An analysis published Friday by Democracy Docket warned that “tens of thousands” of voters across the US face “risk of disenfranchisement” thanks to actions being taken by the United States Postal Service.

The analysis, written by veteran election reporter Jim Saksa, points to a new USPS policy known as Regional Transportation Optimization (RTO) that “will eliminate evening mail pickups from post offices more than 50 miles away from a regional processing facility, most of which are located in major urban areas.”

For people who live in these areas, ballots sent on Election Day will be postmarked and delivered at least a day later than in previous election years, thus making it ineligible to be included in final election tallies.

“In every state, a day’s delay in delivery means that if mail voters wait until the last day or two before the election to mail their ballot,” Saksa explained, “they could be disenfranchised.”

Saksa reported that this policy is currently active in “about 42.5% of all ZIP codes” in the continental US, and is scheduled to eventually take effect in around 70% of all ZIP codes. No additional ZIP codes are expected to be added between now and election day.

Saksa also said that voters concerned about their ballots not being counted should deliver them in person to their local post office, where they can ask an employee to postmark it.

President Donald Trump has tried for the last several months to use USPS to meddle with states’ mail-in voting systems.

In March, the president signed an executive order that instructed the United States Postal Service to not deliver ballots in any states that have not given the federal government access to their voter lists.

The US Supreme Court last month rejected Trump’s efforts to interfere with mail-in voting, allowing states to continue sending ballots to voters as they’ve done in past elections.

Even with the Supreme Court loss, however, the president’s repeated attacks on voting by mail has had a major impact on the 2026 midterm elections.

An NBC News poll released in September showed that just 23% of Democratic voters said they planned to vote by mail this year, a double-digit drop from 2024 when 34% of Democrats said they were voting by mail.

In an interview with Politico published Thursday, Quentin James, founder and president of The Collective Political Action Committee, said Black voters have been expressing concerns about sending in their ballots for fear that Trump will order USPS to not deliver them.

“I think there’s confusion,” James said. “We know that the president has spent six months talking about changing the rules regarding mail-in voting, and a lot of folks are concerned about their ballot being secure.”

Indivisible co-founder Leah Greenberg also told Politico that her group is “absolutely hearing concern” about the mail voting process this year.

“But more importantly,” Greenberg added, “what we’re hearing is people trying to figure out what they can do and how they can organize locally in order to protect elections.”

Jordan Bardella, a leader of the French far-right National Rally, has denied writing antisemitic messages in 2013, as the race ahead of next May’s presidential elections continues to heat up.

An investigation by the left-leaning outlet Mediapart said on Thursday (1 October) that it could authenticate antisemitic messages from 2013 and attribute them to Bardella.

In the messages, Bardella, an MEP and chair of the far-right Patriots for Europe group, said “all the banks are owned by Jews” and that Israel aims to create a new world order. Earlier media reports also found his secret Twitter account publishing racist content, such as mocking a young Black man who had suffered police violence.

He denied having written the messages, calling the evidence “crude montages” and “obscure screenshots that can easily be manipulated,”  he wrote on social media, adding he would sue Mediapart for defamation.

“Either Mediapart is running this operation itself, or it is being manipulated by interested parties,” he has said.

This article continues, but the full version is available only to EUobserver.com subscribers. Visit account.euobserver.com/membership

Andy Burnham plans to pass a law scrapping the triple lock before the next election despite Labour pledging in its 2024 manifesto to keep it intact and the PM himself previously saying it would stay until 2030.

The post Burnham to Start Dismantling Triple Lock Before Election appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

With Democrats leading competitive races and poised to reclaim the House, the American political map is shifting under Trump’s weakening hold, the impending exits of McConnell and Pelosi, and a familiar warning: never count out the party’s talent for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Good riddance to both. The major tectonic plates of […]

First published in Respekt.

In Germany’s recent state elections, voters as young as 16 could cast ballots. The results confirmed a global trend of political division between young women and men.

“On 1 January, we both deleted Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat. And whichever of us would be the first to start watching Reels again or download Instagram would have to eat a slice of rotten cheese,” Greta and Lena told Germany’s Deutschlandfunk radio station.

The 16-year-old girls live in a village in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and chose to delete social media because they had been spending far too much time on it. They often scrolled on TikTok or Instagram late into the night, affecting their performance at school. This summer, however, both reinstalled TikTok for a month. This time without the punishment of a slice of rotten cheese.

They did so for an experiment with journalists from Deutschlandfunk. The journalists wanted to find out what political content the girls would consume through TikTok, the popular Chinese social network, during the peak of the election campaign. Mecklenburg-Vorpommern went to the polls on the third weekend of September. And, as is well known, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) swept the state, just as it had two weeks prior in Saxony-Anhalt.

Greta and Lena, however, were in a markedly different position from their peers in Saxony-Anhalt. For the first time, the north-eastern federal state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern had allowed 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in state elections. Since young people consume much of their news on social media, Greta and Lena immersed themselves in TikTok, one of the networks now most popular among young Europeans.

For the first few minutes, the girls watched a range of non-political videos — recipes, tomato growing and “silly” AI videos. Then, at around the third minute of scrolling, the first political content appeared. First came a video about Erich Honecker, the former East German communist politician. “Why am I seeing so much stuff about the GDR here?” Greta wondered. As she continued scrolling, she came across AfD co-leader Alice Weidel herself.

It was the first moment when the girls began to notice how quickly their initially apolitical feed was changing. “I feel as if it is constantly just AfD,” Greta said later. She added that she had not searched for any such content in advance. Over the following month, the girls kept a diary of their feed and observed how, after political videos, more and more similar content began appearing — not only from the parties themselves, but also from a range of accounts that picked up and further spread their messages.

The experiment confirmed what has been known for some time: TikTok and other networks alongside it can quickly form the political world a young person sees and the views they come to adopt. At the same time, algorithms are accelerating a trend of a political divide between young women and men, which was also reflected in the results of the state elections mentioned above in Germany.

Algorithms exacerbate polarisation

This article continues, but the full version is available only to EUobserver.com subscribers. Visit account.euobserver.com/membership

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has welcomed a declaration adopted on September 24 that emphasizes climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction, and resilience-building through improved data, risk assessments, and early warning systems. The declaration acknowledges the role of specialized UN agencies, including the WMO, in coordinating scientific data related to sea-level rise. According to UN […]

Dinosaurs are the celebrities of prehistory: instantly recognizable, endlessly merchandised, and constantly misunderstood. Thanks to movies, outdated museum displays, and “fun facts” passed around like campfire stories, much of what we think we know about these animals doesn’t hold up under closer examination. Did every T. rex roar like a jet engine? Were all dinosaurs […]

The post 10 Dinosaur Myths That Refuse to Go Extinct appeared first on Listverse.

Faced with rising great-power suspicions and the challenge of verifying clandestine, cavity-muffled detonations, the US is turning to high-precision subterranean blast experiments in the Nevada desert to strip covert nuclear testing of its technical cover. Last month, the US Department of Energy (DOE) reported that the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) conducted an underground, non-nuclear […]

The post US blast simulation targets China’s alleged secret nuke testing appeared first on Asia Times.

Wars, sanctions and shrinking civic space shape the opening of the General Assembly’s Third Committee The United Nations General Assembly’s principal human-rights committee opened its annual debate with warnings that war, racism, inequality and restrictions on civil society are weakening protections worldwide. Yet the discussion also exposed a deeper political divide: governments agree that the […]

Every day that passes California becomes less American and more foreign hhttps://patriots.win/p/1ATVVZ366k/commiefornia-continues-its-slide/c/ 

As PCR said would be the case, Putin’s never-ending, ever-widening war is leading to nuclear war Russia warns NATO of […]

The Cowardly US Navy Attacks Unarmed Iranian Ship https://www.presstv.co.uk/Detail/2026/10/01/777371/Iran-US-Dena-Destroyer 

Israeli soldiers invaded communities across the West Bank on Wednesday, abducting at least 22 Palestinians, including 3 children and 2 employees of the Islamic Association for Orphan Care. Soldiers also broke into homes, assaulted residents, & fired gas bombs

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by Nicolas Hulscher, MPH – originally published on Focal Points substack

VERSIONE SINTETICA IN ITALIANO

All links to previous Gospa News posts have been added in the aftermath by virtue of the ties with topics covered

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has filed a sweeping lawsuit against Pfizer and its CEO, Albert Bourla, accusing them of deceiving the public about the safety and transmission-prevention capabilities of Pfizer’s COVID-19 mRNA injection.

The 49-page complaint was filed on October 1, 2026, in St. Lucie County, Florida, and targets Pfizer and Bourla personally under Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.

