CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Canada's TD Bank fast-forwards CEO transition, cuts pay for 41 execs

Story by Reuters
Jan. 17, 2025

FILE PHOTO: A sign for TD Canada Trust in Toronto, Ontario, Canada 

. REUTERS/Carlos Osorio/File Photo© Thomson Reuters

(Reuters) -TD Bank Group said on Friday CEO-designate Raymond Chun would be appointed to the role on Feb. 1, months earlier than initially planned, and slashed the salary of 41 executives, including its outgoing chief.

Last month, the Canadian bank warned of a challenging 2025 and suspended its medium-term earnings forecast as it works through its anti-money laundering remediation program following a U.S. regulatory probe.

TD had also said it would hold a strategic review that would include reassessment of growth opportunities, productivity initiatives and where it needs to invest or divest.

In October, it became the largest bank in U.S. history to plead guilty to violating a federal law aimed at preventing money laundering, and agreed to pay more than $3 billion in penalties to resolve the charges.

The plea deal, which includes a rare imposition of an asset cap and other business limitations, arises from multiple government investigations into what authorities described as pervasive issues.

Chun is set to replace long-time CEO Bharat Masrani, who took the top job at the bank in 2014.

The bank lowered Masrani's total compensation by 89% to $1.5 million in 2024, from $13.27 million in 2023.

At his first appearance as incoming CEO at a banking conference in Toronto in January, Chun addressed the bank's strategic review that could include the sale of its stake in Charles Schwab and exiting some loan portfolios. Chun also said he expects to hold an investor day later in 2025.

"Ray has moved quickly and decisively to launch a review of our strategy, operations, and investments, and has engaged with customers, clients and colleagues across the Bank," chair of TD's board Alan MacGibbon said.

Masrani will stay on in an advisory capacity until July 31, the bank said. TD had previously announced the transition date for Chun as April 10.

(Reporting by Manya Saini in Bengaluru and Nivedita Balu in Toronto; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar)

Op-Ed: ‘Amexit’ — America’s departure from itself and sanity.


By Paul Wallis
DIGITAL JOURNAL
January 16, 2025


Wall street: — © Digital Journal

As the world looks forward to a repeat 4-year season of Whack a Nutcase there’s a noticeable omission in the imagery.

The awe is gone. There’s nothing impressive about USA 2025 or the faces on the screens. The image is buried under mountains of sleaze.

The Land of Overachievers looks sounds and acts like a crack house.

The Masters of the Universe are long gone.

You don’t even need to mention politics. It’s that bad. Not one single issue affecting the physical realities of Utterly Miserable America is under discussion.

America can no longer afford itself even in theory.

If you search “USA sanity” on Google News, you will only get a shopping list of unsolved problems.

The pattern of Brexit is repeating in monotonous predictability:

Everyone said, “Don’t do Brexit” and “Don’t leave the single market”.

They said they wouldn’t.

They then did Brexit, accompanied by much hysteria and flag-waving.

It was far worse than predicted. Emigration from the UK is more of a problem than immigration.

In the case of the US, “Amexit” will be disastrous. That’s what’s likely to happen.

You have to wonder:

Why would so many very rich people work so maniacally to totally destroy the system that made them so rich and allowed them to remain rich?

Why are non-existent issues more important than a rotting society?

Why are so many gigantic glaring and incredibly dangerous real national issues being ignored?

The American media’s take on the situation is indicative:

“Look at it logically. You’re only dying or going broke or living in an old Dorito packet.

The really important issue is that some useless butt-ugly incompetent rich brat schmuck needs a few hundred more billion to throw more tantrums”.

The level of insanity is so repulsive that the world will have no choice but to react negatively. To protect their own economies, Europe and China will simply have to work with each other.

So what?

So if America can’t borrow or borrowing is too expensive, and US offshore funds stay offshore, there will be a supermassive financial black hole in the next four years. That link is to the ominous and very expensive issue of the USA’s credit rating.

The US domestic economy is far too weak from years of ridiculous price rises to take much more. Domestic demand can’t keep up with the spending sprees.

