Israel has produced human monsters who are now creating machine monsters. They have turned their young men into killers, now robots. I wonder if the people in Israel feel as sick as I do about this.
Nothing to do with the topic at hand but I havet o post this .
Israeli bombing of Rafah kills dozens, including long-awaited twins
A woman who spent 11 years trying to conceive is mourning her twins, born just four months ago, who were killed in Rafah along with her husband. A series of Israeli attacks on Gaza’s southernmost city, once declared a safe zone, have killed 25 Palestinians.
Not to mention the individual that was squashed while alive by the tank. Hands in zip ties as they made sure he was on pavement slowly rolling starting w feet.
What is so disturbing are the lack of voices in Israel denouncing it's many crimes. They are to be held to account also. They want Netanyahu gone, but nothing about stopping this genocide.
Americans for the most part were indifferent to our many Middle Eastern wars, and sometimes, many times, you felt what you did was all in vein and it was. All you can do is protect your own sense of humanity, your own soul, which the people of Israel are not.
Humanity is a terminal autoimmune disease. If you are a person of faith--whatever faith bc it's all the same scam--then you must blame your invisible sky fairy & its/their clerics, the ones who pull all the levers of power that manipulate the lost, confused, fearful (of death, the unknown, & others), the ignorant, the mis-/dis-informed, the brainwashed, the uneducated, the cognitively impaired, & the genuinely stupid. Human "progress", the imagination, & creativity, the contents of that vague mixed-bag "virtue", lead us all down the road of good intentions to the cul-de-sac of earthly Hell, not Paradise. One cannot change the world to suit one's particular needs but must change oneself to take advantage of what the world offers. Feeling sick about reality just leads to depression & despair. Don't think too much. It's bad for one's mental & physical health. Finally, life is absurd & ultimately meaningless, so enjoy it when, where, & how you can while you can. When it's over for you, you won't feel sick or anything else. Maybe not a comfortable thought, but you can always rewrite the ending if it makes you feel better. Feelings are dangerous. But you probably don't appreciate my cynicism.
This is nothing any cynic like Diogenes would believe and is an insult to their name, nor is it something that would be appreciated by anyone who has ever read even a little bit of existentialism or knows a single thing about it or philosophy or religion in general.
It's just an utterly worthless sort of nihilism bereft of all meaning, really, and even that's an insult to nihilists because at least most nihilists will find meaning in e.g hedonism and find things to live for, whereas the only logical conclusion to your beliefs is suicide.
The world is in a bad place because of people like you, the sleepwalking zombies who are dead from no belief and think everything is meaningless, that nothing is worth working towards, and that feeling anything is bad because they can't appreciate the full range of human emotions. What is wrong with you that drove you to think this way?
That was probably one of the grossest, saddest comments I've ever read on Substack. And "Don't think too much," really? A better solution, if someone actually feels reading about what's going on in the world is getting to them: find meaning in life and activities that provide happiness for you to where what you read can't deeply affect you. Alternatively, read less of that and more of something else, since there's more worth reading than one ever could in one lifetime; think more, not less.
I had a dream about how all these "battle tested" AI run weapons got turned on their programmers and came after the genocide enablers instead of innocent civilians. But then I woke up and read this news and realized the nightmare was still happening. The only way to make this nightmare go away is by shutting down the military-industrial complex once and for all. Who's with me? (I hear that using paint ball guns to take out these robot dogs’ optics is effective.)
A few robot cars have been disabled and destroyed. A deployment of police-like bots in San Francisco a few years back was a disaster. Bums found it entertaining to make the bots move in the wrong direction, and junkies were making money disabling the bots and stripping out all the sellable parts. Human creativity built the bots. Human creativity can destroy them.
There must be a permanent ceasefire in Gaza in order to comply with the ICJ ruling. Not with Palestinians suffering under oppressive conditions, but as a place where all live with peace and equality. It is time for Pope Francis to do more than talk. He must go to Gaza and make a stand for peace and freedom.
Let us also support UNRWA. If our governments won’t act in accordance with humanity, then we will. https://www.unrwausa.org/donate Let us do it to honor Aaron Bushnell, or in memory of Hind Rajab.
