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Francesca Heather-Hayes's avatar

That just about sums up how I feel about the world that’s been/ is being created. I haven’t anything meaningful to add but wanted to show my approval both for your beautiful prose and what it says. Thank you.

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Nick's avatar

And, I’m sad to say it’s going to get worse. They want their “Golden Age” or a “New World Order” - order out of chaos. It’s no longer a ‘Conspiracy Theory’,

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Marten's avatar

Yup, it's gonna get worse before it gets better, and it will !!!!Trust the Universe

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Nick's avatar

They control everything - Banking, Oil, Military, Government, Media etc etc

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Jo Waller's avatar

Who do you think that 'they' are? I suspect that 'they' are indeed from a conspiracy concerning evil 'globalists'. The other 'they' (US Imperialism and BlackRock et al) deliberately created and spread this theory so that we oppose regulations by the state or UN aimed at anything to do with addressing the climate and environmental crises or global inequality: but which would damage free ( ie US neoliberal) markets and their profits.

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Nick's avatar

‘They’ are the elite families, shielded by the Rothschild’s.

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Jo Waller's avatar

So big fossil fuels etc.

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Michael Green's avatar

Where have all the sparrows gone,

Gone to graveyards everyone,

When will we ever learn.

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Vin LoPresti's avatar

As the plastic bullguano proliferates this season, as little American boys (and girls) crave this stuff, I can just feel in their reactions, in their dispositions, the sense of warrior potency they exude with that drone controller in hand. With wealthy shitelib parents who don't counsel otherwise, you can almost taste their fantasies of being a "warrior" who obliterates "targets" with their killer drone. Buying an American kid this tech garbage is like feeding pure sugar to that exceptionalist warmonger psychic cultural base that's more or less innate to children of the American nightmare.

Just another AI seduction to separate them from one another and from the Natural world. Easy prey for totalitarian control.

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Feral Finster's avatar

While shitlibs worship the military, they don't want their offspring joining it.

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Vin LoPresti's avatar

I really don't think it matters what parents want given that with every new social media opportunity, the weight of the culture falls on their children like a bunker buster. And as Nod Dranoel has pointed out below, kids are already inclined in the warfighter direction via death-cult gaming.

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Feral Finster's avatar

If that were the case, the military would have no problem meeting recruitment quotas and have its pick of recruits.

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Vin LoPresti's avatar

Big difference between buying into the ethos and suporting it in the culture versus actually putting your body on the line. Even imbeciles awaken at the wrong end of a firearm.

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JennyStokes's avatar

I think that the USA (however stupid they are) KNOW one thing.

Americans coming back in 'body bags' it will turn the Country into a bloodbath! Hence drones: manipulated by 'digital game enthusiasts!

A person (young man/woman) playing 'warfare games' on the Internet/possibly used by .........who know what.

DO these young people EVER think of reality?

Take these 'gaming young people' into a REAL war!

Get off your arses you people/look at what YOU have done.

Smell the blood of innocent people.

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Duane McPherson's avatar

Not so much need for an army of citizens (volunteer or conscript) when it's easier and cheaper to fund a proxy army (Ukraine) or hire an army or mercenaries (Syria). And there's no popular blow-back about the body count.

Yes, it all begins to feel like the end times of the Roman Empire but don't worry, I'm sure our Masters of the Universe on Wall Street will find a solution.

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Indu Abeysekara's avatar

Great post Duane McPherson. The latest linguistic twist is that the proxies are called "rebels"!

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Jon Olsen's avatar

The system is brittle: hard but fragile. Remember the late USSR. We need LOTS less negativity and more defiance.

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Feral Finster's avatar

Not arguing that, but lips service doesn't get results. Even press ganged conscripts are of more use.

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JennyStokes's avatar

Just bought a wonderful wooden 3D puzzle for a friends kid............then I thought oh NO what tree was chopped down.

Can't win!

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Vin LoPresti's avatar

At least it's biodegradable and more importantly not implicitly or explicitly representative of war technology.

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JennyStokes's avatar

This is true Vin BUT I am very attached to trees.

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gypsy33's avatar

I too, Jenny. I’m sure you’ve heard me reintegrate many times that trees are nature’s Most Noble Creations.

They provide humans and other-than-humans immense sources of food. They provide shelter for birds and mammals. And yes, they provide us with firewood, which millions rely on, as well as building materials.

Fortunately, trees are renewable. The puzzle you purchases was but a very small portion of whatever tree was cut to ostensibly convert into lumber.

At least you didn’t purchase a plastic puzzle!

Happy Solstice a day late!

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JennyStokes's avatar

Same to you Gypsy.

