Football: “The incredible slander machine of PSG”

Published on: 10/13/2022 – 07:47 On the front page of the press, this Thursday, October 13, the first reactions to the vote of the UN General Assembly condemning the Russian “illegal annexations” of Ukrainian territories. The revelations of Mediapart on the use by the PSG club of an “army” of trolls on Twitter to serve its interests, targeting the media and even its own players. And the ethical questions raised by an astonishing scientific advance. The +: Receive the France 24 press review every morning on your iPhone or any other mobile. And also always by becoming a fan of our Facebook page… On the front page of the press, the first reactions to the vote of the UN General Assembly condemning the Russian “illegal annexations” of Ukrainian territories: 143 votes for, 5 against ( Russia, Belarus, Syria, North Korea and Nicaragua) and 35 abstentions, including China and India. The French newspaper La Croix evokes a “broad condemnation” of the Russian annexation, with support for Russia which is “very slightly eroded” compared to the vote last March, with two more votes against Moscow. The Belgian daily Le Soir speaks of “frank and massive support” for Ukraine from the United Nations, whose vote “unequivocally” denounces Russia and considers the holding of referendums in the annexed territories contrary to international law. .Same story from the side of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. For the German daily, “the message to Vladimir Putin could hardly have been clearer”. “Although the UN vote is not binding, it is a clear signal to Russia that the international alliance against Putin is growing stronger after every month of war, after every war crime in Ukraine,” the newspaper said. Alongside the United Nations vote, NATO, for its part, declares that providing Ukraine with anti-aircraft defense systems is now the “highest priority”. The Tribune de Genève explains that kyiv needs an “iron shield” to protect itself from the missiles that have been falling on the country since the explosion that hit the Crimean bridge. According to the Swiss daily, Germany has already delivered a first defense system and other allies should follow quickly – in short, it would only be a matter of time. The Financial Times confirms the German deliveries but reports difficulties among the allies to “secure Ukrainian air defense systems”. According to the British daily, NATO says it has “supply problems” linked to production shortages and relatively low stock levels. In France, Emmanuel Macron, quoted by Le Monde, is committed , Wednesday, October 12, to “deliver radars, systems and missiles” to the Ukrainian army, while ensuring that it does not want to close the door to a possible dialogue with Moscow, when kyiv deems it possible. An option that The Moscow Times seems to be considering as well. The independent Russian daily, which judges that Moscow “has neither the reserves nor the resources to change the situation” on the ground, assures that the Kremlin “wants to return to the negotiations as they were before collapsing in mid -April”, hoping that “the nuclear threat will force Washington to intervene and ‘freeze’ the conflict with the current territorial gains”. an “army” of trolls on Twitter to serve his interests, targeting the media and even his own players, including Kylian Mbappé. These revelations make the front page of the site which denounces “the incredible army to slander” of the PSG, currently led by the Qatari Nasser al-Khelaïfi. This “army” of fake Twitter accounts would, according to Mediapart, lead “violent and filthy” campaigns against the club’s opponents. The news site says it has obtained a report from the “Digital Big Brother” agency – Big Brother, as in George Orwell’s novel -, a digital communication company controlled by a Franco-Tunisian businessman and employed by PSG between 2018 and 2020. This company, which is actually more like a pharmacy, would have “supervised” an army of trolls, whose role would have been to influence PSG fans and the media. The team’s star striker, Kylian Mbappé, was reportedly targeted after the first rumors of his possible departure for Real Madrid in 2019. Also in the crosshairs of these trolls, the sports daily L’Équipe links the smear campaign which he too was the subject of, after the publication of two front pages he had published. The first, on the opening of a judicial investigation for suspicions of fixing during a Champions League match between PSG and Red Star Belgrade, in October 2018. And the second, in December of the same year, on the risks for PSG of having to part with one of its two stars, Neymar or Kylian Mbappé, in the event of sanctions, for violation of financial fair play. We cannot leave each other on this. Before telling you tomorrow, I wanted to share with you this info, relayed the journal Nature, which reports that scientists have succeeded in implanting a kind of human brain cells, called organoids, in young rats, to better study certain psychiatric disorders , such as schizophrenia. This news is both a hope for the experimentation of new treatments but also poses ethical problems, with some fearing that the creation of rodent-human hybrids could harm animals or create animals with brains similar to that of the Man. Find the Press Review every morning on France 24 (Monday to Friday, at 7:20 a.m. and 9:20 a.m. Paris time). Also follow the Revue des Hebdos every weekend in multicast.