The complaint opens with a striking line: “Those people are criminals.”That is how Bourla described people who publicly raised safety concerns about Pfizer’s COVID-19 injection.

After COVID-19 Vaccination 85-Million-Person Study Finds Increased Risks of Stroke, Heart Attack, Coronary Artery Disease, and Arrhythmia

At the center of the case is an explosive allegation: Pfizer publicly assured Americans that its COVID shot was safe while the company possessed internal and external safety information involving myocarditis, miscarriages, strokes, adverse events, and deaths.

158,893 adverse events in just 10 weeks

According to the complaint, Pfizer’s own adverse-event database contained 158,893 adverse events from 42,086 case reports by February 28, 2021—only about 10 weeks after the vaccine received emergency authorization.

Yet in January 2023, Bourla publicly stated that Pfizer had seen “not a single [safety] signal” despite billions of doses having been administered.

Florida argues that statement was fundamentally incompatible with information already known about myocarditis and pericarditis.

Myocarditis: Massacre after mRNA Vaccines! Other 28 Deaths Confirmed by Autopsies (Study), 18,000 Adverse Reactions, 10,000 Mysterious Heart Attacks

1,223 reported deaths

The complaint also states that Pfizer’s database contained 1,223 reported fatalities following vaccination as of February 28, 2021.

76,253 Dead Recorded in Europe and US Following COVID Vaccines. 4,358 Fetal Deaths: Pfizer Hid Disturbing Data on Pregnant Women Risks

Florida argues that the existence of this volume of serious adverse-event information undermined Pfizer’s sweeping public safety messaging.

The volume of reports became so large, according to the filing, that Pfizer hired 600 additional full-time employees and expected to hire another 1,800 workers to process adverse-event reports.

Pregnancy and miscarriages

Another major section of the lawsuit concerns pregnancy.

The complaint states that by February 28, 2021, Pfizer had reports involving 458 pregnant women exposed to its COVID vaccine. Of those reports, 248 involved an adverse event and 52 involved miscarriage, according to the filing. Nearly all of the reported miscarriages occurred during the first trimester.

The lawsuit also points to Pfizer’s planned clinical trial involving pregnant women.

Pfizer initially sought approximately 4,000 participants, but the complaint states that only 348 mothers and 335 infants were ultimately enrolled and that the study was terminated early. The women vaccinated in that study were 24–34 weeks pregnant, meaning the trial did not directly provide first-trimester vaccination data.

FAUCI & CDC KNEW THAT COVID VACCINES COULD TRIGGER MISCARRIAGE (5 videos). As Denounced by Gospa News in 2021 on 3,573 Cases of Fetal Death among Vaccinated Women

The complaint further cites the Comirnaty package insert as stating that there are no available data on use before 24 weeks sufficient to inform risks for major birth defects and miscarriage.

Pfizer pushed transmission claims without testing transmission

The second enormous pillar of Florida’s case concerns transmission. Pfizer and Bourla repeatedly told the public that vaccination would protect other people.

In December 2021, for example, Pfizer said that getting as many people vaccinated and boosted as possible remained the best course of action to “prevent the spread of COVID-19.”

But according to the complaint, Pfizer’s pivotal clinical trial did not test whether vaccination prevented person-to-person transmission.

The FDA itself stated in December 2020 that there was no evidence at that time that the vaccine prevented SARS-CoV-2 transmission from one person to another, and transmission was not an objective of Pfizer’s trial protocol.

COVID: THE HUGE LIE! During EU Hearing Pfizer Director Admits Vaccine was Never Tested on Preventing Transmission

A Pfizer executive later publicly acknowledged that the vaccine had not been tested for stopping transmission before entering the market.

Florida alleges that Pfizer nevertheless used the idea of protecting loved ones as a powerful marketing tool to increase vaccine uptake.

More than $80 BILLION in COVID vaccine revenue

The financial stakes were enormous. The complaint states that Pfizer turned approximately $1.5 billion in research and development spending into more than $80 billion in COVID vaccine revenue.

Pfizer’s vaccine captured nearly 70% of the U.S. and European COVID vaccine markets, according to figures cited in the complaint.

Meanwhile, Bourla received approximately $101.8 million in compensation from Pfizer between 2020 and 2023.

PFIZER VACCINE, THE HUGE BINGE! Inside Big Pharma Board Boss of Coca-Cola, Reuters, Gates Foundation, Goldman Sachs, FDA & FB

Florida’s complaint goes beyond safety claims and accuses Pfizer of engaging in broader unfair business practices to dominate the COVID vaccine market.

Florida wants the money back

Florida is seeking far more than a symbolic judgment. The Attorney General is asking the court for civil penalties, a permanent injunction against deceptive or unfair representations concerning Pfizer’s COVID vaccine, attorneys’ fees and other relief.

Most significantly, Florida is also seeking disgorgement—legal language meaning Pfizer could be forced to hand back profits connected to conduct the court ultimately determines violated Florida law.

FOUR other US STATES in Lawsuits vs “BIDEN’s VACCINE (Pfizer)”. None against the PENTAGON-FAUCI’s One (Moderna)

Finally, a government is attempting to hold Pfizer and Albert Bourla accountable by at least some degree for their gross deception.

For years, the company’s false safety and transmission claims helped drive mass vaccine uptake. Now those fraudulent claims are headed to court.

Nicolas Hulscher, MPH

Epidemiologist and Foundation Administrator, McCullough Foundation

Support our mission: mcculloughfnd.org

Please consider following both the McCullough Foundation and my personal account on X (formerly Twitter) for further content.

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MAIN SOURCE

ATTORNEY GENERAL LAWSUIT DOCUMENT

Attorney General James Uthmeier Files Lawsuit Against Pfizer and its CEO Dr. Albert Bourla

(Bloomberg) — Turkey and the United Nations have set up fresh talks in Russia and Ukraine to discuss a Black Sea ceasefire, trying to coalesce scattered efforts to protect grain...

A Royal Australian Air Force F/A-18F Super Hornet has been photographed carrying an inert AIM-260 Joint Advanced Tactical Missile (JATM) during a major U.S. Navy test event in California. The development comes weeks after Australia announced that it would buy the new missile, with its Super Hornets being the first RAAF aircraft to receive it.

The photograph was released by the U.S. Navy and shows an RAAF F/A-18F assigned to No. 1 Squadron taking off from Naval Base Ventura County Point Mugu on September 11 during Gray Flag 2026. The loadout also includes a CATM-9X — the inert training variant of the AIM-9X — and a CATM-120, the inert training version of the AIM-120 AMRAAM, three external fuel tanks, an AN/ASQ-228 ATFLIR targeting pod, and a Tactical Combat Training System (TCTS) pod.

Gray Flag is the naval aviation test community’s flagship large-force test event, providing opportunities for large-scale integration of new capabilities across services, platforms, industry, and allied forces. Gray Flag 2026 was the largest edition of the exercise to date. According to the Navy, more than 3,000 personnel from over 150 organizations participated, flying more than 750 sorties and logging over 2,000 flight hours across hundreds of multi-domain test objectives.

Previous iterations of Gray Flag have been used to test new and still-developmental weapons in increasingly complex, operationally representative scenarios, including actual missile engagements against realistic targets. Making use of the sprawling Point Mugu Sea Range, the event has also become an important opportunity for working out how sensors, weapons, aircraft, and networks interact as part of larger kill chains and kill webs. A new, longer-range air-to-air missile is especially relevant when it comes to developing tactics, techniques, and procedures within a broader, networked air-combat architecture.

Beyond being the first apparent glimpse of an Australian JATM in any context, integration of the weapon onto Australia’s Super Hornet fleet has already progressed to the point of carrying the missile — in inert form — during a major U.S.-based test and integration exercise.

As TWZ reported in August, Australia is set to become the first country outside the United States to operate the AIM-260 following a roughly $480-million procurement through the U.S. Foreign Military Sales program. The Australian government said at the time that the missile would first be integrated onto the RAAF’s F/A-18F fleet, before being fielded on the F-35A and EA-18G Growler. Looking further ahead, the RAAF’s MQ-28 Ghost Bat collaborative combat aircraft (CCA) could also emerge as a candidate for integration with JATM.

Australia’s announcement did not provide a delivery schedule or specify when JATM would enter Australian service.

The overall proportions and external configuration of the AIM-260 were revealed when an example appeared on a U.S. Navy F/A-18F in May of this year. That aircraft, operated by Air Test and Evaluation Squadron 31 (VX-31), provided the first publicly known photographic view of the highly classified missile.

The AIM-260’s exact specifications remain classified. It is intended to provide substantially greater range than the AIM-120 AMRAAM while retaining a broadly similar form factor. That compact configuration is important because the missile is designed not only for external carriage but also for internal carriage by aircraft such as the F-22 and F-35.

