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Why fight the Second World War in the first place? The soundbite that circulated the world was "why fight the Second World War in the first place?", and being directed at the man that Carlson had announced as the greatest warmonger in England was not an accident. #DebatePolítico #Conservadorismo #HistóriaBritânica (translated)

The author wrote that Saudi Arabia was facing intense attacks while the United States, which they said had triggered the war in the Middle East, looked elsewhere. They claimed a Houthi strike on Riyadh airport had killed 12 people and said a saying about those relying on America being left exposed had become especially relevant. #MiddleEast #SaudiArabia #Houthi #US #SA #YE

Fat Dog are an English band, currently consisting of Joe Love, Chris Hughes, Morgan Wallace, and Ellis D. The band formed in 2020 in South East London. Fat Dog's music has been described as containing elements of dance, punk and klezmer; frontman Joe Love has cited the music from Serious Sam as having influenced the band's sound. Fat Dog was formed during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Prior to releasing any singles, the band became known for their boisterous live performances, with Gary Ryan of NME describing them as "2023's wildest live band". https://hvdommelen.nl/f/FatDog.html

Joueur du Grenier indicated that he played Squadron 42, the single-player mode of Star Citizen, in advance and had a good time. He praised the immersion, the richness of the environments and life scenes, which he compared to his walks in Night City, in Cyberpunk. He also enjoyed the first-person combat, the visual effects, the sound design, and the music. According to him, the interface was polished and seemed simpler than that of Star Citizen, perhaps in anticipation of a release on consoles. However, he believed that the game would not be suitable for everyone: out of five hours, about three were devoted to cutscenes, with also long sequences where the player followed characters by walking. He described it as a story-driven game rather than a space simulation or gameplay. Joueur du Grenier also reported issues with finishing, lighting, and textures, but said he encountered neither crashes nor significant blocking bugs. He found the artificial intelligence uneven, with some enemies helping each other or throwing grenades, while others seemed unresponsive. He ultimately compared the game to a dream version of Wing Commander and was pleased to have seen Mark Hamill. #StarCitizen #Squadron42 #Gaming (translated)

Jonathan Krispijn wrote that Soundos had rejected the far-right in a rough manner. According to him, it ensured that people no longer listened when everyone who was critical of immigration was labeled as far-right. #soundos #immigratie #politiek #debat #nederland https://t.co/bo9V5O3qMU #immigratie #politiek #debat (translated)

Russia’s war propaganda gets a soundtrack – how AI-generated songs reached global streaming platforms Russian war propaganda is no longer confined to television broadcasts, Telegram channels or political videos. A study by the Ukrainian threat-intelligence organisation Terrecon has identified 981 songs combining signs of AI generation with pro-Russian military narratives, distributed through an ecosystem that reaches YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer and SoundCloud. The songs range from sentimental ballads to rock and heavy metal. Their recurring themes are familiar from conventional Russian wartime propaganda: the heroisation of Russian soldiers, romanticisation of the war, mobilisation, the “Russian world”, commemoration of fallen troops and attacks on Ukraine and its armed forces. Some contain derogatory or dehumanising references to Ukrainians. What is new is not necessarily the message, but the production and distribution model: generative AI allows propagandistic music to be produced rapidly, cheaply and in quantities that would previously have required musicians, studios and producers. Nearly 1,000 tracks identified Terrecon examined 3,725 tracks collected from YouTube, YouTube Music, SoundCloud and the AI music platform Suno. After manual review, researchers classified 981 as showing both indications of AI generation and pro-Russian war propaganda. In 681 tracks they identified 728 propaganda-related keywords or phrases. The largest category was the glorification of the Russian military, followed by romanticised treatment of Moscow’s so-called “special military operation”, mobilisation appeals, narratives about the “Russian world”, and the cult of fallen soldiers and the state. The reach was not merely theoretical. Listening or viewing statistics were available for 608 of the identified tracks; together they had accumulated 86.8 million plays and views, according to Terrecon. A smaller group of 13 high-performing songs accounted for more than 53 million YouTube views and more than 67 million when YouTube Music was included. Among the better-known examples is “Power of Artillery”, a Russian-language rock song praising artillery weapons that passed two million views on YouTube. Most of the tracks for which publication dates could be established appeared after 2024, broadly coinciding with the rapid expansion of consumer AI music generators such as Suno and Udio. That correlation does not prove that AI alone caused the increase, but it illustrates how drastically the economics of production have changed. A propaganda song for as little as $11 Terrecon also tested how difficult it would be to commission such material. Researchers