Mining company can't tap water needed for Okefenokee wildlife refuge, US says

Mon, March 4, 2024



SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — A federal agency is asserting legal rights to waters that feed the Okefenokee Swamp and its vast wildlife refuge, setting up a new battle with a mining company seeking permits to withdraw more than 1.4 million gallons daily for a project that critics say could irreparably harm one of America's natural treasures.

In a letter obtained by The Associated Press, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service tells Georgia state regulators that federal law prohibits diverting water from the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge in quantities that would harm its function as a protective habitat for native animal and plant species.

“Disruption to the natural flow of groundwater in this interconnected system could have far-reaching consequences for both the Refuge and surrounding areas,” Mike Oetker, the federal agency's acting Southeast regional director, wrote in a Jan. 31 letter to Georgia regulators. He added: “Any decision regarding the proposed mining permit must be made with consideration of federal reserved water rights.”

Twin Pines Minerals is on the cusp of obtaining permits it has sought since 2019 to mine titanium dioxide less than 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) from the southeastern boundary of the Okefenokee refuge, the largest U.S. refuge east of the Mississippi River.

The Okefenokee refuge covers nearly 630 square miles (1,630 square kilometers) in southeast Georgia and is home to more than 400 animal species including alligators and bald eagles. The swamp’s wildlife, cypress forests and flooded prairies draw roughly 600,000 visitors each year, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages the refuge.

Scientists have warned that mining near the Okefenokee's bowl-like rim could irreparably harm the swamp’s ability to hold water and increase the frequency of withering droughts. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland in 2022 declared the proposed mine poses an “unacceptable risk” to the fragile ecosystem at the Georgia-Florida line.

Twin Pines has insisted its proposed 773-acre (312-hectare) mine won’t harm the Okefenokee refuge. Regulators with the Georgia Environmental Protection Division have said their own analysis “concluded that water level in the swamp will be minimally impacted.”

The Georgia agency issued draft permits for the mining project Feb. 9, starting a 30-day period for public comments before regulators work up final permits for the agency’s director to approve.

While it's unclear how much permits might be delayed by the Fish and Wildlife Service's formal assertion of water rights, legal experts said Georgia regulators are legally obligated to work with the federal agency to ensure the Okefenokee keeps enough water to function as a wildlife refuge.

Legal issues dealing with water consumption are generally left to the states. However, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1908 established that public lands reserved by the federal government for Native American tribes, national parks and other purposes have rights to water that take precedence over other users.

“This doctrine does not just give the Fish and Wildlife Service a seat at the table," said Megan Huynh, an attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center. “It legally entitles the Okefenokee to as much water as is necessary to support the primary purpose of the refuge and wilderness area.”

While federal agencies commonly assert water rights for public lands in the West, where the arid climate makes water more scarce, they have rarely done so in the eastern U.S., said Ryan Rowberry, a Georgia State University law professor who has studied how federal reserved water rights protect public lands.

“Now we’re moving into a different era,” Rowberry said. Growth in population, industry and awareness that climate change is getting worse have called into question the premise that “there’s enough water for everybody" in eastern states, he said.

The move by the Fish and Wildlife Service seeks to reassert some level of federal oversight of Twin Pines' proposed mine. Typically, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would also need to approve permits. But it lost that authority over the Georgia project in 2020 because of regulatory rollbacks under then-President Donald Trump.

The Fish and Wildlife Service's letter to the Georgia Environmental Protection Division asks for federal officials and state regulators to meet and “work together to quantify the amount of water” the Okefenokee refuge needs. The state agency has not yet responded.

“Georgia EPD is reviewing the letter from U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service like all of the other comments being submitted" by the public on Twin Pines' mining application, John Eunice, the state agency's deputy director, said in an email Monday. He anticipated a response “once the public comment period has closed."

The groundwater use permit Twin Pines is seeking would allow an average daily withdrawal of 1.44 million gallons (5.45 million liters) of water from the Floridan Aquifer to process mining debris and waste. The plan calls for removal of additional water that gushes into mining pits during excavation.

Any discussions between federal officials, Georgia regulators and Twin Pines over the Okefenokee's water needs and how much water the proposed mine would divert from the swamp could be contentious. Hydrologists for the National Park Service said last year that documents Georgia regulators relied upon to conclude the mine wouldn't harm the refuge contained technical errors and “critical shortcomings” that made them unreliable. Regulators stood by their analysis.

Russ Bynum, The Associated Press

Column: Biden should hope he gets heckled at his State of the Union speech


Doyle McManus
Mon, March 4, 2024

President Biden's next State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress is Thursday. (Saul Loeb / Associated Press)

President Biden should hope he gets heckled by Republicans when he gives his State of the Union address on Thursday, just as he was last year.

Here's why.

Biden's campaign for a second term is in trouble. His job approval rating, normally a reliable indicator of an incumbent’s chances, is mired below 40%.

So the stakes for the State of the Union address, usually a forgettable event, are unusually high.

The president and his aides have been getting a tsunami of public advice from other Democrats, including strategists who worked for Presidents Obama and Clinton, on how to improve his prospects.

They say Biden needs to accomplish three goals: He needs to quell voters’ worries that at 81 he is too old to seek a second term. He needs to tackle, head-on, the issues on voters’ minds: high prices and immigration. And he needs to frame the election as a binary choice between him and former President Trump instead of a referendum on his first term.

Read more: California poll reveals how minor candidates could throw 2024 presidential race to Trump

For months, Biden has tried to joke his way out of voters’ concerns over his age — or worse, reacted angrily to questions about it.

“It’s crazy to think that if you don’t talk about it, people won’t think he’s old,” David Axelrod, Obama’s campaign strategist, said recently. “You won’t get a hearing unless you at least acknowledge to people, ‘Yeah, I get it.’”

Last week Biden took a half step in that direction, telling late-night television host Seth Meyers that both candidates are old, and that voters should focus on the differences between them.

“Take a look at the other guy — he’s about as old as I am," the president said of the 77-year-old Trump. "It’s about how old your ideas are. Look, I mean, this is a guy who wants to take us back. He wants to take us back on Roe v. Wade, he wants to take us back on a whole range of issues.”

That was a good start, but probably not enough.

