cross-posted from: lemmy.ml/post/39882721

Belly of the Beast video channel hosted on PeerTube.wtf
is now caught up with the collection on YouTube. From now on, new #videos from YouTube will be quickly loaded to #PeerTube as well. [The previous Cuddly.Tube channel will be taken down soon.]

URL: peertube.wtf/c/cuba/_botb/_vid…

Also significant is the expansion of playlists. BotB produces a lot of videos, and it is sometimes difficult to find what you are looking for. I spent some time going through the collection and adding playlists.

If you set up a login on PeerTube.wtf, you could also develop and save your own private playlists. But logins are not necessary to browse videos on PeerTube.wtf.

One playlist that will probably get a lot of use is Cuba and #Palestine, which contains 17 videos.

When you get a chance, please check them out.

#LetCubaLive #EndTheEmbargo #Solidarity #FreePalestine
#politics #BellyOfTheBeast #Cuba #Gaza

@palestine

Peter Link

2025-12-05 02:37:28

Belly of the Beast video channel hosted on PeerTube.wtf

Belly of the Beast video channel hosted on PeerTube.wtf
is now caught up with the collection on YouTube. From now on, new #videos from YouTube will be quickly loaded to #PeerTube as well. [The previous Cuddly.Tube channel will be taken down soon.]

URL: peertube.wtf/c/cuba/_botb/_vid…

Also significant is the expansion of playlists. BotB produces a lot of videos, and it is sometimes difficult to find what you are looking for. I spent some time going through the collection and adding playlists.

If you set up a login on PeerTube.wtf, you could also develop and save your own private playlists. But logins are not necessary to browse videos on PeerTube.wtf.

One playlist that will probably get a lot of use is Cuba and #Palestine, which contains 17 videos.

When you get a chance, please check them out.

#LetCubaLive #EndTheEmbargo #Solidarity #FreePalestine
#politics #BellyOfTheBeast #Cuba #Gaza

@palestine

https://peertube.wtf/c/cuba_botb_videos/videos

José Luis Granados Ceja
Dec 06, 2025

Days removed from Sunday’s presidential vote, and still without a clear winner, Honduras’s post-election crisis became more contentious after a member of the country’s electoral authority denounced “monumental electoral fraud” on Thursday evening.

Marlon Ochoa, a representative for the Libre Party on the three-member National Electoral Council (CNE), alleged coordinated and deliberate electoral fraud carried out by the other council members, Cossette Alejandra López-Osorio of the National Party and Ana Paola Hall of the Liberal Party.

Honduras Plunges Into Post-Election Turmoil as Electoral Official Alleges “Monumental Fraud”

A member of Honduras’s electoral authority says deliberate manipulation and internal sabotage compromised the general election vote—complicating a razor-thin race marred by U.S. interference.

^{José Luis Granados Ceja (Drop Site News)}

A new, disturbing detail in the “drug boat” controversy that has enveloped Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the past week calls the purpose of the entire operation into question.

According to an exclusive report from CNN, the alleged narco-trafficking boat that the U.S. military targeted on September 2 in a “double tap” strike, which killed 11 people, wasn’t even heading to the U.S.

Navy Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley, who was in charge of the operation, reported to lawmakers that the boat they struck was actually en route to link up with a larger boat that was heading to Suriname, a country east of Venezuela, two sources with direct knowledge of his remarks said.

Bradley also said that it was still possible that the alleged drug shipment could have eventually ended up in the U.S., the sources told CNN—rather dubious justification for a strike that left several people dead.

The Alleged Drug Boat Wasn’t Even Heading to the U.S.: Report

This new detail eviscerates Pete Hegseth’s argument.

^{The New Republic}

cross-posted from: news.abolish.capital/post/1209…

Are you on Trump's naughty list?

Attorney General Pam Bondi is ordering the FBI to “compile a list of groups or entities engaging in acts that may constitute domestic terrorism,” according to a Justice Department memo published here exclusively.

