#democratic secretaries of state

[contemplatingoutlander]

It is disturbing that Musk's AI chatbot is spreading false information about the 2024 election. "Free speech" should not include disinformation. We cannot survive as a nation if millions of people live in an alternative, false reality based on disinformation and misinformation spread by unscrupulous parties. The above link is from the Internet Archive, so anyone can read the entire article. Below are some excerpts:

Five secretaries of state plan to send an open letter to billionaire Elon Musk on Monday, urging him to “immediately implement changes” to X’s AI chatbot Grok, after it shared with millions of users false information suggesting that Kamala Harris was not eligible to appear on the 2024 presidential ballot. The letter, spearheaded by Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon and signed by his counterparts Al Schmidt of Pennsylvania, Steve Hobbs of Washington, Jocelyn Benson of Michigan and Maggie Toulouse Oliver of New Mexico, urges Musk to “immediately implement changes to X’s AI search assistant, Grok, to ensure voters have accurate information in this critical election year.” [...] The secretaries cited a post from Grok that circulated after Biden stepped out of the race: “The ballot deadline has passed for several states for the 2024 election,” the post read, naming nine states: Alabama, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington. Had the deadlines passed in those states, the vice president would not have been able to replace Biden on the ballot. But the information was false. In all nine states, the ballot deadlines have not passed and upcoming ballot deadlines allow for changes to candidates. [...] Musk launched Grok last year as an anti-“woke” chatbot, professing to be frustrated by what he says is the liberal bias of ChatGPT. In contrast to AI tools built by Open AI, Microsoft and Google, which are trained to carefully navigate controversial topics, Musk said he wanted Grok to be unfiltered and “answer spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems.” [...] Secretaries of state are grappling with an onslaught of AI-driven election misinformation, including deepfakes, ahead of the 2024 election. Simon testified on the subject before the Senate Rules and Administration Committee last year. [...] “It’s important that social media companies, especially those with global reach, correct mistakes of their own making — as in the case of the Grok AI chatbot simply getting the rules wrong,” Simon added. “Speaking out now will hopefully reduce the risk that any social media company will decline or delay correction of its own mistakes between now and the November election.” [color emphasis added]

[simply-ivanka]

Indict. Prosecute. Incarcerate.

Zero tolerance for government officials manipulation of media, facts and public information.

[dadsinsuits]

John Kerry

[jonsnowunemploymentera]

I’m sorry but the best Jon Snow AUs are those where he is some sort of civil servant. I always see people headcannon him as ROTC/soldier or cop but I think they kind of miss the mark. GRRM has steadily been moving away from the traditional warrior archetype with Jon and more into the counts-pebbles ruler type. So the cannon compliant AUs are the ones where he ends up as some sort of government official. Maybe he could be a city hall manager or an ombudsman. He could be a state representative or maybe even a senator. Let me remind people that he’s the only elected leader in the series. AU!Jon Snow would totally be the extremely competent but also extremely depressed congressional representative from like, idk, Alaska.

[damonlakespt2]

There’s no way this is actually real rn i can’t wait to be completely obliterated by a nuclear missile in the next 4 years

[sporkfan14]

an interesting development in this election cycle is that i am now getting ads in which right-wing dudebro podcasters/influencers with bad haircuts unenthusiastically reverse their stance on voting and say that actually it does matter and you should do it and can register at the link below

like, buddy, put some joie de vivre into it. i can tell that you're new at this because you suck. the libs are owning you man, they're genuinely and earnestly out there getting people signed up while you're treating this like an ad read for Raid: Shadow Legends.

it's really funny to see them caught up in the conundrum of being obviously paid to encourage people to genuinely engage in civics while also not being so enthusiastic that they lose the attention and respect of their audience whose primary sense of identity is rooted in ironic detatchment from society.

[eightfourone]

surely there's 40k people in indiana who would vote for a socialist party

[morganablenewsmedia]

Anti-Party Activities: PDP Has Summoned Wike

Anti-Party Activities: PDP Has Summoned Wike PDP Describes Minister’s Threat ‘Disappointing’ On Monday, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) has disclosed that Nyesom Wike, the Minister of Federal Capital Territory, has been summoned through a letter. Wike who is to appear before the Party’s Disciplinary Committee to address allegation and answer petitions against him over threat and anti-party…

[minnesotafollower]

U.S. Again Ranks Cuba in Worst Category for Human Trafficking

On June 24, the U.S. State Department released its 2023 Trafficking in Persons Report on human trafficking, whose “severe forms” are defined in the U.S. Trafficking Victims Proetection Act (TVPA) as: “sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act has not attained 18 years of age” or “the recruitment,…

[nando161mando]

Nevada Democrats sue secretary of state and Green Party to block Jill Stein from ballot

[jacks-weird-world]

📸: Ig/JFKlibrary.

[dedalvs]

I was a student at UC Berkeley during the 2000 presidential election. The propaganda at that time was that Al Gore and George W. Bush were exactly the same candidate wearing different ties. There was no difference between them, so you should vote for Ralph Nader.

In 2016 the propaganda was Bernie Bros—and going both ways ("Hillary is an establishment candidate! You're not a real liberal if you don't vote for Bernie!" and also "Bernie will never win! If you EVER supported Bernie you're not a real liberal!").

This time the propaganda was Gaza. "How can you vote for a candidate that is a part of an administration responsible for GENOCIDE?!"

The thing with propaganda is it's always true—kind of. You can go right down the list and see the truth in all of these things:

Both Al Gore and George W. Bush were establishment candidates. Al Gore was the sitting vice president and a career politician and George W. Bush was the son of former president and vice president George Bush, who himself was vice president to Ronald Reagan.

