Yeah, but is it worthwhile?

Yeah, that’s not new, but I feel there are still many who are unaware, although I don’t understand why.

Exploiting Meta’s Weaknesses, Deceptive Political Ads Thrived on Facebook and Instagram in Run-Up to Election

• Deceptive Political Ads: Eight deceptive advertising networks have placed over 160,000 election and social issues ads across more than 340 Facebook pages in English and Spanish.
• Harmed Users: Some of the people who clicked on ads were unwittingly signed up for monthly credit card charges or lost health coverage, among other consequences.
• Spotty Enforcement: Meta removed some ads after first approving them, but it failed to catch others with similar or identical content — or to stop networks from launching new pages and ads.

I feel this is too simplistic. There are apparently parallels to Nazi Germany’s ideology, and the Nazis represent without doubt one of the worst regimes in human history. But they didn’t ‘invent’ this. Their racism, their hatred, and their view on women whose place is ‘in the family’ has been here for much longer, and it is by far not limited to the ‘Western’ world (in China, officials go from door to door urging women to become pregnant, just to name an example, and a recent UN study found that one in eight women and girls alive today experienced rape or sexual assault before they are 18 years old).

One thing I’m missing in this discussion is the role of men in the family. No one appears to talk about that, at least not publicly. (Just stumbled upon this 1 min video.)

But that’s just my opinion. Also, I’m not a historian or sociologist, so take this with a pinch of salt.

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell (video, 8 min)

"The issue of the day on the campaign trail was the stupidest person who has ever run for president, telling American women… what he is going to do to them, whether they like it or not.”

A scholar from Berkely has been investigating the possible impact of Project 2025 and Trump’s pissible second term on the environment:

The plan contains an extensive description of how they would constrain the reach and breadth of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by limiting enforcement and shifting its focus to what we sometimes call compliance assistance. In this role, the EPA would work directly with companies to try to help them reduce their environmental impact, but would move away from enforcement. This model has been tried federally under some Republican administrations and the absence of enforcement has repeatedly resulted in significant environmental degradation.

The effort to break up [NOAA] is part of a strategy of hear no evil, see no evil: If you don’t report on climate change, then perhaps it doesn’t exist.

It’s a good Q&A with Ken Alex, Director of Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment (CLEE).

Here’s the whole story if I’m not mistaken:

Hell is Not Hot Enough for Ken Paxton - (December 2023)

What kind of people are they? I cannot even think something like that, this is not in head.

Another good Q&A with Robinson (2023):

“Transition to democracy is not easy”

We emphasize two things: first, people need a strong state that regulates society, collects taxes, provides people with goods, and maintains order. But the state should be forced to work for the benefit of society. Therefore, political power should be distributed among the population. Thus, if one of these two things fails, extractive political institutions emerge in society. Here we focus on: the political foundations of inclusive economic institutions and how inclusive economic institutions can lead to prosperity.

(Emphasis mine.)

You need to read this in context. They want the office to help Trump “steamroll the kind of internal opposition he faced in his first term.”

This office is not to make the president’s moves ‘legally sound’ but rather to the opposite. They want to defund the agencies (it isn’t “legally sound” to “traumatize” EPA and other officials), to erase any reference to climate change so that “our energy companies” can work, and many other things.

Just read Project 2025: https://www.25and.me

Ian Bassin, a democracy expert, calls these moves “anticipatory obedience”: fear by owners that if Trump wins he could take vengeance on companies that cross him. They noted that the leadership at CNN and the Post changed after the Trump administration tried to block the takeover of CNN’s parent company and tried to deny a cloud computing contract for Amazon, Bezos’s company.

That’s very telling and a stark reminder why decentralization in media and the entire economy is important.

Washington Post editor-at-large Robert Kagan stepped down in the meantime. As Semafor reports on the newspaper’s recent editorial meeting:

[…] But there may be more: “people are shocked, furious, surprised,” said an editorial board member [referring to Jeff Bezos’ non-endorsement decision], citing internal discussions around resignation. “If you don’t have the balls to own a newspaper, don’t.”