The people don’t have any money. Nada. Zip. Nonesuch.

That’s why “We the People” are so important. Who the hell do you think ultimately pays for everything?

Even the rich should know money has to come from somewhere other than their egos.

The antiquated US revenue system (no VAT to start with) hasn’t been able to match funding requirements for decades. It’s a miracle the balance didn’t simply implode.

Generations Z and Alpha have been priced out of any hope of the American Dream.

They can’t even afford to shut their eyes and dream, and they know it.

Grasping at straws is understandable. It doesn’t work when you’re drowning. Grasping at a hopelessly outdated millstone of delusional falsehoods won’t work either.

Like Brexit, Amexit doesn’t need to happen. Any guesses what will happen?

__________________________________________________
Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.

Op-Ed: Sabotaging the future of the world with cost insanity.


ByPaul Wallis
DIGITAL JOURNAL
January 14, 2025


New York City — © Digital Journal

The decades of slavish growth mythology are burying the world. Growth was the only word “economists” knew.

They didn’t mention that sucking every living dollar out of the global economy with fictional prices might just possibly be a super-dumb move.

They didn’t mention hitting a point of absolute non-viability in real costs pre-pandemic.

They forgot to tell anyone that raising prices means raising more obstacles to growth, too.

The pseudo-economists left out that population shrinkage is now a long-established fact in the West, Japan, and China due to prices and it’s nothing new.

To be fair, this is also “illiterate capitalism”.

America is off track. Immigration and homelessness crisis in large metropolises like Los Angeles is the best example. — Image: © AFP

It’s the no-brainer of all no-brainers to make your own costs unsustainable. You really do have to be dumb far beyond the meaning of the word.

What’s inexcusable is pretending that these were ever “great numbers”. They were always fictional.

We’ve gone from “great numbers” to “totally untrustworthy numbers”, and that’s about to get a whole lot worse thanks to regressive economic retards.

The economics of the Great Depression were idiotic then. They’re likely to be far worse now.

There’s another fun issue—the Plague of Billionaires just happens to be in businesses that are mainstream trading sectors. These guys were there when the money went past. They had 20+ years of incredibly low borrowing rates, lazy, inept governments, and they never, ever, pay taxes.

There’s nothing to respect in this rabble of rich rabid rodents. A not-very-bright house brick could have become a billionaire in that environment.

That almost total lack of talent and mis-leadership is the basis of the chronic mismanagement of everything. They’ve never had to do real business in an unprotected cost environment. Debts are dangerously high, and they’ll get more dangerous. You can go broke as a borrower and a lender simply because price rises have drained liquidity to this incredible extent.

If anything “growth” is now a measure of shrinkage. History is glaring through the fiction. The devaluation of wealth is very real. A billion is worth a lot less now. Compared to times of real prosperity around 1960, everything is about 10 times more expensive in dollar terms. Is that good? No.

It’s actually a lot worse than that for housing, education, and health. Houses that cost millions now might have cost six figures back then. Five figures would definitely get you a decent house. Health and education were reasonably priced. You could even afford to have both!

New York City: — Photo: © Digital Journal

Are health, housing, and education being managed or mismanaged? How about energy, quality of life, nutrition, safe living environments, and other indicators of competence?

In the real world, the one you may have heard mentioned occasionally by mystics and debt collectors, denial is pointless. You can’t just say it’s not happening and expect to be believed.

One number being cited for consumer price rises in 2025 is 20%, which actually isn’t at all out of the ball park given previous price increases worldwide.

Gen Alpha will have to be totally feral and learn to dig burrows. Survival will be tough.

_________________________________________________

Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.

Op-Ed: Social media — Full of itself, failing to deliver in too many ways


ByPaul Wallis
January 14, 2025

This photo illustration shows the social media platform X (former Twitter) app on a smartphone in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on September 18, 2024 - Copyright AFP/File Allison Joyce

Social media was going to connect the world. It was going to be a way for people from anywhere and everywhere to engage. “Everyone is connected”, etc.