The target is those expressing “opposition to law and immigration enforcement; extreme views in favor of mass migration and open borders; adherence to radical gender ideology,” as well as “anti-Americanism,” “anti-capitalism,” and “anti-Christianity.”

That language echoes the so-called indicators of terrorism identified by President Trump’s directive National Security Presidential Memorandum-7, or NSPM-7, which the memo says it’s intended to implement. Where NSPM-7 was a declaration of war on just about anyone who isn’t MAGA, this is the war plan for how the government will wage it on a tactical level.

In addition to compiling a list of undesirables, Bondi directs the FBI to enhance the capabilities (and publicity) of its tipline in order to more aggressively solicit tips from the American public on, well, other Americans. To that end, Bondi also directs the FBI to establish “a cash reward system” for information leading to identification and arrest of leadership figures within these purported domestic terrorist organizations. (The memo later instructs the FBI to “establish cooperators to provide information and eventually testify against other members” of the groups.)

From Ken Klippenstein via This RSS Feed.

FBI Making List of American “Extremists,” Leaked Memo Reveals

^{Ken Klippenstein}

AI models can meaningfully sway voters on candidates and issues, including by using misinformation, and they are also evading detection in public surveys according to three new studies.

Scientists are raising alarms about the potential influence of artificial intelligence on elections, according to a spate of new studies that warn AI can rig polls and manipulate public opinion.

In a study published in Nature on Thursday, scientists report that AI chatbots can meaningfully sway people toward a particular candidate—providing better results than video or television ads. Moreover, chatbots optimized for political persuasion “may increasingly deploy misleading or false information,” according to a separate study published on Thursday in Science.

“The general public has lots of concern around AI and election interference, but among political scientists there’s a sense that it’s really hard to change peoples’ opinions, ” said David Rand, a professor of information science, marketing, and psychology at Cornell University and an author of both studies. “We wanted to see how much of a risk it really is.”

404 Media

2025-12-04 19:00:28

Scientists Are Increasingly Worried AI Will Sway Elections

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Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week.

Scientists are raising alarms about the potential influence of artificial intelligence on elections, according to a spate of new studies that warn AI can rig polls and manipulate public opinion.

In a study published in Nature on Thursday, scientists report that AI chatbots can meaningfully sway people toward a particular candidate—providing better results than video or television ads. Moreover, chatbots optimized for political persuasion “may increasingly deploy misleading or false information,” according to a separate study published on Thursday in Science.

“The general public has lots of concern around AI and election interference, but among political scientists there’s a sense that it’s really hard to change peoples’ opinions, ” said David Rand, a professor of information science, marketing, and psychology at Cornell University and an author of both studies. “We wanted to see how much of a risk it really is.”

In the Nature study, Rand and his colleagues enlisted 2,306 U.S. citizens to converse with an AI chatbot in late August and early September 2024. The AI model was tasked with both increasing support for an assigned candidate (Harris or Trump) and with increasing the odds that the participant who initially favoured the model’s candidate would vote, or decreasing the odds they would vote if the participant initially favored the opposing candidate—in other words, voter suppression.

In the U.S. experiment, the pro-Harris AI model moved likely Trump voters 3.9 points toward Harris, which is a shift that is four times larger than the impact of traditional video ads used in the 2016 and 2020 elections. Meanwhile, the pro-Trump AI model nudged likely Harris voters 1.51 points toward Trump.

The researchers ran similar experiments involving 1,530 Canadians and 2,118 Poles during the lead-up to their national elections in 2025. In the Canadian experiment, AIs advocated either for Liberal Party leader Mark Carney or Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre. Meanwhile, the Polish AI bots advocated for either Rafał Trzaskowski, the centrist-liberal Civic Coalition’s candidate, or Karol Nawrocki, the right-wing Law and Justice party’s candidate.

The Canadian and Polish bots were even more persuasive than in the U.S. experiment: The bots shifted candidate preferences up to 10 percentage points in many cases, three times farther than the American participants. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why the models were so much more persuasive to Canadians and Poles, but one significant factor could be the intense media coverage and extended campaign duration in the United States relative to the other nations.

