Covert Israeli Disinfo Campaign Targeted Black Democrats
June 5: Israel’s fake accounts … Contraceptive-rights vote … Killer heat coming … GOP attacks prosecutors for prosecuting crime …
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The Israeli government last year paid a firm to create fake “news” websites, and hundreds of fake American accounts on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, which then urged Black Democrats to support funding Israel’s military, the New York Times reported this morning.
Israel, it’s worth noting, is a U.S. ally and already receives billions of dollars in support from the U.S.
Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs paid a Tel Aviv marketing firm $2 million to use the fake accounts to pressure more than a dozen U.S. lawmakers, “particularly ones who are Black and Democrats,” the Times says. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) are specifically named. So is Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY).
The accounts not only pushed pro-Israeli messages, but also sought to stoke concerns about alleged campus antisemitism.
Scholars of social-media bullshit told the Times this is the first confirmed case of the Israeli government using such campaigns to influence U.S. lawmakers. Ooookay.
The Israeli ministry denies its involvement, which unnamed Israeli officials told the Times was a naughty, naughty lie, even though hundreds of “Americans” agreed with it on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
The Times says that the influence campaign had several aspects in common with Israel’s military campaign in Gaza:
It used artificial intelligence
It hit the wrong targets (drawing 40,000 followers, many of them fellow bots)
It was executed poorly (profile pics didn’t match bios)
It didn’t work
Some of the examples of incompetence are kinda hilarious, notwithstanding the actual human suffering of two million human beings, obvi. At least twice, accounts with profile pics of Black men posted messages about what things are like for them, as a “middle-aged Jewish woman.” And 118 posts passed on pro-Israeli articles with the following, totally human, hear-it-all-the-time phrasing: “I gotta reevaluate my opinions due to this new information.”
The Times didn’t immediately get reaction from U.S. lawmakers, but presumably they gotta reevaluate their opinions due to this new information.
Senate Votes Today on Your Right to Birth Control
For years, I’ve largely rejected or at least pooh-poohed the argument that after outlawing abortion, Republicans would come for contraceptive rights. As longtime Newsfuckers know too well, I have a history of wrongness.
And so, when the Senate votes today on the Right to Contraception Act, in a shocking turn of events, the outcome is not a slam dunk!
The Guardian reports that it will be a “steep, if not impossible, uphill battle” to recognize that people have the right to battle sperm from going uphill. Even DCC3FRFP1 Donald Trump has aborted his own position on contraception. He has said his campaign was “looking at” the issue, and that contraceptive rights should be up to the states, and then that he wouldn’t advocate against contraception — which doesn’t negate it being up to the states. (We know from the testimony of Trump sex-haver Stormy Daniels that Trump has eschewed contraception when it comes to his own personal speaker of his house2.)
Almost 90% of voters support contraceptive rights, which means even most MAGA voters support the right to contraception even as sex itself is becoming an option for fewer and fewer of them. So, Republicans have sought to rebrand popular birth-control methods — such as morning-after pills and intrauterine devices, as abortifacients…even though there’s nothing to aborti, let alone anything with a facie.
Of course, putative “originalist” Republicans may argue that the founding fathers never envisioned these modern methods for birth control. Presumably, Republicans will support legislation that permits contraceptive methods colonial Americans used to prevent pregnancies, such as condoms made from serf intestines, lemon-rind cervical caps, vaginal suppositories made from shit, and thinning the female population by labeling troublesome ones as witches and burning them.
Especially if Republicans successfully sheath their opposition in a filibuster, today’s vote could serve Democrats as a prophylactic to prevent the birth of a Republican Senate seven months from now.
Either way, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) says he’s already gestating an upcoming vote on in-vitro fertilization, which involves destroying unused embryos wholesale, which as Republicans see it is wholesale murder worse than killing 36,000 people with faces and differentiated limbs in Gaza.
Invisible Serial Killer Crosses Border from Mexico without Getting Papers Checked
After killing 61 people in Mexico, a vast dome of heat easily crossed America’s totally open-to-heat-transfer border and is now setting up shop in the American southwest, where it will kill more Americans than all other undocumented immigrants combined will.