“I don’t think they’ve put it to bed,” said Doug Sosnik, who helped Bill Clinton win a second term in 1996. “It’s still an issue. He needs to lean more forward on it.… This isn’t an issue he’s going to win; he just has to get to the point where he’s not losing on it.”

“We’ll have to do it again,” a Biden aide acknowledged.

Read more: Column: Trumponomics? He would impose the equivalent of a huge tax hike

Biden is unlikely to raise the age issue in his State of the Union speech. But merely by turning in a competent performance, he can rebut opponents’ claims that he’s not fit for the office.

In his address a year ago, he was handed a minor triumph by Republican zealots, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, whose heckling and the back-and-forth that followed showed he can still be quick on his feet. The president should hope for more of that kind of help again this year.

On the economy, aides say Biden will recount the achievements of his first three years, including bipartisan legislation on infrastructure and high-tech manufacturing.

On inflation, which is easing but still troublesome, he’ll talk about his push to negotiate down prescription prices for Medicare and his efforts to ban hidden “junk fees” charged by banks, hotels and other businesses.

Read more: Column: Trump wanted to pull the U.S. out of NATO. In a second term, he's more likely to try

And he’ll repeat his demand for legislation to “make the wealthy and corporations to pay their fair share,” meaning higher taxes on corporations and individuals making more than $400,000 a year.

On immigration, he’ll ask Congress — again — to pass the bipartisan Senate border bill that has been blocked by House Republicans. He previewed that pitch during his visit to Brownsville, Texas, last week, puckishly appealing to Trump to join him in support of the bill. With House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) sitting behind him, that part of the speech could set off fireworks.

He’ll talk about a long list of other issues as well, including reproductive rights — possibly including the recent ruling by Alabama’s conservative Supreme Court that had the effect of shutting down in vitro fertilization in the state.

Read more: 'What is this, "The Handmaid’s Tale"?' Exploring moral questions posed by controversial IVF ruling

The test of Biden’s success will be whether he can turn a speech that too often devolves into a laundry list of priorities into a coherent narrative of what he would seek in a second term.

“You need a compelling, consistent narrative on where the country is and how you’re going to make it better,” Sosnik said. “It’s got to be forward looking.”

Which brings us to the third goal: making the 2024 election a choice between two flawed candidates, not a referendum on Biden’s first three years.

“Most presidents can’t win a referendum, and Biden surely can’t, given the environment and the mood of the country right now,” Axelrod said on the podcast he co-hosts, "Hacks on Tap." “If it’s a referendum, it’s going to go poorly. If it’s a choice, I think he’s got a shot to win.”

Read more: Column: Biden's memory is failing. So is Trump's. The question is whose flaws are more dangerous

Biden offered a preview of that theme in his appearance with Meyers, when he framed the election as a choice between two old men — only one of whom “wants to take us back.”

Given the protocol of a State of the Union address, he’s unlikely to take Trump on by name, as he’s been doing more often in campaign events — calling the former president “dangerous,” a “threat to democracy” and, turning one of Trump's favorite insults back at him, “a loser.”

His rhetoric on Thursday will be more elevated, but the underlying goal will still be to make the contrast clear.

One way he can do that is on foreign policy, where he will press the Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson of Louisiana, to put his pending request for military aid for Ukraine to a vote. Biden is likely to remind Congress that defending U.S. allies against Russian President Vladimir Putin is a core national security goal. The comparison with Trump, an unabashed Putin fan, won't need to be spelled out.

So here’s a television recommendation rarely made before. This will be a State of the Union speech worth watching — even if the president isn't lucky enough to get heckled again.

Get the best of the Los Angeles Times’ politics coverage with the Essential Politics newsletter.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

VP Kamala Harris leads Bloody Sunday memorial as marchers' voices ring out for voting rights

The Canadian Press
Sun, March 3, 2024 



SELMA, Ala. (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris told thousands gathered for the 59th anniversary of the Bloody Sunday attacks on civil rights marchers in Selma, Alabama, that fundamental freedoms are under attack in America even today.

Harris joined those gathered at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where voting rights activists were beaten back by law enforcement officers in 1965. The vice president praised the marchers' bravery as they engaged in a defining moment of the civil rights struggle.

“Today, we know our fight for freedom is not over, because in this moment we are witnessing a full on attack on hard-fought, hard-won freedoms, starting with the freedom that unlocks all others, the freedom to vote,” Harris said.

She criticized attempts to restrict voting, including limits on early voting, and said the nation is again at a crossroad.

“What kind of country do we want to live in? Do we want to live in a country of freedom, liberty and justice? Or a country of injustice, hate and fear?” Harris asked, encouraging people to answer with their vote.

She said other fundamental freedoms under attack include "the freedom of a woman to make decisions about her own body.”

Harris paid tribute to the civil rights marchers who walked across the bridge in 1965 knowing they would face certain violence in seeking “a future that was more equal, more just and more free.”

Harris drew parallels between those who worked to stifle the Civil Rights Movement and “extremists” she said are trying to enact restrictions on voting, education and reproductive care.

Earlier Sunday, Attorney General Merrick Garland spoke at a Selma church service commemorating the anniversary of the attack by Alabama law officers on civil rights demonstrators. He said recent court decisions and certain state legislation have endangered voting rights in much of the nation.

“Since those (court) decisions, there has been a dramatic increase in legislative measures that make it harder for millions of eligible voters to vote and to elect representatives of their choice,” Garland told worshippers at Selma’s Tabernacle Baptist Church, the site of one of the first mass meetings of the voting rights movement.

“Those measures include practices and procedures that make voting more difficult; redistricting maps that disadvantage minorities; and changes in voting administration that diminish the authority of locally elected or nonpartisan election administrators,” he said. “Such measures threaten the foundation of our system of government.”

Decisions by the Supreme Court and lower courts since 2006 have weakened the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was passed in the wake of the police attacks in Selma, Garland said. The demonstrators were beaten by officers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 7, 1965, as they tried to march across Alabama to support voting rights.

The march and Garland’s speech were among dozens of events during the Selma Bridge Crossing Jubilee, which began Thursday and culminated Sunday.