approached 25 creators producing AI-assisted militaristic music; 15 agreed to take commissions. Prices ranged from approximately $11 to $330, while delivery times ranged from two hours to three days. According to Terrecon, some were prepared to produce highly aggressive anti-Ukrainian material, including content intended for audiences involving children from occupied Ukrainian territories. Some creators used Russian intermediary services that provided access to Western AI tools such as Suno and Udio despite restrictions. The researchers then tested several AI generators themselves. Across 40 prompts submitted to Suno, Udio, Mureka, Google Flow Music and ElevenLabs, 25 resulted in successful generations, while safeguards were circumvented in 15 cases. Terrecon reported that four of the five services tested produced Russian-language material containing wartime narratives, although technical problems prevented comparable testing on some systems. In one Udio experiment, the researchers said the model itself introduced more explicit violent language than had appeared in the original promp These tests do not demonstrate that the commercial platforms knowingly support Russian propaganda. They show something narrower: existing safeguards can be inconsistent when political messaging is packaged as music. From generation to Spotify The distribution experiment may be the most revealing part of Terrecon’s research. The team deliberately uploaded test tracks containing explicit hostile language to YouTube, SoundCloud, Spotify and Deezer. Terrecon says none was blocked during the experiment. On SoundCloud, researchers used an account identifying its location as Moscow, disclosed the use of AI and added markers including references to the Russian military and the war. The platform accepted the upload and subsequently offered paid promotional and distribution tools. This does not prove that streaming recommendation systems systematically promote pro-war music. There is currently insufficient public evidence to make that claim. It does demonstrate that material can enter the same commercial distribution infrastructure as ordinary music and, once there, potentially benefit from playlists, searches, sharing and recommendation mechanisms available to other releases. That distinction is important. Propaganda no longer has to announce itself as political communication. On a streaming platform it can look like another song. Culture as a delivery mechanism Music has always been used in wartime propaganda. What generative AI changes is scale. Instead of investing heavily in a limited number of patriotic performers or officially commissioned productions, creators can generate variations across styles, audiences and emotional registers at very low cost. Terrecon found material ranging from war rock to sentimental songs and content styled for younger audiences. Some creators also experimented with cloned celebrity voices and stylistic imitation of established musicians. The format also offers a different relationship with the audience. A political video asks a viewer to consume an argument. Music can accompany commuting, exercise or entertainment and may be encountered outside explicitly political spaces. This does not automatically make it more persuasive, and Terrecon’s research does not establish measurable effects on political attitudes. It does, however, place wartime narratives inside a cultural environment where users may not initially perceive themselves as consuming political messaging. An ecosystem, not a proven Kremlin command structure The strongest evidence supports describing this as a growing AI-assisted pro-Russian propaganda-music ecosystem, not a single operation controlled from Moscow. Terrecon did not establish that the Russian government created, financed or coordinated all 981 tracks. Reporting on the study likewise notes that the extent of direct state involvement remains unclear. There is broader evidence that the Russian state finances cultural projects and digital content supporting the war, including through state-backed funding bodies. That context matters, but it does not allow individual songs in Terrecon’s dataset to be attributed to the Kremlin without additional evidence. The significance of the case lies elsewhere. AI has reduced the cost of producing ideological content, intermediaries can help creators access generation tools, and global platforms can provide distribution. The result is a pipeline in which wartime propaganda no longer has to resemble propaganda at all. It can simply appear in a playlist. Sources Terrecon / Ukrainska Pravda — Daria Verbytska on the research https://www.pravda.com.ua/columns/2026/10/05/8056229/ Suspilne Culture — detailed breakdown of Terrecon findings https://suspilne.media/culture/1417933-rosijsku-voennu-propagandu-maskuut-pid-anime-karaoke-ta-rok-doslidzenna-si-pisen-vid-terrecon/ The Insider — AI-generated Russian war propaganda music https://theins.ru/news/297839 Institute of Mass Information — summary of New York Times reporting https://imi.org.ua/en/news/doslidzhennya-rf-masovo-stvoryu%D1%94-propagandistski-pisni-za-dopomogoyu-shi The Bridge Media — AI-generated songs and Russian military propaganda https://thebridgemedia.com.ua/en/ai-generated-songs-russian-military-propaganda/ Center for Strategic Communication — cost and production of AI propaganda music https://spravdi.org/propaganda-za-11-yak-rosiya-shtampuye-shi-pisni-z-miljonamy-prosluhovuvan/ Times of India — AI-generated Russian war songs