Let us call for a No Fly-Zone over Gaza!
These are a few small things we can do. If we can do more, let us do more.
So am I ( ironic can you see me with my walker and paint ball gun against a horde of robot dogs?) This is the stuff of now non futuristic but present day nightmares. By the way coming our way in the near future....huge prisons being readied to hold 1/2 million people...
A staple of science-fiction dystopias has been the intelligent weapons that are turned against their deployers, or indeed, turn themselves against them autonomously. A wise people would never allow such weapons to be developed, but weapons enthusiasts are not always wise, are they?
In one case, though, Ken Mcleod imagined an intelligent, autonomous weapon with which the Americans wanted to attack Europe (or vice versa) but while in flight (these are rockets, natch) the weapons, being very intelligent, started meditating on what they were being told to do, and decided it was not a very good thing, and disappeared without a trace. They were very intelligent! And an inspiration to us all.
Had enough? Take a walk. Remember the Hippocratic oath: "First do no harm."
Sometimes I read the headline and maybe the first paragraph and then skip right to the comments section because I can’t handle being alone with such horrific things like what is being laid bare in this article.
Israelis are cementing their identity with the utter worst of humanity - psychopathic, soulless, cold, arrogant. So sick. Very terribly sick. And untrustworthy.
I have to wonder -- is this the world the Israelis want to live in? What kind of a country do they think they're creating? They're superficially "winning" but they're going to create their own open-air prison as pariahs and outcasts. No amount of calling people antiSemitic will ever work again to get their way. No one will care what they think or want to do business with them. That's already happening and will accelerate as the US loses its ability to bail them out. I think they genuinely believe they can outsmart everyone.
Agreed that their strategy and methods are creating a hellscape.
But they don't have to out-smart everyone, they just have to be really, really evil for a certain amount of time. Keep people paralyzed in fear and horror just long enough to make it to their goal line.
And while the world is wringing its hands for another 6 months (or longer? - who can imagine that?) while doing nothing except sternly condemning their actions, Israel will push forward and complete their hellscape. When they are finished completing it, the rest of the world may not want to do business with them, but they will be required to. All because most good people's response to this type of sheer evil is to either shut down or look away, and just hope that it gets better someday and that somebody somewhere does something.
The clock is ticking....perhaps Israel's best weapon....the clock that goes unchecked. All of the best brains in the world can't beat it, because it's not brains that defeat evil, it's sacrifice out of love. Most people here in the U.S. don't have the will for that, and that is what Israel is counting on.
I agree with most of what you wrote as the world seems to be paralyzed with fear of crossing the US and dithers, expecting other nations to do something. At the beginning of the war, one of the IDF generals said it couldn't have happened without the US sending weapons. Biden will never withdraw support and anyone who thinks Trump is going to is kidding themselves. But America can't support them forever and as the cruelty escalates, you're hearing "ceasefire" a lot more often than "Israel has the right to exist."
A friend told me a few days ago that one of her New Jersey Jewish friends is now in Israel working on a kibbutz to replace the people called up for the military. How long can they hold services together if middle-aged, soft Americans are who they're relying on the keep the economy going? I read it's dropped 20% in the last 5 months. Time may not be as much on their side as they think.
The Houthis have set the standard for bravery and self-sacrifice. I would have to think it in some way shames the countries that have done nothing to stand with their fellow Arabs.
It’s not the middle aged geezers from New Jersey propping them up. It’s Nuland, Blinken, Kirby, Sullivan, Schumer & co. With weapons and money. Working in Wash DC. Not at the kibbutz.
No SW, no amount of calling people anti-Semitic will ever work again. Especially after the so called 'Flour Massacre'. Several European countries, that have previously supported Israel have condemned Israel and the IDF and more are starting to realise they look bad.
It seems the veil has been torn aside and Israel has done that to themselves.
ALL of NATO is supplying ammunitions and weapons to Israel NOW, during this genocide. Some even have soldiers in Palestine helping with the mass murder.