The commemoration is a frequent stop for Democratic politicians paying homage to the voting rights movement. Some in the crowd gathered to see Harris speak about the upcoming November election and what appears to be a looming rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.

Khadidah Stone, 27, part of a crowd gathered at the bridge Sunday in light rain before the march, said she sees the work of today's activists as an extension of those who were attacked in Selma in 1965. Stone works for the voter engagement group Alabama Forward, and was a plaintiff in the Voting Rights case against the state that led to creating a second Alabama congressional district with a substantial number of Black voters. Voters will cast their first ballots in that district on Tuesday.

“We have to continue to fight, because they (voting rights) are under attack,” Stone said.

Nita Hill wore a hat saying "Good Trouble,” a phrase associated with the late Rep. John Lewis, who was beaten on the bridge during Bloody Sunday. Hill, 70, said it is important for Biden supporters to vote in November.

“I believe Trump is trying to take us back,” said Hill, a retired university payroll specialist.

Decades ago, images of the violence that at the bridge stunned Americans, which helped galvanize support for passing the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The law struck down barriers prohibiting Black people from voting.

U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, a Democrat of South Carolina who is leading a pilgrimage to Selma, said he is seeking to “remind people that we are celebrating an event that started this country on a better road toward a more perfect union,” but the right to vote is still not guaranteed.

Clyburn sees Selma as the nexus of the 1960s movement for voting rights, at a time when there currently are efforts to scale back those rights.

“The Voting Rights Act of 1965 became a reality in August of 1965 because of what happened on March 7th of 1965,” Clyburn said.

“We are at an inflection point in this country,” he added. “And hopefully this year’s march will allow people to take stock of where we are.”

___

Associated Press reporters Terry Spencer in Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Stephen Groves in Washington, D.C.; and Jeff Martin in Atlanta contributed to this report.

Kim Chandler, The Associated Press

UN rights chief calls for 'non-discriminatory' US election

Reuters
Mon, March 4, 2024 

Turk UN High Commissioner for Human Rights addresses the Human Rights Council in Geneva


GENEVA (Reuters) - The U.N. human rights chief on Monday called on the United States to protect the right to vote and ensure that this year's presidential election is "non-discriminatory".

The U.N. Human Rights Committee last year voiced concern at an "practices at the state level that limit the exercise of the right to vote", including partisan gerrymandering, restrictions on voting by mail and burdensome voter ID requirements.

Former President Donald Trump has based his current campaign for re-election on his false claims that the 2020 election he lost to Joe Biden was rigged.

"In this electoral year, it is particularly important for authorities at all levels to implement recent recommendations by the U.N. Human Rights Committee to ensure that suffrage is non-discriminatory, equal and universal," Volker Turk, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, told the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.

"In a context of intense political polarisation, it is important to emphasise equal rights, and the equal value of every citizen's vote," Turk said.

Trump is the frontrunner to be the Republican presidential nominee in the Nov. 5. election. Biden faces little opposition in the Democratic Party in his campaign for a second four-year term.

(Reporting by Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Donors raise $100K for prisoner who sent 13-cent hourly wages to Gaza

Maham Javaid, (c) 2024 , The Washington Post
Sun, March 3, 2024 

Hamza, 56, has been incarcerated for roughly 40 years and is expected to be released on parole in March. (Contributed by Justin Mashouf)

When Justin Mashouf’s incarcerated friend Hamza told him he needed help donating money to help civilians in Gaza, Mashouf said he was eager to support him.

When the pay stub arrived, Mashouf was stunned - all $17.74 of Hamza’s 13-cent-an-hour janitorial wages were marked for charity.

When Mashouf shared Hamza’s prison pay stub on social media, users raised more than $102,000 through a GoFundMe campaign, money intended to go to the 56-year-old California man who has been incarcerated for nearly 40 years and is set to be paroled this month.

The Washington Post agreed not to publish Hamza’s legal name - “Hamza” is a chosen name - because Mashouf said Hamza feared he would be risking his parole status by seeking attention.

When Hamza first pitched the idea of donating to civilians in Gaza to Mashouf, he was “concerned and heartbroken” about news that he was watching from prison.

“These last few months, he’s been very anxious about the state of the world, especially since he knows he is reentering the real world,” Mashouf said in a phone interview. “But when people began showing him kindness, it really helped ready him for this reentry.”

“He gave people hope by showing how selfless he is, and then they gave him hope through their kindness.”

Mashouf, a filmmaker, first contacted Hamza in 2009, when he was working on his documentary “The Honest Struggle.”

Hours after Mashouf first posted Hamza’s pay stub for 136 hours of janitorial work for the California Health Care Facility, a prison in Northern California, and donation check on social media, strangers began to ask how they could donate to Hamza.

First, he collected money on Venmo, but soon that got overwhelming, he said.

“There were thousands of people who wanted to help,” he said, and he realized that he needed to set up a GoFundMe page to manage the donations.

Legal records show that Hamza was convicted of one count of second-degree murder in 1986 and sentenced to 15 years to life. He pleaded guilty to the murder when he was a teenager, records show.

Mashouf said Hamza had been convicted of the murder of an uncle.

“Hamza accidentally fired a gun at a loved one … leading to his imprisonment for over four decades,” according to the GoFundMe page.

At the time of his conviction, the sentencing judge told Hamza that he would be released on adult parole, Hamza wrote in an appeal against the denial of his parole in 2013.

Hamza had appeared before the parole board 10 times between 1995 and 2013 and was routinely denied, his documents showed. California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation records show that Hamza was denied parole three more times between 2014 and 2023.

The GoFundMe page also laid out how Hamza converted to Islam in 1989 and how he would be spending his money once released: health care, housing, clothing, food, a job search and training. Hamza has already decided, however, that some of the donations meant for him will go to others in need, Mashouf said.

After Mashouf told Hamza that the funds were in the thousands, Hamza asked him to disable donations.

“He said whatever has already been donated is sufficient for him,” Mashouf said. “And that he didn’t want to distract people from those who were suffering more than him.”

In an update on the GoFundMe page, Hamza said he was eager to start his new life.

“I look forward to the promise of life, happiness, struggles and dreams, to soar and spread my wings, to be a man, a human being once again now that I know the preciousness and the incalculable value of Life,” he wrote.