The weapon has been developed as a response to the increasingly long-range air-to-air threat posed by China’s PL-15 and other advanced missiles. Official range figures have not been released, although previous reporting has pointed to an intended range of at least 120 miles and potentially considerably more.

The Australian procurement therefore represents an important expansion of the JATM program beyond the U.S. fleet.

The timing of the Point Mugu photograph is particularly interesting. Gray Flag is specifically intended to bring together large numbers of aircraft, weapons, sensors, networks, and other systems for demanding integration and test activities. An Australian Super Hornet carrying JATM at such an event would be entirely in line with the purpose of the exercise.

It is not clear, however, what role the missile was playing. The photograph does not establish whether it was an Australian-owned operational weapon, a U.S. test asset, or a missile being used for a particular integration activity. Blue bands on the missile body confirm that it’s a training missile with an inert rocket motor and/or warhead.

Public evidence of an Australian aircraft carrying the AIM-260 is another important milestone in the weapon’s transition from a closely guarded U.S. development program toward allied service.

It also underscores the most interoperability aspect of the Australian acquisition. Canberra is buying into a U.S. long-range air-to-air weapon program at a time when the Royal Australian Air Force and U.S. forces are increasingly expected to operate together across the Indo-Pacific.

The exercise also comes as the U.S. moves to accelerate development and future production of the AIM-260. In September, the Pentagon and Lockheed Martin reached a framework agreement laying the groundwork for a future multiyear procurement deal, while the Air Force Test Center confirmed that the missile is already undergoing both ground and airborne testing. The agreement is intended to give Lockheed Martin and its suppliers the demand signal needed to expand production capacity, although the number of missiles, costs and delivery schedule remain undisclosed.

The development should also be seen in the context of broader U.S.-Australian cooperation on air-launched weapons. RAAF F/A-18Fs are also being integrated into the U.S.-Australian Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM) effort under the Southern Cross Integrated Flight Research Experiment (SCIFiRE), with Australia providing test infrastructure for the weapon’s flight-test program. You can read more about this program here.

The video below shows a hypersonic test conducted at Woomera in 2016 under the U.S.-Australian Hypersonic International Flight Research Experimentation (HiFIRE) program.

Australia said its F/A-18Fs would be the first RAAF aircraft to receive JATM, and an Australian Super Hornet has now been photographed carrying one during a major U.S. Navy test event. For the RAAF, getting JATM onto its frontline fighters is consequently an increasingly urgent requirement, giving its Super Hornets a credible long-range counter to the weapons they could face in a future high-end fight.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

The post AIM-260 JATM Missile Spotted On Australian Super Hornet appeared first on TWZ.

The 18^th-century notion of the panopticon — a circular prison design with a guard station in the middle, allowing a single officer to enforce discipline by keeping watch over all the prisoners — has become real in the 21^st century through AI-driven surveillance against workers: It’s the Amazon warehouse.

It should be no surprise that the company that harnessed technology to create a vast, $2.7 trillion empire would employ the same sophistication to enforce workplace discipline and tamp down insurgent unionization efforts. A recent disclosure of Amazon’s internal “employee relations” documents reveals just how extreme Amazon’s methods of warehouse surveillance and control have become.

Amazon employs what it calls the “Atlas” model, inputting into a computerized model a staggering amount of information on workers, their thoughts and behaviors, the workplace environment, and myriad other factors — “hundreds of data points,” according to the company. Atlas produces not just a granular measurement of ongoing worker unrest, worksite by worksite around the world, but also a prediction model for future organizing. It’s like the “precrime” police in the film Minority Report who use psychic powers to identify and apprehend would-be criminals before they act — except in this case, it’s an AI-driven tool used by the billionaire owners of one of the richest companies in history to head off rebellion among its low-wage workforce. And this is not Tom Cruise play-acting; it’s very real.

Workers anywhere who have endured anti-union campaigns can relate to stories of overbearing surveillance by management; the Atlas model, however, takes the spying to an entirely new level.

Details of the Atlas model came to light recently as a result of a legal dispute between Amazon and Unifor, the Canadian private sector union. Last year, British Columbia’s Labour Relations Board awarded union certification to Unifor at Amazon’s YVR2 warehouse outside Vancouver, finding that the company had broadly interfered in the union drive. It was the second union certification at Amazon in North America — the other being the 2022 union win at JFK8 in Staten Island, New York. But in contrast to the U.S., where Amazon has managed to stall bargaining for four and a half years because of weak labor laws, the B.C. Labour Relations Board ordered Amazon to recognize the union and negotiate. Contract bargaining commenced last December.

Not surprisingly, Amazon has dragged its feet in negotiations, prompting the union to file unfair labor practice charges with the Labour Board. Following a series of hearings earlier this year, the Labour Board found that Amazon violated provincial law. In August it ordered a remarkable step — first-contract arbitration at YVR2. That fight remains in play, but as a result of the legal proceedings, Amazon was required to turn over documents to the Labour Board and Unifor. Unifor has shared them with Truthout, and they can be viewed here.

Atlas produces not just a granular measurement of ongoing worker unrest, worksite by worksite around the world, but also a prediction model for future organizing.

In addition to the Atlas model revelation (beginning on Page 19 of the document), the material includes more than 100 pages that reveal in great detail how Amazon trains its frontline managers in union-busting. My colleague at the Center for Work and Democracy, Ben Fong, has written about this other portion of the disclosed material.

“Amazon’s own documents pull back the curtain on what workers have been telling us for years,” said Justin Gniposky, Unifor’s organizing director. “Behind the friendly PR, Amazon sees workers as property and treats their fundamental right to unionize as a threat to be managed and then eliminated.”

Amazon did not respond to Truthout’s request for comment on the Atlas model.

The documents describe the Atlas model as “a labor risk framework to clarify how Amazon evaluates emerging workforce issues, labor union targets, and internal or external labor threats.” The Atlas model ingests hundreds of data points: employee trainings completed; health and safety incidents, from simple first-aid cases to serious injuries; feedback from workers on management; worker tenure and turnover; the proximity of a warehouse to another workplace experiencing union activity; local minimum wage rates and other area economic conditions; and even the temperatures inside and outside of the warehouse.

Amazon seems especially thorough about scraping data from worker communications channels to plug into the Atlas model — the company’s internal “Voice of the Associate” (VOA) electronic bulletin board, the answers to digital questions posed daily to workers, and externally, forums including Reddit — “to understand the tenor of the discussion at the site level,” according to the documents.

“Behind the friendly PR, Amazon sees workers as property and treats their fundamental right to unionize as a threat to be managed and then eliminated.”

Atlas uses AI to identify phrases and “common keywords” to allow managers to do a “deep dive into the worker population driving the discussion.” Atlas also looks at the upvotes or other responses — positive, negative, or neutral — that the comments elicit, and the volume of those worker reactions. All of these data points go into Atlas and let managers “look around corners to identify developing themes” so they can “tailor strategic responses for addressing emerging risk.”

Amazon also tracks and documents all organizing activities that managers detect, and records them under the category of “employee relations events.” Each activity is assigned a severity score. “High severity” events include employees signing union cards, delegations of workers approaching management with demands, protests, sickouts, and work stoppages.

Atlas uses mathematical modeling to create a point system for all these data points, assigning a “labor score” to each workplace. The scale is further broken down into tiers, with the Tier 5 designation applied to facilities with high scores, where there is “no immediate perceived risk,” and Tier 1 applied to facilities where “future activity is imminent.” Amazon’s union busters focus largely on Tier 1 and 2 facilities.

Atlas produces extensive spreadsheets ranking different facilities and looking not just at raw “labor scores” but also at monthly trends. In 2024, the year the documents date from, Amazon was most concerned about union activity at 16 warehouses it had ranked as Tier 1. For instance, at LDJ5, a Staten Island sortation center across the street from JFK8, Atlas noted that leading issues of worker concern were “bathroom breaks, equipment, rest breaks, leadership/management, temperature.” The spreadsheet noted that “internal activists” — workers — were organizing, and that by looking at month-over-month trends, LDJ5 was experiencing “Risk Increase,” with the phrase placed inside a bright red box. At four of these Tier 1 facilities, the spreadsheet noted, the threat of union activity was sufficiently high to justify deploying Amazon’s “rapid response” team: union busters who travel to hotspots of organizing throughout Amazon’s global network.

Union organizing at Amazon is not just a battle over economics; it’s also a fight for basic freedom and democracy.

But the main value of Atlas seems to be predictive. For the Tier 2 worksites (“future activity is highly probable”), the spreadsheet poses these questions: “Which sites are showing the most future risk that are not Tier 1 sites yet?” and “What is the risk in each business line and which has the most risk, is it increasing or decreasing? What is driving the risk?” Tier 2 spreadsheets in the document look at the number of investigations of workers that management has handled in the last month, whether that number is trending up or down, the number of worker appeals of those investigations, and — notably — the percentage of negative worker comments on internal bulletin boards.