There’s great irony that Yuval Noah Hariri has been the biggest fearmonger about the dangers of AI for the future of humanity, while seemingly and conveniently refusing to take a stand on the current genocide that his own government enacts. Of course, writing this from the departure queue at Karachi Airport, where the US has been carried out drone attacks on a country they were supposedly allied with, ‘success’ as Fatima said, ‘meaning someone was killed, often in their sleep,’ these dehumanising tactics are both nothing new and should almost certainly be considered a war crime
He’s a pseudo intellectual who like so many pseudo intellectuals (Stephen Fry, Tom Holland, Douglas Murray, Ben Shapiro etc. etc.) has been elevated to the position of ‘one of the great thinkers of our times’ because he wrote a popular book. We worry about populism in politics - but fail to take heed of populism in other fields as well which is, arguably, a much bigger driver of populism as a whole…
You’re welcome. You’d obviously want to add Rory Stewart to that list - who has somehow turned himself into a public intellectual despite having done absolutely nothing of note except continue miraculously to fail upwards…how do people not see through these charlatans I find extraordinary
When The Terminator movies started in 1984 I was perplexed and did not fully grasp the implications. Now my eyes are wide open and it’s scary as hell. Going back further there are Asimov’s 1942 Three Laws of Robotics introduced in his short stories.
Basically:
The First Law: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
The Second Law: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
The Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
We did not learn this lesson, we did not heed the warning, and it has the potential to destroy most all living beings. Hubris and madness.
Michael when the first Terminator movie came out I had been an avid S.F. reader for years - probably scince Asimovs' robot stories - and I thought well that's common sense. Apart from the time travel bit.
But the oligarchs who are developing these robots don't want Asimovs' three laws, because they want to use these robots to protect their wealth and power.
The one thing that neither Israel or the United States understand is that your adversaries will acquire the same technology that you have at some point.
The future of Israel looks bleak AF, and if I was living there I would GTFO ASAP.
The CIA military industrial complex absolutely loves war. They need constant neverending wars to justify their obscene budgets stolen from taxpayers. More war, more power, more money. The bigger the war the better.
>>"They need constant neverending wars to justify their obscene budgets"
I doubt they care about justifying their budgets or if it has anything to do with budgets at all. IMO - it is about profits, corporate global hegemony, US hegemony and geopolitics, and capitalism.
There is a really interesting book called "War is a Racket" written by Major General Smedley Butler in 1935 that goes into more detail about it. (https://archive.org/details/WarIsARacket)
Without a budget supplied by taxpayers there would be no profit. Not a single president since JFK has tried to cut the CIA MIC budget. We are all paying for war through taxes and inflation.
I'm not sure what your knowledge level is about Government budgeting, or what the components are that go into Government budgets.
Here's some info:
(1) Government budgets have many sources of funding. Some of them are taxes from citizens. Others are - selling of T-Bonds and other low-interest/no-interest Government securities to entities that can afford them (mutual funds, hedge funds, high net-worth individuals, foreign governments, corporations, etc.)
(2) If you notice, the MIC always gets funded - regardless of US Government budget shortfalls. There are many strategies to fund the MIC - including the Federal Reserve printing money (through financial instruments) and lending it to the Government.
(3) There is a persistent "myth" that "taxes" are the only source of such funding. Unfortunately, because of loopholes in US Tax Laws, taxes are never enough to fund the needs of the US Empire.
(If you are interested in more detail, I could forward you links that go deeper into funding sources of US Govt. Budgets and alternate financing schemes)
and seeing your own Americans treated like /()=()%%$ and living in tents cities, with Americans living in fear, dying unexpectedly, chronic illnesses, children.....
I see a direct line from Bourne to Orwell's permanent war.
For those reluctant to hit links, here is a taste:
"War is the health of the State. It automatically sets in motion throughout society those irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate cooperation with the Government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals which lack the larger herd sense. The machinery of government sets and enforces the drastic penalties; the minorities are either intimidated into silence, or brought slowly around by a subtle process of persuasion which may seem to them really to be converting them. Of course, the ideal of perfect loyalty, perfect uniformity is never really attained. The classes upon whom the amateur work of coercion falls are unwearied in their zeal, but often their agitation instead of converting, merely serves to stiffen their resistance. Minorities are rendered sullen, and some intellectual opinion bitter and satirical. But in general, the nation in wartime attains a uniformity of feeling, a hierarchy of values culminating at the undisputed apex of the State ideal, which could not possibly be produced through any other agency than war. Loyalty — or mystic devotion to the State — becomes the major imagined human value. Other values, such as artistic creation, knowledge, reason, beauty, the enhancement of life, are instantly and almost unanimously sacrificed, and the significant classes who have constituted themselves the amateur agents of the State are engaged not only in sacrificing these values for themselves but in coercing all other persons into sacrificing them."
