Mind you, whilst you are totally right, The Guardian have long been "fucking Zionists" and even now that they toned down their overt support of the Genocide, still are "fucking Zionists" judging by their continued practices of framing both sides differently, such as how in their articles Israelis "are killed" whilst Palestinias merely "die".

This is one of the largest forums in the largest lemmy instance, so controlling powers for information gathering and message shaping such as Mod and Admin here are obvious targets for state actors.

From my own experience and impressions here both in modding actions, the posts of some mods in some other forums and even getting an e-mail from a Tel-Aviv based organisation when I was a member of Lemmy.World (highly critical of the Genocide) on the e-mail address of that account, at least the US and probably Israel have obtained both kinds of positions here.

IMHO, understanding the Scientific Method and, maybe more importantly, why it is as it is (so, understanding things like Confirmation Bias - including that we ourselves have it without noticing it, which skews our perception, recollection and conclusions - as well as Logical Falacies) is what makes the most difference in how we mentally handle data, information and even offered knowledge from the outside.

PS: Also more broadly in STEM, the structured and analytical way of thinking in those areas also helps in things like spotting logical inconsistencies, circular logic and other such tricks to make the illogical superficially seem logical.

Even subtle but common Propaganda techniques used in the modern age are a lot more obvious once one is aware of one's one natural biases and how these techniques act on and via those biases, purposefully avoiding logic.

Personally I feel that that's the part of my training in Science (which I never finished, since I changed the degree I was taking from Physics to EE half way) is what makes me a bit more robust (though not immune: none of us are, IMHO) to Propaganda.

Outside the politics bit and the making it about New York because he's running for New York Mayor hence to represent all New Yorkers and their interests, I want to emphasise the core in his point that it's all about principles:

• I have these Principles, my Principles apply the same to everybody, I stand by my Principles equally for all.

I just had this big discussion with colleague of mine who started a critique about the flotilla trying to get help to Gaza by mentioning some local (I'm not in the US) leftwing politician that's in it.

It really pissed me off because this has nothing to do with political affiliation and I don't care about political affiliation - it's about being against victimizing en masse people who did nothing wrong, because they're part of a specific ethnicity.

It's the principle of the thing - though shall not harm those who did you no wrong (even if they look like people who did do you wrong) - and the principle of the thing applies the same no matter which political forces have sided with whom.

Further, in my view it's the most immoral think imaginable to excuse mass murdering of civilians because one's political favorites have chosen a side: you're either a Moral person with a sense of Right and Wrong and hence whose judgment of the Right or Wrong of certain actions is based on the actions themselves (not on which tribes are seen as aligned with any side), or what you have is not Morals, just a doglike "follow the leader".

Anyway, it's nice to see somebody so nicelly making the point of "these are my principles and as principles they apply the same for everybody".

For the first part, let's just say that when I was a member of lemmy.world and commonly made posts critical of the Israeli Genocide in Gaza, I started receiving e-mails on the e-mail address I used to register in that instance, in my native language, from a Tel-Aviv based organisation inviting me for an online "Learn about Israel" course. I never make my e-mail public and as far as I know only instance Admins have access to that data about users, not moderators.

Another example: you can find a ton of pro-Israel posts by gedaliyah@lemmy.world, a !news@lemmy.world moderator who also "strangely" seems to specialize in opinating about other Middle Eastern nations (mind you, this is so overt I actually doubt they're a paid state actor - probably just an amateur far-right Israeli).

I've also seen and received some weird moderation actions in lemmy.world forums - for example like a post where I pointed out somemebody else's link to an article about something in China was to a think tank which gets funding from the Australian Defense Department, was moderated as "misinformation" when the "About Us" page in that site says exactly that they're funded by the Australian Defense Department. More broadly, posts in lemmy.world forums that relate to geostrategical "adversaries" and "allies" of countries like the US seem to attract way more moderation actions than pretty much anything else but outright spam and trolling.

Hardly proof of an abundance of state actors there, I know, but definitelly strange.

