Israel reportedly used fake social accounts to garner support from US lawmakers
haaretz.com
haaretz.com
Just like I've predicted many times on HN.
Text generation is low on the list of things needed to successfully engage in automated spam. Social media is built on reputation, not who can write generic believable text the quickest. And funny enough the ex-OpenAI people (mostly Helen) calling for gov regulation said GPT should not have been released to the public because of this risk.
This is not the whole picture at all. I’d even say mostly incorrect. You can definitely influence public opinion with a social media consisting entirely of bots, provided the public aren’t aware of it.
Note the biggest word in the cloud: UNRWA. All my confirmation bias was in one direction in October. The oddly dissonant and desperate messaging you'd see made things extremely difficult to maintain that, like, you have to be of a very specific mindset to see message after message about the evil UN and not say, "uh, did we go off the rails somewhere?"
(n.b. this was in a lefty Jewish space, broadly denigrating governmental institutions isn't a usual virtue signal)
Going back to the beginning, there's an uncomfortable willingness/ignorance of Overton window widening, in a way that reduces sympathy rather than engenders it, and all of a sudden, otherwise kind people are engaging in rank racism*, glorification of destruction, and extreme conspiracies**.
* lots of "no such thing as innocent Palestineans", "Palestineans love redacted", when questioned, turns into "it's not racist if they're not a race, and they aren't because bla bla bla"
** Day after day after day of the bailey, "World Central Kitchen was trying to smuggle terrorists", coupled to the motte "Jose Andres held a barbecue buffet! Lol!"
That's a solvable tech problem to shut it down. Unfortunately, it's not a priority on a state level because everyone is doing it.
Closest I've seen would be campaigns like this, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/security-aviation/2024-0... .
Then there's the stuff by IDF soldiers on TikTok, and the stuff settlers put out.
I have the impression that the iranians don't need to do stuff like that.
Propaganda is still very prevalent and the target group is rarely someone other than the domestic population, even in democracies.
I think saying "evil" anything is wrong. But the UN is still a body made up of people, and like everything has its flaws. Its done some things that have turned out great and truly made the world a better place. Its done other things that haven't worked out so well. I certainly don't think it is above criticism.
I can understand why Israelis might be suspicious of the UN. The relationship between UN and Israel seems kind of fraught in a way that isn't true of pretty much any other country. The not allowing israel to fully vote until 2010 (edit: 2014), the (arguably) unequal focus only Israel's human rights record relative to other countries, and the whole UNRWA being totally different with different rules than any other refugee group, all make israel a bit unique in its relationship to the UN. I could easily understand how someone from Israel might feel that the UN treats them differently from other countries and is perhaps biased against them.
You're not going to throw that out without reference to how the US and Israel have consistently been the only countries to oppose Palestinian UN membership and voting.
It is possible to talk about why X might feel Y without talking about why other groups might feel the same way or even whether or not that feeling is justified.
Talking about motivations is different than determining what is "fair"
In fairness, the definition of state is pretty arbitrary and seems more like a popularity contest than anything else. Like how is taiwan not a state? How is the vatican a state? How is the Sovereign Military Order of Malta a state?
Taiwan has a permanent population, it has a government not under another, and it has the capacity to interact with other states (and does). There's no doubt Taiwan is a state and the only reason it's not universally recognized as one is China.
"Palestine" has no defined territory, no government, and really no capacity to interact with other states as one.
Wikipedia goes on to say: "There are also entities that do not have control over any territory or do not unequivocally meet the declarative criteria for statehood but have been recognised to exist as sovereign entities by at least one other state." including Palestine in this list.
It feels like the statehood of Palestinians should be a matter between them, Israel, Jordan and Egypt, the three countries that own the land that Palestinians desire to have as their state. Can the world declare that California is a state if the US doesn't want it to be?
Btw re: admission to the UN: "The requisite conditions are five in number: to be admitted to membership in the United Nations, an applicant must (1) be a State; (2) be peace-loving; (3) accept the obligations of the Charter; (4) be able to carry out these obligations; and (5) be willing to do so."
From what i understand, both Jordan and egypt have renounced their claim to the Palestine. Egypt did so in 1978 and Jordan in 1988
Two thoughts on this:
Firstly, every time a country is getting criticized for it's human rights abuses it, like clockwork, raises the spectre of being "unjustly singled out" about it's human rights abuses. To be clear, I would very much like every country on earth that engages in human rights abuses prosecuted for it, including mine, and specifically every U.S. President that's still currently alive since they are ALL guilty of them in varying degrees. And that way, we can't be accused of biases.
Secondly, I believe it's fair, even if we are biased against Israel in this way, to be biased since it has the rather unique position of being a state that exists solely because of and by the authority of the West. It is a colonialist project and has been from it's inception and I don't think you can take this situation on fully without acknowledging that fact.
Debating whether it should or shouldn't exist is rather moot at this point because it does, and tons of people live there who have committed no crime and done no wrong. That said, it is at the end all, an ethno-nationalist state built on a foundation of war crimes too numerous to count, that is currently incrementing as they barrage an utterly impotent neighbor to death, and it is doing so with the enthusiastic encouragement of FAR, FAR too many colonial powers. Maybe that's enough to say, ethically, that all of it's citizens should be displaced, maybe not. I do not know the solution. My point is that Israel's existence, in entirety, is violence perpetrated against every country it borders with, it wars with, and who's land it sits upon. That cannot be ignored.
My favorite one of these is when South Africa would say that the only reason people were angry about Apartheid was their obvious "anti-Boer prejudice." Which sounds stupid, until you remember that the British rounded up Boers and put them into concentration camps. It's still stupid, but if you accept the premise that being abused gives you the right to abuse, it's a claim as legitimate as any other of that type.
> My point is that Israel's existence, in entirety, is violence perpetrated against every country it borders with, it wars with, and who's land it sits upon.
They could have just torn down the walls, and still can. Israelis can call the resulting country Israel, and Palestinians can call it Palestine. It only requires both groups to give up any dreams of theocracy. What made the PLO and Arafat so distasteful to Israeli power players was the fact that they were secular, reasonable, and making moral arguments, not theological ones. People whose goal was to wipe out the Palestinians vastly preferred Hamas.
E.g. they have done a lot of good work reducing hunger & famine throughout the world. UNESCO has done a lot to preserve unique cultural & envirnomental sites around the world. UN has done a lot to put pressure on countries to ban female genital mutilation.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2023-00193...
"The appointment of Ali Bahreini, Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran and Permanent Representative to the United Nations, to chair the 2023 United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) Social Forum (2 and 3 November 2023), is nothing more than a slap in the face given the human rights situation of most Iranians, particularly women, and the repeated executions in the wake of the ongoing protests in the country and, more generally, the Islamic Republic's gross human rights violations and its catastrophic and politicised handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, when its refusal to import Western vaccines cost hundreds of thousands of lives."
Let me really blow your mind: also, raised very conservative Catholic, didn't do Confirmation, then was Muslim for about 6 years
It's all a long story. Catholic, LGBTQ stuff rubbed me the wrong way and in some of the deepest grace I've seen, my religious educator encourage it.
Muslim, I was essentially on my own once I turned 15 (abusive and absentee parents) and transferred from Catholic school to public school (save $$), and the most welcoming people were foreign, the rest had been in the same classes for a decade. They didn't prostelyize, it was fun going there on Friday nights to play dodge ball, it was little incremental work to show up earlier and it felt good.
Zionist...I swear to God there wasn't a single negative word about Jews or Israel or other religions at either of the 2 mosques I went to. There was a quiet understanding that Palestinians were hurt and that it was a bit melodramatic at times, given they had structural issues on their own side.
In general, I'm an inveterate both sides er, and I'm guessing knowing a lot of avowed older Zionist as well as Muslims makes me feel secure in "ugh there's some extremists / ignorant people in group X" rather than "wow group X is inherently evil"
And now you're making me think maybe the parents have more to do with it than I realize. It took a lot to finally say...wait, no...what they're doing is wrong and I don't owe them anything. As long as I'm thinking things out and rational, I'm doing my best. Adds to the comfort with tendatiousness/both sides and confidence in holding to it.