Exactly. Once the elite power structure no longer needs humans to do their killing and "peacekeeping", it's over. And back in the '80s we thought The Terminator was just a cool piece of fiction. Welcome to SkyNet, folks.
I am in a state of stunned despair after reading Caitlin's Newsletter and then going on to Chris Hedges / Anthony Lowenstein interview. Witnessing the daily carnage of the Palestinian people by Israel, we knew things were dystopian but could never imagine the reality of a world spinning out of control beyond dystopia.
I'm with you Indu. I've been paying attention to the Palestine / Israel story since before Oct 7 and I thought that it could get ugly, but what's happening now is beyond my wildest imaginings. On our screens, daily, yet the rest of the world ( S.A. excepted ) stand back and do nothing!
Where the fck did the human race go? 'Cos they ain't payin' attention here.
Indu, read Anthony Lowenstein's book "The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World". It gets way more dystopian.
And unfortunately, as Lowenstein states in his book - he only just scratches the surface of Israel's depravity and evilness. He faced many challenges in digging deeper, and says that that his book exposes less than 10% of the reality of the methodology of the Israelis.
Hello Chang, thank you. I haven't got round to reading Lowenstein's book as yet. With regard to the utterly horrifying dangerous times that we are living in, very soon "dystopia" may be inadequate to describe it!
I am very concerned about small countries in the Global South like Sri Lanka, caught up and snared in this miasma. With severe austerity for the people, drowned in debt ( a fate worse than death ) and a ruling class beholden to US machinations and to Israel. And this was a country which had great social welfare stats with free healthcare and free education etc. After decolonisation it looks like they are being recolonised.
How do you know? As I noted above, smart weapons that turn against their users are a staple of science fiction. You don't even need machines; I recall a landlord of my past who got vicious guard dogs because he feared crime. Guess who they attacked first.
Remote murder will soon be the province of petty tyrants warlords wall loving demagogues and drug dealers. There’s a movie I saw 15 years ago called Sleep Dealer which dealt with this distopian future
If anybody is unclear about who the real victims of Zionist genocide are, take a look at this: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/L3vBsuzbRSw?feature=share Tonight I had dinner with some liberal Democrat friends. They indicated that they were horrified and saddened by the war crimes in Gaza. I asked, based on that, if they'd vote for Biden again. "I'm sure as hell not going to vote for Trump!" was the response. So these college-educated people who've done well in life can stare at blood-soaked piles of murdered children and not turn against the real perpetrator, Joe Biden??? Americans dare not mock older Germans who could smell the burning flesh from ovens in the nearby Konzentrationslager yet swear they knew nothing about the genocide. Now WE have become them...
Here's a counterpoint: Let's hypothesize that this genocide continues (or expands into a larger war) 1 year from now and Trump is in power. Do you honestly believe that things will be any better/different under Trump?
US Foreign Policy and Global Geopolitics is above the level of Presidents. It doesn't matter if it is Trump, Biden, or some other 3rd party candidate. The US hegemonic system is setup in such a way that it is exceedingly difficult for any "one leader" to change trajectories and plans that have been decades in the making.
But Trump serves a purpose; his most rabid adherents will back whatever he endorses, the liberals will be up in arms and their derangement syndrome will kick in, and the whole US population will be at war with each other over more stupid identitarian bullshit. With the consumers (we aren’t considered citizens any longer) so distracted, empire can continue to march along creating bloodbaths around the world with fewer objections from a restive populace.