Voice of the Associate and other internal bulletin boards are key focal points. Charts in the document track how often workers raise particular topics, like weather, time off, breakroom amenities, management treatment, and restroom cleanliness. They also analyze the “vector” of each issue: “What are the top drivers of negative Sentiment and change MoM [month over month]?” is one question posed in the document. “What Sites are spiking MoM in negative sentiment? What themes are driving the sentiment? What anecdotes can we pull?”

Atlas is not strictly a North American tool. One chart analyzes trends for warehouses globally, documenting “employee relations events” — worker organizing — and cataloguing the number of worker comments on Voice of the Associate and the percentage of those comments that were negative. Two warehouses in the English Midlands where workers have been organizing with the GMB union — both Tier 1 sites in Atlas’ taxonomy — showed high volumes of negative VOA posts. A warehouse in Melbourne, Australia, also showed mostly negative Voice of the Associate posts, while posts were mostly not negative in some of the warehouses in Poland, Germany, and Italy.

All this is surely a tiny sliver of Atlas’s output. The former head of Amazon’s HR platforms, Bud Cashatt, boasted on LinkedIn recently about how his department created “predictive site-risk ML touching every building in Amazon’s global network.” (“ML” stands for machine learning, where programmers train AI to learn patterns and build predictions based on analyzing vast quantities of data.)

Did Jeremy Bentham, the 18^th-century British philosopher who dreamed up the panopticon, anticipate Atlas? Nearly 250 years ago, he imagined his panopticon as a useful tool for prisons, “madhouses,” and also “to the business of manufactories,” the industrialized manufacturing plants then just emerging in England. Speaking of his watchman in the center of the operation — the human Atlas of his time — Bentham wrote, “The concealment of his person will be of use.”

The documents uncovered at the B.C. Labour Board shine a light on Amazon’s concealed watchman. Atlas illustrates just how far Amazon will go to try to rule the warehouse floor. And its scope also underscores just how terrified Amazon’s masters are of their own workforce rising up and claiming their due.

Bentham theorized that the panopticon would facilitate social control: He imagined that incarcerated people would behave, not knowing at any moment whether they were being watched by the guard. It was, he wrote, “A new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind.”

But what happens when prisoners — or workers — resist such attempts at social control? There’s no level of AI sophistication that can erase the reality that Amazon’s workers move millions of packages every day, and without their labor, the Amazon supply chain collapses.

Peter B. Olney, the retired organizing director of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, calls Atlas “a promethean tool for union busting and the thwarting of any employee organizing.”

To fight back against this “existential threat” to basic worker rights and unions, Olney says, “we have to get real about deploying massive resources towards organizing the workforce and finding their serious vulnerabilities and choke points.”

Today we see emerging fights everywhere against a billionaire class intent on harnessing AI and technology to undermine basic democracy and impose authoritarianism, both in the workplace and throughout society: in revolts against the algorithmically driven content we are force-fed on the internet; protests against and sabotage of the Flock cameras on neighborhood lampposts; and resistance against the replacement of workers with bots and computers. The Atlas model places Amazon workers at the center of this global fight against the AI billionaires. And it highlights that union organizing at Amazon is not just a battle over economics; it’s also a fight for basic freedom and democracy.

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Brazil votes this Sunday, and the Trump administration has spent months trying to tilt the outcome toward far-right presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro. Tariffs. Terrorist designations. Revoked visas. Frequent meetings with the Bolsonaro family. Taken alone, each move looks random. Put the pieces together, and a picture emerges: U.S. interference in Brazil’s 2026 elections. 

Over the last year, Trump has met frequently with members of the Bolsonaro family. In June, the State Department put two Brazilian gangs on the terrorist list. Just a few weeks later, Trump shared an article on Truth Social that said Brazil was his next big challenge. Less than a month later, in July, Trump imposed new 25% tariffs on Brazilian goods. In August, Trump revoked the U.S. visa of the Brazilian ambassador.

The Brazilian Intelligence Agency recently raised the risk of external influence and interference by the United States in Brazil’s 2026 elections to a quote, “critical level.”

This is Episode 15 of Under the Shadow, Season 2. 

Under the Shadow is an investigative narrative podcast series that walks back in time, telling the story of the past by visiting momentous places in the present. Season 2 responds in real time to the Trump administration’s onslaught on Latin America.

Follow Under the Shadow on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Hosted by Latin America-based journalist Michael Fox.
This podcast is produced in partnership between The Real News Network and NACLA.
It is supported, in part, by Global Exchange.

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Panamerican Dispatch

You can check out Michael Fox’s new reporting project on Brazil. 

It’s called Panamerican Dispatch. It’s a project of The Real News in partnership with Global Exchange. The website is www.panamericandispatch.org

You can also follow us on social media below

Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/padispatch.bsky.social
X x.com/PAdispatch
IG instagram.com/padispatch
Tiktok www.tiktok.com/@padispatch

Theme music by Michael Fox’s band, Monte Perdido. Monte Perdido’s 2024 album Ofrenda is available on Spotify, Deezer, Apple Music, YouTube or wherever you listen to music.

Other music from Blue Dot Sessions and Epidemic Sound.

Script editing by Heather Gies. Hosted, written, produced, mixed, and edited by Michael Fox.

Guests: 

• Alexander Main
• Maria Martha Bruno
• Igor Fuser

Resources: 

• Visit Panamerican Dispatch for all of the latest news on Brazil
• You can visit Agencia Public for their reporting and analysis about Brazil. 
• Here is Agencia Publica’s investigación, Digital Militia. 
• Many thanks to Jake Johnston from the Center for Economic and Policy Research and Maria Martha Bruno, from Agencia Publica, for taking the time to speak with me and for their excellent analysis and insight.
• You can visit CEPR’s Live Tracker on Latin America.
• You can check out Michael Fox’s Patreon.
• More background… 
• The Beginning: Monroe and migration | Under the Shadow, Episode 1
• Panama. US Invasion. | Under the Shadow, Episode 13
• The legacy of Monroe | Under the Shadow, Bonus Episode 4 

Support Under the Shadow

Please consider supporting this podcast and Michael Fox’s reporting on his Patreon account: patreon.com/mfox. There you can also see exclusive pictures, video, and interviews.

You can subscribe to Michael Fox’s new free speech podcast, The Battle for Free Speech on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Michael Fox:

Hi folks. This is your host, Michael Fox. Before I get started, I wanted to let you know that I have big news. First, this season of Under the Shadow has been nominated for three podcast Signal Awards. It’s really exciting, and you can help us by heading over to signalaward.com and voting for Under the Shadow. I’ll add direct links in the show notes that will take you straight there. Second, last week I launched a new website called Pan American Dispatch. It’s a project of the Real News. We’re translating daily articles from Portuguese and Spanish into English for a US audience. Over the next two months, we’ll be exclusively focused on covering the Brazilian elections and Trump’s attempts to sway them. That is what this entire episode is about. And if you want to get all of the news about what’s happening in real time, please consider subscribing to our Substack.

You can find us at panamericandispatch.org. We’re also on X, Blue Sky, Instagram, and TikTok. Our handle is @PAdispatch. Okay, that’s it. I hope you enjoy the show. On May 26th, 2026, a 45-year-old Brazilian senator named Flavio Bolsonado met with US President Donald Trump at the White House. Flavio is the presidential candidate for the far right in Brazil in the upcoming elections in October. This is what he had to say at the annual conservative political action committee meeting in Texas earlier this year.

Flávio Bolsonaro:

And let me look you in the eyes and tell you, we will win.

Michael Fox:

Flavio is the son and political heir of the former far right president Jair Bolsonado, a close ally of the US president. In the meeting at the Oval Office in May, Flavio Bolsonado reportedly asked Trump to designate the Brazilian drug gangs, Primero Commando de Capital and the Commando Vermelio as foreign terrorist organizations. After the meeting, Flavio spoke to the press.

He said, “I asked President Trump emphatically to designate as soon as possible the PCC and the Commando Vermelio as foreign terrorist organizations.” This might not seem like such a big deal, but it is. The United States has sometimes used that very designation as the pretext to invade or interfere in foreign countries. The US placed the Venezuelan gangs, Trende Aragua and Cartel de los Soles on the list back in 2025, and fighting those alleged terrorists was one of the excuses the United States used for invading Venezuela and kidnapping President Nicholas Maduro on January 3rd of this year. In other words, this designation carries weight.

