Recently, there were municipal elections in France, and there was Israeli interference there as well [0] (the article is pay-walled and in French but it's written in the title at least).
So it sounds like these guys posed as investors, schmoozed politicians, and got them on tape agreeing to do corrupt stuff. The recordings were then released to influence voters.
The thing about this is, the response to it will depend on who the politicians were. For example, if it was the "far right" politicians caught on tape, there wouldn't be the same furore about election interference. The recordings may of course be edited to be misleading.
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nmeofthestate
"Black Cube" - wonder what they're going for there. Maybe "Sinister Obelisk" was taken.
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nashashmi
The desperation of the state is becoming apparent. Look for more election interference in the future. It will be more sophisticated. And likely can be traced in past elections.
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rekrsiv
Quick question: Could they also be manipulating this message board's voting?
They are speaking in English. Only appendices 1-5 are available.
beboplifa
The tapes show prominent Slovenian figures apparently discussing corruption, illegal lobbying and the misuse of state funds.
Is there any evidence that the tape is fraudulent? The article doesn't provide any. I wonder if anybody even read the article other than words "Israeli firm" and jumped to a lynching
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epolanski
It's insane the power and influence Israelis have.
In the US it's blatant, from the insane amounts of money and weaponry sent to Israel (why are american taxpayers subsidizing Israel exactly? It's not like they are neither poor nor US owes them) to the recent events in the middle east.
But even in Europe. Here in Italy the coalition government has multiple high profile politicians that just happen to be shareholders or CEOs of security companies owned by Israelis. And just so it happens that the same security and communication companies get lots of work by the Italian government. And when journalists brought this up because they didn't report it to neither the government nor parliament, nothing happened anyway.
It's a scandal really, but if you write or say it, you're labeled as anti semitic, so criticizing and surfacing this terrible stuff is always controversial.
So is the allegation that this private intelligence firm tried to induce members of the government party to offer a bribe. They then published the recorded conversations.
I guess what is missing from the article is was the videos misleading or did they really get offered the bribe? Because if its the latter, its kind of hard to feel sympathy for a corrupt official getting caught even if the mechanism was problematic.
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_zoltan_
and Russia is now doing the same in Hungary... :(
tlogan
Interesting. I have vey limited knowledge of Slovenian politics, but it often seems that whoever gets elected ends up facing corruption charges and ends up in prison after the next election cycle.
Since Janez Jansa will be prime minister he will be charged for corruption by end of his term and this could be the third time for him to go to prison (the first instance happened under the socialist regime, so maybe that does not count).
Anyway, I do not think Israelis needed to work hard here to find some dirt.
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
I wonder when people will stop being scared to speak out. Is it once they lose their job due to stolen data? Is it once Palantir decides they are a threat and they lose their freedom? Is it once they lose their own land? Is it after starting the 10th war?
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nec4b
There was no rigging or any manipulation of votes. Current and previous government officials were caught bragging about their previous corrupt adventures. The government after some initial shock came up with a story about foreign intervention. Slovenian newspapers and journalist activist carried it all the way to Brussels in order bank on negative emotions about Israel and hopped people will think about that. There was no institutional response, because the current government has cleaned institutions of people not loyal to them. It's a rather sad situation. The society is deeply divided.
When similar thing happened in Belgium, the corrupt people were immediately punished and nobody cared who exposed them.
jmyeet
I want to talk about Ticketmaster.
People hate Ticketmaster. For good reason. TM throws on all these fees, clearly engages in third-party selling, makings buying difficult and jacks up prices. All of this is known. But what's less known is that artists, especially big artists, like Ticketmaster. Why? Because TM is a sacrificial anode. It takes all the hate but adding junk fees that in part go to the artist. The artist can say they're selling seats from as low as $20 in press releases while the least they will get for a seat is $30 because of all the fees.
Being hated is a service you can sell because it takes away attention from what you're doing. You get to blame this third-party but you're still absolutely complicit in everything they're doing. You see where this is going?