Totally accurate...and reflects the long process started when the simpleton, Truman, authorized the National Security Act of 1947. Although Trump will face endless chicanery from Marxist Democrats, he is unlikely to start more wars. He's got pals in Israel who may help him dampen the genocide. He gets along with Putin, which may help stabilize Ukraine. Biden is the real menace. His whole life, he's covered up his incompetence with lies, and now that he's senile, the Deep State manipulates him 24x7. When Russia wins and the UKA collapses, Neocons will push for nuclear response. Biden won't even notice until the sirens go off. Trump won't allow it. Risk level is evolving toward the that in the Cuban Missile Crisis. The difference is that in 1962 we had an intelligent President in the While House. Now we have a bumbling fool. Susan Rice, Biden's manipulator-in-chief is absolutely guaranteed to make the wrong decision.
Robotics technology has really exploded over the past few years. Imagine how robotics will be a decade from now. The Chinese already are trying to manufacture robotic humanoids. Hopefully we can develop robots for peaceful purposes but sadly this is just how technological advancement works. If it wasn't robots it would be something else. Humans will always find a way to configure something for destructive purposes.
I wasn't condemning China, I think that their efforts are commendable. I am pro-robotics, don't see why we should really be against them. I name dropped China because they seem to want to take non-military robotics further than everyone else does at the moment.
Cool, so videogames and reality now blend perfectly into each other. Instead of humans there are now remote controlled robots fighting and killing each other. A small step for mankind, a big step for the weapons industry. 🫣
Israel has produced human monsters who are now creating machine monsters. They have turned their young men into killers, now robots. I wonder if the people in Israel feel as sick as I do about this.
Polls suggest (https://truthout.org/articles/polls-show-broad-support-in-israel-for-gazas-destruction-and-starvation/) that Israelis don't but Jews around the world do.
Nothing to do with the topic at hand but I havet o post this .
Israeli bombing of Rafah kills dozens, including long-awaited twins
A woman who spent 11 years trying to conceive is mourning her twins, born just four months ago, who were killed in Rafah along with her husband. A series of Israeli attacks on Gaza’s southernmost city, once declared a safe zone, have killed 25 Palestinians.
Published On 3 Mar 2024
3 Mar 2024
https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/3/3/israeli-bombing-of-rafah-kills-dozens-including-long-awaited-twins
Not to mention the individual that was squashed while alive by the tank. Hands in zip ties as they made sure he was on pavement slowly rolling starting w feet.
What is so disturbing are the lack of voices in Israel denouncing it's many crimes. They are to be held to account also. They want Netanyahu gone, but nothing about stopping this genocide.
From what i am reading, most support gaza destruction.
Americans for the most part were indifferent to our many Middle Eastern wars, and sometimes, many times, you felt what you did was all in vein and it was. All you can do is protect your own sense of humanity, your own soul, which the people of Israel are not.
Humanity is a terminal autoimmune disease. If you are a person of faith--whatever faith bc it's all the same scam--then you must blame your invisible sky fairy & its/their clerics, the ones who pull all the levers of power that manipulate the lost, confused, fearful (of death, the unknown, & others), the ignorant, the mis-/dis-informed, the brainwashed, the uneducated, the cognitively impaired, & the genuinely stupid. Human "progress", the imagination, & creativity, the contents of that vague mixed-bag "virtue", lead us all down the road of good intentions to the cul-de-sac of earthly Hell, not Paradise. One cannot change the world to suit one's particular needs but must change oneself to take advantage of what the world offers. Feeling sick about reality just leads to depression & despair. Don't think too much. It's bad for one's mental & physical health. Finally, life is absurd & ultimately meaningless, so enjoy it when, where, & how you can while you can. When it's over for you, you won't feel sick or anything else. Maybe not a comfortable thought, but you can always rewrite the ending if it makes you feel better. Feelings are dangerous. But you probably don't appreciate my cynicism.
This is nothing any cynic like Diogenes would believe and is an insult to their name, nor is it something that would be appreciated by anyone who has ever read even a little bit of existentialism or knows a single thing about it or philosophy or religion in general.
It's just an utterly worthless sort of nihilism bereft of all meaning, really, and even that's an insult to nihilists because at least most nihilists will find meaning in e.g hedonism and find things to live for, whereas the only logical conclusion to your beliefs is suicide.