Mashouf said that Hamza is a qualified electrician but would need computer and technological training to get up to speed before he joins the workforce outside prison.

Hamza will also be donating his March paycheck to civilians in Gaza, one that he hopes is his final check from prison.

Mayorkas Says Texas Gov. Greg Abbott Trying to ‘Wreak Havoc’ on U.S. States

Corbin Bolies
Sun, March 3, 2024 

CNN

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is hitting back at Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s criticism of the president, saying on Sunday that the governor’s suggestion that Joe Biden could hypothetically close the border “couldn’t be more wrong” and the governor was trying to “wreak havoc” on other U.S. states.

Abbott suggested on State of the Union last week that Congress already imbued Biden with the power to close the border, arguing Biden “needs a backbone” to enforce current immigration laws instead of demanding new ones. Appearing on the same program on Sunday, Mayorkas said Abbott’s preferred presidential candidate, Donald Trump, already tried that once—and failed.

“As a matter of fact, former President Trump tried to close the border and it was enjoined in the courts and never saw the light of day,” Mayorkas said. Trump attempted to close the Southern border through multiple channels—including travel bans, changes to asylum laws and the use of Title 42 during the COVID-19 pandemic. The latter effort stayed in place until Biden’s first term.

Mayorkas also didn’t hold back from criticizing Abbott directly, accusing him of bucking federal officials who sought to work with him and condemning him for sending buses of migrants to other U.S. cities.

“This coming from an individual who is purposefully refusing to coordinate, communicate, collaborate with other officials and trying to wreak havoc in other cities and states across the country,” Mayorkas said. “That is not a model of governance, and he couldn’t be more wrong.”

WAR IS ECOCIDE
Investigation: Why Ukraine is attacking Russian energy infrastructures

TIT FOR TAT

Lise Kiennemann
Mon, March 4, 2024 



Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian energy infrastructures have been increasing since early January, with targets including a fuel export terminal and processing complex in Ust-Luga, a refinery in Tuapse and another in Volgograd. Our investigations revealed that at least eight sites have caught on fire after drone attacks. Ukraine is likely carrying out their attacks to weaken the Russian economy – and to show off its military power, says analyst and energy expert Benjamin Schmitt

Images that circulated online show firefighters working to stop the flames consuming a petrol depot in the eastern Russian village of Polevaya the night of February 14.

The fires were caused by Ukrainian drone attacks, according to Roman Starovoyt, the governor of Kursk, the oblast, or region, where Polevaya is located. Ukrainian outlet Kyiv Post also reported that the fires were caused by Ukrainian drones, stating that this information came from "sources from Ukraine’s Military Intelligence”. l

The drone attacks in Polevaya are not isolated. Moscow has been targeting Ukrainian energy infrastructure for some time and, now, Ukraine is striking back. They’ve hit multiple Russian gas and petrol infrastructures in recent weeks.

In at least two other cases, Russia has claimed to foil a Ukrainian drone attack targeting Russian energy infrastructure.
Showing off Ukraine’s ability to strike

By hitting a target so far away, Ukraine is also demonstrating its potential to cause damage and destruction.

GREAT RUSSIAN CHAUVINISM & IMPERIALISM
Putin ally says 'Ukraine is Russia' and historical territory needs to 'come home'

Andrew Osborn
Updated Mon, March 4, 2024 

Russia's Security Council deputy head Medvedev meets military personnel in Ulyanovsk region


By Andrew Osborn

(Reuters) -Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council and an ally of President Vladimir Putin, described Ukraine on Monday as part of Russia and said what he called historical parts of Russia needed to "come home."

In a bellicose presentation that suggested Russia's military goals in Ukraine are far-reaching, Medvedev, who was Russia's president from 2008-2012, praised the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union and said Moscow would prosecute its "special military operation" until the Ukrainian leadership capitulated.

"One of Ukraine's former leaders said at some point that Ukraine is not Russia," Medvedev, a hawk who diplomats say gives a flavour of the thinking inside the Kremlin, told a youth forum in the Black Sea city of Sochi.

"That concept needs to disappear forever. Ukraine is definitely Russia," he said to applause. "Historic parts of the country need to come home."

There was no immediate reaction from Kyiv. Ukrainian officials have repeatedly accused Medvedev and other top Russian officials of waging an illegal war of conquest and said Ukraine and its people are distinct from Russia and Russians.

Medvedev was speaking in front of a giant map of Ukraine showing the country as a much smaller landlocked rump of land than its internationally recognised territory.

The map appeared to depict a scenario where Ukraine would be squeezed up against Poland, with Kyiv remaining its capital, but Russia would be in control of a swath of Ukrainian cities and its east, south and entire Black Sea coastline.

Russia has the initiative on the battlefield and controls just under one fifth of Ukrainian territory, which it claims as its own, but the scenario is sharply different from the situation on the ground.

PEACE TALKS RULED OUT

Medvedev, who the West once saw as a liberal reformer, said Russia's "geostrategic space" was indivisible from Ukraine and that any attempt to change that by force was doomed.

"All our adversaries need to understand once and for all a simple fact: that the territories on both banks of the Dnipro River (which bisects Ukraine) are an integral part of Russia's strategic and historical borders," he said.

Medvedev ruled out peace talks with the current Ukrainian leadership. He said any future Ukrainian government that wanted talks would need to recognise what he called the new reality.

Commenting on East-West relations, Medvedev said ties between Moscow and Washington were now worse than during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis when the two countries appeared on the brink of nuclear conflict.

"I will say one bitter thing," he said. "The current situation is much worse than the one in 1962. This is a fully fledged war against Russia with American weapons and with the participation of American special forces and American advisers. That's how it is."

(Reporting by Reuters, Writing by Andrew Osborn, Editing by Timothy Heritage)

Andrey Kurkov: ‘I expected Putin to escalate – but not to bomb us like Hitler’

David Knowles
Sun, March 3, 2024 

Mightier pen: Andrey Kurkov at home in Kyiv - Jack Leather

In 2024, two years on from the start of the full-scale invasion of his country, Andrey Kurkov has no illusions about Russia’s intentions in Ukraine and what it means for the West.