https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/europe/ai-sings-russias-war-story-inside-the-rise-of-generative-songs-about-ukraine-conflict/articleshow/134650594.cms EU Council / EUR-Lex — Presidential Foundation for Cultural Initiatives https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32026D1351 Human Rights Watch — Russian state funding of digital and patriotic content https://www.hrw.org/report/2025/07/30/disrupted-throttled-and-blocked/state-censorship-control-and-increasing-isolation #DISINFORMED #Episode16 #Russia #Ukraine #RussianPropaganda #WarPropaganda #MusicPropaganda #AIMusic #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #GenerativeAI #SyntheticMedia #AIPropaganda #Disinformation #InformationWarfare #InfluenceOperations #CulturalPropaganda #DigitalInfluence #NarrativeManipulation #PropagandaMusic #StreamingPlatforms #Spotify #AppleMusic #YouTube #YouTubeMusic #Deezer #SoundCloud #Suno #Udio #RussianWorld #RusskiyMir #MilitaryPropaganda #WarNarratives #Mobilisation #AlgorithmicDistribution #RecommendationAlgorithms #MusicStreaming #PlatformManipulation #Terrecon #OSINT #MediaManipulation #WRLD

The author said Vladimir Putin had given himself a “present” for his 74th birthday in the form of what they described as a massive attack on Kyiv and other parts of Ukraine. They wrote that sirens were still sounding in Kyiv and the attack was continuing, and claimed a Russian ballistic missile had landed among apartment buildings in the city. https://t.co/whGChqrYyf #Ukraine #Putin #Kyiv #UA #RU

Brazil’s synthetic voters – when AI manufactures public opinion They look like ordinary street interviews. A reporter approaches a passer-by in a Brazilian square and asks a simple question: who will you vote for? A young voter explains why Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva deserves another term. An elderly woman says Brazil needs Flávio Bolsonaro because he represents political renewal and greater security. The locations look plausible, the microphones are visible and the answers sound much like the brief political opinions heard in television vox pops around the world. None of the people are real. Ahead of Brazil’s presidential election on 4 October, fact-checking organisation Aos Fatos identified at least 50 TikTok videos in which artificial intelligence was used to manufacture voters, reporters and apparently spontaneous political interviews. Together, the videos had accumulated around 7.4 million views by mid-August. Some promoted Lula, others Flávio Bolsonaro, while another group used synthetic characters to ridicule or stereotype supporters of one side. Aos Fatos found no apparent evidence linking the accounts producing the videos to either presidential campaign. The opinion poll that never took place The format is important. These were not conventional deepfakes in which a recognisable politician is made to say something he never said. Instead, the creators reproduced the visual language of the vox pop – the short street interview used by broadcasters and social-media creators to illustrate what ordinary people supposedly think. In pro-Lula videos, synthetic voters described themselves as beneficiaries of social programmes or credited the president with improving their lives. In videos supporting Flávio Bolsonaro, artificial interviewees associated him with political renewal, public security and fighting corruption. Other clips were openly hostile: AI-generated characters presented as poor or living in parts of Brazil’s north-east were shown in dirty clothes or run-down surroundings, declaring support for Lula because they supposedly preferred welfare payments to work. The deception is therefore subtler than fabricating a candidate’s statement. It manufactures something that political communication normally treats as evidence of public sentiment. A real vox pop may be unscientific, but the people interviewed at least exist. These videos created the appearance that identifiable social groups – young people, pensioners, welfare recipients or residents of particular regions – were spontaneously expressing political preferences when no such encounters had taken place. An electoral-law specialist interviewed by Aos Fatos described the technique as the fabrication of a “social fact that never occurred”. That captures the central innovation: AI is being used not merely to falsify political speech, but to manufacture the impression of grassroots opinion. Fifty videos, but not one proven network The available evidence does not support describing the 50 posts as a centrally controlled influence operation. Aos Fatos located them through TikTok searches and recommendations produced by the platform itself, then examined the accounts responsible for publication. Most had relatively small individual audiences, although their combined reach was substantial. The first examples identified by the investigation appeared as early as March 2026. Activity increased in June and was concentrated particularly in July and the first half of August as Brazil’s election calendar intensified. Some accounts specialised in AI-generated videos generally, including fabricated podcast-style material. Others were explicitly political or supportive of a candidate, but Aos Fatos found no apparent links between those profiles and the official Lula or Bolsonaro campaigns. That distinction is essential. The evidence demonstrates a common technique and a shared political environment, not a single command structure. Some creators may have been motivated by ideology, others by engagement or monetisation. Publicly available evidence does not establish who commissioned the individual videos or whether