Common Dreams:
"Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Saturday warned the United States not to interfere with a shipment of oil bound for Venezuela after the South American nation said it would provide an armed escort for the tankers.
In a statement posted on his website, Rouhani said the United States had created 'unacceptable conditions' in different parts of the world, but that Iran would 'by no means' be the one to initiate conflict. ...
Venezuela said Wednesday that planes and ships from the nation’s armed forces will escort the tankers in case of any U.S. aggression."
-->Imminent war, but the US media, including the NYT, is not reporting on the confrontation. Our media does not like to highlight how reckless and provocative our military is in the rest of the world.
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Carnegie Mellon University, School of Computer Science:
"Carnegie Mellon University researchers have discovered that much of the discussion around the pandemic and stay-at-home orders is being fueled by misinformation campaigns that use convincing bots.
To analyze bot activity around the pandemic, CMU researchers since January have collected more than 200 million tweets discussing coronavirus or COVID-19. Of the top 50 influential retweeters, 82% are bots, they found. Of the top 1,000 retweeters, 62% are bots. ...
'Conspiracy theories increase polarization in groups. It’s what many misinformation campaigns aim to do,' Dr Carley [professor in the School of Computer Science] said. 'People have real concerns about health and the economy, and people are preying on that to create divides. ... Spreading conspiracy theories leads to more extreme opinions, which can in turn lead to more extreme behavior and less rational thinking.' "
https://www.scs.cmu.edu/news/nearly-half-twitter-accounts-discussing-‘reopening-america’-may-be-bots
-->You would think that the widespread use of bots to divide citizens and encourage conspiracy theories would be covered by our "newspaper of record." But the NYT is often missing in action when it comes to reporting on AI manipulation of the internet.
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Common Dreams:
"New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is facing new criticism after the Associated Press reported Friday that a state directive led to over 4,300 still recovering coronavirus patients being sent to New York's 'already vulnerable nursing homes.'
'It was a death sentence,' tweeted Daniel Choi, a doctor at the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell. He called the directive a 'horrendous idea' and 'definitely not something any doctor taking care of nursing home patients would have signed off on.'
The state health department directive, issued March 25, barred nursing homes from requiring patients deemed 'medically stable' from being tested for Covid-19 prior to admission. Cuomo, a Democrat, rescinded the order May 10, but not before thousands of infected patients likely entered nursing homes and contributed to the coronavirus's spread."
-->The NYT has done several stories about the appalling death rate in the state's nursing homes, but criticism of Cuomo is always left out. He has become the darling of the neoliberal Democrats.