“Putin will not give up while he’s alive. If he manages to destroy Ukraine, he will fight against the West in Moldova, in Lithuania, in Poland. And European leaders and politicians should understand that this is a potential Third World War. And it will reshape Europe and the European Union.”

We meet in Kurkov’s flat in central Kyiv. One of its high windows is crisscrossed with tape, a technique used to minimise the impact of shattering glass after a missile strike or shelling. He tells me about the dinner he made for close friends on the night before the invasion.

“I cooked borscht, and we were joking. I was saying that this is probably the last borscht in Kyiv. After midnight, when we were saying goodbye to each other, suddenly everybody started exchanging mobile numbers, just in case. And I took photos of this moment. All the faces of my guests were very worried and very concerned, and there were no smiles at all.”

By morning, Russia’s war of aggression had started in earnest. Tanks and troops were rolling across the border and missiles were striking major cities. For Kurkov, the full-scale invasion was a shock. A veteran of travelling to the front lines, the author was no stranger to death and violence, but it was the size of the invasion that surprised him.

“It was clear that this frozen war is not going to stay like this forever. Russia will never be happy with Crimea. For me, it was no surprise that a full-scale invasion started, although I didn’t expect this scale of it. I was expecting an escalation in Donbas. I wasn’t expecting a 1941-style of bombing the whole country, like Hitler did.”

Now 62, with a neat moustache and bright eyes, Kurkov is at the height of his fame. Born in St Petersburg, he had a string of eclectic jobs, including prison warder and screenwriter, before gaining international success as a novelist. His first, translated into English as Death and the Penguin, became a worldwide bestseller and was translated into 30 languages. Often surreal, bitingly funny and eerily prescient, Kurkov’s work reflects the profound cultural changes in Ukraine and Russia over the past 30 years.

Even prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine (he and his English wife, Elizabeth, escaped to their house in the country initially, before returning to the capital), Kurkov had written about working out how to live through a war.

'European leaders must realise that this is a potential Third World War'

 - AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky

In his 2018 novel Grey Bees, his pro-Ukrainian protagonist, Sergey Sergeyich, is caught up in the Donbas war. His village lies near-abandoned as Ukrainian and Russian forces shell each other over the disputed “grey zone”, and Sergeyich must walk a delicate line between two rival armies and his “frenemy” in the village.

However, Kurkov tells me that the war curbed his ability to write fiction. He abandoned a new novel for which he had written 70 pages. “On the first day, I almost couldn’t write anything. Just a couple of sentences in the diary. For me, writing is pleasure. And when I write, I am living in two worlds, the world I created for the novel and the world with my real friends, my real family and real problems. So my imaginary life was immediately removed from me.” (His latest novel, The Silver Bone, which is published in the UK on Tuesday, was written before the war.)

Following the start of the war, Kurkov threw himself into journalism instead, writing hundreds of articles for publications across the globe. The full-scale invasion also changed how the people of Ukraine thought about the Russian language.

A local civilian in Ocheretyne, a village near the Avdiivka district, recently claimed by Russian troops in Donbas - Narciso Contreras/Anadolu via Getty Images

Although the Ukrainian language is historically oppressed (in the 1930s, the Soviet authorities carried out a brutal purge of Ukrainian culture and language), more and more people have started speaking Ukrainian in recent years, and many are bilingual. Since the 2022 full-scale invasion, some have even abandoned Russian altogether, rejecting any association with the “aggressor” country.

Kurkov, whose mother tongue is Russian, tells me: “My books are now not published in Russian, because bookshops in Ukraine don’t want to sell books in Russian, because Putin turned the language into the language of the enemy, in spite of the fact that 30 to 40 per cent of Ukrainians are Russian-speakers. Now, lots of people are changing language, switching to Ukrainian.”

Kurkov’s own works were banned in Russia in 2014, the year he first began to go to the front lines. But, he says: “There will be a niche for Russian-language literature. I don’t know if it will be a ghetto, or whether it will be a kind of club, closed-community literature. But it will survive.”

You can listen to David Knowles interview Andrey Kurkov on Ukraine: the Latest, The Telegraph’s daily podcast on war in Ukraine, using the audio player at the top of this article or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favourite podcast app.

Russian security forces battle militants in Ingushetia region, Russian media report


Reuters
Sat, March 2, 2024 

March 3 (Reuters) - Russian security forces fought alleged militants all night in Russia's North Caucasus republic of Ingushetia, Russian state media reported on Sunday morning, leading authorities to introduce counter-terrorism emergency powers in the area.

During a search operation in one of the residential buildings in the town of Karabulak on Saturday, the alleged militants opened fire on Russian law enforcement forces, Interfax reported, citing the National Anti-Terrorism Committee.

"Law enforcement officers who arrived at the scene began a clash with the criminals," Interfax reported.

Russia's RIA state news agency reported that as of Sunday morning, "active measures" were underway to "neutralise" the militants.

A "counter-terrorism regime" that allows authorities greater powers to clamp down on people's movement and communications was introduced and nearby population evacuated to ensure safety, Interfax reported.

Ingushetia, the smallest region in Russia, is wedged between North Ossetia and Chechnya. It has a population of about half a million people.

For almost a decade until 2017, Russian security forces were battling an armed insurgency conducted by an array of Islamist militant groups in Ingushetia as well as in Dagestan and Chechnya. 

(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Editing by Jamie Freed)

Ingushetia profile - BBC News


Moldova says Russia has no right to lecture on democracy

Sat, March 2, 2024
By Alexander Tanas

CHISINAU, March 2 (Reuters) - Russia has no right to lecture on democracy, the Moldovan Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Saturday, as tensions between the two countries have risen after Moldova's breakaway Transdniestria region asked Moscow for help.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said earlier in the week that the Moldovan government "is following in the footsteps of Kyiv" after Transdniestria turned to Moscow to help its economy withstand "pressure" from the Moldovan government, which the Chisinau administration dismissed as a propaganda event.

"Minister Lavrov and the Kremlin regime have no moral right to lecture on democracy and freedom," Moldova's Foreign Ministry said in a statement issued on Saturday.

"A country that imprisons opposition politicians and kills them, unreasonably attacks its neighbours, has nothing to offer the world but blood and pain."