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Vin LoPresti's avatar

As am I, Jenny, my life would be emptier without my conversations with the wisdom of 500 y-o Junipers.

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JennyStokes's avatar

Our native tree here in S. France is a Miccoucoulea (spelling). They grow huge, with spreading branches. But do the people who run our Towns and City's plant them.....NO.

They plant trees of other lands and wonder why they get pests!

Luckily I don't have much longer to live but what we leave behind for others is a dying wold. Shame.

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gypsy33's avatar

Hi Jenny

One of the most popular evergreens here is the Colorado Blue Spruce. Well, they grow just fine in Colorado and similar western states, but here in humid Michigan they develop a fungal disease called needle cast. It begins at the bottom and works its way up, eventually killing the tree. I can’t tell you how many we’ve had to cut down, but we were ignorant of this affliction when we planted them many years ago.

When I worked at the nursery, I actively discouraged people from buying them, instead, steering them to our beautiful native white pines.

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Marci Sudlow's avatar

Trees are a renewable resource.

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Jim Jackson's avatar

On an industrial scale, trees are a renewable resource. On one's homeplace, a tree that one planted, fertilized, and watered during droughts is an object of affection. So much so, that if multiplied by twenty or so, moving to another location seems unacceptably depressing.

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Elaine's avatar

There was a beautiful tall evergreen tree here in the mobile home park where I live. It towered above the homes surrounding it. From my kitchen window I enjoyed seeing it. But a tree "service" company came and cut it down.

I asked the lady who lives across from where the tree was why it was cut down. She said that it was considered a danger in a strong windstorm. That tree was never liable to be blown down. It was very sturdy and had a large trunk. I went and looked at the stump that was left. Other pine trees here have never blown down.

In essence, the tree "service" company probably had been eyeing the tree and convinced the park owners that the tree was a danger. Greed destroyed a beautiful tree.

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JennyStokes's avatar

The trees in our Universe are dying.

As the world heats up: Where is the shade?

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JennyStokes's avatar

Marci.

Our imported trees are dying here in France.

When the trees go ......we go.

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JennyStokes's avatar

NO.

DO you know how many 1000 old Oak trees were cut down to save Notre Dames Cathedral in Paris?

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Marci Sudlow's avatar

I doubt that the wooden puzzle you bought was made from 1000 yr old oak trees. More likely pine being raised sustainably for harvest.

I love trees also and have reforested much of my own land after the last of our horses passed on. The turnover time from seedling to maturity is short for a lot of our indigenous species, poplar, aspen, and white pine especially, but also birch and maple. We have an entire young forest that was open pastureland as recently as 20 years ago.

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Nod Dranoel's avatar

That started long ago with the murder death cult owning gaming

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Vin LoPresti's avatar

Yes, thanks: The early propaganda setup for the self-delusional drone "warfighter". I don't think in that direction since I have never succumbed to playing any of those games.

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JennyStokes's avatar

What is wrong with 'board game?' Where the WHOLE family can come together?

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K_L_Elsayed's avatar

Chillingly beautiful Caitlin... Drones are created by cowards and weaklings who're power hungry dweebs. By a military that can't BS people into signing up. By octogenarians in power who refuse to die... Weakness is the operative word.

How can weak people control the populace? How can they fight their unnecessary wars without sustaining casualties & guilt (?) for their murdering countless innocents? How can they sanitize and insulate themselves from "unnecessary" humanity.?

These are very sick people creating this extremely sick new world. For what? CONTROL... because they're weaklings and cowards and greedy and power hungry and ignoramuses and totally psychopathic.

The truth is they're going to die just like us... There's no immortality utopia in this story.

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Howard Pearce - Libertarian's avatar

'How can they fight their unnecessary wars without sustaining casualties & guilt (?) for their murdering countless innocents?'

The same way FDR and Truman did !

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K_L_Elsayed's avatar

FDR and Truman, along with many of our pre-drone wars cost US military lives as well as civilian casualties. Drones take on the risk of soldiers. Israel has shown that drones are great for warfare when the soldiers are precious beings. Drones go in, but soldiers don't, they hide in their tanks and behind bulldozers.

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Amelia Anderson's avatar

I encounter far too many people who act as if the 'survival bunkers' or 'secret islands' will somehow save and protect the 0.001% from the climate crisis.

Except that's not how the climate crisis works. It cooks the world alive and these wealthy dipshits are 101% aware of it yet continue to drag us screaming into forced collective suicide regardless. It's insanity.

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K_L_Elsayed's avatar

You're 100% right! They're so crazy with greed and power they think they're immune to all of this I guess. Bunkers and secret islands are laughable, considering they'll probably not make it to hide when things go sideways.