Trump agreed to Flavio’s request. Just three days after meeting with Flavio Bolsonaro, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that those two Brazilian gangs would be added to the list of foreign terrorist organizations. Flavio responded in a letter to Rubio, thanking him for the classification and offering to place his transition team at the disposal of the White House if he’s elected. For months, the United States has been escalating the pressure on Brazil in the lead up to the presidential elections with the goal of helping to lift Flavio Bolsonaro to the top office. Just a few weeks after the State Department put the Brazilian gangs on the terrorist list, Trump shared an article on Truth Social that said Brazil was his next big challenge. Less than a month later in July, Trump imposed new 25% tariffs on Brazilian goods. In August, Trump revoked the US visa of the Brazilian ambassador.

It was an apparent tit for tat after Brazil denied visas to two US State Department officials who planned to travel to Brazil to meet with former President Jair Bolsonaro. I could go on. The point here, as many people have pointed out, is that there isn’t just one thing that Trump is doing to try and sway the vote in favor of Bolsonaro. It’s a whole combination of moves, like a jigsaw puzzle with many pieces taken alone, and it’s just a random assortment of colors and shapes. But when you start to put the pieces in place, a picture begins to emerge. See, Trump allies have won big elections across Latin America. In recent years, right-wing candidates have taken back or held onto power in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras, Bolivia, and Peru. And they’ve done so with the help of US President Donald Trump, who’s thrown his weight around to boost right-wing candidates, and also with the support of bot farms and shady electoral campaign practices linked to Washington and Mar-a-Lago, as we looked at in the last episode.

Donald Trump:

But on this historic day, we come together to announce a brand new military coalition to eradicate the criminal cartels plaguing our region.

Michael Fox:

Many of those countries have now joined forces in Trump’s shield of the America’s alliance, but there are a few holdouts, and Brazil is one of the most important.

Alexander Main:

The upcoming election in Brazil is really going to be extremely consequential for the entire region.

Michael Fox:

Alexander Main is the director of international policy at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Alexander Main:

Brazil is the country with the largest economy, biggest population in Latin America, and it’s also one of the few countries that is still holding out against US pressure, pressure to align with the Trump administration’s agenda in the region.

Michael Fox:

The first round election is on October 4th in just a couple of days, and the runoff will take place three weeks later on October 25th. Bolsonaro is facing off against the longtime workers’ party icon, Luis Ignacio Lula de Silva. He’s the current president and he’s running for reelection. I have been covering the campaigns here in Brazil in recent weeks. I’ve attended rallies for both Lula and Bolsonaro. Today, I’m going to walk you through what’s at stake, and most importantly, how Trump is exerting underhanded pressure on the country ahead of the vote. As a leak document showed last week, the Brazilian Intelligence Agency has raised the risk of external influence and interference by the United States and Brazil’s 2026 elections to a “critical level.” According to the report, there is a trend of escalating pressure on Brazil and a quote, “selective intensification and reconfiguration of the pressure exerted by the United States.” It’s a textbook example of foreign election interference today, a multifaceted jigsaw.

People are concerned, but they’re also standing up, and that’s what makes this episode so interesting. It’s happening in real time. You have Trump attempting to sway the vote, and you also have people pushing back.

Like Lula’s recent speech at the United Nations where he told the US president that Brazil will not be the backyard of any country.

Or this woman, a small farmer who I spoke with at a Lula rally in Southern Brazil. “We’re not afraid of Trump, “she said. “We know what he wants to do and we’re not going to let him. We are the resistance. We’re not afraid of him, just like Lula isn’t afraid. Lula showed us that we are not less than any country,” she said. That and so much more in a minute. This is Under the Shadow, an investigative narrative podcast series that looks at the role of the United States abroad in the past and the very present. This podcast is a co-production in partnership with The Real News and NACLA. I’m your host, Michael Fox, longtime radio reporter, editor, journalist, the producer and host of the podcast’s Brazil on Fire: Stories of Resistance and my new series, The Battle for Free Speech. I’ve spent the better part of the last 20 years in Latin America.

I’ve seen firsthand the role of the US government abroad, and most often sadly, it is not for the better. Invasions, coup, sanctions, support for authoritarian regimes. Politically and economically, the United States has cast a long shadow over Latin America for the past 200 years. It still does. This is season two of Under the Shadow Trump’s attack. Episode 15, election meddling in Brazil.

Okay, before we dive into the allegations of election interference, let me set the scene. To do that, I want to take you back to a month and a half ago to the launch of the campaigns here in Brazil. I was in Sao Paulo covering Lula’s kickoff. Some of this section of the episode is based off of reporting I did at the time for the world and the real news. It’s August 16th, 2026. Tens of thousands of supporters of President Luis Idnacio Lula de Silva are packed into May 1st stadium in Sao Paulo. Among them is Sida Maya. She’s the secretary of women’s public policies in the nearby municipality of Maua.

“This is living history,” she says. “I’m participating in a historic moment. It’s a great feeling and we’re going to elect Lula.” Next to her, her husband Valmirmaya holds back tears. “It’s emotional, “he says. Lula’s campaign chose this stadium to kick off his run for a fourth and final term as president. This is where Lula got his start. In 1979, Lula was a young leader at the ABC Medal Workers Union. He led an iconic strike and rally at this same stadium. The workers won and it marked the beginning of the end of the country’s military dictatorship. Valmir Maya was there then and he’s here now.

“We wanted what we got,” he says, “to transform Brazil into a democratic country. That was our struggle, and Lula was the expression of this.” Inside the stadium, President Lula strode onto a long stage wearing a Panama hat and a white shirt. From the bleachers, he seemed to float above the sea of supporters in red, the color of Lula’s workers’ party. Lula’s top campaign promise has always been about battling hunger. Over the years, he’s lifted millions from poverty, increased access to education, health, and infrastructure, in particular in impoverished Northeastern Brazil. Lula told the crowd that there was much work left to be done, that they had to think of the future. He said they had to invest even more in education, that he wanted to continue to develop jobs and industry for Brazil. 300 miles to the east, Lula’s challenger, Flavio Bolsonaro, launched his campaign on Copacabana Beach in his hometown of Rio de Janeiro.

“Come with me and rescue our nation,” he said, “God above everyone, Brazil above all.” Flavio Bolsonaro has attacked the left and promised to fight crime and insecurity, cut bureaucracy, promote private business and privatizations, and develop close ties with the United States. Much of his rhetoric and that of his supporters is wrapped in a religious language of good versus evil.

“You are the son of hope,” said a pastor at his campaign launch. “You are the first born. You received the legacy of representing your father, and now for everything that is sacred on the face of the earth, honor your father. “The savior trope goes over well with his evangelical supporters, an important base for Bolsonaro and other far-right politicians in Brazil, as we looked at in depth in my 2022 podcast, Brazil on Fire. Blase Narujo is a youth pastor at an evangelical church in a working class neighborhood of Sao Paulo. He joined others on the streets in mid-August to promote Bolsonaro and other far-right candidates running for local office.

He said,” I believe that Flavio Bolsonado is the only viable candidate who can beat Lula and the workers’ party. “I’m a Christian here,” he told me. “I behave as a Christian, but I’m also a political activist here on the streets to defend my beliefs,” he said. Flavio Bolsonado also has powerful support in high places, in particular, as we heard earlier from Donald Trump. If you remember, the US president is a longtime ally of Flavio’s father, Jair Bolsonado. Jair is currently on house arrest. He was first barred from running for office for spreading lies about the country’s electoral system. Last year, the Supreme Court convicted him of plotting a coup to return to power. Before his rise as the leader of Brazil’s far right, Jair Bolsonaro was a backbench congressman for decades, outlandish, but mostly obscure. And then he ran for president.

Speaker 5:

There are a few things that drew inspiration for you.

Jair Bolsonaro:

Very special guy. Turned out to be a great friend of mine.

Michael Fox:

Bolsonaro fashioned himself after Trump. In fact, in Jair Bolsonaro’s electoral campaign in 2018, international media often called him the Trump of the tropics. He and Trump met a number of times while they were both president.

Jair Bolsonaro:

And I think we can say that Brazil and the United States are as close or closer as they’ve ever been.

Michael Fox:

Last year, Trump imposed 50% tariffs on Brazil in part because of the country’s criminal trial against the former president.

Donald Trump:

They’re treating President Bolsonaro very unfairly. He’s a good man. I know him well. I negotiated with him.

Michael Fox:

And let me be honest, there are many supporters of Bolsonaro who look up to Trump and want him to use his leverage to help their candidate, Jair Bolsonaro’s son and protege Flavio Bolsonaro. On September 7th, members of the far right in Brazil hit the streets across the country to rally for Flavio. I covered the march in the southern Brazilian city of Florianopolis. There, numerous people told me how much they admired Trump and how grateful they were for his support. Adalberto Luis de Santos is marching with a blue hat with the insignia of the United States. He and his wife are draped in Brazilian flags. “We’re hoping for support from the United States,” he said. “I believe Trump can help us. All Brazilians need the support of someone from abroad. “. “Trump is really important,” another man in the march told me. “The external pressure is very important.