(Ran out of posts on main, so this is from my old backup when I was gainfully employed at FAANG)
That does make more sense: unless I read you wrong, leftism wasn’t a real sway here - and that’s easier to square away. Leftist Zionism is (as far as I can tell), almost only advanced by Jews.
Neat, though I’m perhaps confused as to how you might even arrive at Zionism (a rather polar position to take).
So good luck to you, but I'm not surprised you'd stay private But my anecdata (or some may call life experience) tell me you'd be fine and fare well where a similarly extreme position on the opposite end of the spectrum would cost you a lot personally and professionally. I wish we all reflected in the West or in tje region or conflict area, well, why is that?
For the record since I inevitably get routinely called an anti-Semite anyway: I think Hamas and groups like them are vile, but many in the region opposing them don't take the high road by comparison either. Im nkt sure if its recent or monitoring that become easier and more economical, but that means their opponents with this crap and other tactics have really screwed up. This HN post further supports my cynicism and disappointment.
Someone from their group is clearly thinking ahead and automating all of them out of a job :)
Evidence aside, I personally think it is extremely likely that Russia, China and most other countries active on the world stage have tried to "interfere" in US politics to some degree, but nowhere near the amount that we interfere in the politics of other countries or that Israel interferes in ours.
So you acknowledge that it's quite clear that Russia indeed is systematically interfering, and your only claim is to call "what about" some other country?
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/grand-jury-indicts-thirteen-r...
And there are reports from the intelligence services which are very clear as well, for example:
https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf
A brief search will come up with much more.
The only question is why you haven't found any of this evidence, haven't believed any of it, or why you would argue such an easily disproven position without ever taking a few minutes to find out if the position you argue is still true many years after you've formed it.
It's almost as if you heard an opinion once or multiple times, perhaps from people or political figures you trusted. Then you internalized that opinion and it took on the attributes of 'belief' and haven't ever questioned it since it was formed. This belief became bound up with other things you believe, and now the defense mechanisms your brain uses to support 'belief' are also supporting this opinion in contradiction to facts that have been proven over the past years.
These defense mechanisms exist in your brain for good reasons, but they are also a way that propaganda exploits your brain's natural tendency to behave. It's difficult for victims of this to see it for what it is, confront their 'belief' system and admit they've been tricked. They have to overcome the feeling that it's their own fault they were tricked and their brain was exploited, which many never do, even though it's really not their fault that the human brain works the way it does. Propaganda is insidious, and particularly treacherous in the way that it convinces people to argue on its behalf, and that the act of doing so reinforces the hold the propaganda has on the person.
Thank you for providing civil, factual, compassionate responses in this thread - it’s an inspiring example of discourse.
I’d like to add an informative and entertaining essay on the mechanics of belief and the reasons some beliefs are harder to change than others:
Well I did (again), so let's take it from the top:
- Russia hacked into various local & state election boards, scary right? But in the very same report we learn this from, it's detailed this had no influence on vote tallies.
- Russia's state media outlets preferred one candidate over the other and made efforts to promote them. This one shocked me the most since I'm sure everyone before now assumed Russia's state media outlets would never push Russian propaganda! Who would have thought? Guess I'll have to get all my completely unbiased news from Aljazeera, Xinhua and KNCA from now on.
- Finally Russia is credited with Guciffer 2.0 and DCLeaks. Which likely had the most impressive (relative) impact but are also the most likely to trigger an argument at the dinner table since the evidence crediting these hacks to them are highly dubious.
Not mentioned in the report, oddly enough, was the ad campaigns they ran on various social media platforms to promote fringe candidates to increase national discord. Sounds clever but these ads were pretty terrible, good idea bad execution.
Even if we credit Russia for the DCLeaks and Guciffer hacks, which I personally believe they are undeserving of, Russia's attempts at "interference" were rife with incompetence, much like anything Russia tries. It's noteworthy that one of your links detailed one of their failures as so dramatic it resulted in the arrests of 13 participants!
If you were to combine everything I've listed here and compare it with any single propaganda operation performed by Israel, would you truly consider Russia's attempts more impressive? Certainly not the person you were replying to, and certainly not me.
Not to mention China's attempts, which in both scale and scope eclipses anything Russia has tried:
- https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/20/technology/ch...
- https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/08/technology/china-facebook...
Lucky for you, I'm not some jackass who links a few things and then follows it up with any essay psychoanalyzing you. So I'll leave it implied ;)
>https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/grand-jury-indicts-thirteen-r...
These indictments contain assertions, not evidence. Indeed, when it came time to go to trial, the government dropped the charges rather than present the "evidence" they claimed they had.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/16/russia-election-jus...
>And there are reports from the intelligence services which are very clear as well, for example:
>https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf
>The only question is why you haven't found any of this evidence, haven't believed any of it
There is an endless number of reports, findings, Senate Committee conclusions, all of which are filled with evidence-free assertions. You may choose to believe the government and their evidence-free assertions, I do not. No doubt you put great credence into the letter signed by 51 top intelligence officials, including 5 former heads of the CIA that the Hunter Biden laptop was "Russian disinformation" - many people continue to believe this despite the fact that the letter has been proven to be entirely false, and the laptop was introduced as evidence at trial by the DOJ this week, with its authenticity sworn to by the FBI.
>It's almost as if you heard an opinion once or multiple times, perhaps from people or political figures you trusted. Then you internalized that opinion and it took on the attributes of 'belief' and haven't ever questioned it since it was formed. This belief became bound up with other things you believe, and now the defense mechanisms your brain uses to support 'belief' are also supporting this opinion in contradiction to facts that have been proven over the past years.
Trust and faith are for children and priests. I don't trust the government, the DOJ, Russia, any politicians, or anyone else. I trust my ability to very carefully scrutinize and interpret information. When a claim is made, I look at the evidence offered to support that claim, no matter who makes it, or what the claim is. I suggest you read the above paragraph (the one that you wrote) and try to understand how it exactly describes your own beliefs.
>Propaganda is insidious, and particularly treacherous in the way that it convinces people to argue on its behalf, and that the act of doing so reinforces the hold the propaganda has on the person.
I could not agree more, and your post is a perfect example.
I've made you defensive, and that wasn't my intent. At least you didn't go straight to irrational anger.
That said, I really don't see anything in your reply to change my assessment.
You're not engaging on the linked content other than to state disbelief, you seem to have applied some kind of category label to me as a believer in some kind of letter campaign(?), you have affirmed the extremely high level of certainty you have in your ability to assess information, and you've hyperbolized the level of rigor you use to assess all information claims you ingest from any source.
We're not going to take this discussion anywhere useful from here.
And that's okay. I tried, and now remember why most people don't. I don't hold any ill will towards you.
Oh whoops I guess you're right, all of those were lies about Russian perpetuated by US govt and media.
Side note: Russia has an economy the size of TX. Are they really wasting all of their money convincing Americans which octogenarian to "rule"?
The U.S. has grandmastery level of expertise in this space. No other nation comes remotely close. ex CIA directors have even admitted this openly on TV - "election interference" for the "greater good" - to thunderous applause!
Russian efforts to interfere were small, laughable peanuts that the American experts pitied. Read the assessments written in 2023, when Anti Trump hysteria had lowered.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2023/1/20/23559214/r...
Other nations just grit their teeth and put up with the extraordinary American interference in their internal affairs - because what can they even do ? The U.S. is the Divine Icon of Sanctimonious Hypocrisy. Complain too hard and you will be openly threatened with sanctions. (Look at what is happening with Georgia nowadays)
Only one item here really is explicitly illegal/immoral. Can you guess which one? How much evidence is there for US doing it?