It’s not clear how many people the heat dome will kill here, but it ain’t none. Last year, 645 people died of heat-related causes just in Maricopa County, AZ, home to America’s hottest city, the appropriately named Phoenix.
Temperatures in Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and parts of California are expected to be 20° hotter than usual while the killer heat dome is in town. Phoenix will top 110° while Death Valley will get above 120°. If the name Death Valley wasn’t enough of an indicator, do not go there, even if the local chamber of commerce renames it Iceberg Cove.
And, yes, climate researchers say this is because of climate change. And, yes, climate researchers say we’re basically too late to stop 20° hotter than usual from becoming the usual. In other words, our climate measures now are just locking the barn door after the horse has gone and dropped dead of heat exhaustion.
Local officials, however, are preparing their responses. Emergency responders in Phoenix will pack the heat’s victims in ice…ice created using electricity, the generation of which will just make heat stronger. Meanwhile, officials in Texas and other southern states are preparing for this summer’s record heat by bolstering their defenses against calls to install air conditioning in their prisons.
Some cell temperatures in un-air-conditioned southern prisons — i.e., most of them — routinely top 120°. But government officials in Texas, Florida, and other states reportedly are refusing to install air conditioning. Of course, behavior that licensed mental-health professionals might label “psychopathic,” unlicensed, unqualified, empathetic folks call good old-fashioned, small-town pragmatism.
Three quarters of Florida’s prisons lack air-conditioning. So do two-thirds of Texas prisons. Republicans in Texas, however, narrowly avoided missing out on this summer’s prisoner barbecue. Somehow, $545 million in funding for air-conditioning managed to make its way out of the House of Representatives. The Texas Senate, however, stopped the funding dead in its overheated tracks.
There’s a hearing June 27 involving a lawsuit to force Texas to cool its prisons no hotter than 85°. Presumably, the courtroom will be air-conditioned.
MEANWHILE A new study found that the record heat we saw last summer was due mostly to human activity such as driving gas-powered SUVs to go eat factory-farmed meat. Specifically, 92% of the increased heat is being blamed on humans. Disproportionately American humans. Disproportionately American Pentagon humans.
The rate at which Earth enhottened last year also hit a record, the study found. As of 2023, the Earth was getting hotter at a rate of 0.47° per decade. Also last year, America sucked or squoze more fossil fuels from the Earth than any nation ever has.
House GOP Adopts Pro-Crime Agenda
Once proudly the self-professed party of (non-white-collar) law and order, House Republicans yesterday went beyond recent defenses of career criminals and mounted a full-on effort to keep America safe from prosecutors.
Historically, the party prided itself as being tough on crime, supporting even extremist policing measures and systemically unjust prosecutions, routinely blasting Democrats for “coddling” criminals. After 9/11, many Republicans broadened their efforts to combat not just violent street crime, but Muslims and people of Arab descent or of Arab resemblance or of Arab- or Muslim-seeming attire.
Under Pres. Donald Trump, Republicans went hard after Black Lives Matter and the shadowy organized-crime cartel known as Antifa as part of an expanded anti-crime agenda that now included non-existent crime and the hypothetical criminal masterminds behind it.
Post-Trump, other fictional criminals joined the ranks under the GOP microscope. Now it was the vast national conspiracy to steal swing-state votes even in states where Republican officials held some of the levers of power. But having already failed to capture or even identify the criminal brains behind Antifa or BLM, Republicans yet again were unable to identify the obviously fictional geniuses who pulled off the caper of the millennium by rigging the entire nation’s election systems while Republicans controlled the White House, FBI, and Justice Department.
So Republicans have recently changed tack, going soft on non-fictional crime and redefining some crimes as both legal and/or awesome. There’s little rhyme or reason to the category of redefined non-crimes, other than the fact that they’re committed by Republicans and/or their allies. Such no-longer crimes include fraud, campaign-finance violations, and killing thousands of people in Gaza.
Their new tough-on-prosecutors approach was on full display in the House yesterday.