“. A woman in the march carrying a flag and a yellow hat told me,” Just the simple fact that Trump is in power and acts democratically in favor of freedom makes all of the difference for our people. “.

“We don’t want Brazil to turn into another Venezuela,” she said. “I’ve heard that narrative countless times in Brazil and during elections in countries across Latin America for years. It’s the ever-present boogeyman of so-called communist Venezuela, but fear of the Venezuelan fate took on an even more serious dimension after the US invasion of Caracas earlier this year. The sentiments of so many Bolsonaro supporters are a sign of just how polarized the political debate is and how much the far right in Brazil looks up to the US president. Two weeks later, I covered another rally in the same city, this one in support of President Lula.

People had a lot to say about Trump and his efforts to influence their presidential decisions. I asked them, “Are you afraid of what Trump and the United States could do during this election to try and support Bolsonaro?” “Yes, I’m really afraid of that, “said one man carrying a Lula flag. “They want to take away our sovereignty. They want to invade our lands. They want to take what is ours and let Brazil be a colony of another country.” “Of course we’re afraid, “said someone else,” but we believe that Lula is well ahead in the election and we won’t allow Trump to destroy the election. “What do you think about Trump and are you concerned that Trump might try and do something with the elections here in

Speaker 7:

Brazil? Yeah, we’ve seen a lot of his work here in Latin America that we are very scared. Venezuela, Peru, Colombia, Argentina. So we are very scared because Latin America is being contaminated by him and his work, so it’s very scary and we don’t want him in here or anything with him.

Michael Fox:

People have a lot to be concerned about. When I was in Sao Paulo in August, I sat down with Igor Fusser at a cafe near Palista Avenue. We’ve known each other for years. He’s a professor of foreign relations at Brazil’s ABC Federal University. I asked him how he sees the US actions against Brazil at this moment.

He said, “This is not just about the United States trying to remove the government of a left-wing party, the workers’ party, or a left-wing leader, which is Lula. It’s about subjecting Brazil to the policies of the United States, and Brazil being the largest country in Latin America is precisely the biggest obstacle to the American project of global dominance of the Western hemisphere,” he said. Remember, over the last year, as we’ve looked at throughout this podcast, Trump has pushed the United States into a new era of dominance over Latin America, the likes of which the region has not seen in decades. Boat strikes in the Caribbean, the US invasion of Venezuela, and the kidnapping of President Nicolas Maduro, the oil blockade on Cuba, and Trump throwing his weight around and meddling in elections across Latin America. It’s all justified by a renewed Monroe doctrine. Here’s Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, underlining that point.

Pete Hegseth:

President Trump has established the Trump corollary of the Monroe Doctrine, the Don Roe doctrine, and the war department is implementing it as fast as we can.

Michael Fox:

Brazil is the latest battleground. It’s playing out in the open and behind the scenes. It’s early August. The Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism is meeting in Sao Paulo. At the meeting circulating in the crowd are staff from the US Consulate in Sao Paulo, their mission to woo Brazilian journalists into conversations about the country’s electoral process and the state of “freedom of expression” in the country. This was reported by several independent journalists at the conference and then published by independent journalist Leandro DeMori, the former executive editor of The Intercept Brazil. According to Demorti, three journalists at the event confirmed the actions of the consular officials. Two journalists said they were offered assistance with US visas if they needed them, even though the meetings with the officials about the country’s elections were to be held in Sao Paulo.

Washington has leaned on two key narratives to demonize Brazil in recent years. One, that freedom of expression is under attack in Brazil because of its attempts to reign in social media disinformation, and two, that the country’s electoral system is faulty and prone to errors. Both of those claims are false. Brazil has long held certified free and fair elections, and freedom of speech is alive and well, although Brazil embraces a more inclusive harmonious definition of how the freedom of speech fits into the country’s other laws. Episode 12 of this series goes deeper into those claims and their fallout. DiMorti’s reporting about the recent journalism forum brings up more questions than answers. What were the consular officials trying to achieve? Did some journalists take the bait? If so, how will this be weaponized? We don’t have answers, but it’s another piece of the scrambled jigsaw puzzle.

Here’s another, and it’s just one example of how the meddling campaign has been building. In mid-September, less than two weeks ago, Flavio Bolsonaro’s brother, Eduardo, met with President Donald Trump at the White House. As we looked at in the last episode, Eduardo is a former congressional representative who now lives in the United States. The Brazilian Supreme Court sentenced him earlier this year to four years in prison for his actions in the US, lobbying the Trump administration to intimidate the Brazilian judiciary amid the trial against his father. According to reports, Eduardo traveled to Washington to ask Trump to impose sanctions on members of the Lula government and the Supreme Court, including Justice Alexandre Morais. If you’ve been following Brazil or my reporting, you might remember that Morais was the justice that led the trials against the dissemination of fake news in the country and also against Jair Bolsonaro.

Jair Bolsonaro:

Also developing this morning, the Trump administration placing sanctions on a Brazilian Supreme Court justice over concerns of human rights violations and politicized prosecutions.

Michael Fox:

Last year, the US sanctioned Mordice for supposedly carrying out human rights abuse, including arbitrary detention. Those sanctions were lifted four months later, but they were a thinly veiled retaliation for the trial against Bolsonaro and also Morais’s fight with ex-owner Elon Musk, which we looked at in depth in episode 12. There is no question the battle over Brazil right now is also taking place online and Silicon Valley is playing its part.

On Wednesday, September 23rd, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, took down President Lula’s Facebook page and blocked his campaign from running political ads. The platform gave no justification for the move. Lula’s workers’ party and his electoral coalition demanded answers. Lula’s campaign asked for the immediate return of the account. The campaign’s lawyers told the platform that the restriction “poses a serious risk to the candidate’s level playing field in the election.” The head of the Workers’ Party national communications team, Eden Valadaris, said they hadn’t ruled out taking the case to the superior electoral court. He wrote on X, “Brazil’s electoral contest, its campaigns, and its vote cannot be left to the mercy of the political preferences of the big tech companies whose supposed programming errors only hit and harm one campaign and one candidate.” One candidate, meaning Lula. By the next morning, the page was back up, but Lula’s electoral coalition said Meta’s actions harm the presidential campaign.

Remember that Meta was founded and is run by Mark Zuckerberg. He’s a close ally of President Donald Trump.

Jair Bolsonaro:

Thank you very, very much.

Michael Fox:

In fact, he was at Trump’s inauguration for his second term alongside the heads of Apple, Google, Amazon, and of course, Tesla and ex – CEO, Elon Musk. I want to talk about something important today because it’s time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram. Zuckerberg got rid of fact-checking at Meta in early 2025, just before Trump came into power last year, and that’s important because there are now fewer constraints on the spread of fake news or misinformation on the platform. In late August, Amnesty International tested this lack of guardrails in Brazil. It sent 15 different AI-generated election-related political disinformation ads to Facebook to see if the platform could discern between truth and falsehood. Meta failed to block most of them. A similar test run by the eco movement in Brazil in mid-September showed that nearly 90% of the disinformation ads it attempted to run on Meta were approved, including “AI ads depicting execution style threats against lawmakers and calling for a stop the steal style coup.” And I want to say one more thing about the role of Silicon Valley’s big tech platforms.

They are paying attention to what’s happening in Brazil. Here’s just one example. Last year, lawmakers and a congressional committee in Brazilia were discussing a bill on AI regulation. According to the fact-checking agency, Ausfatos, big tech lobbyists visited committee members more than 80 times over a five-month period. The tech company that met with members in Brazilia the most was Meta, which made more than a third of those visits.

There’s another layer to all of this, another puzzle piece if you like. In the last episode of this podcast, I took an in-depth look at the work of the Argentine political strategist, Fernando Cerimedo. Remember, Serimedo has led right-wing digital campaigns across Latin America, and he did so with the help of Washington and Trump’s former campaign manager and digital strategist, Brad Parscali. This is what he had to say earlier this year in Mar-a-Lago when he was presented an award for best Hispanic Political Consultant of the Year.

Jair Bolsonaro:

I want to say something in English. Thank you to Brad Parscale for believing me all the time and give me your technology and Tim Don for the fighting in Latin America against socialism. Thank you, Brad.