The world is in a bad place because of people like you, the sleepwalking zombies who are dead from no belief and think everything is meaningless, that nothing is worth working towards, and that feeling anything is bad because they can't appreciate the full range of human emotions. What is wrong with you that drove you to think this way?
That was probably one of the grossest, saddest comments I've ever read on Substack. And "Don't think too much," really? A better solution, if someone actually feels reading about what's going on in the world is getting to them: find meaning in life and activities that provide happiness for you to where what you read can't deeply affect you. Alternatively, read less of that and more of something else, since there's more worth reading than one ever could in one lifetime; think more, not less.
I do like it (am a cynic myself! always loved the 2 planet joke, where one sneezes and the other says it will pass, he had it too: humans!)
I had a dream about how all these "battle tested" AI run weapons got turned on their programmers and came after the genocide enablers instead of innocent civilians. But then I woke up and read this news and realized the nightmare was still happening. The only way to make this nightmare go away is by shutting down the military-industrial complex once and for all. Who's with me? (I hear that using paint ball guns to take out these robot dogs’ optics is effective.)
A few robot cars have been disabled and destroyed. A deployment of police-like bots in San Francisco a few years back was a disaster. Bums found it entertaining to make the bots move in the wrong direction, and junkies were making money disabling the bots and stripping out all the sellable parts. Human creativity built the bots. Human creativity can destroy them.
There must be a permanent ceasefire in Gaza in order to comply with the ICJ ruling. Not with Palestinians suffering under oppressive conditions, but as a place where all live with peace and equality. It is time for Pope Francis to do more than talk. He must go to Gaza and make a stand for peace and freedom.
Please sign the petition and share widely.
https://chng.it/CRQ7qw4Gzn
Code pink
https://www.codepink.org/cnngaza?utm_campaign=12_15_pali_update_alert_3&utm_medium=email&utm_source=codepink
Let us also support UNRWA. If our governments won’t act in accordance with humanity, then we will. https://www.unrwausa.org/donate Let us do it to honor Aaron Bushnell, or in memory of Hind Rajab.
Let us call for a No Fly-Zone over Gaza!
These are a few small things we can do. If we can do more, let us do more.
I fucking am!
So am I ( ironic can you see me with my walker and paint ball gun against a horde of robot dogs?) This is the stuff of now non futuristic but present day nightmares. By the way coming our way in the near future....huge prisons being readied to hold 1/2 million people...
A staple of science-fiction dystopias has been the intelligent weapons that are turned against their deployers, or indeed, turn themselves against them autonomously. A wise people would never allow such weapons to be developed, but weapons enthusiasts are not always wise, are they?
In one case, though, Ken Mcleod imagined an intelligent, autonomous weapon with which the Americans wanted to attack Europe (or vice versa) but while in flight (these are rockets, natch) the weapons, being very intelligent, started meditating on what they were being told to do, and decided it was not a very good thing, and disappeared without a trace. They were very intelligent! And an inspiration to us all.
Had enough? Take a walk. Remember the Hippocratic oath: "First do no harm."
Sometimes I read the headline and maybe the first paragraph and then skip right to the comments section because I can’t handle being alone with such horrific things like what is being laid bare in this article.
Israelis are cementing their identity with the utter worst of humanity - psychopathic, soulless, cold, arrogant. So sick. Very terribly sick. And untrustworthy.
I have to wonder -- is this the world the Israelis want to live in? What kind of a country do they think they're creating? They're superficially "winning" but they're going to create their own open-air prison as pariahs and outcasts. No amount of calling people antiSemitic will ever work again to get their way. No one will care what they think or want to do business with them. That's already happening and will accelerate as the US loses its ability to bail them out. I think they genuinely believe they can outsmart everyone.
This is the world that already exists in their sick and paranoid minds. They now are creating that twisted mental wold in the material world.
Agreed that their strategy and methods are creating a hellscape.
But they don't have to out-smart everyone, they just have to be really, really evil for a certain amount of time. Keep people paralyzed in fear and horror just long enough to make it to their goal line.
And while the world is wringing its hands for another 6 months (or longer? - who can imagine that?) while doing nothing except sternly condemning their actions, Israel will push forward and complete their hellscape. When they are finished completing it, the rest of the world may not want to do business with them, but they will be required to. All because most good people's response to this type of sheer evil is to either shut down or look away, and just hope that it gets better someday and that somebody somewhere does something.