That worked out well, didn’t it?

The mythology of social media makes even US media look almost focused and respectable. It’s self-hype to infinity.

The hype is pretty messy, too. Glitz, glamour, maybe, if you’re 10 years old. You have the infant influencers and rabid rabbits making millions. So what? A few industry pets aren’t all that relatable. The actual successes aren’t many people. It’s another 1%, as usual.

That’s the problem. What social media thinks of itself vs what it actually delivers. The ridiculous vs an ever-diminishing content value.

I bumped into a Forbes article “Why social media is the most misunderstood job in corporate America”. I had to see how social media could be misunderstood, even by a sector that famously drags its eyebrows along the ground for a living.

Social media is ironically called “the attention economy”, even in a country where ADHD is a sort of cultural icon.

It WAS different. Twitter was a primary source of news, and Tweet volumes meant something. That’s not the case now. Nobody gives a damn what a bot thinks about anything. Social media bots are fiction by definition. AI bots aren’t going to make things any better. You’d be lucky to get real numbers for marketing.

That’s not a problem in the sector.

“We reached 200 million people!”

Well, did you? Any social media demographic has a percentile of social media watchers. In the States, at least half of your audience is hostile to some degree thanks to the tides of political slop. Another hefty percentage of viewers are the people who posted it and their handlers. It’s not even a real audience in that many ways.

You could create a nice cynical algorithmic metric to measure hits as a form of market antagonism. The market, as usual, sees what it wants to see, not what it needs to see.

Well, you could get decent metrics if anyone could be bothered responding to the tonnage of tripe produced every second. Total silence is a negative response.

Imagery has a lot to do with this silent response. Nobody watches social media to find the babbling bozos of their dreams. Bear in mind also that these corporate guys also can’t read their own marketing figures.

Check out this Top Social Media Marketing Skills article, complete with an embarrassingly edited headline. Then see if you can say you’ve noticed any of those skills on social media. This is the image social media has of itself. “Pathetic” is hardly the word.

It becomes this in business terms:

“We spent $10 million on a social media marketing campaign” translates into a few extra sales worth maybe $1 million. They don’t see it and don’t look for it. There are obviously no business skills involved at any level.

TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook are the mainstream market. They’re shopfronts as much or more than social media. They deliver consumables, not information There’s a huge difference. These are the lands of FOMO and the rest of the superficial rubbish on social media.

YouTube is a bit different. It provides content people like, and those people tend to be niche markets. The quality of content varies from undeniably excellent to utter trash. The audience soon learns to discriminate. That’s pretty much the whole story.

I was watching a live CNN coverage of the LA fires. The chat was entirely political, and nobody bothered to respond. There were posts celebrating the fires from around the world.

News?

Useful information?

Hardly. It was a soapbox based on a catastrophe. Do you think that sells or influences anyone? It doesn’t. It wasn’t even a new platform for the nuts; it had nothing to say and went on saying it for the entire CNN coverage.

That’s the dry rot destroying social media. You can’t “engage” with this drivel. It has no value. It’s just noise.

That’s where social media becomes its own worst and most unforgiving enemy. Nobody’s interested in non-information.

The lack of hard or even slightly useful information just isn’t good enough anymore. You can find drivel anywhere; why go looking for it?

There’s a major productivity issue here. Yes, you are allowed to laugh like an enthusiastic hyena.

How productive can this slop be for anyone?

Now add another dimension – Real users who want to communicate with each other. Remember them? Your actual core users who keep your numbers up?

These users can take or leave anything, however insane, and they do. They can ignore anything and be unimpressed by anything. You guys should be thankful you can even point to a meaningful market demographic like that.

The refugees from X and the resulting meltdown are a warning. The advertisers didn’t like it. They left The real users didn’t like it. They left. That’s what non-delivery means for social media.

Nobody HAS to watch anything online.

You’re a click away from oblivion.