There is a lot of evidence, including open statements made by ex-CIA directors, published books by former military/intelligence agents, de-classified documents, news articles, interviews of EU ministers, etc. But most Americans hold your position - that direct or covert U.S. interference in other nation's affairs is completely fine. The only thing I complain about is the sanctimonious hypocrisy when actions reflect back.
These campaigns were multifaceted and included calling proven basic facts into question, going so far as to suggest Russia wasn't interfering at all.
Convincing people to disbelieve this basic fact precluded them from any possible consideration of whether Russia was supporting specific candidates, how Russia might benefit from such a candidate taking power, and why Russia might consider interference to be worth the effort, money, and risk.
This disbelief would also preclude any consideration about why the politician might:
- support such Russian meddling by pretending it did not exist
- make unsupported claims implicating their political opponents which completely ignored known facts
- play dumb whenever the subject came up
It was a playbook, followed to incredible success in conjunction with other propaganda efforts.
This all served to enable the politician to completely avoid addressing core questions about why Russia would support the candidate to the point of interfering with US elections to begin with.
You mean through completely accepted and legal campaign donations to pretty much every major politician? Oh no wait that’s AIPAC and Israel and “just fine”. You mean through bots that post shit on FB right?
I don’t care for conspiracies, but I do wonder why American politicians don’t try to stop donations from foreign government institutions to politicians in general. JFK was on track to do just that before he was murdered.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/31/us/politics/deepfake-us-o...
> Deepfake of U.S. Official Appears After Shift on Ukraine Attacks in Russia
> U.S. officials said they had no information about the origins of the video. But they are particularly concerned about how Russia might employ such techniques to manipulate opinion around the war in Ukraine or even American political discourse.
Most likely this is meant to target trump supporters to encourage them to go vote for him because it highlights increased US support for Ukraine.
> last decade
well over a century..
The thing is that it’s a Constant. It’s not a new or surprising thing like fake news presents it as.
Just waiting for a random US future president to create an "Internet" branch of the military. Maybe that's already happened.
Difference today is you can stoke the flames of public outrage with just a few people, without even setting foot in the country, while maintaining a lot of plausible deniability, since the modern playbook relies heavily on uncertainty and confusion, meaning you can safely target allies without significant risk of being caught (even if you're caught, you can deny it and say it's hostile propaganda).
Propaganda only seems to work in two situations. The first is on topics people know nothing about. Each time the US invades some places most people couldn't even find on a map, support for it rises in accordance with the propaganda. But as people learn more, and gradually form their own values, that support tends to rapidly decline. And there are also long-term consequences, because people will remember being lied to. My views on the US war machine and geopolitics in general seem unlikely, at this point, to ever change. And they were largely formed due to the Iraq War. Irrefutable [1] and Undeniable [2] are two 21 year old articles I still go back to on occasion.
The other situation is when it's true. During the Cold War we spread endless propaganda about things like having stocked store shelves. This is doubly effective in the same way that lying propaganda is doubly ineffective. Because not only does it create a desired perception, but once people gradually find out it's really true, it also tends to turn them against their own government who invariably misrepresents such situations. Again, people don't like being lied to.
[1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2003/02/06/i...
[2] - https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/06/opinion/irrefutable-and-u...
The belief that holding strong opinions protects against propaganda is dangerous. Strong opinions is where propaganda inserts its levers.
Here's AI Trump and AI Biden debating live now on Twitch (video isnt great as of today but the voices are) https://m.twitch.tv/videos/2157689323
God knows what % of the population has mental issues because we watch too much Twitter and Facebook and other crap
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Cyber_Command is the closest thing that we have today. It's not a formal branch, though, but rather a joint effort across the existing branches.
A cursory look and it seems Germany and China were first to having a specific branch, but China dissolved theirs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber_and_Information_Domain_S...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Liberation_Army_Str...
Why internet is the battlefield? Because everything in our world is based on an opinion. You can sell a lot of bs to your “client” if he has “correct” opinion.
Bad news, our opinion system was designed for groups and villages, not for the internet.
The difference now is the speed, cost and scale. It is super cheap to spread crap today than ever. Also it is quick and the reach is massive.
By the way, Manufacturing Consent is a depressing book. You’d lose what little faith you have in media, if you read it…
Maybe it's not what I should remember most, but it did help remind me that when your livelihood is based on what you say you will be much more measured, regardless of the subject.
Probably why people look to social media or Substack for more independent people who have a longer leash, less on the line, and more to gain, since that's where you get your interesting although many times wrong takes (e.g. Ivermectin for Covid, or Lab Leak Theory)
Internet is a communications medium. It was destined to be flooded with propaganda, whatever you try to call your particular flavour.
Or as I have been saying since the 1990's, the only difference between marketing and propaganda is that with marketing at least you are trying to peddle a product instead of an ideology.
I disagree, ideologies are often already in there, even when they are simplistic "power-tools are for men and all men require power-tools", or "having better stuff than your neighbors is a virtue, failing to do so will lead to dangerous ostracization."
Very tame "Our blender spins twice as fast as the competition" marketing might be arguably free of ideology, but that's a decreasing minority.
I disagree. This isn't peddling an ideology, it's using an existing ideology (or stereotype) in order to peddle a product. A company with a marketing campaign targeting men isn't going to refuse to sell power tools to women, they're just designing their marketing campaign in a way they think will maximize sales overall, using existing biases and ideologies that potential customers already have. Normal companies don't care about ideology unless it helps them make more money, which is their true goal.
That’s not how this works. “The medium is the message,” as Marshall McLuhan would say.
A woman may never consider buying power tools because of the imagery of the propaganda surrounding power tools. Or the salesman may undermine, intimidate, or otherwise obstruct her attempts to purchase one. But regardless your point falls apart because the ideology of capitalism underlying the power tools on the shelf subsumes the ideology of the advertising.
That subsumption, however, does not in any way contraindicate those ideologies present in the advertisement’s framing. It only demonstrates that money is more important than the other ideologies being peddled.
Quite often I default to the word propaganda when talking about anyone's PR campaigns in my own personal battle with trying to undo this. I ratchet it up when talking directly to marketing/PR people. Pretty much every time I'm just looked at as yet another crazy person.
Marketing often includes the peddling of an ideology as a foundation for the product buying, especially for big-ticket items. (One buys the product that fits and signals one’s ideology.) To me, this makes marketing even more insidious as we often focus on the product rather than the message. Think Ford, Tesla, Apple …
And guns.
Literally the raison d'etre of PR | propaganda is to distract, to replace, to (in modern terms) throw a dead cat on the table and have everybody talk about that.
The stated purpose was to flatten the curve.
> Who benefited?
The government.
> How?
By giving the impression that they were doing something.
> Why were the curfews necessary to achieve those goals?
They weren't, as far as we know. In Quebec's case they were still scrambling to justify them a few hours before the press conference:
https://www.thesuburban.com/news/legault-s-curfew-decision-w...
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/curfew-legality-queb...
The US hasn't been especially loud about it, but it's been a dominant force in 'internet warfare.'
how competent they actually are at this, who knows...
If anything, this makes me question the accuracy of historical events that happened before humanity had access to such tools.
Cyber Force!
They have cyber marines, cyber carriers, cyber destroyers, cyber bombers, cyber jets, and cyber drones. They even have their own sister agency called Veterans Affairs where veterans can go to get virtual healthcare treatment.
US military spent over half a billion on war propaganda - outsourced to experts.
This is not a war.
It's not like we haven't done this either. I worked for a company in 2005 which was doing this paid for by politicians. Moment I worked this out, I quit.
You can sit there and do nothing and wait for your enemy to paint you in a bad light and the next thing you know your usual political allies are throwing money and aid at your enemy. Or you protect your citizens as best as possible by entering the game. The moral high ground may have a higher body count.
This point applies to both sides for ref. And because it's a war, the rules of fair play go out of the window until people are on trial afterwards.
Speaking of trials: U.S. lawmakers had voted to sanction ICC if it tries to prosecute citizens of the US or it's allies.
I guess it is always one rule for thee and another one for me. So much for rules based order.