The clock is ticking....perhaps Israel's best weapon....the clock that goes unchecked. All of the best brains in the world can't beat it, because it's not brains that defeat evil, it's sacrifice out of love. Most people here in the U.S. don't have the will for that, and that is what Israel is counting on.
I agree with most of what you wrote as the world seems to be paralyzed with fear of crossing the US and dithers, expecting other nations to do something. At the beginning of the war, one of the IDF generals said it couldn't have happened without the US sending weapons. Biden will never withdraw support and anyone who thinks Trump is going to is kidding themselves. But America can't support them forever and as the cruelty escalates, you're hearing "ceasefire" a lot more often than "Israel has the right to exist."
A friend told me a few days ago that one of her New Jersey Jewish friends is now in Israel working on a kibbutz to replace the people called up for the military. How long can they hold services together if middle-aged, soft Americans are who they're relying on the keep the economy going? I read it's dropped 20% in the last 5 months. Time may not be as much on their side as they think.
The Houthis have set the standard for bravery and self-sacrifice. I would have to think it in some way shames the countries that have done nothing to stand with their fellow Arabs.
It’s not the middle aged geezers from New Jersey propping them up. It’s Nuland, Blinken, Kirby, Sullivan, Schumer & co. With weapons and money. Working in Wash DC. Not at the kibbutz.
Like this:
https://www.state.gov/revocation-of-five-foreign-terrorist-organizations-designations-and-the-delisting-of-six-deceased-individuals-as-specially-designated-global-terrorists/
And this:
https://www.npr.org/2023/12/09/1218407156/israel-tank-ammunition-sale-gaza-congress-state-department
And this:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/14b-us-aid-package-for-israel-crafted-with-eye-to-multi-front-war-not-just-gaza/
No SW, no amount of calling people anti-Semitic will ever work again. Especially after the so called 'Flour Massacre'. Several European countries, that have previously supported Israel have condemned Israel and the IDF and more are starting to realise they look bad.
It seems the veil has been torn aside and Israel has done that to themselves.
What “several countries?
ALL of NATO is supplying ammunitions and weapons to Israel NOW, during this genocide. Some even have soldiers in Palestine helping with the mass murder.
There’s great irony that Yuval Noah Hariri has been the biggest fearmonger about the dangers of AI for the future of humanity, while seemingly and conveniently refusing to take a stand on the current genocide that his own government enacts. Of course, writing this from the departure queue at Karachi Airport, where the US has been carried out drone attacks on a country they were supposedly allied with, ‘success’ as Fatima said, ‘meaning someone was killed, often in their sleep,’ these dehumanising tactics are both nothing new and should almost certainly be considered a war crime
He’s a pseudo intellectual who like so many pseudo intellectuals (Stephen Fry, Tom Holland, Douglas Murray, Ben Shapiro etc. etc.) has been elevated to the position of ‘one of the great thinkers of our times’ because he wrote a popular book. We worry about populism in politics - but fail to take heed of populism in other fields as well which is, arguably, a much bigger driver of populism as a whole…
You’re welcome. You’d obviously want to add Rory Stewart to that list - who has somehow turned himself into a public intellectual despite having done absolutely nothing of note except continue miraculously to fail upwards…how do people not see through these charlatans I find extraordinary
Cheering on the Houthis gets easier with each passing day
And more FUN, Brian!
The Hout’hi are stallions!
When The Terminator movies started in 1984 I was perplexed and did not fully grasp the implications. Now my eyes are wide open and it’s scary as hell. Going back further there are Asimov’s 1942 Three Laws of Robotics introduced in his short stories.
Basically:
The First Law: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
The Second Law: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
The Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
We did not learn this lesson, we did not heed the warning, and it has the potential to destroy most all living beings. Hubris and madness.
Michael when the first Terminator movie came out I had been an avid S.F. reader for years - probably scince Asimovs' robot stories - and I thought well that's common sense. Apart from the time travel bit.
But the oligarchs who are developing these robots don't want Asimovs' three laws, because they want to use these robots to protect their wealth and power.