On Saturday, Russians queued to lay flowers on the grave of Alexei Navalny, President Vladimir Putin's fiercest critic inside Russia, who died at the age of 47 in an Arctic penal colony on Feb. 16. Supporters said he had been murdered.

Navalny's death came nearly two years after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a war that has no end in sight and in which civilians continue to die.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine sparked fears that Moscow might seek to sweep westward through southern Ukraine all the way to the Transdniestria separatist region, which says it has 220,000 Russian citizens.

Relations between Moldova and Russia have also frayed as the Chisinau government has steered a pro-European course and accused Moscow of trying to destabilise it.

"We are building a European future so that all our citizens, regardless of language and ethnicity, live in peace and prosperity," the Moldovan Foreign Ministry said in its Saturday's statement.

(Reporting by Alexander Tanas; additional reporting by Elaine Monaghan and Lidia Kelly; editing by Jonathan Oatis Writing by Lidia Kelly;)

Book Review: 'Means of Control' charts the disturbing rise of a secretive US surveillance regime

The Canadian Press
Mon, March 4, 2024



In the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks, former national security advisor John Poindexter launched Total Information Awareness, intent on preventing future assaults on the homeland by amassing extensive databases on people and their movements.

The Pentagon program had a creepy eye-surveilling-the-globe-from-a-pyramid logo and was roundly rejected by civil libertarians as Orwellian overkill. Adm. Poindexter, an Iran-Contra conspirator, was skewered by late-night talk show hosts and Congressional resistance moved to defund it.

Except TIA wasn't DOA. Not by a longshot.

The data collection that Poindexter envisioned instead went underground, with code names such as “Basketball” and classified budgets. How private Beltway contractors grew what has become a secretive surveillance regime is exposed in disturbing detail by journalist Byron Tau in his first book, “Means of Control.” In the absence of a federal privacy law, the U.S. national security establishment has used commercially available data to craft a creeping panopticon.

As a Wall Street Journal reporter, Tau broke important stories on how the shadowy U.S. data collection and brokering industry has been indirectly — and legally, it seems — eavesdropping on tens of millions of Americans and foreigners in the service of U.S. military, intelligence and homeland security.

“In China, the state wants you to know you’re being watched. In America, the success lies in the secrecy," he writes. "The government does not want you to notice the proliferation of license plate readers. It does not want citizens to understand that mobile phones are a surveillance system... that social media is being eavesdropped on.”

“Means of Control” traces Tau's efforts to cut through thickets of secrecy to show how different kinds of data became available for purchase by the U.S. government post-9/11, how what author Shoshana Zuboff termed “surveillance capitalism” — the vacuuming up of personal data by Facebook, Google and others to feed the online ad market — stoked a thriving, under-the-radar bazaar of businesses selling data on people's habits, predilections and, importantly for soldiers and spies, physical movements.

“I've spent years trying to unravel this world — a funhouse of mirrors draped in nondisclosure agreements, corporate trade secrets, needlessly classified contracts, misleading denials, and in some cases outright lies,” he writes.

Unlike Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency worker whose 2013 data dump sounded piercing alarms on U.S. government surveillance, Tau is an outsider. So he is often stymied. But he is not alone in this work, and generously credits his journalist competitors.

When Tau does get a breakthrough, it is often on surveillance partnerships that help foil a bad guy — like the U.S. border drug tunnel Department of Homeland Security agents uncover in 2018 with cellphone geolocation data obtained from a company called Venntel.

To gather intelligence, firms working closely with U.S. national security operators have embedded data-collecting software in smartphone apps — such as Muslim prayer apps popular in the Middle East. The app owners may or may not be aware of the software modules' surveillance mission, though there's a reason they're getting paid to include the data-gathering SDKs (software development kits).

Some of these tools have been developed with CIA funding and some, like VISR (Virtual Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance), have been widely shared inside U.S. intelligence and among U.S. military special operators, Tau writes. The companies involved come and go in the sort of musical chair game we've come expect in U.S. national security contracting.

Which hasn't prevented some from being outed by privacy warriors led by Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon and, now, the Biden administration's activist Federal Trade Commission.

Take X-Mode, one firm Tau examines.

In 2021, X-Mode was found to have been selling access to location data to the U.S. military. In January, the FTC banned X-Mode and its successor, Outlogic, from sharing or selling data on cellphone users’ location without their explicit consent. It expressed concern such data could be used to track visits to places like abortion clinics, places of worship and domestic abuse shelters.

Near the end of the helpfully annotated 291-page book, Tau offers a chapter on how to protect yourself from digital tracking. There are privacy/convenience tradeoffs. But is complete erasure truly possible? He asks Michael Bazzell, an expert in the field.

“Of course,” Bazzell says. “Will you enjoy that life? Maybe not.”

—-

More AP book reviews: https://apnews.com/hub/book-reviews

Frank Bajak, The Associated Press

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for SECURITY STATE 

Black women struggle to find their way in a job world where diversity is under attack

Mon, March 4, 2024



BOSTON (AP) — Regina Lawless hit a professional high at 40, becoming the first director of diversity and inclusion for Instagram. But after her husband died suddenly in 2021, she pondered whether she had neglected her personal life and what it means for a Black woman to succeed in the corporate world.

While she felt supported in the role, “there wasn’t the willingness for the leaders to take it all the way,” Lawless said. “Really, it’s the leaders and every employee that creates the culture of inclusion.”

This inspired her venture, Bossy and Blissful, a collective for Black female executives to commiserate and coach each other on how to deal with misogynoir — misogyny experienced by Black women — or being the only person of color in the C-suite.

“I’m now determined to help other women, particularly women of color and Black women, to see that we don’t have to sacrifice ourselves for success. We can find spaces or create our own spaces where we can be successful and thrive,” said Lawless, who is based in Oakland, California.

Many women in Lawless' group have no workplace peers, making them the “Onlys” — the only Black person or woman of color — which can lead to feelings of loneliness or isolation.

“Getting together helps us when we go back and we’re the ‘only-lonelies’ in a lot of our organizations," Lawless said.

With attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives raging, Black women looking to climb the corporate ladder face a more hostile landscape than ever. Aside from having to constantly prove themselves and talk in a manner that can’t be labeled as angry or emotional, obtaining top managerial positions doesn’t stop the double dilemma of racial and gender pay gaps. All this adds up to disproportionate representation of Black female senior leadership.