It doesn't seem reasonable to me to assume that the main objective of any government is to protect its citizens.
i dont know of a single country that wouldnt do the same in their position.
I mean it'd be nice not to have them but as a species we're stupid animals with stupid ideas so there's no end of it in sight.
I don't agree with any of it for ref.
I mean, if Israel started bombing me, I'd try to garner support from US citizens too? There is a world of difference between that and faking social media accounts
It's pretty important that most stories about this conflict and similar current affairs get flagged, because otherwise HN's front page would consist of little else, and that's not the purpose of the site. But it's also important that the topics not be ignored completely, even though they're painful. There's no happy medium here, unfortunately.
Here are some links to previous explanations. If you (or anyone, of course) have a look at these and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40418881 (May 2024)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39920732 (April 2024)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39618973 (March 2024)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39435324 (Feb 2024)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39435024 (Feb 2024)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39237176 (Feb 2024)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39161344 (Jan 2024)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38947003 (Jan 2024)
Brigaded reports? 4chan solved it by adding a mandatory enum to reports to specify what the report is reporting for. Identifying bad reports and banning users as a result becomes trivial.
Flooding with stories about a particular topic? That's what stickies are for and they work particularly well so that mods can auto-delete any non-sticky stories pertaining to the MOT.
Flamewar on a MOT? Add a sticky to the top of the thread like reddit does saying moderation will be minimal and to enter the thread at your own risk.
How about one of the standard Merriam Webster definitions of force: (verb) "to compel by physical, moral, or intellectual means" i.e. by framing their argument to compel by convincing it's from an intellectual standpoint. Not too interested on your hangups for definitions of basic words to be honest here though.
Throwing a tantrum about being unable to redirect outrage freely onto others while masquerading adding functionality to enable that discourse as an "already solved problem implemented by others" with lack of complying to their personal standards being perceived as refusing "enhancements" isn't a discussion, its an emotion driven stance attempting to make the other party look unreasonable.
I'd argue that the reason most of us are on HN is that it doesn't use 21st century forum enhancements.
In: blame FB comments for congress funding Israel
Is it really that hard to imagine congress supporting the democratic country with one of the biggest pride parades in the world vs the country that hasn’t had elections in 18 years and is split between 2 leaders who disagree on pretty much everything?
Do you mean NYC Pride or Sao Paolo Gay Pride Parade?
Israel seems to only extend that sort of courtesy to a part of its citizenry, but when you remember that the "stable" countries in the region are all more-or-less absolute monarchies, it becomes obvious why the US is willing to at least work with Israel.
There have been over 100 Arabs in the Israeli parliament: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Arab_members_of_the_Kn...
So I challenge you to find 1 law that treats Jews and Arab citizens differently in Israel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_citizens_of_Israel#Civil_...
It's the same as the US's treatment of African Americans for decades; legally they have the same rights but the reality of how they get treated by their government is much different. Just pointing out "Aha! They are equal under law!" is misleading and tries to shut the issue down
You're mixing up two different things. Arab Israelis (as Israel calls them) are Israeli citizens. They have the same rights as any Israeli citizen.
Freedom of movement to and from the Gaza strip is of Gazans, who are not Israeli citizens, and they indeed don't have the same rights in Israel as Israeli citizens.
More directly: apartheid "democracy" > monarchy?
For what it's worth, the US has also tried to work a two-state solution over the last 30 years with various degrees of vigor. That became much harder to accomplish when the Gaza Strip decided to elect Hamas to lead its government in 2006-07.
It became much harder when the Israeli hard Right murdered Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 and then took over the Israeli government with Netanyahu's election in 1996.
Both fairly explicitly in reaction against the idea of ever accepting a Palestinian State.
The Hamas suicide bombings in 1994 were in response to the massacre committed by Jewish terrorist Baruch Goldstein in February. The first bombing of the "wave" happened in April.
[1]
> This was the first suicide bombing attack to be carried out by Palestinian militants against Israeli civilians in Israel, and was carried out in retaliation for the killing by a settler of 29 Muslims while they were at prayer in the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron on 25 February.
> I.e. the root cause of this was Palestinians, not Israelis.
I.e. This is grossly disingenuous.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afula_Bus_suicide_bombing
Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin condemned the attack, describing Goldstein as a "degenerate murderer" and "a shame on Zionism and an embarrassment to Judaism" - which is important.
Agree that it is important. What is even more strange is that Yitzhak Rabin himself was assassinated by a Zionist Terrorist. There were many deals and processes and talks, Almost all of them put Israel front and centre, even Oslo accords for instance. But as claimed by Bibi, Zionist Terrorists tried everything to thwart it. And conveniently placed the blame on Palestinians. It was Zionist Terrorists who brought terrorism as we know today to the middle east. It was them who killed in cold blood, the mediator who presented the plan, Count Folke Bernadotte. But all the blame is on Palestinians, while the Terrorists derailed any hope for peaceful coexistence, and continue to do so.
I can't really debate your other statements because it's pretty short of facts. I seriously doubt the truth of "zionism brought terrorism to the middle east" as there were e.g. massacres of Jews in the region (Hebron, or Tsfat) that predate zionism.
And sure, Lehi were terrorists, I'm not super familiar with the Bernadotte story but that's well into the conflict, not by any means that start of it.
From my perspective it was the Palestinians, through Hamas, that derailed the Oslo accords. By any measure you can choose, the Palestinian violent opposition to peace eclipsed the Israeli one. Also while Israel has a government with the ability to enforce policy, the Palestinians never had any centralized authority that talks for all of them. While Israel was putting extreme right activists in detention with no trial, the Palestinians were letting Hamas out of their jails with a "revolving door".
Which Israel can't be blamed for enough.
Let's just leave this place filled with insurgents without any coordination with the authority. I wonder what will happen.
What do you mean at least work with Israel? The US is propping up Israel and without that ally Israel would probably implode. What’s messed up is how disrespectful Israel and some of their politicians are to US and their citizens. One thing I like about Israel is that they have a variety of oppinions and schools of thought. What we’re currently seeing is coming from the radical right wing and those atrocities will unfortunately stain Israelis of all types. Hope they do at the next elections.
Almost all of the support and protection they've received from the US since October has been mainly to keep leverage on Netanyahu and to keep the war from spreading across the Middle East. For example, if Iran's missiles had bombarded Tel Aviv, you're probably going to see Israel bombarding Tehran, which could pull in Iraq, etc., and Israel has yet to lose a fight against its regional neighbors.
They don't need the US to prop them up economically or militarily, which should bring about a conversation about support come next budget, but I doubt it.
I too would like to see a more moderate group in charge.
Neither do the North Koreans [1][2]? (Caveats [3][4].)
America dropping Israel simply means it finds a new supplier. Russia is out of the picture, given its dependence on Iran, but China and India would be more than willing to supply.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_People's_Army_Air_For...
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanks_of_North_Korea
Why would Israel bombing Tehran pull in Iraq? Iraq and Iran have never been friends.
Wishful thinking, regardless of which elections your talking about. In the US, both sides are working hard to prop up Israel. In Israel before October, Netanyahu was on trial for fraud, bribery and breach of trust. Who's even talking about that anymore? Now he gets to be a war Prime Minister.
And now... Iraq?! you must be joking or cynic
Imagine if in the last century, the billions of refugees and descendants of refugees of the world, would all still be kept as ethernal refugees.
The nations of the world are a condescending bunch. Implying that the Palestinians are not to be treated as equals to Germans, Ukrainians, etc.,
https://freedomhouse.org/country/iraq/freedom-world/2024 https://freedomhouse.org/country/lebanon/freedom-world/2024 https://freedomhouse.org/country/israel/freedom-world/2024
There is nothing undemocratic about this at all. This is what international law mandates. Israel is prohibited from annexing this territory by said international law. When Israel annexed other occupied territory and gave residents rights (The Golan Heights) the international community refused to accept that.