any coordination existed between the accounts. This decentralised model also creates a different enforcement problem from a traditional bot network. There may be no headquarters to expose and no infrastructure whose removal disables the entire operation. The format itself can be copied by anyone with access to inexpensive generative-video tools. When the algorithm mixes real and synthetic citizens Aos Fatos documented another important feature of the phenomenon: TikTok’s recommendation system placed AI-generated interviews alongside genuine street interviews. For a user scrolling quickly through the platform, the transition between an authentic citizen and an entirely fabricated one could therefore be almost invisible. In 18 per cent of the 50 videos analysed, there was no indication that the people shown had been generated using AI. After Aos Fatos provided TikTok with the videos, the company said it had removed all of them for violating its rules on edited and AI-generated media. TikTok said its policies require creators to identify synthetic content and prohibit manipulated media capable of misleading users about matters of public importance or impersonating genuine journalistic material. The issue extends beyond one platform. Factchequeado’s review of Brazil’s 2026 election campaign found that synthetic endorsements and other deepfakes had become one of the most visible forms of AI-assisted electoral misinformation, alongside fabricated candidate statements and invented scenes. Brazil already had rules for synthetic politics Brazil entered the campaign with unusually detailed electoral rules governing artificial intelligence. The Superior Electoral Court, the TSE, requires electoral propaganda using synthetic multimedia to disclose clearly that AI was used. More importantly for the fake-voter videos, its rules prohibit synthetic audio or video used to favour or harm a candidacy when it creates or alters the image or voice of a living, deceased or fictitious person. The difficulty is attribution and enforcement. When a synthetic video is published by an official campaign, responsibility can be relatively straightforward to investigate. When it comes from an apparently independent account with no demonstrated relationship to a candidate, lawyers interviewed by Aos Fatos said responsibility is more likely to fall on the individual creator, while imposing electoral sanctions on a campaign would require evidence of a connection. For the final 72 hours before the election and the 24 hours following it, the TSE has imposed additional restrictions on newly published or republished synthetic material involving candidates or public figures, reflecting the particular difficulty of correcting fabricated content immediately before voting. From deepfake politicians to synthetic electorates The Brazilian case illustrates a broader change in political manipulation. The first generation of electoral deepfakes concentrated on famous people: make a politician appear to say something damaging, or fabricate an endorsement from a celebrity. Synthetic vox pops reverse the perspective. The politician can remain completely authentic; it is the electorate around the politician that is fabricated. That changes the psychological proposition of the message. Instead of saying the candidate believes this, the video suggests people like you believe this. Age, clothing, accent, neighbourhood and social class can all be generated to construct an artificial constituency around almost any political claim. There is no evidence that the 50 Brazilian videos identified by Aos Fatos constitute a single centrally directed campaign, nor evidence that they changed voting intentions. What they demonstrate is a technique whose barrier to entry has become extremely low. AI no longer needs to forge the politician. #DISINFORMED #Episode14 #Brazil #BrazilElection2026 #Elections #ElectionDisinformation #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #GenerativeAI #SyntheticVoters #SyntheticMedia #AIAvatars #AIGeneratedVideo #VoxPop #FakeInterviews #Astroturfing #AIPropaganda #PoliticalDisinformation #InfluenceOperations #InformationWarfare #SocialMediaManipulation #TikTok #PublicOpinion #ManufacturedConsent #SyntheticPublicOpinion #DigitalInfluence #Deepfakes #ElectionIntegrity #TSE #AosFatos #FactChecking #OSINT #MediaManipulation #WRLD (translated)

Baha accused Konstantin and his party friends of pushing the Union to the edge with their desired firewall, which brought 30 percent to the AfD while not benefiting the left camp. Instead, he wrote, the left has shifted further to the left, and its alarmist tone seems more authentic. He noted that the hypocritical, pseudo-altruistic comments about caring are no longer convincing. Baha wrote that Konstantin played a role in turning Friedrich Merz into an enemy figure, accusing him of opening the gate to hell when he relied on the support of the SPD and Greens for "Common Sense" in the Bundestag. The subsequent campaign yielded nothing. At the same time, those addressed relied on the assumption that the Union would never go into coalition with the AfD and would look for a power option with them in case of doubt. Now, Baha wrote, that too is wobbling: A weak Union no longer helps them, and Red-Red-Green is far from a majority. He wrote that his party has put itself in a bind out of fear of Konstantin and his political environment. That is the problem of his party. However, the previous red-green course has failed and has significantly harmed democracy as well as the Union, he explained. #Politik #Deutschland #Demokratie (translated)