Israel is America's Ticketmaster. Anything bad that Israel or an Israeli firm does, the US could end today with a phone call by simply saying "we're cutting off aid if you don't stop doing". The price of this is to be the sacrificial anode for what is actually American foreign policy. There are well-funded and organized efforts to whitewash Israel's reputation and those were successful up until the last few years.
Israel is a huge supplier of spyware eg Pegasus [1]. Despotic regimes use this to spy on journalists and opposition figures and has likely been used to locate and kill them. You think we couldn't stop that? Of course we can. But we like that because, again, Israel takes the heat.
So Israel interfering in Slovenia's elections is the least surprising thing I've heard. I'd be surprised if it wasn't true. You will find Israeli influence in probably every election.
Joel Zamel, an Israeli intelligence veteran, led the Israeli intel company Psy-Group, which worked closely with Netanyahu and the Trump campaign circle, including Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner.
Psy-Group partnered with Cambridge Analytica (later Emerdata) to influence the 2016 US elections using social media data.
The Black Cube intel firm, staffed by former Mossad agents, was employed by Cambridge Analytica, which was involved in harvesting Facebook data.
Harvey Weinstein Hired ex-Mossad Agents to Track Women Accusing Him of Sexual Assault
Weinstein hired Israeli firm Black Cube to research his accusers and to scuttle reports of his sexual abuse
Black Cube operatives posed as activists, abuse victims and sources for journalists
It seems to me that interfering in a foreign election should be understood to be grounds for war.
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chimpanzee2
Doesn't matter, half of HN will still defend them.
show comments
chiengineer
At this point its extremely clear and important to understand
It doesnt matter how men, bodies / hours / time / millions and billions you spend building a defensive
They will infiltrate with less than 500k
And come out on top
100% of the time
This is a fundamental human problem that needs fixing across the entire planet
It does not matter what country or secret groups are involved or how much life or death is truly at stake
There is a 100000% chance some dumbass is willing to fuck if all up for a small bribe
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shevy-java
Israel really needs to stop interfering in other countries'
elections. That's not acceptable. We don't interfere when
their population votes for warcriminals either.
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gokhan
Already downvoted to hell. Will leave frontpage in 5-10 mins with 273 points in 1 hour. Shame.
carabiner
Why are they like this... There are elite cultures that just live and don't bother anyone. Israel isn't one of them.
vrganj
Israel under Netanyahu is part of the international antidemocratic axis of imperialist autocracy.
These gentlemen (and of course they're all men) constitute the 21st century axis of evil, responsible for most of the backsliding and worsening of rule of law around the world.
show comments
seydor
Israel has created a whole industry around "politics" as a service. Between rampant spying in multiple countries using Predator etc and slimy campaings like this, you can buy governments for an increasingly affordable price.
show comments
ahhhhnoooo
Israel has recently invaded Lebanon, started a regional war with Iran, and has been recognized as committing genocide in Gaza.
The UN believes the IDF uses rape as a matter of policy and has published a report with quite a bit of evidence.
Hearing Israel is meddling with elections is like, yeah, if you are doing that other stuff I'm not shocked when you also do this.
cooloo
It's amazing to see the amount of hate towards Israel here.
I guess part of it it's just plain old Jew hate in new cover
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maxdo
This instance is a kindergarten if you compare Victor Orban doing phone calls during EU sessions from toilet to report secrets to Russia.
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bilekas
Am I mistaken but in theory aren't Solvenia and Isreal technically allies ?
I'm not naive to believe intelligence agencies don't target each other in many ways, but general voting interference seems quite brazzen. I would love to see an example being made out of them here.
That said, bar sanctions, Isreali 'private' companies like this seem to have carte blanch on whatever they want to do. No sanctions, no fines, not even investigations will happen I fear.
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abdelhousni
Same Slovenia which Prime Minister of Slovakia Robert Fico was shot and critically injured in 2024 after, certainly not related, his government's opposition to military assistance to Ukraine and of hypocritical face of the EU inaction against Israel "treatment" of Palestinians.
https://archive.ph/LwhOj
Recently, there were municipal elections in France, and there was Israeli interference there as well [0] (the article is pay-walled and in French but it's written in the title at least).
