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Vader

Best of the Web: You're not imagining things: Report finds 50% of pro-government social media accounts in Israel are bots

Accounts run from foreign countries said to like and share posts by PM, other politicians within seconds, even though videos they're sharing take minutes to actually watch
bots cyberwarfare psywar
About half of the politically active accounts on Israeli social media are not real people but rather bots, including many of those boosting posts by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and members of his right-wing coalition, according to an investigation by Channel 12 news.

The report, which aired on Friday night, found that Netanyahu and his allies use bots to "like" and share their posts almost immediately after the content is uploaded, in order to convince the platforms' algorithms to recommend it to other users.

"When he posts a five-minute video in Hebrew, in the first 60 seconds, most of the shares are from abroad, and [those] posts happen within about five seconds," Jonathan Hasidim, of the Scooper research group, told Channel 12.

The report cited a negative post about the Brothers in Arms protest group and a reaction to the slaying of policeman 1st Sgt. Niv Peretz as examples of posts by the premier that were clearly boosted by bots.

He explained that in the latter case, "the initial [response] was very strong, 70% from abroad, and after that we see a decline." Hasidim told the network: "It's a trend-graph that's very characteristic of Netanyahu's tweets."

Additionally, whereas reactions to such posts are often negative, when the posts are shared they skew largely positive, indicating the use of bots, according to the report.

Comment: This is just part of the picture. Between the US, UK and Israel, no other country comes close to their psywar capabilities, and they've been doing this for a long time, dating back to the turn of the century.


Snakes in Suits

Best of the Web: Paris court orders 6-month suspensions of 10 social media accounts over "cyber-harassing of Brigitte Macron"

brigitte macron
"Stop calling me a man!"
A Paris court found Monday, January 5, 10 people guilty of cyber-harassing France's First Lady Brigitte Macron. The court pointed to "particularly degrading, insulting, and malicious" comments referring to false claims regarding alleged trans identity and alleged pedo-criminality targeting Brigitte Macron.

Eight defendants were handed suspended terms of four to eight months, while a ninth man was sentenced to six months in jail over his absence from the hearing. They and a tenth person were ordered to follow a course against hate speech online. Three individuals considered to be the key instigators online also had their social media accounts suspended for six months.


Comment: Other than the guy who received a default, actual, prison sentence for being 'in contempt of court', that's the only real punishment here: temporary social media bans. The 'online re-education camp' sentencing one of them received is laughable. The media running with headlines about "10 Sentenced to Prison For Being WRONG About Brigitte" is just spin to obscure the fact that the Macrons still have not won a defamation case, and yet are also still unable to simply have people jailed for stating that 'the emperor has no clothes'...


The defendants, eight men and two women aged 41 to 65, were accused of posting "numerous malicious comments" falsely claiming that President Emmanuel Macron's wife was born a man and linking the 24-year age gap with her husband to pedophilia. Some of the posts were viewed tens of thousands of times.

Presiding judge Thierry Donard described the claims of the French first lady's "alleged paedophilia" as "malicious, degrading and insulting," saying the defendants had received sentences for "intentionally harming the complainant."

Police Car

Best of the Web: ICE agent shoots female 'legal observer' dead in Minneapolis - 1 mile from where George Floyd died

police minneapolis renee good
The woman has been identified as Renee Nicole Good, 37
A US immigration agent has shot dead a 37-year-old woman in the city of Minneapolis, sparking protests overnight.

Federal officials said the woman, Renee Nicole Good, had tried to run over immigration agents with her car but the city mayor said the agent who shot her had acted recklessly.

Videos of the incident show ICE agents approaching a car which is in the middle of the street. As it attempts to drive off, one of them points his gun at the driver and at least two shots are heard. The FBI is investigating.

Hundreds of ICE agents have been deployed to Minneapolis, in the state of Minnesota, as part of the White House's crackdown on illegal immigration.


Comment: 2,000 of them in fact, the largest ICE deployment yet.