__________________________________________________
Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.

'Damaging’ AI porn scandal at US school scars victims


By AFP
January 16, 2025


A wave of AI porn scandals has rocked schools across US states, from California to New Jersey - Copyright AFP/File Stefani REYNOLDS

Bill McCarthy and Anuj Chopra

Her voice tinged with anger, an American mother worried about what the future holds for her teenage daughter, just one of dozens of girls targeted in yet another AI-enabled pornography scandal that has rocked a US school.

The controversy that engulfed the Lancaster Country Day School in Pennsylvania last year highlights a new normal for pupils and educators struggling to keep up with a boom in cheap, easily available artificial intelligence tools that have facilitated hyperrealistic deepfakes.

One parent, who spoke to AFP on the condition of anonymity, said her 14-year-old daughter came to her “hysterically crying” last summer after finding AI-generated nude pictures of her circulating among her peers.

“What are the ramifications to her long term?” the mother said, voicing fears that the manipulated images could resurface when her daughter applies to college, starts dating, or enters the job market.

“You can’t tell that they are fake.”

Multiple charges — including sexual abuse of children and possession of child pornography — were filed last month against two teenage boys who authorities allege created the images.

Investigators uncovered 347 images and videos affecting a total of 60 victims, most of them female students at the private school, on the messaging app Discord.

All but one was younger than 18.



– ‘Troubling’ –



The scandal is the latest in a wave of similar incidents in schools across US states — from California to New Jersey — leading to a warning from the FBI last year that such child sexual abuse material, including realistic AI-generated images, was illegal.

“The rise of generative AI has collided with a long-standing problem in schools: the act of sharing non-consensual intimate imagery,” said Alexandra Reeve Givens, chief executive of the nonprofit Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT).

“In the digital age, kids desperately need support to navigate tech-enabled harassment.”

A CDT survey of public schools last September found that 15 percent of students and 11 percent of teachers knew of at least one “deepfake that depicts an individual associated with their school in a sexually explicit or intimate manner.”

Such non-consensual imagery can lead to harassment, bullying or blackmail, sometimes causing devastating mental health consequences.

The mother who spoke to AFP said she knows of victims who had avoided school, had trouble eating or required medical attention and counseling to cope with the ordeal.

She said she and other parents brought into a detective’s office to scrutinize the deepfakes were shocked to find printed out images stacked a “foot and a half” high.

“I had to see pictures of my daughter,” she said.

“If someone looked, they would think it’s real, so that’s even more damaging.”



– ‘Exploitation’ –



The alleged perpetrators, whose names have not been released, are accused of lifting pictures from social media, altering them using an AI application and sharing them on Discord.

The mother told AFP the fakes of her daughter were primarily altered from public photos on the school’s Instagram page as well as a screenshot of a FaceTime call.

A simple online search throws up dozens of apps and websites that allow users to create “deepnudes,” digitally removing clothing, or superimpose selected faces onto pornographic images.

“Although results may not be as realistic or compelling as a professional rendition, these services mean that no technical skills are needed to produce deepfake content,” Roberta Duffield, director of intelligence at Blackbird.AI, told AFP.

Only a handful of US states have passed laws to deal with sexually explicit deepfakes, including Pennsylvania at the end of last year.

The top leadership at the Pennsylvania school stepped aside after parents of the victims filed a lawsuit accusing the administration of failing to report the activity when they were first alerted to it in late 2023.

Researchers say schools are ill-equipped to tackle the threat of AI technology evolving at a rapid pace, in part because the law is still playing catchup.

“Underage girls are increasingly subject to deepfake exploitation from their friends, colleagues, school classmates,” said Duffield.

“Education authorities must urgently develop clear, comprehensive policies regarding the use of AI and digital technologies.”

China says population fell for third year in a row in 2024


By AFP
January 17, 2025


China ended its strict 'one-child policy', imposed in the 1980s amid overpopulation fears, in 2016 and started letting couples have three children in 2021 - Copyright AFP/File Arif ALI

China said on Friday its population fell for the third year running in 2024, extending a downward streak after more than six decades of growth as the country faces a rapidly ageing population and persistently low birth rates.

Once the world’s most populous country, China was overtaken by India in 2023, with Beijing seeking to boost falling birth rates through subsidies and pro-fertility propaganda.