Michael Fox:

Serimedo is now in prison on charges that he tried to kill his girlfriend. According to her, he hired the hitman to silence her. Serimedo also faces charges of illicit enrichment and other crimes, but his digital campaigning and the bot farms that he’s deployed in elections up and down the hemisphere haven’t necessarily gone away, nor have his deep ties to the right in the region. Remember who presented that award to Cerimedo? It was Eduardo Bolsonaro, the brother of Flavio Bolsonaro. They reportedly have known each other for more than 15 years. Now, just this week, Washington sanctioned Bolivian Attorney General Roher Mariaka, who is prosecuting the Serimero case,

He defended his country sovereignty and vowed to continue the investigation despite the apparent attempt to intimidate him. I mention all of this to say that just because Serimedo is now in jail, it doesn’t mean that these types of digital influence campaigns heavily fueled by an inter International far right aren’t happening. As I mentioned last time, Serimedo is just one piece in a puzzle, a cog and a wheel, albeit one very important cog. But actions pushing disinformation online are still happening. We just don’t necessarily know from who or where. Here’s one example. About a week ago, the Brazilian journalistic outlet Ajencia Publica reported in conjunction with Aos Fatos that AI farms were fueling the far right agenda in the lead up to the elections. The bots had created 255 profiles and made over a thousand posts. Agencia Publica reported that the network had “achieved 58 million views, expanding the reach of posts supporting the Bolsonaro family and attacking the Supreme Court.” It’s a strategy known as astroturfing, using artificial engagement to give the impression of a real surge in grassroots support.

All of this happened over one month between August and September. According to the investigation, one of the main nodes of this AI campaign was linked to the Instagram account Leo Indio Bolsonaro. That is managed by Leonardo Rodriguez de Jesus. He is Flavio and Eduardo Bolsonaro’s cousin. He was investigated by Brazilian officials for his role in the 2023 attempted coup. A warrant for his arrest was ordered in 2025. He fled the country. He’s reportedly now in Argentina. The point is this, these campaigns are happening. We often just don’t hear about them until after the fact.

Maria Marta Bruno:

Well, I’ve been voting since 1998 and I have never seen such level of interference of foreign interference in Brazilian elections.

Michael Fox:

Maria Marta Bruno is a journalist with Agencia Publica, the outlet I mentioned earlier. If you remember, I spoke with her in the last episode as well about Serimedo.

Maria Marta Bruno:

It reminds me a lot of what I have read in history books and what I have learned on the Brazilian dictatorship and the very clear role that the US developed from 1964 to 1985 when the military dictatorship in Brazil took place. There was never since the end of the dictatorship such open intervention.

Michael Fox:

Maria says there have been a lot of headlines lately mentioning diplomatic tension between Brazil and the United States, but she says what we’re seeing goes far beyond that.

Maria Marta Bruno:

Because given the gravity and the timing of the recent facts, I would say that it constitutes a clear interference in our process.

Michael Fox:

She highlights Trump’s tariffs on Brazil both last year and this year, which she says are wrapped into defending former President Jair Bolsonaro. She points to the numerous meetings between Flavio and Eduardo Bolsonaro with top officials in Washington over the last year, the US sanctions against Supreme Court Justice Alexandre Morais and so much more. And she says there are two other big reasons why the United States is so interested in Brazil. The first is China.

Maria Marta Bruno:

The US intentions to reduce China influence in Latin America. We all know that China, it’s a key partner for Brazil and for other countries in the region.

Michael Fox:

The second is rare earth minerals, stuff like neodymium, dysprosium, or terbium. Yeah, I don’t know what they look like either, but they’re used in EV motors, green energy technologies, military equipment, and other industries. Brazil is home to somewhere between a fifth and a quarter of the total rare earth reserves in the world. It’s second only to China. In April, a US company bought up the Brazilian firm Ceja Vergi, which mines rare earth minerals in Brazil. After his meeting with Trump in May, Flavio Bolshinaro promised to work with the United States on mineral extraction. “We are the only real alternative to China for a free world,” Flavio Bolsonaro said. “Under my government, there will be long-term strategic partnership with the United States in this sector with protected investment and shared reindustrialization between the two countries. Flavio also promised that if he is elected in his first month, Brazil would join President Trump’s Shield of the America’s regional coalition.

Brazil will join the shield of the Americas together with the United States, “he said,” and countries across the region, forming a great hemispheric alliance against terrorism and organized and transnational crime. “This is Brazil’s place. It is the protagonist of the security of the Americas side by side with free and sovereign nations, he said.

Maria Marta Bruno:

And we know that the US is very interested in what we have and the reserves that we have. So it’s very significant, it’s very important, and we know that the US is following closely the development of the presidential elections here because they will certainly determine what will be the future of the diplomatic relation between US and Brazil in the upcoming years.

Michael Fox:

In the face of all of this, Brazilians are responding none louder than President Luis Idnacio Lula de Silva.

Jair Bolsonaro:

The assembly will now hear and address by his excellency, Luis Inacio Lula Da Silva, president of the Federated Republic of Brazil.

Michael Fox:

The day is September 22nd, 2026, New York City. Brazilian President Luis Idnacio Lula de Silva walks to the podium at the United Nations to kick off the 81st General Assembly meeting. Without mentioning him, Lula speaks directly to US President Donald Trump. “Brazil does not fit into anyone’s backyard,” he says. Lula denounces Trump for attacking democracy, interfering in elections and using military force to acquire material resources across Latin America. He closes his speech with a nod to the upcoming high stakes elections in Brazil. On October 4th, he says, “Millions of Brazilians go to the polls to decide their future. They will not just elect the president of the republic, state governors, and representatives of the legislative power. They will decide between democracy and denialism, between if Brazil is going to move toward a future of more opportunities or return to a past of exclusion.”. He says Brazil will have free and transparent elections as it always has with broad freedom of speech.

He denounces the spread of disinformation online, in particular coming from outside the country, which he says is an attempt to “disrupt the debate.”.

“We have a modern and robust electoral system,” he says. “We have a plural citizenship and a free press. We will not allow the enemies of democracy, both internal and external, to attack the popular will. Brazilian democracy belongs to Brazilians. Brazil will continue to be a sovereign country. No one, no one will take us away from this path, “he says. It’s Lula’s response to Trump and the world as the country faces incredibly important elections, elections that Trump and the United States have been attempting to influence. Brazilians have been vocal online and in the streets against Washington’s pressure, and recently they actually got some support from a group of lawmakers on Capitol Hill. On September 24th, just last week, Senator Bernie Sanders and 30 Democratic members of the US House of Representatives sent a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. They accused the Trump administration of waging a pressure campaign against Brazil ahead of the first round vote.

Illinois Congresswoman Delia Ramirez led the congressional effort. They write, “We are writing to express our grave concern regarding the administration’s coordinated effort to threaten our strategic alliance with Brazil and undermine the Western Hemisphere’s second largest democracy ahead of its upcoming presidential election in October 2026. Over the course of President Trump’s second term,” they write, “We have seen US officials engage in a sustained multifaceted campaign of interference and destabilization in Brazil. They point to the shocking 50% tariffs Trump levied on the country last year amid the country’s trial against Jair Bolsonaro. They also underscored Trump’s appointment last year of Darren Beattie as a senior advisor on Brazil issues in the State Department. Beattie, a noted far-right extremist and white supremacist,” they write, “came into this post with a clear record of public statements signaling an overt ideological commitment to undermining Brazil’s democratic institutions.” The congressional representative singled out Trump’s current tariffs, his meeting with Flavio Bolsonaro at the White House, and his designation of the Brazilian drug gangs as foreign terrorist organizations.

They write, “Given the Trump administration’s repeated military strikes in the region, justified in part by alleged foreign terrorist organization threats to US security, the designation has also fueled fears of potential US military intervention.” They recall comments from White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt last year that threatened Brazil could potentially face the United States’ military might.

US military action in Brazil isn’t likely, but it’s not out of the question. Nothing is under Trump’s Dunro doctrine. The lawmakers highlight that Brazil is just the latest in a quote, deeply troubling pattern of interference by the United States in foreign elections, including in Argentina, Honduras, and Columbia. Rather than helping defend democracy, they write, the United States is acting as an agent of interference and destabilization using diplomatic economic and political pressure in ways that risk weakening the country’s democratic institutions, undermining confidence in Brazil’s electoral process and inflicting further damage on our relationship with a strategic US ally and trading partner. They demand that Washington commit to recognizing the certified election results. Here’s the thing, the stakes are high. Remember Igor Fusser? He’s the professor I met at the Sao Paulo Cafe. He told me, “It’s clear that the United States is doing everything and will do everything possible to prevent the reelection of Lula in the next elections.” And Igor told me there was a reason for that, because if Flavio Bolsonaro wins, he will bow to Trump and the United States.