CIVICO 33 - "ORTA NOVA SOUND LAB": FROM CAPITANATA TO "BROADWAY WORLD", THE "COMMUNITY BAND" PROJECT CONQUERS NEW YORK The social laboratory promoted by ANBG and the Ministry of Culture lands on the largest theatrical network in the world thanks to the article co-written by Chris Rabinowitz and the Orthese author Luciano Magaldi Sardella. There is a brass thread connecting Piazza Mario Frasca to Broadway. "Orta Nova Sound Lab" is the Community and Social Regeneration Band through Music, the project officially presented on September 21 at the C-Lab MAO FM 19.77 by brothers Luca and Erminio Ferrandina, which is experiencing unprecedented media attention for a band initiative born in the province of Foggia. The journalistic success is marked by its appearance on September 28 in Broadway World, the most authoritative global portal dedicated to theater and live performance, based in New York with over 1.5 million monthly global visits. This is not an insignificant result, projecting a story from the Apulian periphery into the realm of international cultural information. The article, titled "Orta Nova Sound Lab Launches Youth Community Band in Southern Italy," is co-authored by New York editor Chris Rabinowitz, a journalist for the American publication, and his Italian co-author Luciano Magaldi Sardella, an international author originally from Orta Nova, an engineer, academic journalist, and researcher active between Italy and abroad. The dual Italian-American signature symbolizes how a "good local practice" can become global news when told with expertise and roots. The Project: the Band as Social Regeneration "Orta Nova Sound Lab" is promoted by the National Association of Marching Bands (ANBG), chaired by Benedetto Grillo, and has been approved for funding under the public notice of the Ministry of Culture as per D.D.G. April 7, 2026, rep. n. 149, aimed at "Enhancing research and dissemination of musical practices in peripheral and areas of high social vulnerability." It is realized with the support of the Municipality of Orta Nova and with the collaboration of a solid civic network: the A.P.S. MAO FM 19.77, the "A. Olivetti" Higher Education Institute, the "Sandro Pertini" Comprehensive Institute, the Music Art association, and the C.I.S.A. of Foggia. As highlighted by "Broadway World," this is the first initiative in Italy to reinterpret the distinctive tradition of marching bands and youth orchestras within a ministry grant dedicated to urban peripheries and social vulnerability. A model that explicitly dialogues with the spirit of the so-called "Caivano Decree" (D.L. 123/2023) for combating youth discomfort, educational poverty, and juvenile delinquency. The idea, in its disarming simplicity, was summarized by the project director for ANBG, Antonella Spagnoletti: "The band is aggregation! The band is cohesion. Bringing these kids together to learn and live differently from the social world is among the primary objectives of our association." This concept was reiterated by the Mayor of Orta Nova, Ing. Domenico Di Vito: "This is an important project that can definitely make a difference compared to the past because it has all the ingredients to connect the entire world of culture and social issues that exists in Orta Nova and needs to be valued. The administration's commitment is to ensure sustainability, structure, and continuity over time." At the press conference presentation, moderated by journalist Giuseppe Di Bisceglie, participated alongside President Grillo, Director Spagnoletti, and Mayor Di Vito, Regional Councillor Grazia Maria Starace, Councillor for relationships with the third sector Sebastiano Battista, Councillor for Culture Vittoria Mastrogiacomo, and educational professor Alfredo Coppola, delegate of the Olivetti Institute. Why the News Became International The "Orta Nova Sound Lab" marching band project demonstrates that when a project has anti-mafia roots, pedagogical value, and a credible institutional network, the press responds. From local and national outlets like Cassa Armonica, Ansa Puglia, TGNorba, Corriere della Sera Bari, RaiNews TGR Puglia, La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno, Amica9TV, Brindisi In, Blasting News Italia, TRM Network, Secolo XIX, FoggiaToday, PlayNews24, Stato Quotidiano, and many others that well-documented the conference, it reached BroadwayWorld, which viewed the Orthese experience as a "social laboratory" capable of responding to the mafia with music. This leap in scale comes from joint efforts and the bridging work done by Luciano Magaldi Sardella, who managed to translate for the English-speaking audience alongside New York editor Chris Rabinowitz the deep meaning of a village band that in Apulia is not folklore, but a civil presence, a concrete alternative to screens and disintegration. In a South often narrated only for its emergencies, Orta Nova chooses to be told for its ability to generate community. And this time, the news has made its way around the world, starting from a square in Daunia. The Schedule The path, entirely free, includes instrumental workshops for brass and percussion, ensemble music lessons, and collective rehearsals with qualified teachers and conductors, open to aspiring musicians, families, schools, and citizens. The program that attracted the attention of national and now international press is organized as follows: October 2026: parade of bands marching through the streets and public spaces of Orta Nova, to recover the historical value of the band as a popular and identity expression. November-December 2026: high-profile concert season with the Grand Band Concert of Conversano and the Grand Band Concert "Biagio Abbate" City of Bisceglie, artistic training for the young students. Focus on inclusion: a special evening dedicated to female music with the Orchestra Note di Puglia, a formation composed entirely of professionals, to reinforce the values of equal opportunities. January 2027: first official concert of the newly formed Community Band of Orta Nova, a foundational act and public restitution of the work done. (translated)