[0]: https://www.lecanardenchaine.fr/politique/53391-la-campagne-...
So it sounds like these guys posed as investors, schmoozed politicians, and got them on tape agreeing to do corrupt stuff. The recordings were then released to influence voters.
The thing about this is, the response to it will depend on who the politicians were. For example, if it was the "far right" politicians caught on tape, there wouldn't be the same furore about election interference. The recordings may of course be edited to be misleading.
"Black Cube" - wonder what they're going for there. Maybe "Sinister Obelisk" was taken.
The desperation of the state is becoming apparent. Look for more election interference in the future. It will be more sophisticated. And likely can be traced in past elections.
Quick question: Could they also be manipulating this message board's voting?
Here are the videos: https://www.anti-corruption2026.com/
They are speaking in English. Only appendices 1-5 are available.
The tapes show prominent Slovenian figures apparently discussing corruption, illegal lobbying and the misuse of state funds. Is there any evidence that the tape is fraudulent? The article doesn't provide any. I wonder if anybody even read the article other than words "Israeli firm" and jumped to a lynching
It's insane the power and influence Israelis have.
In the US it's blatant, from the insane amounts of money and weaponry sent to Israel (why are american taxpayers subsidizing Israel exactly? It's not like they are neither poor nor US owes them) to the recent events in the middle east.
But even in Europe. Here in Italy the coalition government has multiple high profile politicians that just happen to be shareholders or CEOs of security companies owned by Israelis. And just so it happens that the same security and communication companies get lots of work by the Italian government. And when journalists brought this up because they didn't report it to neither the government nor parliament, nothing happened anyway.
It's a scandal really, but if you write or say it, you're labeled as anti semitic, so criticizing and surfacing this terrible stuff is always controversial.
Alternate source due to paywall: https://www.politico.eu/article/black-cube-leak-tape-corrupt...
So is the allegation that this private intelligence firm tried to induce members of the government party to offer a bribe. They then published the recorded conversations.
I guess what is missing from the article is was the videos misleading or did they really get offered the bribe? Because if its the latter, its kind of hard to feel sympathy for a corrupt official getting caught even if the mechanism was problematic.
and Russia is now doing the same in Hungary... :(
Interesting. I have vey limited knowledge of Slovenian politics, but it often seems that whoever gets elected ends up facing corruption charges and ends up in prison after the next election cycle.
Since Janez Jansa will be prime minister he will be charged for corruption by end of his term and this could be the third time for him to go to prison (the first instance happened under the socialist regime, so maybe that does not count).
Anyway, I do not think Israelis needed to work hard here to find some dirt.
I wonder when people will stop being scared to speak out. Is it once they lose their job due to stolen data? Is it once Palantir decides they are a threat and they lose their freedom? Is it once they lose their own land? Is it after starting the 10th war?
There was no rigging or any manipulation of votes. Current and previous government officials were caught bragging about their previous corrupt adventures. The government after some initial shock came up with a story about foreign intervention. Slovenian newspapers and journalist activist carried it all the way to Brussels in order bank on negative emotions about Israel and hopped people will think about that. There was no institutional response, because the current government has cleaned institutions of people not loyal to them. It's a rather sad situation. The society is deeply divided. When similar thing happened in Belgium, the corrupt people were immediately punished and nobody cared who exposed them.
I want to talk about Ticketmaster.
People hate Ticketmaster. For good reason. TM throws on all these fees, clearly engages in third-party selling, makings buying difficult and jacks up prices. All of this is known. But what's less known is that artists, especially big artists, like Ticketmaster. Why? Because TM is a sacrificial anode. It takes all the hate but adding junk fees that in part go to the artist. The artist can say they're selling seats from as low as $20 in press releases while the least they will get for a seat is $30 because of all the fees.
Being hated is a service you can sell because it takes away attention from what you're doing. You get to blame this third-party but you're still absolutely complicit in everything they're doing. You see where this is going?