You can ask why these territories are in this status for this length of time. Part of the reason is that the country it was occupied from, Jordan, does not want it back. Another part is that the Palestinians that live there don't really want this resolved either (at least some really large portion of them). Another part are other external interests that don't want to see this resolved.
The total physical occupation of Germany lasted 11 years. The final status of Germany was only determined in 1990 in the 2+4 agreement. That's a 45 year period. The US still has bases in Germany.
It's incredible how persistently you miss the point.
What people are asking Israel to do is let Palestinians have a say in their own affairs. That can be done _either_ by letting the Palestinian government meaningfully control Palestine (as the West German government did relatively soon after the war ended), _or_ by letting Palestinians have a say in the Israeli government that rules over them (one state solution).
I'm being called a liar for pointing out that in general people living in occupied territories do not have the rights of the citizens of the occupier, which is the exact situation here, and for which Israel is labelled as an "Apartheid State", since there's no Apartheid in Israel proper, only supposedly in said occupied territories.
I think you're factually wrong on your "What people are asking" statement. Different people are asking different things. However, you can totally ask that question as an individual and we can discuss it.
Palestinians do have a say in their own affairs. But you're saying "letting the Palestinian government meaningfully control Palestine". When you say Palestine do you mean the west bank? Would you agree that in Gaza Israeli did let the Palestinians "meaningfully control Gaza"? What was the outcome of that? What do you propose can be done differently in the west bank for example? What level of say/control do you feel would balance Israel's security needs with the Palestinian's need to have a say/meaningful control? Let's talk specifics.
By the way, I'm totally not an expert in post WW-II Germany, I don't really know if we can apply the same methods or not: https://www.historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers/papers/german...
There was West Germany and East Germany. There was "denazification" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazification (e.g. promoting of Nazi ideas had a death penalty under the occupation, do you think that'll fly with Israel vs. Palestinians vs. the world?). There were war crime trials for top level Nazis.
EDIT: It's also worth mentioning that when the west bank was occupied by Israel in 1967 it was considered to be part of Jordan and Jordan didn't give up that claim until their peace agreement with Israel. But if your point is that Israel should have at that point given the people living in this area a measure of autonomy to run most aspects of their lives I think I can agree. There was definitely some self governing, e.g. at the city level. I think the demand was of Israel to return this to Jordan at that point in time and Israel refused since it meant there would be large Arab armies 10 minute tank drive from Tel-Aviv. (e.g.). I wasn't around in 1967 and I haven't studied that period in detail.
No.
> What was the outcome of that?
Impossible to say because it has never happened.
The demand, not "ask", is that Israel end the Occupation.
It is a lot different from any of those examples, mainly because the U.S. didn’t annex the parts of those countries it cared about (see East Jerusalem), didn’t start moving its own people to the rest of the territory carving it up like Swiss cheese, didn’t prevent people from going and coming, didn’t heavily restrict trade between those countries and their neighbors, etc.
So while indeed they were militarily occupied, the degree of functional civilian control by the democratically elected governments were far greater than that enjoyed in Palestine by the PA or by Hamas.
I agree that the situation in Puerto Rico is undemocratic but again, it’s not nearly as egregious for lots of reasons.
> This is what international law mandates. Israel is prohibited from annexing this territory by said international law. When Israel annexed other occupied territory and gave residents rights (The Golan Heights) the international community refused to accept that.
It is laughable to claim the reason for anything Israel does is “international law” when they flaunt it so cavalierly. Really, they didn’t mind the international legal implications of annexing East Jerusalem or building settlements in the West Bank, but the reason they refuse to annex the rest of it and give people citizenship is because of international law?
That’s clearly not the case. They have taken the parts they care about either by annexation or pseudo-annexation (settlements). The reason they don’t want to annex the rest is because they don’t want Arabs to be nearly half their citizens (annexing it without granting citizenship would be too egregious to ignore in the eyes of the rest of the world) and because there’s nothing there that they want. Expect this to change if the trend of Israel becoming more and more right wing continues.
I also think my other point stands that if Israel did annex the West Bank and/or Gaza and give Palestinians equal rights, as it did in Jerusalem or the Golan Heights that would not be viewed as an acceptable solution. The reason I raise this is because criticism is levelled at Israel for not doing that. The Palestinians would not consider this to resolve the conflict and neither would anyone else, they say exactly what you're saying here. I'm not saying the reason Israel isn't doing it is international law but surely the lack of acceptance from anyone to this solution is part of that thought process (and also the question of maintaining Jewish majority in Israel).
Palestinians did get some control, they got total control of Gaza in 2005, partial control earlier of Gaza and the West Bank as part of the Oslo accords.
I also want to be clear that I'm opposed to Israeli settlement in the west bank. I don't think that's helpful. I also don't think it's the real problem here. The legal status of the west bank in Israeli law is still occupied territory, there hasn't been any formal annexation.
One thing I can say as to the annexation/reunification of Jerusalem is that Israel is doing a much better job than Jordan did in maintaining and protecting the rights of all religions to have access to their holy sites. When Jerusalem was under Jordanian control Jews could not access it at all and I think Christians also less than today. So I think Israel is a reasonable guardian of this place and all its citizens and visitors are treated fairly. The final status of Jerusalem would presumably be something agreed to as part of the (maybe never) peace agreement. I think between leaving it "occupied" and the current status the current status is/was the better option for everyone.
There are voices by the way in the right wing of Israel calling for annexation and granting of citizenship.
I don't think Israel is "flaunting" international law more so than most of the rest of the world. It just happens to be in an unsolvable mess of a situation. Israel and Israelis really wanted this resolved in the peace process of the early 90's and were willing to go a long way towards what Palestinians were asking for, but didn't really meet a partner. So to blame this solely on Israel, which is admittedly to some degree in a position of power, but is also very vulnerable, is not fair. I would say at least half the blame is on the Palestinians.
All most people know is the spin they've gotten from the media and politicians. Both tend to be very pro Israel in the US. That's changed a little recently, but not much.
Israelis are just doing what their version of Judaism is telling them to do, it's the neocon Zionists in the US that finance it that are the real danger. It isn't just that they don't care about Palestinian lives, they don't care about Israeli lives, either. They care about Israeli contracts.
It's bipartisan enough that I don't believe the parties will be able to come to an agreement to enact any meaningful change. This goes beyond the Republican vs. Democrat issues so it's much more difficult to make this a partisan issue to rally mass support from either party.
Americans’ views of the Israeli people are broadly positive [1].
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/05/30/how-ameri... 64%
"The survey puts numbers on trends that have become increasingly apparent: Cable news viewers are more supportive of Israel’s war effort, less likely to think Israel is committing war crimes, and less interested in the war in general. People who get their news primarily from social media, YouTube, or podcasts, by contrast, generally side with the Palestinians, believe Israel is committing war crimes and genocide, and consider the issue of significant importance.
WE OFTEN HEAR people say that “Twitter isn’t real life” or that “Nobody watches cable news,” but the survey asked where people get most of their news, asking them to pick just one, and cable and social media won out. Most Americans do in fact get their news either primarily from cable (42 percent) or social media like TikTok, Instagram, or another platform (18 percent). A third of people said they get their news from YouTube or podcasts, with 13 percent saying they got most of their news that way.
Asked generally where folks got their news on a day-to-day basis, with a “check all that apply” option, it’s even more clear how dominant cable (55 percent), social media (38 percent), and podcasts/YouTube (34) are compared to print, at 21 percent. (I read the survey as using “print” as a stand-in for any text-based media, whether digital like The Intercept or on actual printed paper.) "
Even the polls you referenced show how stark the contrast between young and old americans are on this topic. Some of the older americans barely have any education on this topic but just stick with the zionist propaganda they were fed when they were younger, they couldn't even locate Israel/Palestine on a map.
Most of the older christian zealots don't have the critical thinking skills or capacity to change their mind on the topic because their indoctrination is so thorough that they'd rather deny reality than face the facts. Not surprising considering they grew up on a mantra that the so called "chosen" people can do no wrong.