Fire

Best of the Web: Wildfires rage out of control in Patagonia, Argentina, as thousands of tourists evacuated


Comment: Is there a 'hidden hand' behind these fires?


mmmmm
Argentine authorities have evacuated some 3,000 tourists from a sparsely populated Patagonian district ravaged by wildfires for days, officials said Wednesday.
Wildfires have raged through Patagonia, forcing the evacuation of at least 3,000 tourists.

Several forest areas near the Andes mountains in Chubut province have been blazing since Monday (5 January), with video footage showing billows of smoke and flames rising from the trees.

More than 2,000 hectares of vegetation across various points in the Argentine Patagonia have been affected by the blazes. "Comarca Andina", a popular tourist destination, has been hit by the flames.

At least one of the fires was the result of arson, officials said.

It comes a year after the country was hit by its worst wildfires in three decades, which saw tens of thousands of hectares razed to the ground and left one person dead.


Comment: Social media in Argentina is rife with reports of evidence of arson at more than one of the fires:


And Argentine media is reporting the discovery of 'grenades' of some type being found 'around a lake' somewhere in Patagonia:


DD Geopolitics has a whole theory as to what may be happening here: preparation for partitioning Argentina into another 'Jewish state'?

Unmasking the Flames: Israel's Shadow Over Patagonia and Milei's Betrayal of Argentina

The Grayzone also finds the theory to have merit:




Cruise Missle

Best of the Web: Russia's Oreshnik Strike on "Largest Gas Storage Site in Europe" in Ukraine's Lvov Region

oreshnik strike lvov gas
The moment of impact of one of Oreshniks multiple war heads on a gas intallation in Lvov, Ukraine, January 8, 2026
It has happened for only the second time of the war: the Russian Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile dubbed the Oreshnik was launched from the Kapustin Yar range toward Lvov, again providing the world with an eerie spectacle:


Zoomed footage:


Comment: Regarding the main event, namely the actual warheads knocking out Ukraine's military, NATO mercs and the power grid, Kiev's mayor is advising the city's population to leave, at least temporarily, for the duration of the cold weather.

But this 2nd display of Oreshnik remains just 'a sample': Lvov's mayor has said damage from the strike was minimal, and that there were no casualties, because the hyper-sonic missiles apparently, again, contained no actual warheads.




Skull

Best of the Web: State terrorism: UK regime has 'de-banked' millions of British citizens


Comment: This is, functionally, as bad as a prison sentence. Without a bank account in today's world, you cant function. Not even the basics. And this has happened arbitrarily, with no judicial process, just... [Press DELETE] aaaannnnnddd it's gone...


Nigel Farage
© skynewsReform UK leader Nigel Farage
An estimated 453,230 accounts were shut down in the United Kingdom in the last year, a stunning figure that has drawn outrage from the country's leading conservative lawmaker.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage called the shocking figure "appalling" and slammed European rules that he believes "makes it cheaper for banks to close accounts over unusual transactions." Farage, who was elected to the British Parliament in 2024 and leads the conservative populist Reform Party, is no stranger to debanking, having had his accounts closed by Coutts in 2023.

So what's the banks' excuse? "Financial crime reasons," they said, according to documents obtained by The Telegraph under Freedom of Information rules.

Comment: This is tantamount to "no man being able to buy or sell lest he take the mark of the beast."

The above-linked Telegraph article quotes James Graham, a senior researcher at think tank the British Prosperity Institute:
"Preventing crime sounds noble, but nobody believes another 453,000 people are financial criminals, on top of the 408,000 in 2024, and 317,000 in 2023."
No one believes the UK government that these half million accounts were 'fraudulent accounts of criminals'.

They've begun 'sanctioning' their own people, dissidents 'guilty' of 'WrongThink'.


Cowboy Hat

Best of the Web: One fell swoop: Lawsuit eyes dealing final death blow to racial preferences

Statue of Justice
Opponents of affirmative action hoped that the Supreme Court had delivered a death blow to the controversial policy in 2023 when Chief Justice John Roberts declared for the court's majority that "Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it."