The population stood at 1.408 billion by the end of the year, Beijing’s National Bureau of Statistics said, down from 1.410 billion in 2023.

The decline was less sharp than the previous year, when it was more than double the fall reported for 2022, data showed.

China ended its strict “one-child policy”, imposed in the 1980s over overpopulation fears, in 2016 and started letting couples have three children in 2021.

But that has failed to reverse the demographic decline for a country that has long relied on its vast workforce as a driver of economic growth.

Many say falling birth rates are due to the soaring cost of living, as well as the growing number of women going into the workforce and seeking higher education.

Population decline is likely to continue due to gloomy economic prospects for young people and as Chinese women “confront entrenched labour market gender discriminations”, Yun Zhou, a sociologist at the University of Michigan, told AFP.

People over 60 are expected to make up nearly a third of China’s population by 2035, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, a research group.



– ‘Trend won’t change’ –



Data released on Friday showed that the population aged 60 and over reached 310.31 million — just a few percentage points short of a quarter of the country and an increase from nearly 297 million recorded in 2023.

However, the data also showed China’s birth rate — among the lowest in the world — ticked up slightly from the previous year to 6.77 per 1,000 people.

“This uptick is unlikely to last, as the population of childbearing-age women is projected to decline sharply in the coming decades,” said Zhao Litao, a senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s East Asian Institute.

“In the long term, the trends of declining births, overall population contraction, and rapid ageing remain unchanged.”

He Yafu, an independent demographer in China, put the uptick in births down to women who deferred having children during the Covid-19 pandemic giving birth. There was also an increase in marriages in 2023 and 2024, the auspicious Year of the Dragon.

However, “the general trend of total population decline won’t change”, He told AFP.

“Unless strong policies to encourage childbirth are introduced… the proportion of the elderly population will continue to rise.”

Officials said in September they would gradually raise the statutory retirement age, which was set at 60 and among the lowest in the world. It had not been raised for decades.

The rules took effect from January 1.

China’s previous retirement age was set at a time of widespread scarcity and impoverishment, before market reforms brought comparative wealth and rapid improvements in nutrition, health and living conditions.

The world’s second-largest economy now has to contend with slowing growth, while a fast-greying population and a baby bust have piled pressure on pension and public health systems.

Pet boar gets to stay with French owner, for now: court


By AFP
January 17, 2025


Cappe said the court ruling made her 'very happy' - Copyright AFP FRANCOIS NASCIMBENI

A French woman who has kept a wild boar as a pet since finding and domesticating the animal can keep it for now, a court has ordered, overruling local authorities who insisted the animal had to be removed or killed.

Horse breeder Elodie Cappe found the female boar — named Rillette after a delicacy often made from pork — in 2023 when it was still a piglet near a complex of stables she runs in Chaource, in France’s centre-east.

The local prefecture informed Cappe that she had to find “an adapted structure” for the boar, which has grown to weigh 100 kilos (220 pounds), or have it euthanised.

The order caused an outcry among animal lovers in France and abroad, with former film star and prominent animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot weighing in to save Rillette.

Several petitions launched on the Change.org website calling for the boar to be allowed to stay put have clocked up a total of around 300,000 signatures.

After the prefecture rejected all calls to drop its opposition to Rillette staying with her owner, Cappe took the case before an administrative court in November.

In its ruling delivered Thursday, the court rejected the administration’s argument that non-domesticated animals can only be held by private individuals if they are from a recognised breeding centre.

“Nowhere”, the court said, did the law state that “they need to be born and bred in captivity”.

While allowing that it is illegal in principle to capture wild boars, the judge noted that the prefecture can grant exceptions, and asked the administration to reconsider its stance.

“We are very happy,” Cappe told AFP, adding she hoped that “finally” the prefecture would allow her to keep Rillette.

Her lawyer, Karl Burger, added that Cappe has been meeting all requirements for holding non-domesticated animals, including having Rillette vaccinated, sterilised and providing a secure, enclosed shelter.