I think if those christians who voted favorably had seen how israelis spit[3] on christians and assault[4][5] christians, their opinions would change swiftly, but the news channels they consume won't feed them this reality because consent needs to be manufactured.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
[1] https://theintercept.com/2024/04/30/gaza-israel-palestine-ca...
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJNfKTO7XK8
Everyone has a snippy argument for why opioid opinion is wrong. I’m not saying, in this case, that the majority is correct. (Nor the inverse.) Just that it is the reason Israel enjoys such support here.
(Would also note that both sides fervently believe the media is conspiring against them.)
So why did you not give your argument? I've at least put in the work to provide evidence & arguments for my thesis, you on the other hand are just saying handwavy stuff.
>I’m not saying, in this case, that the majority is correct. (Nor the inverse.) Just that it is the reason Israel enjoys such support here.
Yes and I've explained how that is largely a product of manufactured consent and there is plenty of evidence for that. I've only provided a fraction of the available evidence here supporting that thesis.
>(Would also note that both sides fervently believe the media is conspiring against them.)
That's just completely asinine framing, at least critique the article, the argument or the data instead of making my position out to be something conspiratorial
Allies influencing other allies is part of the process. Don't just think that it is Israel doing it in America. America is also doing similar actions in other countries where they want to win favour.
Yes? This happens periodically when someone is caught doing something outside of normal diplomatic duties.
Jordan seems to be a much stronger friend to us in the region.
as i think of it, it's strange that the US supposedly has a separation of religion from state, in the constitution+amendments, yet funds an external country based on a religion. i wonder what fraction of donations to Israel come back as lobbyists paying politicians to fund the next round of donations. there must be datasets recorded somewhere, but i have no idea where to look.
In the Middle East. Which is sort of true. (Cairo, Riyadh and Doha aren’t as reliable.)
Our traditional greatest ally is the U.K.
France is our oldest ally. But it (and Poland) are weaker and have been less reliably at our side than Britain has been.
Spying and keeping tabs on your friends is one thing. Influence campaigns among close allies are generally not the way it works.
Do you know of any? Can you cite them?
*Historical examples of other forms of US meddling/interference is not being ignored, and paves the way to why I would not say not being done.
When a newspaper brought it up he went through the steps to formally renounce Canadian citizenship, which became official in May 2014.
Not a fan of Cruz, but this is sufficient for me. More problematic would be those nations that don't accept or don't allow them to renounce citizenship.
>On the day of arrival in Israel, or occasionally at a later date, a person who enters Israel under the Law of Return as an oleh would receive a certificate confirming their oleh status.
On the very day they step off the boat or plane. This isn't the case of "anyone who comes to the US and waits 10+ years might finally get to become a citizen". Seems pretty fucking automatic.
The Wikipedia summary is oversimplified, it's very easy but you do have to affirmatively express an interest and fill out an application (https://www.gov.il/en/service/declaration_of_intent_to_recei...). They don't literally hand it to you when you get off the plane, and even if they did you still can't point to any Jewish person and declare that they must be a citizen of Israel. Most Jewish people have never even been to Israel.
Maybe you're arguing that since it's so easy, all Jewish people in Congress are effectively dual Israeli citizens even if they never actually apply for citizenship. In that case, you'll also be shocked to learn that every single person in Congress is a dual citizen of Dominica, which can be obtained without ever setting foot in the country by just paying $100,000 (https://www.cbiu.gov.dm/dominica-citizenship/). Everyone in Congress can afford that, so we might as well say they've already done it.
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/lawmaker-n...
I assume most countries with designs in foreign politics do much the same.
It has been a long while since I worked with them- the basic idea was that you could identify how people related to each other via their public posts, identify communities by topic, then identify how people influenced each other.
Some topics were harder to automate- if we took as an example b the keyword "abortion" you'll find multiple opposed groups. Searching for terrorists was somewhat similar- their public mouthpieces would use certain words, and their detractors would use the same words in opposition.
I won't go into too much further detail because while the company closed in 2022 I really respected the owners and I suspect they're going to find a way to bring the idea of the company back in a new form.
We need to better define what propaganda is. To me it's misleading or false information with the purpose of facilitating a political outcome. Or deceptive information not meant for selling a product.
This definition is good enough, I don't see why it would need a redefinition.
I think those who overuse the term ought to explain it in their own words.
Most "ads" aren't these kinds of ads though, and seek to manipulate you. They at least are just a grift, and only want to separate you from your money instead of, say, supporting a war that doesn't need to be fought.
The entire history of our species runs counter to this. The most peaceful periods are uni or bipolar dynamic. Pax Americana is statistically meaningful [1].
> Once parties lack the resources for war
Generally speaking, impoverishment increases violence.
So I want to say that it's not entirely clear to me that social media peer pressure campaigns are not on occassion counter productive. Automating it seems like it would be potentially disasterous. At the end of the day, there's much we still dont know about psychology, particularly when it comes to efforts at online persuasion.
I think the more worrying is going after the low information voter. I didn't think Russia's election interference had much effect in 2016, but now when you look at US Media (largely conservative outlets) their footprint is very visible.
If the purpose of the trolling is to influence a decision, does it matter if the target reads it and is trolled directly or trolls enough constituents to call for action? Either way, the influence was asserted making the effort worthwhile.
So they may recognize trolling, but if you tell them "Hey, the President of Israel tweeted at you," they just assume it was the President of Israel.
* my grandmother can't recognize fake information
* my grandmother is old
* politicians are old
* therefore politicians can't recognize fake information
Politics has always been full of deception, people doing politics professionally for decades should know a bit or two about it.
I think it's worth pushing back on this. Deception works when it's unexpected, and if the medium is something politicians aren't familiar with, they may not even be looking for the kinds of deception they're being targeted with. They think themselves hardened to deception, but they may not be open-minded enough to even realize there are forms of deception they haven't prepared for.
Kids these days just know everything is a scam or BS, but I can't seem to convince my parents' generation that someone would lie to them via e-mail.
eg: (Various headlines)
* Australian Politicians Keep Falling For Telegram Scams
* The phishing email that hacked the account of John Podesta
* Who is behind the Westminster WhatsApp 'honeytrap' stings?
If you're wondering why politics sometimes seem out of touch, it's because politicians, their media and the commentariat are locked into an echo chamber already.
If I were an actor interested in influencing the policy of another country, why would I spend $$$ on manipulating the voting populace if I can poison the feed of the people who matter for far less?
Take a look a r/worldnews vs any other subreddit discussing this topic. r/worldnews is controlled. Negative comments towards Israel get comments deleted and users banned. Any other subreddit, there are people arguing from multiple directions. On r/worldnews, you only see dissenting opinions for the first hour or so until the mods "clean up the thread".
Obviously, this is anecdotal information and probably slightly biased.
It's just a different echo chamber...
but like most articles about Israeli hacking, US Big Tech involvement in the war, etc it was immediately flagged once it reached the front page.
I don’t know how much of this is moderators removing posts, or if there is a pro-Israel brigade that is censoring HN’s front page.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Internet_Defense_Force
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWD5xiiafBc
it's prudent to assume such operations are still ongoing
This article is from Hareetz, which is a major newspaper in Israel.
There's a huge, organized Israel lobby aimed at the US. It's no secret. There's AIPAC, the American-Israel Political Action Committee. "Lobbying for Pro-Israel Policies", it says on their web site. There are official organizations in the government of Israel which do "public diplomacy".[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_diplomacy_of_Israel
>”Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.”
The point of this campaign was to highlight "fake social accounts tricking" "Black lawmakers and young progressives" (>Black lawmakers in the U.S., particularly Democrats., >young Americans, >Black Americans) because at least someone wants them to think that they, their teams and their followers are weak & easy targets, thus reducing their perceived competence and credibility without the necessity of success of the campaign itself, except that similar campaigns existed for pro-Russia and fuck-Russia content all while celebrating Ukraine's destruction, sorry, fight for independence, officially.
