] Loiek started a YouTube channel where she talks about mental health and shares her philosophies about life. However, shortly after that, she started receiving messages from followers telling her that they had seen her on Chinese social media. There, she's not Olga Loiek but a Russian woman who speaks Mandarin, loves China and wants to marry a Chinese man."
German Defense Minister Pistorius on conversations with generals intercepted by the Russians:
“The reason why it was still possible to record a telephone conversation among the ranks of the Air Force lies in an individual error… Not all participants followed the procedure of secure call.
According to reports, the data leak occurred on a participant from Singapore, who was connected via an unauthorized connection, i.e. effectively via an open connection" #AureFreePress#News#press#headline
Now that everyone knows that it is not necessary to employ #German military personnel to enable #Ukraine's armed forces to use #HIMARS system, #BackbencherChancelor#OlafScholz should sit down on the bench and keep his misgivings, which are not shared by a majority of Germans or even his coalition government,to himself.
The longer this war drags on, the HIGHER the likelihood...
'Along with Sherwood Park, the subreddits for Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, Red Deer, Grande Prairie, and a handful of other small cities throughout Canada also recorded Russia in their top three countries of origin for users last year — results that alarmed both local users and experts on foreign interference.'
"The documents show how in January 2023 the Kremlin’s first deputy chief of staff, Sergei Kiriyenko, tasked a team of officials and political strategists with establishing a presence on Ukrainian social media to distribute disinformation."
Some thoughts to those inclined to take the word of 'respectable' public figures (who are actually authoritarians and even génocidaires), and to those who have grown cynical of all lying politicians:
There used to be a concept called 'leaving hostages to fortune', in which public figures learned to avoid making promises or offering falsehoods that were vulnerable to thwarting/exposure by future contingencies.
Under the assumption that having your lies exposed or rash promise invalidated would be potentially career-ending, it used to sometimes be reasonable to operate on an epistemic criterion of "embarrassment", where we could increase our level of trust in a statement made by a public figure if it (a) wasn't currently able to be confirmed but (b) it seemed obvious that they would get caught out for lying if it were not true. I.e. "They wouldn't lie about that, right?"
However, the information landscape has profoundly shifted in recent years. (Or has seemed to for some people. See below)
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I said earlier that the information landscape has changed. At one level, it has. At another very important level, this change has primarily been in the experience of many of us in (so-called) western liberal democracies, who previously enjoyed the #privilege of feeling less routinely lied. Citizens of the majority world have for decades/lifetimes experienced a similar pattern of shamelessly manipulative falsehoods and consequence-free empty promises from leaders in the #ImperialCore.
Once citizens in these colonising and settler-colonial wealthy nations realise that, then the potential for genuine #solidarity across national, colonial and generational boundaries begins to open. And that solidarity represents the only genuine threat to the #plutocratic divide-and-conquer agenda that is as old as time and which is currently hurtling us collectively towards an uninhabitable Earth.
Solidarity or hell-on-Earth: these are only two paths currently available. Indeed, given the enormous success of this #InformationWarfare over recent decades, this is reduced to one choice: solidarity amidst our unfolding hell-on-Earth or collapse, mass death and the extinction of the last shreds of human dignity, kindness and joy. Let us each choose wisely.
"Nearly two years after EU-wide sanctions were imposed to blunt Russian propaganda supporting the Kremlin's war on Ukraine, the websites of the Kremlin-backed RT and Sputnik media outlets are still easily accessible in many countries across the EU, including in the very institutions that drafted the regulations targeting them."