Igor says, “Brazil will become a country under the tutelage of the United States, a colony or almost a colony of the US as already happened with Argentina, Columbia, Venezuela, and many others. And if Lula is victorious in these elections, we will live a very intense period of confrontation between the two countries,” he says. And Igor has a really interesting analysis here. He says, “The US dominance over Latin America imposed by Trump is analogous to the control of the Soviet Union over the Eastern block countries during the Cold War under a Russian foreign policy imposed by Soviet leader Leonid Brezniv in 1968.” He says, “Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, all of those countries were formally independent nations with their own government, their own laws, their own representation in the United Nations, but these countries were not autonomous. They didn’t have sovereignty. Any movement that they made that clashed with the interests of the Soviet Union was repressed.

Some of them were even invaded,” he says. “So we’re living in Latin America, a Breznev doctrine, capitalist, imperialist, dictated by Donald Trump. “That is why this election is so important. Brazil is the outlier, the counterweight to the United States and the region, and the US is fighting hard to bring it to heel.

We’re going to see this all unfold not in a couple of months or weeks, but in just a few days. The first round of the election is on October 4th. Brazilians are voting for their president and vice president. They’re also voting for all of the country state governors, all 513 members of the Chamber of Deputies, two-thirds of senators, and more than a thousand state assembly seats. Lula is ahead in the race, but he appears shy of the 50% needed to win outright. If no presidential candidate wins more than half of the vote, it’ll go to a second round. There, polls show the margin between Lula and Bolsonaro even tighter, and it will undoubtedly be a tough campaign. The second round, if it’s needed, is on October 25th.

That is all for this episode of Under the Shadow. Things are going to get intense in the coming days. Please consider following our new website, Pan-American Dispatch and our social media accounts for ongoing reporting on Brazil and these elections. Some of the reporting in this episode was based off of stories I produced recently for the world and The Real News. Many thanks to those outlets for all that they do. Let me remind you that if you’re craving even more backstory here, you can always go back and listen to episode 12 of the second season of Under the Shadow about Brazil’s fight against fake news in the country and the US attempt to roll it back. And please also consider checking out my 2022 podcast about Brazil under Bolsonaro. It’s called Brazil on Fire. It’s still totally relevant today. You can find that wherever you listen.

As always, you can find me at patreon.com/mfox.

There you can also support my work, become a monthly sustainer, or sign up to stay abreast of all the latest on this podcast and my other reporting across Latin America. You can find a ton of content there exclusively also for my supporters. If you’re looking for more information, news and reporting on Trump’s onslaught, both in communities within the United States and abroad, please check out The Real News and NACLA. Both of them are publishing daily indispensable reporting. The theme music is by my band, Monte Perdido. You can find us on Spotify or wherever you stream music. This closing song playing right now is off our 2024 album, Ofrenda. I hope you check it out. Under the shadows of co-production of The Real News and NACLA, it’s produced in partnership with Global Exchange. This episode was written, researched, reported, and produced by me, Michael Fox. The script was edited by Heather Geis.

Thanks for listening. See you next time.

“Marine Le Pen has reinvented herself. Her style now is more moderate,” reckons Jacques Rupnik, a French political scientist, ahead of the country’s widely anticipated battle for the presidency.

Many voters in France will vote for the candidate they see as having the best chance of defeating the far-right leader, Rupnik explains.

“All polls show that if the far-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon faced Marine Le Pen in the second round of France’s presidential election, Marine Le Pen would win,” he says, explaining that many French votes are unwilling to back Mélenchon.

In his interview with Denník N, Rupnik claims Mélenchon is the first French presidential candidate to seek support from immigrants so explicitly.

Find out:

• How Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon have used the migration debate for their campaigns.
• Why the presidential frontrunners do not understand economic issues.
• Rupnik’s assessment of Emmanuel Macron’s two presidential terms.
• Who does Marine Le Pen look up to?

Polls suggest that if France held a presidential election now, far-right Marine Le Pen and far-left Mélenchon would make the second round. What does this tell us about France?

France is divided and polarised. Young people in particular tend to lean towards more radical parties. Establishment parties are old and worn; they have lost their appeal. They have little to say, except for claiming that others are dangerous or worse. But you must bring something new to an election. But after ten years of Macron, that is very difficult.

And it is not entirely true that all polls predict Mélenchon will reach the second round; they often place former prime minister Edouard Philippe ahead of him. Mélenchon is powering ahead in polls because he has launched his campaign and is very good at it. But, nothing is decided.

In French presidential elections there are two rounds. In the first round, you vote for your preferred candidate; in the second, you vote for the lesser evil. So, for most voters, the question will not only be whom they prefer, but also who has the best chance of defeating Le Pen in the second round.

And that is very important. All polls say that if Mélenchon faced Le Pen in the second round, he would lose. Many people are not willing to vote for Mélenchon. A centrist candidate has the best chance of defeating Le Pen, so for now it looks like former prime minister Philippe.

But only if another former prime minister, Gabriel Attal, withdraws his candidacy.

Yes. We have two strong parties at the extremes, and the space in the centre has shrunk. The narrower it becomes, the more candidates appear within it. Every week, another politician tells media: “You know what, I would give it a go.”

Attal, of course, wants to win over Macron supporters — that is, voters on the centre left. The fact he is in the race matters even if he withdraws and endorses another candidate. That may prove a good strategy.

If Le Pen and Mélenchon reach the second round, many would vote Le Pen. Why?

Marine Le Pen has reinvented herself. Not in the sense that she has been thinking about what new ideas to bring forward, but now her style now is more moderate. It is no longer the brash style associated with her father.

Perhaps she took her cue from Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni, seeing a candidate whom everyone feared, but no radical changes followed her election because she adapted quickly to European realities.

Le Pen points out that in several European countries, including Finland and Sweden, the far right has been in government and nothing has happened.

At the same time, Marine Le Pen managed to break through a certain barrier, and some moderate rightwing voters have shifted to her side.

How did that happen?

Previously, the moderate right was stronger and Le Pen’s camp was weaker. The type of rightwing voters who voted for Jacques Chirac have now shifted their weigh behind more radical options. The balance has shifted, and right-wing voters are saying: “Why should we, the right, be excluded from politics simply because Macron has failed and the Le Pen has grown stronger?”

Immigration is another reason behind growing support for Le Pen. Mélenchon is also capitalising on the immigration debate, but in the opposite way to her.

Please explain that.

Mélenchon opposes Le Pen’s position by arguing that immigrants integrate. The Le Pen camp says: “No, they have come from a different culture and their attitude is anti-French.” Le Pen’s camp says that integration works poorly, that immigrants do not even want to integrate instead preferring to live in their own communities.

“Mélenchon has therefore adopted the theory of grand remplacement, but instead of presenting it as a threat, he has turned it into a huge opportunity.”

And Mélenchon argues that it is fine for immigrants to remain in their own communities, practise their own religions, for women to wear headscarves and so on.

The great replacement conspiracy theory (“grand remplacement“) should be mentioned since the far right embraced it long ago. It is the idea that the native French population will gradually be replaced by new immigrants.

And Mélenchon now says: “What great replacement? On the contrary, it is an opportunity for France. He says: “The more of us there are, the better.”

Mélenchon has therefore adopted the theory of grand remplacement, but instead of presenting it as a threat, he has turned it into a huge opportunity. Of course, everyone knows what he is aiming for. It is an election campaign, and he is appealing to voters who are themselves immigrants.

Previously, no one focused on immigrants in elections except Le Pen who used them as a bogeyman. And now Mélenchon says: “We are appealing to Muslims.” He says Muslim headscarves are fine and religious symbols are fine. He says anyone who opposes this is racist.

In August, Le Pen announced her intention to ban headscarves in public spaces. Will her anti-Islamic agenda help her win?

On the contrary, such statements mainly play into Mélenchon’s hands. Of course, calling a referendum on the issue in France is not so simple since such laws already exist. The law states clearly that you can do what you want at home, but if you work in the public sector you must refrain from displaying your religion. There are laws covering this, and there is absolutely no need to devise new ones. Le Pen’s ideas in this regard seem to be mere campaign slogans; we cannot take them literally.

Yet, a major Le Monde poll shows the French are more concerned about the economy than immigration. Immigration ranks fourth, after social issues and ecology.

That is true, but other polls show that, for many voters, the issues of migration and safety overlap considerably.

So, as concerns about security become increasingly prominent, people are more concerned about security and often link it to migration. Marine Le Pen will certainly try to make it one of the key issues, alongside the economy.

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The economy of rural Scotland is under threat from a Net Zero subsidy scheme that is seeing large areas of the Highlands 'rewilded' and turned into peat bogs, driving out traditional pursuits like deerstalking.

The post Net Zero is Destroying Rural Scotland appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.