But as sweeping as that pronouncement was, it came in a ruling in the landmark SFFA v. Harvard case, solely barring the use of racial preferences in college admissions. The practices that the court deemed illegal on campus have persisted elsewhere, including in programs across the federal government.

A lawsuit now wending its way through the courts, Revier v. Loeffler, aims to change that. Building on the SFFA ruling, the suit's plaintiffs are taking aim at regulations that they allege direct agencies to unconstitutionally dole out tens of billions of dollars in awards on the basis of race - most prominently through no-bid or limited competition contracts reserved for so-called "Small Disadvantaged Businesses" and facilitated by the Small Business Administration. The case could have wide implications, as the SBA's definition of disadvantage has been widely adopted by many other federal agencies.

Snowflake Cold

Best of the Web: Intelligence operation? Berlin power outage is another in long list of 'mystery' attacks against Germany's critical infrastructure


Comment: This is 'darker' than the German government, and the media, is letting on...


Around 50,000 households, 2,000 businesses were left without electricity after high-voltage power lines damaged by fire
berlin power outage
Berlin is currently freezing in the dark due to a 'left-wing terror attack', but who did it exactly?
Thousands of people in southwest Berlin continue without heating or electricity despite freezing temperatures after a major power outage caused by an arson attack on Saturday.

The fire damaged electricity cables, cutting power to about 50,000 households and 2,000 commercial businesses, affecting more than 100,000 people.

Authorities in Berlin declared a state of emergency, requesting support from the military and the federal police.

According to utility operator Stromnetz Berlin, the damage to the power grid is severe, and repairs are complicated; full power cannot be restored before Thursday.

The far-left Vulkan Group, known for similar attacks in the past, claimed responsibility for the sabotage in a letter titled: "Cutting off power to those in power."

Comment: We've looked into this, and found that not a single arrest has ever been made for ANY of these 7-8 major terror/sabotage acts over the past decade.

And this in Germany, the country where you risk being incarcerated for 'insulting political leaders online', and where hundreds of people have been arrested in dawn raids for 'plots' the government alleges may have resulted in acts of sabotage and political destabilization.

And yet, here we have an actual, organized group that has been acting, with impunity, and admittedly to 'cause political destabilization' for many years... yet there are no arrests, no loud condemnations from the government, and no follow-up investigative reporting from the media.

Clearly, this network's 'leftist' credentials, vaguely alluded to by the authorities, are a thin cover-story for something much more sinister. We're reminded of the leftist Baader-Meinhof Gang, a.k.a. Red Army Faction, which operated with impunity in West Germany in the 1970s and 1980s, all the while being handled by German and American intelligence agents, thereby justifying security and political measures to keep the Soviets out, the Americans in, and the general population controlled through a 'strategy of tension.

Berliners are literally being subject to 'gaslighting' in their own homes.


War Whore

Best of the Web: Former Canadian deputy PM Chrystia Freeland resigns parliamentary seat to become economic advisor to Ukrainian government


Comment: This is the perfect career move for Freeland, whose Ukrainian Nazi roots have finally called her home...


Chrystia Freeland
Apparently Zelensky is simply skipping his own people and going straight to appointing officials within foreign governments to top advisory positions.

Ukraine has named former Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland as an economic advisor amid a broader reshuffle of senior government positions, also coming on the heels of the massive energy ministry related corruption scandal which has unleashed chaos within his administration.

Comment: This speaks volumes about the current cadres who pass for 'leaders' in the West, but it also speaks volumes about Canada's status as a 'real country'.


Che Guevara

Best of the Web: Sorry, Zohran, we're kind of done with the "warmth of collectivism."

Mayor Mamdani
© UnknownZohran Mamdani
In his swearing-in ceremony, the new Mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, said, "We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism."

It sent chills down the spines of most of those who understand the history of governments given over to collectivism. I think it's likely in name only, a virtue signal for those at the top to feel better about income inequality.

Let Zohran meet the needs of the poor and the marginalized while we enjoy our mansion in the Hamptons in peace. They'll have to cough up the taxes to buy off some of that guilt, but that's a small price to pay compared to an unruly mob banging down your door.


Comment: The Great Feminization