These campaigns are part of a cluster. They are not meant to merely polarize but to make some people resign and follow public/ the states' opinions much quicker than they normally would. At the same time, buffs, journalists, educated people and the rational kind spend more time sieving through information sources that are bloated.
I'm not saying this is a conspiracy, hell no, it's entanglement, it's marketing, it's the business of politics and national establishments and companies challenging each other to test ludicrous strategies to sway public opinion. It's all from the modern "The Drump" playbook. Just imagine how at least enough people who fall for campaigns like this, feel when they are told the truth. How many will get angry, really? How many are going to start gearing and studying up? Who are they to trust if their own government supports governments who have the need to run campaigns like this?
This whole "making people support conflicting causes" has been working pretty damn well for the (alt)Right, who is desperately trying to diminish young peoples' independence and turn them all into obedient followers to sell their 'stones are really hard' books and narratives and time on screen.
It's just dozens of millions but that's the few you need make the elected look your way when they are ready to pay2win "at all cost".
So how can we fight this with engineering? We need analysis run by red and blue teams from universities worldwide. I mean it's 2024. The scientific community does it, but their time is dictated by the scientific method. Or are there live projects already?
Still I fail to understand why the mods let this happen. Maybe quantity over quality.
I know propaganda is a thing, but it feels like we are getting more about a foreign government than our own.
I feel like before what is going on now I was aware of some of the groups responsible for this being a thing, but was not fully aware just how much money there was in it those organizations until recently.
Some of the practices are concerning, like I found out recently apparently the Boston police regularly go over to Israel for training?
Regardless of what is going on right now, I don't understand how this much power over the US was ever deemed acceptable?
You also get stuff like the POTUS repeating lies like "40 beheaded babies" and "a mother and child had kerosene poured on them" with none of the usual media freakout you usually see over "misinformation."
Next to articles about the protests or other things, there are the articles about the hostages or something else that just feels like a propaganda piece aimed at one thing.
And that is just the headlines.
> An investigation by the New York Times discovered that top Pentagon officials met with news analysts where they gave the analysts 'special information' and then tried to convince them to speak favorably about the Iraq war. The discovery was based on 8000 pages of secret information that had been revealed to The New York Times through a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act. The article states that top Pentagon officials would invite news analysts to secret meetings, and urge the analysts to speak positively of the war. Often, the US would give "classified information," trips, and contracts to the news analysts.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_coverage_of_the_Iraq_War
Yeah. The politicians who repeated this also never apologized for inflaming tensions without any evidence or investigation whatsoever. But anything Israel is accused of, requires thorough investigation by Israel (or sometimes independently - without ever mentioning Israel will not allow independent investigators into Gaza), before we can even think about trusting the people they're killing currently, regardless of affiliation.
Then you read https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231215-israel-social...
And you see that 20 children 15 and younger were killed in total, and out of them 10 by rockets, which starts to paint very different picture. So militants killed 20-36 children depending on how you wish to define a child, out of 1200 people in total. So that's 1.7-3% of killed victims.
On the other hand, you get at least 16 000 killed children by Israel in just the last 8 months. 60 a day at least.
https://time.com/6909636/gaza-death-toll/
And you can see 10-5 a day individually just scrolling through video posts on telegram https://t.me/eyeonpal/
And we're supposed to think that Hamas are child killing monsters and Israel is not and somehow uniquely righteous. Yeah, right. Just the math alone on this doesn't compute for me, at all.
That is currently the NYT headline - How can you call it Israeli propaganda is beyond me.
I guess you're not a fan of Occam's razor? The simplest explanation here seems pretty straightforward, and no, it doesn't involve some NYT conspiratorial behavior.
Free speech sometimes applies to things you don’t like. There’s pro and anti propaganda for just about any foreign interest. Some of it’s just more subtle such as recommendations on TikTok.
Ukraine had really obvious pro Ukraine requests for military aid and images of destruction, but quite a bit of pro Russia propaganda was more subtle aiming for people to stay out of it.
With Israel you see some really blatant pro Israel propaganda, but both sides also have a lot of more subtle stuff.
Also issues like where you are not allowed to refuse to work with Israel if you are an arms manufacturer in the US (but you can refuse to work with the US military). I know that part of that is due to Israel being part of the FMS list but they are also the largest recipient on it...
...and in the United States we've defined down "free speech" to include "monetary donations."
I personally think people misunderstand to whom "freedom" is granted and defended in the US, it is demonstrably not freedom of the individual, but of the powerful.
free speech is a legal concept, and ROI is not a legal concept; when debts are enforced by courts, they frequently don't even enforce interest as if time value of money doesn't exist.
I’m not particularly happy about that law or similar ones in other states, but what you said is inaccurate.
The moment anybody else in the world stops boycotting Israel then finally Texas citizens will be fully free to boycott Israel
Therefore All companies ARE allowed to “boycott energy companies, discriminate against firearm entities or associations, or boycott Israel” https://texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/images/...
Not doing business is something else. States regularly prohibit companies over 500 employees from signing specific contracts, that doesn’t make it illegal to be a company with over 500 employees.
My point was that there is a foreign country that has successfully written laws (using a 'model act', i.e. copy-paste) for 38 US states that is not intended to serve the interest of US citizens, but that of the foreign country. I'm not aware of any other examples of that amount of reach by other countries or foreign interests. Maybe petrochemical/energy?
Open a carwash in Texas and you can put up big posers saying you’re boycotting Israel and the state isn’t going to do crap. There are state laws that prohibit state agencies from contracting such companies, but that’s a different question and only really applies to a small percentage of companies.
If you disagree try and post full text of the actual legislation it’s completely clear what’s going on.
It's way more restrictive, yes. It's still surreal to me.
But the same is true if someone wanted to boycott Canada. That company wouldn't be able to work/contract with state agencies.
In what way is that surreal or surprising?
Also it’s not every contract between companies and the state. Texas uses 10+ employees companies and 100,000+$ contracts as the minimum threshold before language must be added to the contract during the terms of the contract.
But after signing such a contract the company is still only bound by a contract. Breaking contracts happens all the time it’s not illegal. Excluding Fraud etc it becomes a civil rather than a criminal matter.
How do you know how much we get from Israel relative to others?
US politicians can direct funds to Israel and Israel can support them or attack their rivals.
I can't prove that these are somehow connected to funding from Israel, but it seemed like these billboards were ready to go at a moment's notice.
As far as why we deem foreign propaganda as acceptable, I like to think that we play dumb about it in part so we can strategically point it out when it is in the favor of politicians and/or elites. Remember how Russian propaganda supposedly got Trump elected even though it was going on during prior years when the establishment insisted on the integrity of the elections? On the other hand, maybe we are just dumb.
Right, that is what we got in Boston. The timing is just too convenient.
Whether or not it is from Israel themselves or funding here for Israel is kinda a moot point when both have the same purpose: Propaganda for a foreign government.
It's not at all a moot point and you're coming pretty close to a generic 'dual loyalties' trope.
Some of "our" politicians work overtime for israel's interests and neglect their actual job and obligations towards America.
TBH when I said "propaganda" I was grouping a lot of that under that when I should have been more specific.
But that and similar things is what I was referring to with "I don't understand how this much power over the US was ever deemed acceptable".
I remember seeing the articles about them funding the campaign of someone opposing someone else who had been critical if Israel. I don't remember which state or what position, but it wasn't just a one off either.
and also a story from earlier this year: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/03/aipac-israel-spendi...
The MO is basically to try and defeat democrats in primaries who aren't giving carte blanche in terms of spending or support. If their candidate wins the primary, it doesn't matter much who wins the general election, since they have support of R's.
That's really common for most countries on earth though[0]. Gaining exposure and experience from other countries is very valuable for police forces.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Law_Enforcement_...
The Israel / Palestine conflict is one of those low-valence issues with the general public where a politician rarely gets punished for voting one way or another with the notable exception of cash lobbying and super PACs for/against a given candidate.