Claudine Gay's resignation in January as Harvard's first Black president following accusations of antisemitism and plagiarism was just the latest in a revolving door of Black women who have been aggressively questioned or abandoned after achieving a career pinnacle.

Black female professionals also were hit hard when an administrator at a historically Black college in Missouri accused the school's white president of bullying and racism then took her own life. This led some to build networking groups and mentorships. For others it triggered an exodus to entrepreneurship and reinvention.

In Boston, Charity Wallace, 37, a biotech professional, and Chassity Coston, 35, a middle school principal, reflected on their own career struggles in light of Gay's ordeal. Wallace said she was being more cognizant of her mental health, and that's where their young Black professionals group, sorority sisters and family come in.

“It’s a constant fight of belonging and really having your girlfriends or your homegirls or my mom and my sister. I complain to them every day about something that’s going on at work,” Wallace said. “So having that circle of Black women that you can really vent to is important because, again, you cannot let the things like this sit. We’ve been silenced for too long.”

Coston said she mourned Gay's resignation and, fearing something similar could happen to her, she reconsidered her future in education. But she didn't want to give up.

“Yes, we’re going to continue to be scorned as Black people, as Black women. It’s going to continue to happen. But we can’t allow that," Coston said. “I’m speaking from my strength right now because that wasn’t always how I felt in my stages of grief. We have to continue to fight just like Rosa (Parks), just like Harriet (Tubman)."

Gay struggled despite her resume full of accomplishments, Wallace said.

“I can’t imagine how she felt trying to do that and getting all these accolades, her degrees that she has, the credentials, and it just seemed like even that was not enough for her to stay," Wallace said.

The backlash to DEI efforts is only amplified with clashes over identity politics. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones' tenure bid at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill stalled in 2021 because of her work with the 1619 Project, a collection of essays on race. The 2022 confirmation hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman confirmed to the Supreme Court, drew criticism for their harsh and race-based questioning.

President Joe Biden emphatically stating he only would consider a Black woman for the high court deepened resentment toward DEI, said Johnny Taylor, CEO of The Society for Human Resource Management.

“Contrast and compare a CEO standing in front of his workplace or her workplace saying, ‘I’m only gonna consider, the next candidates will only be this,’" Taylor said. "That created some real tension.”

Black women are questioning whether it's even worth trying for top positions, said Portia Allen-Kyle, chief advisor at social justice organization Color of Change. Extreme scrutiny and online vitriol are high prices to pay.

“What I’ve heard from quite a few Black women — family, friends and otherwise — is a little bit of feeling of frustration at the idea that excellence is not enough,” Allen-Kyle said. “The ‘Work twice as hard, be twice as good ... maybe you'll be able to be accepted on your merit.' That lesson that maybe that's not the case is hard and frustrating and disappointing all around.”

The number of Black women in the workforce is in danger of shrinking because of a lack of support and opportunities, according to advocates.

Black women comprise 7.4% of the U.S. population but they occupy only 1.4% of C-suite positions and 1.6% of senior vice-president roles, according to a 2020 report from Lean In, “The State of Black Women in Corporate America." U.S. Census data shows Black women working year-round and full-time in 2021 made 69 cents for every dollar a white man got. Meanwhile, white women made 80 cents on the dollar.

Lawless, who left Instagram/Meta in August, thinks more Black women will decide to be their own boss rather than enter a traditional workplace.

“There’s going to be a chilling effect and you’re going to see more Black women pivot and go into entrepreneurship, which we’re already doing at higher rates,” Lawless said. “Corporations have a real problem. They’ve lost more women at the director and above level since the pandemic.”

Even self-made businesses cannot avoid DEI resistance. The Fearless Fund, a small venture capital firm, is embroiled in a lawsuit accusing a grant program for Black women-owned companies of discrimination. The litigation has scared away potential investors, according to the firm's founders.

Job openings for diversity officers and similar positions have declined in recent months. The combined share of venture capital funding for businesses owned by Black and Latina women has dipped back to less than 1% after briefly surpassing that threshold — at 1.05% — in 2021, according to the nonprofit advocacy group digitalundivided.

Stephanie Felix, of Austin, Texas, just started her own DEI consulting firm in January. It's not something the 36-year-old, who worked in DEI for company review website Glassdoor, initially saw for herself.

“People say there’s risk in leaving but there’s also a lot of risk in staying,” Felix said.

Colleagues, family and even Felix herself had reservations about her career leap. But she said she has too often seen DEI hires go from “office pet to office threat.” Their arrival was heralded as a new chapter, but senior leaders wouldn't come through with promised resources or authority to effect change.

“I applaud women that choose to step away and choose themselves. I applaud myself for it too,” Felix said. "Even though it’s not easy, it gives you more sovereignty over your life which is, in my mind, definitely worth it.”

___

Associated Press business writer Alexandra Olson in New York contributed to this report.

___

Terry Tang reported from Phoenix. She is a member of the AP's Race and Ethnicity team. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, at @ttangAP.

Terry Tang And Michael Casey, The Associated Press

Trump supporters target black voters with faked AI images


Marianna Spring - BBC Panorama and Americast
Mon, March 4, 2024 



Donald Trump supporters have been creating and sharing AI-generated fake images of black voters to encourage African Americans to vote Republican.

BBC Panorama discovered dozens of deepfakes portraying black people as supporting the former president.

Mr Trump has openly courted black voters, who were key to Joe Biden's election win in 2020.

But there's no evidence directly linking these images to Mr Trump's campaign.

The co-founder of Black Voters Matter, a group which encourages black people to vote, said the manipulated images were pushing a "strategic narrative" designed to show Mr Trump as popular in the black community.

A creator of one of the images told the BBC: "I'm not claiming it's accurate."

The fake images of black Trump supporters, generated by artificial intelligence (AI), are one of the emerging disinformation trends ahead of the US presidential election in November.

Unlike in 2016, when there was evidence of foreign influence campaigns, the AI-generated images found by the BBC appear to have been made and shared by US voters themselves.

One of them was Mark Kaye and his team at a conservative radio show in Florida.