“In the U.S., the candidates are very well-known,” Rand said. “They've both been around for a long time. The U.S. media environment also really saturates with people with information about the candidates in the campaign, whereas things are quite different in Canada, where the campaign doesn't even start until shortly before the election.”

“One of the key findings across both papers is that it seems like the primary way the models are changing people's minds is by making factual claims and arguments,” he added. “The more arguments and evidence that you've heard beforehand, the less responsive you're going to be to the new evidence.”

While the models were most persuasive when they provided fact-based arguments, they didn’t always present factual information. Across all three nations, the bot advocating for the right-leaning candidates made more inaccurate claims than those boosting the left-leaning candidates. Right-leaning laypeople and party elites tend to share more inaccurate information online than their peers on the left, so this asymmetry likely reflects the internet-sourced training data.

“Given that the models are trained essentially on the internet, if there are many more inaccurate, right-leaning claims than left-leaning claims on the internet, then it makes sense that from the training data, the models would sop up that same kind of bias,” Rand said.

With the Science study, Rand and his colleagues aimed to drill down into the exact mechanisms that make AI bots persuasive. To that end, the team tasked 19 large language models (LLMs) to sway nearly 77,000 U.K. participants on 707 political issues.

The results showed that the most effective persuasion tactic was to provide arguments packed with as many facts as possible, corroborating the findings of the Nature study. However, there was a serious tradeoff to this approach, as models tended to start hallucinating and making up facts the more they were pressed for information.

“It is not the case that misleading information is more persuasive,” Rand said. ”I think that what's happening is that as you push the model to provide more and more facts, it starts with accurate facts, and then eventually it runs out of accurate facts. But you're still pushing it to make more factual claims, so then it starts grasping at straws and making up stuff that's not accurate.”

In addition to these two new studies, research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last month found that AI bots can now corrupt public opinion data by responding to surveys at scale. Sean Westwood, associate professor of government at Dartmouth College and director of the Polarization Research Lab, created an AI agent that exhibited a 99.8 percent pass rate on 6,000 attempts to detect automated responses to survey data.

“Critically, the agent can be instructed to maliciously alter polling outcomes, demonstrating an overt vector for information warfare,” Westwood warned in the study. “These findings reveal a critical vulnerability in our data infrastructure, rendering most current detection methods obsolete and posing a potential existential threat to unsupervised online research.”

Taken together, these findings suggest that AI could influence future elections in a number of ways, from manipulating survey data to persuading voters to switch their candidate preference—possibly with misleading or false information.

To counter the impact of AI on elections, Rand suggested that campaign finance laws should provide more transparency about the use of AI, including canvasser bots, while also emphasizing the role of raising public awareness.

“One of the key take-homes is that when you are engaging with a model, you need to be cognizant of the motives of the person that prompted the model, that created the model, and how that bleeds into what the model is doing,” he said.

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Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week.

Persuading voters using human–artificial intelligence dialogues - Nature

Human–artificial intelligence (AI) dialogues can meaningfully impact voters’ attitudes towards presidential candidates and policy, demonstrating the potential of conversational AI to influence political decision-making.

^Nature

Nearly half of Europeans see Donald Trump as “an enemy of Europe”, rather more rate the risk of war with Russia as high and more than two-thirds believe their country would not be able to defend itself in the event of such a war, a survey has found.

The nine-country poll for the Paris-based European affairs debate platform Le Grand Continent also found that nearly three-quarters of respondents wanted their country to stay in the EU, with almost as many saying leaving the union had harmed the UK.

Jean-Yves Dormagen, a political science professor and founder of the polling agency Cluster17, said: “Europe is not only facing growing risks, it is also undergoing a transformation of its historical, geopolitical and political environment. The overall picture [of the survey] portrays a Europe that is anxious, that is deeply aware of its vulnerabilities and that is struggling to project itself positively into the future.”