Also, purely from a "good management" point of view, it makes sense for state actors to concentrate their efforts on the largest instance and the larger forums in Lemmy, especially in terms of getting positions with power such as Admin and Moderator.

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As for the rest, yeah, I should probably check votes when I spot a weird voting pattern.

I'm averse to checking people's voting because I feel like I should treat voting as a way for people to anonymously signal their opinion, but it does make sense to check it if I see what I think is an abnormal pattern.

This being posted in a Lemmy.world forum is especially poignant given that it seems to be by far the instance most riddled with state and political actors trying to manipulate opinions, with quite a number of those being actual instance admins or moderators of large forums there.

Beyond that and more in general, on certain subjects it's pretty obvious that there are people going around using either bots, multiple accounts or working in synchrony with others to "juice" the impact of their posts - you post something well thought and reasoned which is critical of one of such people's posts and when they respond to it with their own post, within a few minutes their post has 5 or 10 upvotes and yours the same downvotes, yet when you come back and check it hours later, unless it's deep down in a tread, everybody since has been upvoting your post with no upvotes for the other one.

In some things there's also this funny effect that might be due to bot/propaganda farms or geographical: for example, as an European with an European point of view, I'll often in Politics forums point out the hypocrisy of some things said and done by US Democrats and the tribalist types over here pretty much parroting the party propaganda line, because for me who have a far broader political culture than if had only experience American Politics, it's painfully obvious, and if I do that during the afternoon and night here (so morning and midday in the US), it quickly attracts a lot of downvotes, yet often if I check it out later, that post is slowly attracting more upvotes than downvotes and ends up with a slightly (or at times strongly) positive net vote, which I believe is either because there are actual organised propaganda activities on major Lemmy Political forums by the US Democrat Party and they focus on going after fresh posts in such forums and move on after a while (so their impact on votes is front-loaded) or people from geographical locations other than the US are far more likely to have a view on US politics similar to mine than Americans (so I'm getting more downvotes during US prime Lemmy-usage time and more upvotes the rest of the time).

Mind you, this is all self assessed "strange" observed patterns, so take it with a pinch and expect it to be heavily tainted with things like Confirmation Bias.

London Metropolitan Police, so the general police for most of London (not the City Of London, as that part has its own police force).

I say "general police" because there are specialist forces with police powers and London HQs, such as the Scotland Yard and the Serious Fraud Office.

I lived for over a decade in Britain as an immigrant and find it hilarious when Brits online tell me Britain has much less Racism that the rest of Europe.

The entire "anti"-Discrimination legislation over there is about punishing the overtly voicing of discriminatory statements not about stopping discriminatory practices: managing appearences, not "doing the right thing", mirroring the dominant social practices amongst the middle and upper class English (who control modern day British politics) of favoring heavilly managing appearences instead of behaving morally.

My impression has always been that this approach to discrimination - basically, swipe it under the rug by cracking down of what is said rather than what is done - just make acting in racist and mysogynistic ways be more common rather than less.

It's already known since WWII and the Battle Of Britain that bombing civilian populations doesn't decrease their resolve, quite the contrary.

Whilst some of Russia bombing (such as that of power generation) does make military sense, for the last year or so it looks like strategically Ukraine is way more effective at damaging Russian war efforts with long range attacks than the other way around.

Further, it also looks like Ukraine, with it's proportionally much smaller territory, is much more effective at AA defense.

It's funny that since Ukraine started making their own weaponry for in-depth attacks (as, shamelessly, Western powers did not provide them from the start with cruise missiles), Russia's "Big Country" advantage is being turned into a disadvantage.

What I'm waiting for here is the reaction of Italian dockworkers to the Italian frigate doing absolutelly nothing when the Sumud Flotilla was attacked by an Israeli force in International Waters, which is literally an act of Piracy.

I am massivelly curious about what the reaction of Italian dockworkers to the Italian frigate doing jack-shit nothing will be ...

They actually showed bits of both speeches on TV news around here (I'm not in the US) and these guys are like a clown version of the Nazis.