CIVICO 33 — “ORTA NOVA SOUND LAB”: FROM CAPITANATA TO “BROADWAYWORLD”, THE “COMMUNITY BAND” PROJECT CONQUERS NEW YORK SOURCE: https://www.civico93.it/orta-nova-sound-laab-dalla-capitanata-a-broadwayworld-il-progetto-banda-di-comunita-conquista-new-york/ The social laboratory promoted by ANBG and the Ministry of Culture has landed on the world’s largest theatre network, thanks to the article co-authored by Chris Rabinowitz and the Orta Nova-born author Luciano Magaldi Sardella. There is a brass thread linking Piazza Mario Frasca to Broadway. It is called “Orta Nova Sound Lab” — the Community and Social Regeneration Band through Music — the project officially presented on 21 September last at the C-Lab MAO FM 19.77 of brothers Luca and Erminio Ferrandina, which is enjoying unprecedented media coverage for a band-cultural initiative born in the Province of Foggia. Its journalistic success was sealed on 28 September last by its arrival on BroadwayWorld, the world’s most authoritative portal dedicated to theatre and live performance, based in New York with over 1.5 million global monthly visits. A result that was by no means a foregone conclusion, which projects a story from the Apulian periphery into the international cultural news circuit. The article, entitled Orta Nova Sound Lab Launches Youth Community Band in Southern Italy, is jointly by-lined by New York editor Chris Rabinowitz, journalist for the American publication, and his Italian co-author Luciano Magaldi Sardella, an international author originally from Orta Nova, engineer, academic journalist, and researcher active between Italy and abroad. The dual Italo-American by-line symbolises how a “local good practice” can become global news when it is recounted with expertise and rootedness. The Project: The Band as Social Regeneration “Orta Nova Sound Lab” is promoted by the Associazione Nazionale Bande da Giro (ANBG), chaired by Benedetto Grillo, and was admitted for funding under the public call of the Ministry of Culture pursuant to Director General Decree of 7 April 2026, reg. no. 149, aimed at the “Strengthening of research activities and dissemination of musical practices in peripheries and in areas of high social vulnerability”. It is realized with the support of the Comune di Orta Nova and with the collaboration of a solid civic network: A.P.S. MAO FM 19.77, the Istituto di Istruzione Superiore “A. Olivetti”, the Istituto Comprensivo “Sandro Pertini”, the Music Art association, and the C.I.S.A. of Foggia. As BroadwayWorld itself emphasised, this is the first initiative in Italy to reinterpret the distinctive tradition of touring bands (bande da giro) and youth orchestras within a ministerial call dedicated to urban peripheries and social vulnerability. A model that dialogues explicitly with the spirit of the so-called “Caivano Decree” (Law Decree 123/2023) for combating youth distress, educational poverty, and juvenile crime. The idea, in its disarming simplicity, was summarised by the project director for ANBG, Antonella Spagnoletti: “The band is aggregation! The band is cohesion. Bringing these youngsters together, educating them, and enabling them to live in a manner different from the social-media world is among the primary objectives of our association.” A concept reiterated by the Mayor of Orta Nova, Eng. Domenico Di Vito: “This is an important project that can certainly make a difference compared with the past, because all the ingredients are there to network the entire cultural and social world that exists in Orta Nova and that must be valorised. The administration’s commitment is to ensure sustainability, structure, and continuity over time.” Taking part in the launch press conference, moderated by journalist Giuseppe Di Bisceglie, in addition to President Grillo, Director Spagnoletti, and Mayor Di Vito, were Regional Councillor Grazia Maria Starace, Councillor for relations with the third sector Sebastiano Battista, Councillor for Culture Vittoria Mastrogiacomo, and educational professor Alfredo Coppola, contact person for the Olivetti Institute. Why the Story Went International The “Orta Nova Sound Lab” band project demonstrates that when a project has anti-mafia roots, pedagogical value, and a credible institutional network, the press responds. From local and national titles such as Cassa Armonica, Ansa Puglia, TGNorba, Corriere della Sera Bari, RaiNews TGR Puglia, La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno, Amica9TV, Brindisi In, Blasting News Italia, TRM Network, Secolo XIX, FoggiaToday, PlayNews24, Stato Quotidiano, and many others, which thoroughly documented the conference, the coverage reached “Broadway World”, which read the Orta Nova experience as a “social laboratory” capable of answering the mafia with music. This change of scale derives from joint work and also from the liaison work carried out by Luciano Magaldi Sardella, who, together with New York editor Chris Rabinowitz, succeeded in translating for an Anglophone audience the profound meaning of a town band which, in Apulia, is not folklore, but a civil garrison, a