The polling found that an average of 48% of people across the nine countries see Trump as an outright foe – ranging from highs of 62% in Belgium and 57% in France to lows of 37% in Croatia and 19% in Poland.

Half of Europeans see Trump as enemy of Europe, survey finds

Nine-country poll finds half of people believe risk of war with Russia is high and three-quarters want to stay in EU

^{Jon Henley (The Guardian)}

cross-posted from: lemmy.sdf.org/post/46691137

Archived

• China will impose a 13% value-added tax on contraceptive drugs and devices, including condoms, for the first time in three decades.
• The revision to the Value-Added Tax Law also exempts child-care services, elder-care institutions, disability service providers, and marriage-related services from the tax.
• The changes are part of China's efforts to reverse plunging birth rates and encourage people to have more children, as the population has shrunk for three consecutive years.

[...]

China will impose a value-added tax on contraceptive drugs and devices — including condoms — for the first time in three decades, its latest bid to reverse plunging birth rates that threaten to further slow its economy.

Under the newly revised Value-Added Tax Law, consumers will pay a 13% levy on items that had been VAT-exempt since 1993, when China enforced a strict one-child policy and actively promoted birth control.

At the same time, the revision carves out new incentives for prospective parents by exempting child-care services — from nurseries to kindergartens — as well as elder-care institutions, disability service providers and marriage-related services. The changes take effect in January.

They reflect a broader policy pivot, as a rapidly aging China shifts from limiting births to encouraging people to have more children. The population has shrunk for three consecutive years, with just 9.54 million births in 2024 — barely half of the 18.8 million registered nearly a decade ago, when the one-child policy was lifted.

[...]

China Adds Tax to Condoms as It Works to Boost Birth Rates

^{Karoline Kan (Bloomberg)}

The murder of Imad al-Najjar is one of thousands committed by Assad's forces that are captured in a huge compilation of government files and photos known as the Damascus dossier.

The 134,000 Syrian security and intelligence records were obtained by German public broadcaster NDR, which shared them with the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and its global network of media partners, including CBC News.

The leaked records include 70,000 images — many of them gruesome photos of torture victims' bodies taken and catalogued by Syrian military police — as well as 64,000 files from Syrian intelligence agencies, including many death certificates and arrest reports.

Journalists who analyzed the photos were able to count 10,212 bodies of detainees. The images mostly range from 2015 through 2024. Until now, the Syrian public did not know about the existence of the photos.

cross-posted from: mander.xyz/post/42997414

Web archive link

The EU is considering legally forcing industries to reduce purchases from China to insulate Europe from future hostile acts, the industry commissioner, Stéphane Séjourné, says.

He made his remarks as the European Commission unveiled a €3bn (£2.63bn) strategy to reduce its dependency on China for critical raw materials amid a global scramble caused by Beijing’s “weaponisation” of supplies of everything from chips to rare earths.

The ReSourceEU programme will seek to de-risk and diversify the bloc’s supply chains for key commodities with a funding initiative to support 25-30 strategic projects in the sector.

It will include new rules to stop scrap aluminium leaving the bloc, recycling of magnets used in car batteries and a new €2bn a year fund backed by the European Investment Bank to support industries diversifying away from cheap Chinese supplies.

Underlining the threats posed by over dependency on China, Séjourné said if industry did not respond, the commission reserved the right to introduce legislation.

“We would force European companies legally to diversify their sources of supply. That is not the case now, and it is not what is proposed in the plan [ReSourceEU] but this is a wake up call, a strong wake up call,” said Séjourné.

...

Senior EU officials said that “while the direction is clear” there was a need to “accelerate the process” as China continued to “weaponise” its hold on raw materials for “geopolitical purposes”.

To kickstart the implementation of the strategy, two projects, a molybdenum extraction in Greenland and a lithium mine in Germany will get immediate funding.

The EU will also look at financial support to enable companies to buy from more expensive sources than China and it will set up a “raw materials platform” that will pool company orders and build joint stockpiles.