Read more: https://www.digitaljournal.com/world/pet-boar-gets-to-stay-with-french-owner-for-now-court/article#ixzz8xeVvMwFg

Pompeii reveals ‘impressive’ bath complex


By AFP
January 17, 2025


This handout picture released by the Parco Archeologico di Pompei on January 17, 2025 shows a private thermal baths complex discovered by archaeologists - Copyright Parco Archeologico di Pompei press office/AFP Handout

Archaeologists at Pompeii have uncovered a private thermal baths complex where guests would take the plunge before sitting down to sumptuous feasts, the Italian site said Friday.

The baths excavated at the Roman villa make up “one of the largest private thermal complexes” found so far in the ancient city, near Naples, which was devastated when nearby Mount Vesuvius erupted almost 2,000 years ago.

Guests would shed their robes in a changing room that could accommodate up to 30 people, judging by the benches present, according to the Pompeii statement.

They would then relax in the “calidarium” — a room with a hot bath — followed by the “tepidarium” or warm room, and finally take a plunge in a pool of cold water in the “frigidarium”.

The cold room in particular is “very impressive”, with “a porticoed courtyard measuring 10 metres squared, at the centre of which is a large pool”, Pompeii said.

Afterwards, guests would dine by candlelight in a black-walled banqueting hall decorated with scenes from Greek mythology.

The hall and spa are part of a grand villa which archaeologists have spent the past two years uncovering.

“The direct connection of the thermal spaces to the large convivial hall suggests the Roman house lent itself to staging sumptuous banquets,” the Pompeii statement said.

These were “precious opportunities for the owner to ensure the electoral consensus of his guests, to promote the candidacy of friends or relatives, or simply to affirm his social status”, it said.

When Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, the ash and rock that fell helped preserve many of Pompeii’s buildings almost in their original state, as well as forming eerie shapes around the curled-up corpses of victims of the disaster.

The remains of more than 1,000 victims have been found during excavations in Pompeii, but many more are thought to have died.

Pompeii is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the second most visited tourist site in Italy, after the Colosseum in Rome.

US offered infrastructure incentive for DRC-Rwanda peace deal: official

Agence France-Presse
January 17, 2025 

Washington offered an expansion of the Lobito Corridor into eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo as a way of prodding the DRC and Rwanda toward a peace deal. (Shaun TANDON / © Agence France-Presse)

The United States offered to extend its signature African investment project into the troubled east of the Democratic Republic of Congo as an incentive for a peace deal, but Rwanda has backed away, a senior US diplomat said.

Molly Phee, the outgoing assistant secretary of state for African affairs, said the United States proposed an expansion of the Lobito railway, a project visited last month by President Joe Biden that aims to speed up the transport of minerals from southern DRC and Zambia to Angola's Atlantic coast.

"We had proposed to both sides that if we could get to stabilization in eastern DRC, we could work on developing a spur from the Lobito Corridor up through eastern DRC," Phee told AFP in an interview ahead of her exit Monday as the Biden administration comes to an end.

"We tried to offer positive incentives. A genuine framework -- fundamentally negotiated by the parties -- exists, and at the moment, Rwanda seems to have walked away," she said.

Rwanda-backed rebels known as the March 23 (M23) Movement since 2021 have seized swaths of eastern DRC, displacing thousands and triggering a humanitarian crisis.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame, while never admitting direct military involvement, has demanded the elimination of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), an armed group in DRC primarily composed of Hutu militants formed in the wake of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Authorities in Kinshasa accuse Rwanda of seizing valuable mines in the region amid the conflict.

Phee, who was part of the Biden administration's negotiations along with US intelligence chief Avril Haines, said the United States presented a solution that would include a DRC crackdown on the FDLR.

"They did not take that action," she said of Kinshasa.

"We put it all back together again and then I thought we were on a good track. And then in the end, President Kagame decided not to go to the Luanda summit in December, and you've seen Rwanda and M23 take more territory."

Kagame has dismissed recent peace initiatives such as the summit in the Angolan capital Luanda as little more than photo-ops that do not address "root causes."