HIllary Clinton was an establishment politican, the wife of a former president, and the sitting secretary of state. Bernie Sanders didn't have the party support to become the Democratic Party candidate on account of his history of independence.

Biden and Harris were in office during the Hamas attack on October 7th, 2023, and the US government has offered continued support to Israel in its couteroffensive.

Those things are true. But the true things were being used to distract the distractible from other arguably more important true things, e.g. that Al Gore's actual policies were more liberal than George W. Bush's; Hillary Clinton's policies were more liberal than Donald Trump's; and a Kamala Harris-led government was going to be better for Palestine than a Donald Trump-led government.

The goal with the propaganda each time was exaclty the same. It wasn't to get votes for a third party candidate or change policy or help Gaza.

The goal was to get liberals not to vote.

And it worked. Every time.

It'll work again, too, if we don't teach voters how to recognize this. It's pretty obvious though. If it's near an election and it's a wedge issue between liberal voters and ultra-liberal voters, that's the propaganda.

And it is 100% active and alive here on Tumblr.

[dadsinsuits]

John Kerry

[heritageposts]

The Grayzone has obtained slides from a confidential Israel lobby presentation based on data from Republican pollster Frank Luntz. They contain talking points for politicians and public figures seeking to justify Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip. Two prominent pro-Israel lobby groups are holding private briefings in New York City to coach elected officials and well-known figures on how to influence public opinion in favor of the Israeli military’s rampage in Gaza, The Grayzone can reveal. These PR sessions, convened by the UJA-Federation and Jewish Community Relations Council, rely on data collected by Frank Luntz, a veteran Republican pollster and pundit. [...] The Luntz-tested presentations on the war in Gaza urge politicians to avoid trumpeting America’s supposedly shared democratic values with Israel, and focus instead on deploying “The Language of War with Hamas.” According to this framing, they must deploy incendiary language painting Hamas as a “brutal and savage…organization of hate” which has “raped women,” while insisting Israel is engaged in “a war for humanity.” [...] Luntz’s Gaza war presentation puts his poll-tested tactics back in the Israel lobby’s hands, urging pro-Israel public figures to stay on the attack with incendiary language and shocking allegations against their enemies. In one focus group, Luntz asked participants to state which alleged act by Hamas on October 7 “bothers you more.” After being presented with a laundry list of alleged atrocities, a majority declared that they were most upset by the claim that Hamas “raped civilians” – 19 percent more than those who expressed outrage that Hamas supposedly “exterminated civilians.” Data like this apparently influenced the Israeli government to launch an obsessive but still unsuccessful campaign to prove that Hamas carried out sexual assault on a systematic basis on October 7. Initiated at Israel’s United Nations mission in December 2023 with speeches by neoliberal tech oligarch Sheryl Sandberg and former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a recipient of hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations and speaking fees from Israel lobby organizations, Tel Aviv’s propaganda blitz has yet to produce a single self-identified victim of sexual assault by Hamas. A March 5 report by UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence Pramila Patten did not contain one direct testimony of sexual assault on October 7. What’s more, Patten’s team said they found “no digital evidence specifically depicting acts of sexual violence.”

They also advice to use different language for Democrat and Republican voters, which inadvertently provides one of the most succinct explanation of the difference between the two genocidal parties that I've ever come across:

To make their arguments stick, Luntz recommends pro-Israel forces avoid the exterminationist language favored by Israeli officials who have called, for example, to “erase” the population of Gaza, and to instead advocate for “an efficient, effective approach” to eliminating Hamas. At the same time, veteran pollster acknowledges that Republican voters prefer phrases which imply maximalist violence, like “eradicate” and “obliterate,” while sanitized terms like “neutralize” appeal more to Democrats. Republican presidential candidates Nikki Haley and Donald Trump have showcased similar focus-grouped rhetoric with their calls to “finish them” and “finish the problem” in Gaza.

One of the slides, illustrating what language to use:

There are several more slides in the article. I recommend reading the whole thing, start to finish. One more thing I'd like to highlight though:

Luntz acknowledges Israel’s mounting PR problems in a slide identifying the most powerful tactics employed by Palestine solidarity activists. “Israelis attacking Israel is the second most potent weapon against Israel,” the visual display reads beside a photo of a protest by Jewish Voices for Peace, a US-based Jewish organization dedicated to ending Israel’s occupation of Palestine. “The most potent” tactic in mobilizing opposition to Israel’s assault on Gaza, according to Luntz, “is the visual destruction of Gaza and the human toll.” The slide inadvertently acknowledges the cruelty of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, displaying a bombed out apartment building with clearly anguished women and children fleeing in the foreground. But Luntz assures his audience, “It ‘looks like a genocide’ even though the damage has nothing to do with the definition.” According to this logic, the American public can become more tolerant of copiously documented crimes against humanity if they are simply told not to believe their lying eyes.

. . . full article on GZ (6 Mar 2024)

[sayruq]

A bill has been submitted to the United States congress calling for a full review of the country’s bilateral relationship with South Africa following the International Court of Justice ruling that found it plausible that Israel has committed acts of genocide against Gaza. The bipartisan bill which was introduced by US Republican congressman John James and Democratic Party congressman Jared Moskowitz this week could threaten South Africa’s prospects to benefit from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). The bill will still need to be discussed and passed by congress. It states that not later than 30 days after the date of enactment of this Act, US President Joe Biden in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, shall certify to the appropriate congressional committees and release publicly an unclassified determination explicitly stating whether South Africa has engaged in activities that undermine United States national security or foreign policy interests.