concrete alternative to the screen and to social disintegration. In a South often narrated only for its emergencies, Orta Nova chooses to be recounted for its capacity to generate community. And this time, the news has travelled around the world, starting from a piazza in the Daunia. The Calendar The pathway, which is entirely free of charge, provides instrumental workshops for wind and percussion, ensemble music lessons, and collective rehearsals with qualified teachers and conductors, open to aspiring musicians, families, schools, and citizens. The programme that has attracted the attention of the national and now international press is structured as follows: October 2026: parade of marching bands through the streets and public spaces of Orta Nova, to recover the historic value of the band as a popular and identity-based expression. November–December 2026: high-profile concert season with the Gran Concerto Bandistico di Conversano and the Gran Concerto Bandistico “Biagio Abbate” Città di Bisceglie, an artistic training ground for young pupils. Inclusion Focus: a special evening dedicated to women in music with the Orchestra Note di Puglia, an ensemble composed entirely of professional women musicians, to reinforce the values of equal opportunities. January 2027: first official concert of the newborn Community Band of Orta Nova, a foundational act and public restitution of the work accomplished. (translated)

IRAN: MEK/NCRI – when AI impersonated a real activist in live conversations For years, synthetic media has largely meant fabricated images, cloned voices and manipulated video. A case uncovered by Anthropic in September 2026 suggests a more consequential development: artificial intelligence being used not merely to imitate how a person looks or sounds, but to behave as that person in an ongoing conversation. Anthropic says it dismantled a distributed influence operation targeting Iranians inside the country and abroad that it linked to the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, or PMOI/MEK, and its political front, the National Council of Resistance of Iran. The operators used a shared AI-agent platform to support impersonation, audience profiling, coordinated social-media activity, synthetic personas and the laundering of organisational content through apparently independent accounts. At least four people involved in the operation worked for official NCRI media outlets, according to Anthropic. The company also found references to committee approval processes and MEK leadership, but said it could not independently determine the precise level of central control. Cloning a person from 8,400 Telegram posts The most striking part of the operation involved a real activist whose Telegram identity was copied. According to Anthropic, the operators instructed Claude in Persian that it was now that person, then provided approximately 8,400 of the activist’s Telegram posts so the system could learn and reproduce his writing style. The AI-assisted account was subsequently used to conduct live political conversations with the activist’s existing contacts. Anthropic says that, to its knowledge, the people receiving those messages did not know they were interacting with an account being operated with AI assistance. This is materially different from a conventional chatbot or a static deepfake. The system was not simply producing a forged statement attributed to someone else. It was using a large archive of that person’s authentic language as behavioural training material, then applying the resulting imitation interactively. In practical terms, the deception moved from synthetic content to synthetic identity. Anthropic did not publish the identity of the impersonated activist, nor details of his contacts, and the public report does not establish what specific information the conversations produced. What it does establish is that the impersonation was operational rather than experimental: the cloned account was used in real exchanges with real people. From social-media monitoring to psychographic dossiers The impersonation sat inside a much broader targeting system. Anthropic says the network scraped more than 500 social-media channels and categorised individuals by location, age, profession, political orientation and arrest history. It then analysed approximately 51,944 archived messages from conversations to construct detailed psychographic dossiers on dozens of people inside Iran. The system was therefore not limited to broadcasting propaganda. It was also designed to understand specific audiences and individuals. Profiles could be used to decide what kind of message was most likely to resonate with a particular person, which political identity they appeared closest to and how they should be approached. Anthropic describes this as a structured targeting funnel rather than ad hoc social-media activity. That distinction is important in the Iranian context. Political activists, dissidents and opposition contacts inside Iran can face arrest and severe punishment. The report does not show that the dossiers directly led to arrests or other harm, but collecting and organising information such as arrest history and political affiliation adds a surveillance dimension to what would otherwise be described as an influence operation. A shared AI system for an influence network Anthropic found that the actors used a shared Claude-based platform named “Viktor”, with separate workspaces and persistent memory. Those memory files contained approved sources, prohibited words, account-management instructions and methods intended to reduce the