- 'Heavy-handed' security response in Ethiopia -

Biden took office vowing to pay more attention to Africa than Donald Trump, his predecessor and successor, although the administration soon also became focused on the Ukraine and Gaza wars.
But one of the most devastating conflicts of this century was a two-year war in Ethiopia's Tigray region where at least 600,000 people died, according to an African Union envoy.

The violence stopped with a ceasefire reached in November 2022 in the South African capital Pretoria.

"I'm very proud of the work we did to help end the war in Tigray, which at that time was the largest conflict in the world," Phee said.

But she voiced concern over Ethiopian forces' actions since then, in conflicts in the separate regions of Amhara and Oromia.


"It's a legitimate and difficult problem, as all insurgencies are, but we feel the security services are heavy-handed and are not as attentive to civilian casualties as they should be," she said.

The Biden administration booted Ethiopia out of a major trade pact in response to rights concerns in Tigray.

Phee said the United States "would like to be in a position to resume the kind of partnership that we had" but that Ethiopia still has steps to take.

- Still hopeful in Niger -

The United States also saw a setback when the military seized power in Niger in 2023 -- soon after a visit by Secretary of State Antony Blinken -- and moved closer to Russia.

The junta scrapped a military cooperation deal, forcing Washington to give up a $100 million drone base, soon after Phee voiced concern over Niger potentially selling uranium to Iran, whose nuclear program is under scrutiny.

In a diplomatic dustup, Nigerien authorities denied that there was a deal with Iran and called Phee's attitude "condescending."


Phee said her remarks to Niger should be understood more as an offer than warning.

She said she told Niger that "Iran is a bad actor in the world" and that a deal would cause problems due to sanctions on Tehran.

But she said she told them, "you deserve to use your uranium to benefit your people. We'll be happy to find you a reputable buyer."


"I'm hopeful that action on that kind of path will be taken by them."

Meta’s ‘critical shortcomings’ led to Russian disinformation campaign on platform: report

Erik De La Garza
January 17, 2025 
RAW STORY

How scammers use psychology to create some of the most convincing internet cons Hacker with laptop, Image via Shutterstock.

A covert Russian-led disinformation campaign evaded Meta restrictions and got through more than 8,000 political ads on Facebook despite regulations in the United States and Europe barring companies from conducting business with the organization, a new report revealed.

The Russian IT firm, the Social Design Agency, which has been linked to the Kremlin’s propaganda campaigns, spent an estimated $338,000 in Facebook ads targeting European users, according to The New York Times, citing a report that came out Friday from three groups that track disinformation online.

Its release comes as the Mark Zuckerberg-owned company announced the termination of its third-party fact-checking program in the U.S., which the Times noted “will almost certainly intensify Meta’s confrontation with regulators in Europe over how it handles disinformation and other corrosive content.”

And Meta itself already “highlighted the threat,” the Times reported.

The organization at the center of the report is already under punitive sanction in the European Union and the U.S. “for spreading propaganda and disinformation to unsuspecting users on social media,” according to the Times.

The Facebook ad campaigns expose “critical shortcomings in Meta’s systems to curb the spread of state-sponsored influence — shortcomings that, in turn, create financial rewards for the platform,” the report said.

It also raises “highlights significant concerns related to Meta’s compliance” with laws in the U.S. and Europe, according to the report.

“The SDA operated through a network of anonymous accounts, using false identities to create pages and publish ads. Meta’s failure to enforce strict identity verification allowed these accounts to persist,” the report said of the Russian organization.

The report highlighted “the need for Meta to do more, not less, to fight disinformation, and for E.U. regulators to hold the company accountable,” Alexandre Alaphilippe, executive director of the EU Disinfo Lab, a nonprofit research organization based in Brussels, told the Times.

“If Europe is to be a sovereign entity with its own laws, those laws must be applied by platforms and other actors,” he said to the publication. “A failure to enforce them properly raises serious concerns about sovereignty and whether Europe can ensure its laws are respected on its own territory.”