New restrictions will be introduced on scrap exports in 2026 of the metal and of scrap copper if necessary.

...

The EU said the strategy was designed to reduce the impact of “market shocks” such as the disruption to the car industry caused by the recent, now lifted, ban on exports of chips by China in response to the Dutch government taking control of the Chinese-owned chip firm Nexperia.

...

Up to €3bn in funding will be mobilised within the next 12 months, with €2bn a year made available by the European Investment Bank in the form of loans, venture debt and private debt plus financing such as loans already issued to a Finnish lithium mine project Keliber.

...

EU looks at legally forcing industries to reduce purchases from China

Commission unveils €3bn strategy to de-risk and diversify supply chains for critical rare earth metals and elements

^{Lisa O’Carroll (The Guardian)}

cross-posted from: lemmy.sdf.org/post/46689577

Archived

[...]

In a society where political plurality is crushed, pointing out the existing problems that may eventually put blame on the government and political establishment is dangerous.

[...]

Democracy is vital not only because our rights should be protected, but also because the mechanisms of checks and balances, and division of powers, builds resilience against those in power misbehaving. The collapse of political diversity and the rise of authoritarian governance come with consequences much more far-reaching than the imprisonment of political figures.

[...]

In the face of the tragedy [of the deadly Hong Kong fires], people demand answers about why so many safety procedures and warnings are being ignored. There should not only be arrests of advisors and contractors, but also a truly independent investigation, expanding the scope for civil actors to hold the government accountable.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/un-chief-guterres-end-war-ukraine-should-abide-by-international-law-2025-12-03/

Washington is unhappy that some European arms programs limit U.S. participation.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau on Wednesday slammed European NATO allies for prioritizing their own defense industry over American arms suppliers, according to three NATO diplomats.

The intervention came during Wednesday's meeting of NATO foreign ministers — which was skipped by Landau's boss Marco Rubio.

Landau, a longtime NATO skeptic who spoke first at the closed-door meeting, told ministers not to “bully” his country’s defense firms out of participating in Europe’s rearmament.

Top US official berates Europe over cutting American industry out of defense buildup

^{Victor Jack (POLITICO)}

Taiwan expressed thanks and China was upset on Wednesday after Donald Trump signed into law legislation requiring the U.S. State Department to regularly review and update guidelines on how the United States officially interacts with Taipei.

The United States is Taiwan's most important international backer despite the lack of formal diplomatic ties, and the issue is a constant source of irritation in Sino-U.S. relations given Beijing views the democratically-governed island as its own.

Taiwan Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung told reporters more frequent reviews of the guidelines would allow Taiwanese officials into federal agencies for meetings, for example, though the legislation does not make explicit mention of this.

In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said China firmly opposes any form of official contact between the United States and "the Taiwan region of China".

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/taiwan-cheered-china-upset-after-trump-signs-new-taiwan-legislation-into-law-2025-12-03/

Leaders focus on bolstering Ukraine’s finances as US-Russia talks to end war make little progress

The European Commission will move ahead with controversial plans to fund Ukraine with a loan based on Russia’s frozen assets, but in a concession to concerns raised by Belgium, which hosts most of the assets, the EU executive has also proposed another option: an EU loan based on common borrowing.

The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said on Wednesday the two proposals would ensure “Ukraine has the means to defend [itself] and take forward peace negotiations from a position of strength”.

EU leaders will be asked to decide on the options later this month, as Ukraine faces a looming funding crunch, while the latest round of US-Russia peace talks appear to have made little progress.

European Commission plans ‘reparations loan’ to Ukraine using frozen Russian assets

^{Jennifer Rankin (The Guardian)}

cross-posted from: hexbear.net/post/6952364

cross-posted from: news.abolish.capital/post/1196…

Most Palestinians in Gaza say they don’t feel the relief they expected after the ceasefire. Israel keeps blocking aid into the strip, delaying reconstruction efforts, and leaving hospitals short on supplies, while people go hungry every day.

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From Mondoweiss via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: hexbear.net/post/6952495