Israel is America's Ticketmaster. Anything bad that Israel or an Israeli firm does, the US could end today with a phone call by simply saying "we're cutting off aid if you don't stop doing". The price of this is to be the sacrificial anode for what is actually American foreign policy. There are well-funded and organized efforts to whitewash Israel's reputation and those were successful up until the last few years.
Israel is a huge supplier of spyware eg Pegasus [1]. Despotic regimes use this to spy on journalists and opposition figures and has likely been used to locate and kill them. You think we couldn't stop that? Of course we can. But we like that because, again, Israel takes the heat.
So Israel interfering in Slovenia's elections is the least surprising thing I've heard. I'd be surprised if it wasn't true. You will find Israeli influence in probably every election.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware)
Joel Zamel, an Israeli intelligence veteran, led the Israeli intel company Psy-Group, which worked closely with Netanyahu and the Trump campaign circle, including Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner.
Psy-Group partnered with Cambridge Analytica (later Emerdata) to influence the 2016 US elections using social media data.
The Black Cube intel firm, staffed by former Mossad agents, was employed by Cambridge Analytica, which was involved in harvesting Facebook data.
Harvey Weinstein Hired ex-Mossad Agents to Track Women Accusing Him of Sexual Assault
Weinstein hired Israeli firm Black Cube to research his accusers and to scuttle reports of his sexual abuse
Black Cube operatives posed as activists, abuse victims and sources for journalists
https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/2017-11-07/ty-article/report...
It seems to me that interfering in a foreign election should be understood to be grounds for war.
Doesn't matter, half of HN will still defend them.
At this point its extremely clear and important to understand
It doesnt matter how men, bodies / hours / time / millions and billions you spend building a defensive
They will infiltrate with less than 500k
And come out on top
100% of the time
This is a fundamental human problem that needs fixing across the entire planet
It does not matter what country or secret groups are involved or how much life or death is truly at stake
There is a 100000% chance some dumbass is willing to fuck if all up for a small bribe
Israel really needs to stop interfering in other countries' elections. That's not acceptable. We don't interfere when their population votes for warcriminals either.
Already downvoted to hell. Will leave frontpage in 5-10 mins with 273 points in 1 hour. Shame.
Why are they like this... There are elite cultures that just live and don't bother anyone. Israel isn't one of them.
Israel under Netanyahu is part of the international antidemocratic axis of imperialist autocracy.
Other members, in no particular order:
Orban, Trump, Putin, Babis, Thiel, Bolsonaro, Ellison, Milei, Nawrocki.
These gentlemen (and of course they're all men) constitute the 21st century axis of evil, responsible for most of the backsliding and worsening of rule of law around the world.
Israel has created a whole industry around "politics" as a service. Between rampant spying in multiple countries using Predator etc and slimy campaings like this, you can buy governments for an increasingly affordable price.
Israel has recently invaded Lebanon, started a regional war with Iran, and has been recognized as committing genocide in Gaza.
The UN believes the IDF uses rape as a matter of policy and has published a report with quite a bit of evidence.
Hearing Israel is meddling with elections is like, yeah, if you are doing that other stuff I'm not shocked when you also do this.
It's amazing to see the amount of hate towards Israel here. I guess part of it it's just plain old Jew hate in new cover
This instance is a kindergarten if you compare Victor Orban doing phone calls during EU sessions from toilet to report secrets to Russia.
Am I mistaken but in theory aren't Solvenia and Isreal technically allies ?
I'm not naive to believe intelligence agencies don't target each other in many ways, but general voting interference seems quite brazzen. I would love to see an example being made out of them here.
That said, bar sanctions, Isreali 'private' companies like this seem to have carte blanch on whatever they want to do. No sanctions, no fines, not even investigations will happen I fear.
Same Slovenia which Prime Minister of Slovakia Robert Fico was shot and critically injured in 2024 after, certainly not related, his government's opposition to military assistance to Ukraine and of hypocritical face of the EU inaction against Israel "treatment" of Palestinians.