They created an image of Mr Trump smiling with his arms around a group of black women at a party and shared it on Facebook, where Mr Kaye has more than one million followers.

At first it looks real, but on closer inspection everyone's skin is a little too shiny and there are missing fingers on people's hands - some tell-tale signs of AI-created images.

"I'm not a photojournalist," Mr Kaye tells me from his radio studio.

"I'm not out there taking pictures of what's really happening. I'm a storyteller."

Radio show host Mark Kaye told the BBC that it was the individual's problem if their vote was influenced by AI images

He had posted an article about black voters supporting Mr Trump and attached this image to it, giving the impression that these people all support the former president's run for the White House.

In the comments on Facebook, several users appeared to believe the AI image was real.

"I'm not claiming it is accurate. I'm not saying, 'Hey, look, Donald Trump was at this party with all of these African American voters. Look how much they love him!'" he said.

"If anybody's voting one way or another because of one photo they see on a Facebook page, that's a problem with that person, not with the post itself."

Another widely viewed AI image the BBC investigation found shows Mr Trump posing with black voters on a front porch. It had originally been posted by a satirical account that generates images of the former president, but only gained widespread attention when it was reposted with a new caption falsely claiming that he had stopped his motorcade to meet these people.

We tracked down the person behind the account called Shaggy, who is a committed Trump supporter living in Michigan.

"[My posts] have attracted thousands of wonderful kind-hearted Christian followers," he said in messages sent to the BBC on social media.

When I tried to question him on the AI-generated image he blocked me. His post has had over 1.3 million views, according to the social media site X. Some users called it out, but others seemed to have believed the image was real.

I did not find similarly manipulated images of Joe Biden with voters from a particular demographic. The AI images of the president tend to feature him alone or with other world leaders such as Russian President Vladimir Putin or former US President Barack Obama.

Some are created by critics, others by supporters.

In January, the Democratic candidate was himself a victim of an AI-generated impersonation.

An automated audio call, purportedly voiced by the president, urged voters to skip the New Hampshire primary where he was running. A Democratic Party supporter has admitted responsibility, saying he wanted to draw attention to the potential for the technology to be abused.

Cliff Albright, the co-founder of campaign group Black Voters Matter, said there appeared to be a resurgence of disinformation tactics targeting the black community, as in the 2020 election.

"There have been documented attempts to target disinformation to black communities again, especially younger black voters," he said.

Cliff Albright, who runs an organisation encouraging black people to vote, says younger black voters are targeted for disinformation

I show him the AI-generated pictures in his office in Atlanta, Georgia - a key election battleground state where convincing even a small slice of the overall black vote to switch from Mr Biden to Mr Trump could prove decisive.

A recent New York Times and Sienna College poll found that in six key swing states 71% of black voters would back Mr Biden in 2024, a steep drop from the 92% nationally that helped him win the White House at the last election.

Mr Albright said the fake images were consistent with a "very strategic narrative" pushed by conservatives - from the Trump campaign down to influencers online - designed to win over black voters. They are particularly targeting young black men, who are thought to be more open to voting for Mr Trump than black women.

On Monday, MAGA Inc, the main political action committee backing Trump, is due to launch an advertising campaign targeting black voters in Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

It is aimed at voters like Douglas, a taxi driver in Atlanta.

Panorama - Trump: The Sequel? 

Justin Webb and Marianna Spring travel from the frozen plains of Iowa to the swing state of Georgia to explore Donald Trump's enduring appeal and look ahead to an unprecedented American election year. 

Watch on BBC One at 20:00 on Monday 4 March (20:30 in Wales and Northern Ireland) - and later on iPlayer.

Douglas said he was mainly worried about the economy and immigration - issues which he felt Trump was more focused on. He said Democratic messaging about Trump's threat to democracy would not motivate him to vote, because he was already disillusioned with the electoral process.

The US economy is generally doing well, but some voters - like Douglas - don't feel better off because they've also been through a cost of living crisis.

What did he think of the AI-generated image of Trump sitting on a front porch with black voters? When I first showed it to him, he believed it was real. He said it bolstered his view, shared by some other black people he knows, that Trump is supportive of the community.

Then, I revealed it was a fake.

"Well, that's the thing about social media. It's so easy to fool people," he said.

"It's so easy to fool people" on social media, says cab driver Douglas, after viewing one of the AI fakes

Disinformation tactics in the US presidential elections have evolved since 2016, when Donald Trump won. Back then, there were documented attempts by hostile foreign powers, such as Russia, to use networks of inauthentic accounts to try to sow division and plant particular ideas.

In 2020, the focus was on home-grown disinformation - particularly false narratives that the presidential election was stolen, which were shared widely by US-based social media users and endorsed by Mr Trump and other Republican politicians.

In 2024, experts warn of a dangerous combination of the two.

Ben Nimmo, who until last month was responsible for countering foreign influence operations at Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, said the confusion created by fakes like these also opens new opportunities for foreign governments who may seek to manipulate elections.

"Anybody who has a substantial audience in 2024 needs to start thinking, how do I vet anything which gets sent to me? How do I make sure that I don't unwittingly become part of some kind of foreign influence operation?" he said.

Mr Nimmo said that social media users and platforms are increasingly able to identify fake automated accounts, so as it gets harder to build an audience in this way "operations try to co-opt real people" to increase the reach of divisive or misleading information.

"The best bet they have is to try and land [their content] through an influencer. That's anyone who has a big audience on social media," he said.

Mr Nimmo said he was concerned in 2024 that these people, who may be willing to spread misinformation to their ready-made audiences, could become "unwitting vectors" for foreign influence operations.

These operations could share content with users - either covertly or overtly - and encourage them to post it themselves, so it appears to have come from a real US voter, he said.

All of the major social media companies have policies in place to tackle potential influence operations, and several - like Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram - have introduced new measures to deal with AI-generated content during elections.

Leading politicians from around the world have also highlighted the risks of AI-generated content this year.

Narratives about the 2020 election being stolen - which were shared without any evidence - spread online with simple posts, memes and algorithms, not AI-generated images or video, and still resulted in the US Capitol riot on 6 January.

This time around, there is a whole new range of tools available to political partisans and provocateurs which could inflame tensions once again.