Addition:

Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein Blast Washington Post’s ‘Surprising’ Decision Not To Endorse

"Under Jeff Bezos’s ownership, the Washington Post’s news operation has used its abundant resources to rigorously investigate the danger and damage a second Trump presidency could cause to the future of American democracy and that makes this decision even more surprising and disappointing, especially this late in the electoral process.”

Border and immigration: How mass deportations would devastate Texas

Former President and current presidential candidate Donald Trump has promised, if elected, to implement the “largest deportation in the history of our country.” If such an operation were carried out, a second Trump regime could target around 11 million undocumented people in the United States. Trump’s running mate, vice presidential candidate JD Vance, has suggested starting with 1 million deportations a year—a figure that dwarfs the total reached in any year of Trump’s presidency or that of Barack Obama. The proposal has become a rallying cry for Trump’s base, with supporters brandishing matching signs at rallies reading “Mass Deportations Now.”

[…] Immigrants exist across our economic spectrum. They’re everywhere. They’re us. When we talk about eliminating them from our society, it’s like not just talking about cutting off a finger. We’re talking about cutting off entire legs from the thigh down.”

Microsoft/Crowdstrike last summer.

It seems so.

From the article in my previous post above (here again):

At a polling station for residents of the breakaway Moldovan region of Transnistria - which is economically, politically and militarily supported by Russia - the BBC stumbled upon evidence of vote-buying.

A BBC producer heard a woman who had just dropped her ballot in the transparent box ask an election monitor where she would get paid.

Outside, we asked directly whether she had been offered cash to vote and she admitted it without qualms. She was angry that a man who had sent her to the polling station was no longer answering her calls. “He tricked me!” she said.

She would not reply when asked who she had voted for.

UPDATE: Latest news say Moldova says ‘Yes’ to pro-EU constitutional changes by tiny margin and despite unprecedented Russian interference.

Still ‘too close to call’ with 98% of votes counted. And ‘foreign influence’ plays a major role in this democratic referendum, reports say.

Official data put Yes on 50.08% and No on 49.92% on Monday morning, with over 98% of votes counted.

[Maia Sandu, the incumbent pro-EU president who topped the presidential election first round but by 41% of the vote and will now face a second round] accused “criminal groups” of working together with “foreign forces” of using money, lies, and propaganda to sway the vote.

Sandu also said her government had “clear evidence” that 300,000 votes were bought, which she called “a fraud of unprecedented scale”.

I guess what is meant here is the 2024 presidential election The focus shifts away from the initial “Harris vs Trump” topic to local/state issues.

@desktop_user

If I say, “Candidate A is a liar [although they are not]”, then this is unlawful and must be punished. Every journalist and media house can be held accountable for what they are publishing, and this is for good reason.

And private actors like Elon Musk or states like China and Russia are not exactly famous defenders of free speech as we know. This seems a bit hypocritical to say the least.

For those interested: A report by the Voting Rights Lab (April 2024) has tracked new laws across the U.S. containing election interference provisions that have been enacted in 29 states since 2021. Key takeaways:

• As a new area of election law, election manipulation legislation is constantly changing.
• 79 new U.S. election interference laws will be put to the test for the first time in a presidential election this November.
• Georgia and North Carolina – two of the states likely to determine the results of the presidential election this November – have been at the forefront of new election manipulation laws.

U.S. cybersecurity chief says election systems have ‘never been more secure’

State and local election officials across the country have made big improvements to strengthen both physical and cyber security at polling and voting locations to preserve election integrity, said Jen Easterly, the director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

After Russia’s attempts to influence the U.S. presidential election in 2016, CISA was created to work with state and local officials to make sure voting machines aren’t vulnerable to hacks.

[…] Her confidence in election integrity comes as intelligence officials warn that foreign adversaries — mainly Russia, Iran and China — are stepping up efforts to undermine voter trust in the democratic process, sway voters and inflame partisan divisions.

It’s a safe bet that South Africa has nothing to do with it I would say.