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Mary Wildfire's avatar

This hurts, in its perfect poetic accuracy--but I have, maybe, some good news. I get a lot of information from Nate Hagens' great Simplification podcast, and a great guest he has had more than once is Daniel Schmachtenberger, Who says AI is accelerating at exponential speed and is a huge threat on top of all the other existential threats we face. But I watched and read several things a couple days ago that all said it's overhyped, overblown, that it's sucking up huge amounts of capital without much return, that "generative AI" has hit a wall and is no longer making progress. I am not in a position to judge for myself, but I hope this is true. Drones are still a very serious threat, but if AI is not, that's one less worry, and it's something more. AI is the spearhead of tech "progress", it's so much The Next Big Thing, that if it collapses in a sea of debt it could be a real turning point.

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MountainBlues's avatar

Not only is the financial ROI not happening for AI, it also takes a huge amount of electricity which we don't have. That's why they're talking about building mini nuclear reactors next to data centers. There isn't the time or money to build those either though.

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Mary Wildfire's avatar

this is very important to me because I'm an environmentalists living in West Virginia, where we're currently fighting one of those asinine hydrogen hubs...and proposed power plants for data centers. But if AI is already tanking we have a good chance of scuttling those.

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Stephen Clarke's avatar

boom and bust is how it works some call it disaster capitalism; the final stage unless AI gets smart enough to start running things the way we should.

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Amelia Anderson's avatar

No Capitalist will ever support true AI.

Because the system it would implement is antithetical to the cancerous system that we call Capitalism.

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http://coronistan.blogspot.com's avatar

Apropos drones:

Everyone needs to understand the bigger picture: "Bird Flu" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt52nHNIErk

If the virus lie doesn't die, we will and they don't need to kill us with vaccines, it's enough for them to kill the birds and everything we eat against a fictitious threat from a non-existent virus.

This is all so incredibly sick and people are almost all so incredibly stupid, cowardly and without character.

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JennyStokes's avatar

We've had this 'bird flu' here in France for years...........I am not hearing of too much damage.

Maybe I am not looking because I see 'scaremongering.'

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Gerry Dunn's avatar

"a murder of drones". Brilliant.

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Bruno's avatar

Insults crows though

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A J's avatar

The local PD has applied for a budget increase to buy more drones. I really don't like the way this is going.

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Howard Pearce - Libertarian's avatar

As state spending always has

They take A PERSON'S money WITHOUT THAT PERSON'S CONSENT and call it TAXATION

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A J's avatar

Of course. Last year the local PD even took a chunk of money set aside for Covid-19 relief to spend on more surveillance cameras.

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Feral Finster's avatar

Start liking it. One might say that we are ruled by humans who in many ways, resemble drones.

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sifubernie's avatar

Control. That is why the U.S. government “doesn’t know” where the drones come from, but “there is no danger”. It is an exercise in programming to normalize the presence of drones. That is the plan for the future: total control.

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GabeReal's avatar

Yeah, that’s good insight.

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Howard Pearce - Libertarian's avatar

like NORMALIZING the ability of COERIVE monopoly states to COERCE people

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Jennifer Akdemir's avatar

Yes. Time for the human chimp to go extinct... oh wait, we are working on exactly that.

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The Revolution Continues's avatar

"The sky used to be ruled by living beings. Now it is ruled by drones."

And soon AI-run killer robots will rule the land about us if we don't get the Revolution started and started soon.

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Jo Waller's avatar

Who are 'we' starting this revolution? We are disunited, leaderless and can't agree on anything. A revolution is the last thing we need.

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The Revolution Continues's avatar

Yeah, let's just leave things the way they are. Things are going soooo well, ain't they? Just don't ask a Palestinian in Gaza if they're going well. Or a homeless person sleeping on the streets in the US... Or a person with a potentially cancerous tumor without any health insurance in the US... Or...

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Jo Waller's avatar

You're full of shit. Shooting people doesn't stop people being shot.

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Jo Waller's avatar

This whole thing stinks. It seems to be creating a market by drawing attention to people being denied something- like those with learning disabilities were allegedly being denied the 'covid' jabs. Neither cancer screening nor cancer treatment saves lives (some chemo may on average, if it doesn't kill you, extend your (uncomfortable, nauseous) life by 2.1 months compared to other chemo drugs).

Prevention, prevention, prevention.

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Jo Waller's avatar

So not wanting The Reign of Terror means that I want to leave things as they are and that I want people to die of cancer?

Great reasoning.

How about hitting the 'elites' where it hurts, avoiding junk food and pharma so we don't need health care in the first place, not driving, not flying, not eating animal products, not using Amazon...

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Jim's avatar
Dec 22Edited

The last two paragraphs are excellently accurate and instructive. Thanks.