risk of detection. One operator loaded MEK founding doctrine into the system as what the report called “strategic base data”, allowing others to reuse it across their work. This persistent-memory structure meant the AI did not have to be briefed from scratch for every task. Once doctrine, stylistic rules and operational constraints had been stored, the system could repeatedly produce material consistent with the network’s objectives. Anthropic says the same general playbook appeared across different workspaces despite the operators not sharing obvious account infrastructure. The network also used automated pipelines to coordinate Instagram posting schedules and tailor messages to different audiences. Some accounts initially avoided mentioning the Mojahedin at all, allowing material aligned with MEK/NCRI narratives to appear as neutral or independent political commentary. Content was distributed through the organisation’s own media ecosystem as well as accounts presented as ordinary news or activist profiles. Anthropic assessed the campaign as Category Two on its Breakout Scale: active on multiple platforms with distribution through NCRI-linked media properties and amplifier accounts, but without evidence of broad authentic penetration. Synthetic citizens and disguised organisational media The same infrastructure generated AI avatars presented as ordinary Iranians, complete with Persian audio, to promote Maryam Rajavi’s political programme. Anthropic says the synthetic nature of these personas was intentionally concealed. Operators also rewrote and redistributed content originating from MEK-affiliated media while stripping identifying features or presenting it through apparently independent accounts. The network’s political messaging targeted the Iranian government but also rival opposition currents, including monarchists and supporters of the Pahlavi camp. Anthropic documented fabricated video material attacking a member of the Pahlavi family and the use of the slogan “Neither Shah Nor Sheikh”, consistent with the NCRI’s broader competition with other opposition movements. That rivalry provides relevant context. Reuters describes the MEK as one of Iran’s principal organised opposition movements in exile and the dominant force behind the NCRI, led by Maryam Rajavi. Its relationship with other opposition currents is often contentious, while the extent of its support inside Iran remains uncertain. What can be attributed – and what cannot Anthropic’s attribution is unusually specific but still needs to be stated carefully. The company says its investigation linked the operation to MEK/NCRI and established that at least four participants worked for official NCRI media organisations. It also found a common operational playbook, committee review structures and repeated references to MEK leadership. On that basis, Anthropic said central tasking was likely. It nevertheless stopped short of saying it had proven that NCRI’s senior leadership directly ordered or managed every component of the operation. That caveat matters. The strongest public evidence supports describing GTG-84006 as a MEK/NCRI-aligned influence operation involving personnel from official NCRI media, rather than asserting that every action was directly commanded by the organisation’s top leadership. The broader significance of the case lies elsewhere. Earlier generations of synthetic media attempted to fabricate evidence: a photograph, a voice recording or a video. Here, AI was used to maintain an identity over time, remember doctrine, analyse targets and speak directly to real people while appearing to be someone they already trusted. The deepfake was no longer merely an artefact. It had become a participant in the conversation. Sources Anthropic — Countering misuse of AI: September 2026 https://www.anthropic.com/threat-intelligence-report-september-2026 AI Misuse Case Library — GTG-84006 activist impersonation case https://www.misuseofai.com/en/cases/gtg-84006-activist-impersonation/ Reuters — Who makes up Iran’s fragmented opposition? https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/who-makes-up-irans-fragmented-opposition-2025-06-18/ Reuters — Iran’s divided opposition senses its moment https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/irans-divided-opposition-senses-its-moment-activists-remain-wary-protests-2025-06-19/ Reuters — NCRI and Maryam Rajavi https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/dissident-leader-abroad-urges-iranians-bring-down-khamenei-2025-06-24/ Keywords #DISINFORMED #Episode12 #Iran #MEK #PMOI #NCRI #IranianOpposition #Disinformation #InfluenceOperations #InformationWarfare #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #GenerativeAI #ClaudeAI #Anthropic #AIDeception #AIImpersonation #IdentityImpersonation #SyntheticIdentity #InteractiveDeepfake #DigitalImpersonation #PersonaCloning #BehaviouralCloning #Telegram #PsychographicProfiling #TargetProfiling #AudienceTargeting #SocialMediaManipulation #Astroturfing #SyntheticPersonas #NarrativeLaundering #CoordinatedInfluence #PoliticalInfluence #DigitalInfluence #OppositionPolitics #IranPolitics #OSINT #WRLD

yaz⁷ wrote that Taehyung gave a speech in Spanish and it sounded very good. According to the author, Taehyung said that he was studying the language and that he still didn't speak it very well; he also expressed that he was very happy and grateful to see the audience in Bogotá, which he described as "very cool." He added that he hoped to speak much better Spanish when he returned and that he loved Bogotá very much. #Taehyung #Español #Bogotá (translated)