(Alternately, the client state that controls its patron.)
The upside is the relationship is symbiotic, US expands Israel's borders, wreaking havock in the region, but tests US's war apparatus under "defence" and prevents a unified Arab/Asia/Indo state.
Israel gets free reign to ignore international law, billions, while touting some story about a 'promised land'.
For a country which is meant to be one of the smartest out there, their propaganda campaigns are an utter disaster giveaway to anyone with a pulse and a few dozen brain cells.
Seems their propaganda works just fine if that's a commonly held belief :)
I take it back. They are smart with their hacking and that’s where it ends.
So are often russians, or chinese. Maybe the concentration is on another level, they are a tiny country but highly educated for generations.
I'd bet if we properly educated and developed whole world we would discover Einsteins and Bolts in many many places out there. Ie elite athletes often come from places around where they could do sport, ie mountaineers but also many others.
You want to see some of the crap the agencies were pushing out pre-Brexit and it worked, so I wouldn't classify the average UK citizen as much to be contended with (I am UK as well for ref).
My father was a fine one. His staff fucked off back to Europe, he couldn't hire anyone else and had to fold his company and retire. Then he found out he got cancer and that the NHS had staffing problems due to Brexit.
Me, I am better off for it as I fill a niche demand, but I voted against it because it was generally bad for society and I do not always vote in self-interest.
You are so right though - most people just will refuse to accept they were taken for fools with all the nasty rhetoric about ‘people coming in to our country’… and so many have even been convinced that ripping up the Human Rights act is somehow a good thing (??? Wtf!).
Rich people manipulating the minds of poor people was what Brexit was all about. At the time I was convinced this was a Russian move to make UK weaker. But then again, I was convinced for many years that Trump was a Russian asset to make America implode (which is kind of what happened).
All this hate for foreigners. It’s disgusting.
The funding is what secures these politicians' votes. The propaganda is what the politicians can use to justify their actions to everyone else. That it's laughably bad is a function less of the capabilities of Israel than the utter fealty that these politicans have to the Israeli cause.
(I know nothing about moderation tools)
Is Russia the main American ally in the region that contributes enormously to American intelligence and R&D, while also supporting American military operations?
In pretty much the same way, those who fall for long distance romance scams didn't find the love of their life, despite believing so. They found someone who is taking advantage of them.
Zero? I can't find a reliable source for any congress member being an Israeli citizen
https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/defining-antisem...
Lots of people going masks off now that is cool to be anti-semitic again but now we call it anti-zionist.
By this do you mean Jews? Should be prevent Jewish people from being allowed in congress?
"AIPAC is allowed to exist" Should we prevent it from existing becuase it supports a Jewish state? You have no issue with the hundreds of other lobbying groups, just the jewish one.
Odd that people are only concerned with AIPAC and not the other foreign PACS.
Wonder what the differentiating factor is?
https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs...
"Dual citizens" clearly means "dual citizens". If the OP had the information that many Jews in Congress were dual citizens, he was wrong- although in fairness it's an understandable false belief when you have US politicians coming to Congress wearing their IDF uniform or propose laws to give IDF veterans the same benefits that US veterans receive.
> concerned with AIPAC and not the other foreign PACS. Wonder what the differentiating factor is?
Just look at the the first PAC in the list you mentioned: it's Accenture. Classified as foreign because their headquarter is in an empty office of a tax haven. AIPAC is not even in this list: it's in the "ideology/ single issue" list, where it stands as the only pro-<some country> PAC in the list (and the 4th largest).
https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs...
I don't know. How many? I was curious and Googled, and couldn't find any good authoritative lists. This Quora answer [0] implies that the answer is zero, as does this Snopes article [1]. Both answers mention that there's various incorrect lists going around that are white supremacist propaganda.
[0] https://www.quora.com/Which-current-members-of-Congress-have...
[1] https://www.snopes.com/news/2024/02/05/dual-citizenship-elec...
Speaking personally - I am ethnically Jewish, although I’ve never practiced, and of Polish descent. Technically, if I were to go through the necessary processes, I could acquire citizenship of Israel or Poland. Despite that: I’ve never been to either country, have no known family there, I don’t speak either Hebrew or Polish…the notion that I have any meaningful connection to these foreign countries beyond trivial historical facts is absurd to me. And the idea that, were Poland or Israel to become geopolitical adversaries of Canada, I would be viewed with mistrust, as less Canadian because, through quirks of family history and bureaucracy I’ve been made an offer I never accepted, is pretty disheartening.
At any rate, the upshot of this line of thinking - that we must be wary of Jews with matters of national importance because they are, through no choice of their own, supposedly beholden to a foreign power - is enormously problematic and, yes, anti-Semitic. Similar logic was used to justify Japanese internment camps.
The downside of that though is that I've seen tons and tons of Jewish public figures completely downplay what's happening in Gaza, almost reflexively. Either that or unabashed support for the IDF. All of that is also common even amongst my more liberal Jewish friends/acquaintances. That's completely understandable in a way, to unite for that cause in this context but it also means that the biais is hard to ignore. Though I don't see it as loyalty to a foreign power at all, they are completely american/Canadian/whatever.
So I see it more as an issue that'd be similar to an all white congress voting on issues that mostly impact black people or other minorities. Is it loyalty? Nope. Is there biais (conscious or not)? Yes. The same goes for a congress with almost no Palestinian or even Muslim voices but a lot more Jewish voices imo.
But yes, the reality is that it almost always lead to a very dangerous way of thinking, and not just a discussion about biais
When his business gets boycotted, burned and stolen, when he won't be able to run for office or hold a government position, when his house gets marked and his kids won't be able to go to school the only safe place in that regard will be Israel.
Again, I agree that there can be an argument that Holocaust was a culminating event of the antisemitism in Europe. But i never felt that the antisemitism in the west makes Israel a safe space, is not very congruent one when the both West and Israel touts a shared set of Western values. It is even more surprising since the current conservatives call Western values as Judeo Christian. I would make it clear that people feeling being alienated even in presence of such values is understandable. But the events of establishing Israel, and the continued invasions of neighbouring countries, and the sheer atrocities committed in the process makes no sense to me. Not to say the constant attempts to portray people who have been living there as usurpers, harbouring Zionist Terrorists, are not the actions of some who seeks a safe space.
It's not surprising at all, should the Jews in the west just go about their lives with classic Christen, revived Marxism and newly imported Islamic antisemitism? These western government do nothing to counter it beside saying they condemn that, which means nothing.
Continued Invasions of neighboring countries?? Your bias is showing, every action of Israel is in response to aggression and terrorism by Israel's neighbors. Don't want to get invaded and bombed to hell? Shouldn't have fired thousands of missiles, rape, behead, mutilate, kidnap, harbor terrorists, dung terror tunnels, blocked trade blew up buses, restaurants and coffee shops. These "neighbors" of Israel always like to cry that Israel is the aggressor but it's always reflection.
They don't have any practice making a secular argument about the Palestinian situation, how could they? They fall back to assuring people that Israel is a friend to the US, that Israel is a democracy (a ton of its inhabitants are forced to live in ghettos and refugee camps), that Israel loves gay people (Israel doesn't have gay marriage, or even secular marriage except by treaty), and the worst: "Why don't you give America back to the Indians?"
Russian propaganda is bad, but it's also lazy: it gets them nothing and they don't put a lot of effort into it. Israel is trying as hard as it can. To not ethnically cleanse Israel leaves a population that Europe tried its best to exterminate drifting the stormy seas of having to compromise with their neighbors. This is a population whose neighbors once built factories in order to slaughter them more efficiently.
On a more serious note, I figured the majority of US lawmakers already supported the genocide. I'm surprised Israel feels the need to use propaganda for this
Just like how we knew everyone was always spying on everyone else long before Snowden, we should all know that everyone is doing this to everyone else long before all the revaluations come down to us. There is no benefit to assuming good faith here.