We have been projecting ourselves into our environment in our most recent era of technology. For instance, the electric wires underground and on poles are an extension of the nerves in our brains and the wheels on our vehicles are an extension of our legs. Bnd as Caitlin's last paragraphs illustrate, the replacement seems to be increasing as technologies become more sophisticated, with increasingly undesirable effects.

A key question is whether we can continue to improve as a civilization without such undesirable effects. Can we continue to progress technically without seemingly degrading from the human perspective?

I think it's the human perspective that's suffering. We need to find a way to prioritize our humanity over our technologies. Is there a system of government that would allow such a thing? I don't believe the current system encourages or even allows it. So how do we bring down the current system?

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Howard Pearce - Libertarian's avatar

"We need to find a way to prioritize our humanity over our technologies"

Who or WHAT do you have in mind ?

The State ?

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Howard Pearce - Libertarian's avatar

"are an extension of the nerves in our brains"

GIve up right to property and that includes the property we call YOUR BODY

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Jim's avatar

Howard, I'm not as bright as you're assuming I am and I need to be spoonfed to understand what you mean. Could you please do that, if it's worth your time? Thanks.

I could provide my own mental bridges of the many gaps in reasoning you leave, but then, I'd be listening to myself as I read your comment. Is that your goal?

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Howard Pearce - Libertarian's avatar

I'll tell you something you might know.

I've always seemed to have a sense when people tell me something I disagree with or at least question but do not know why yet (conceptualized it)

MJyabe others do to

I've been amazed at the times that sense has been what I call "right" now

Don 't ignore yours

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Jim's avatar

May I suggest that when you comment, you re-read your comment from the perspective of the reader. There's a difference between composing words that make sense to you as you write and the proper English interpretation of what you wrote. So if you don't stand back and read your result, you will pass on something that makes sense to you but not to the reader - as this example illustrates that.

I also suggest you adhere to standard correct English usage. By not doing so, as here, you give support for the adage, "A person who cannot think clearly cannot write clearly."

That's why re-reading is so important. I do it, many times.

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Howard Pearce - Libertarian's avatar

I've decided to present things from my perspective as I have decided very few people want to be convinced by libertarian ideas

It is a radical view of liberalism and one in opposition to much of what is called Social Liberalism that has wide support .

Libertraianism has a base in what is called Classical Liberalism

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Howard Pearce - Libertarian's avatar

I got a B- in college

Thanks mostly to my math abilities - otherwise it would have been much worse

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Jim's avatar

Thanks for being candid. I got A's, all subjects, Summa Cum Lauda. In grad school, I was closer to average in the coursework. At my age now, I'm not as sharp as I used to be, but in some areas, maybe I'm even sharper.

It took me a while to decide on the style I will write in for the "comment" part of my retirement years. But the most essential goal for me is to be clear and to not expect the reader to bridge gaps, and it takes much re-writing.

I think all good journalists have that goal, among others. Unfortunately, the vast majority of commenters do not have such goals, and I find only few of them worth reading. Very few even show much thinking ability. It's mostly reflexive, and the use of cell phones makes it worse. I like to say, "Most people believe they are thinking, but are really thinking only what they believe."

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Joy in HK fiFP's avatar

From your mouth to god’s ear - if the drones don’t interfere!

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SW's avatar

Artificial wombs are being created as the next step in dehumanizing us and breaking the essential tie of mother -child. This is a real thing in the earliest stages. Every scientific breakthrough has a price and in vitro fertilization was a wonderful boon to many couples who had trouble conceiving. We never can predict where “science” will lead or what potential it has to further imprison us.

Drones are the perfect example how the risk of war minimizes harm to the aggressor and maximizes it to the victim. Brave New World.

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Howard Pearce - Libertarian's avatar

"Artificial wombs are being created as the next step in dehumanizing us and breaking the essential tie of mother -child. "

That sounds nice until you tell us you wanted this MANDATED by The State.

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Jo Waller's avatar

Big pharma and big business have done a great job in vilifying the State using the 'covid' debacle.

Fact is, it's because individuals have so much money and power, such as Bill Gates, that they are able to capture the State, such as the WHO. Giant cartels, who pay $billions for fraud, are still allowed to evade taxes and make profits. Business can manipulate governments (whose balls they have in vices) to mandate their products. It was capitalism that did this, for their profits.

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Duane McPherson's avatar

Yes, artificial wombs are coming and it's not that far off. And, as usual, they will be justified and promoted as a compassionate humanitarian gift to couples (or individuals) who cannot otherwise have children. While the end result will be to complete the commodification of human life. The child will be an industrial product. Brave New World, absolutely.

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