At a joint committee hearing, Republicans grilled America’s top prosecutor for prosecuting and for letting other prosecutors prosecute.
It wasn’t that Republicans had a problem with U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland authorizing a probe of Pres. Joe Biden, including a search of the sitting president’s home. It wasn’t that Garland put a Trump-appointed special counsel in charge of prosecuting Biden’s son. No, the problem for the GOP was that Garland also went after crimes with real, national implications.
(Republicans were right to criticize Garland for not releasing audiotapes of prosecutors interviewing Biden about the documents he shouldn’t have kept. They’ve already voted to hold Garland in contempt of Congress for it. And, yes, of course the GOP wants those tapes for political purposes. Political purposes are real purposes! Those tapes belong to we the people and the Justice Department holds on to far too much of our shit. Now who’s improperly holding documents, my dude?!?)
(The best Garland could come up with yesterday was that “releasing the audio would chill cooperation with the department in future investigations.” Too…I wanna say…bad?)
But Republicans also accused Garland of sending DOJ prosecutor Matt Colangelo to work for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, so Colangelo could prosecute Trump in Bragg’s case. Which, of course, would’ve required Bragg’s consent — in which case, if Bragg were already cooperating, why would Garland need to send Colangelo?
Anyhoo! Facts and logic notwithstanding or even withsitting, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) accused Garland of dispatching Colangelo to Bragg to bag Trump. (Weird that Garland last year decided not to use his politicized prosecutors to get Gaetz for at least some of Gaetz’s multiple alleged ew-ing.)
What evidence did Gaetz have that Garland sent Colangelo to Bragg? The fact that Colangelo went to Bragg, obvi! (Garland denied sending Colangelo. Which, btw, would’ve been okay, too. Prosecutors have a history of cooperating to convict criminals!)
But perhaps the strongest stance Republicans took yesterday in not being strong on crime was the vote to sanction officials of the International Criminal Court (ICC) who obtained warrants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. (The ICC warrants for Hamas leaders are apparently okay.)
House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX), a former prosecutor, said, “I want to be clear the case against Israel is baseless.” How so? It’s not so much a denial that Israel restricted Gaza’s food and water, or that faminizing people violates the international mandate that created the ICC. The real problem Republicans have with the warrants is that Israel isn’t an ICC signatory.
That’s right, Republicans want accused criminals to walk on a technicality. Fun fact; Republicans used to hate walking on technicalities! (Note: Palestinian officials are signatories to the ICC, which is the basis for the ICC claiming jurisdiction over shit that happens in or to Gaza.)
On this legislation, some Democrats lived up to their own history of not upholding the law; 42 of them voted to downhold the rule of international law.
And the bill didn’t stop with Israel. Reportedly, it includes measures that are soft-on-future-crime, creating an entire class of people literally above international law. “Protected [from the law]” persons include U.S. military and government officials — exactly the category of people most likely to commit the kinds of crimes the ICC prosecutes.
The White House said it opposes the bill — but didn’t issue a veto threat. Meaning, in theory, if the Senate passes this thing, Biden could sign off on visa bans and asset freezes for prosecutors who prosecute crimes.
Yesterday’s attacks on prosecutors came just one day after the House GOP on Monday expanded its merciful protections to coddle not just criminals, but novel coronaviruses.
The GOP revived its soft-on-pandemics strategy, battering a retired top scientist who crossed the line with excessive zeal combating a pandemic that killed more than a million Americans.
Ironically, the GOP could have scored genuine, substantive points against Dr. Tony Fauci for not doing or advocating more. But that would clash with their anti-government-doing-more philosophy, which helped kill more than a million Americans.
TCB
NICOLE SANDLER Catch me every Monday with the weekly “The Fucking News” segment on The Nicole Sandler Show, which you can watch/listen to live every Monday at 5pm, or on demand, here.
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Go get ‘em, kids…!
DCC3FRFP = Disgraced, criminally convicted, tridicted, fraudster, rapist, former President.
His Johnson! Because “johnson” also means penis! (Apologies to any Newsfuckers out there with this much-maligned surname.)
Brilliant wrap up!