Welcome to Neo - Tech - Feudalism.
The one thing that neither Israel or the United States understand is that your adversaries will acquire the same technology that you have at some point.
The future of Israel looks bleak AF, and if I was living there I would GTFO ASAP.
The CIA military industrial complex absolutely loves war. They need constant neverending wars to justify their obscene budgets stolen from taxpayers. More war, more power, more money. The bigger the war the better.
More here; https://truthaddict.substack.com/p/forever-wars-are-highly-profitable
>>"They need constant neverending wars to justify their obscene budgets"
I doubt they care about justifying their budgets or if it has anything to do with budgets at all. IMO - it is about profits, corporate global hegemony, US hegemony and geopolitics, and capitalism.
There is a really interesting book called "War is a Racket" written by Major General Smedley Butler in 1935 that goes into more detail about it. (https://archive.org/details/WarIsARacket)
Without a budget supplied by taxpayers there would be no profit. Not a single president since JFK has tried to cut the CIA MIC budget. We are all paying for war through taxes and inflation.
I'm not sure what your knowledge level is about Government budgeting, or what the components are that go into Government budgets.
Here's some info:
(1) Government budgets have many sources of funding. Some of them are taxes from citizens. Others are - selling of T-Bonds and other low-interest/no-interest Government securities to entities that can afford them (mutual funds, hedge funds, high net-worth individuals, foreign governments, corporations, etc.)
(2) If you notice, the MIC always gets funded - regardless of US Government budget shortfalls. There are many strategies to fund the MIC - including the Federal Reserve printing money (through financial instruments) and lending it to the Government.
(3) There is a persistent "myth" that "taxes" are the only source of such funding. Unfortunately, because of loopholes in US Tax Laws, taxes are never enough to fund the needs of the US Empire.
(If you are interested in more detail, I could forward you links that go deeper into funding sources of US Govt. Budgets and alternate financing schemes)
and seeing your own Americans treated like /()=()%%$ and living in tents cities, with Americans living in fear, dying unexpectedly, chronic illnesses, children.....
Also check out Randolph Bourne's classic (1918) essay:
War Is the Health of the State
https://www.marxists.org/archive/bourne/1918/war-is-the-health-of-the-state.html
I see a direct line from Bourne to Orwell's permanent war.
For those reluctant to hit links, here is a taste:
"War is the health of the State. It automatically sets in motion throughout society those irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate cooperation with the Government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals which lack the larger herd sense. The machinery of government sets and enforces the drastic penalties; the minorities are either intimidated into silence, or brought slowly around by a subtle process of persuasion which may seem to them really to be converting them. Of course, the ideal of perfect loyalty, perfect uniformity is never really attained. The classes upon whom the amateur work of coercion falls are unwearied in their zeal, but often their agitation instead of converting, merely serves to stiffen their resistance. Minorities are rendered sullen, and some intellectual opinion bitter and satirical. But in general, the nation in wartime attains a uniformity of feeling, a hierarchy of values culminating at the undisputed apex of the State ideal, which could not possibly be produced through any other agency than war. Loyalty — or mystic devotion to the State — becomes the major imagined human value. Other values, such as artistic creation, knowledge, reason, beauty, the enhancement of life, are instantly and almost unanimously sacrificed, and the significant classes who have constituted themselves the amateur agents of the State are engaged not only in sacrificing these values for themselves but in coercing all other persons into sacrificing them."
Exactly. Once the elite power structure no longer needs humans to do their killing and "peacekeeping", it's over. And back in the '80s we thought The Terminator was just a cool piece of fiction. Welcome to SkyNet, folks.
I am in a state of stunned despair after reading Caitlin's Newsletter and then going on to Chris Hedges / Anthony Lowenstein interview. Witnessing the daily carnage of the Palestinian people by Israel, we knew things were dystopian but could never imagine the reality of a world spinning out of control beyond dystopia.
I find myself with nothing much to say.
I'm with you Indu. I've been paying attention to the Palestine / Israel story since before Oct 7 and I thought that it could get ugly, but what's happening now is beyond my wildest imaginings. On our screens, daily, yet the rest of the world ( S.A. excepted ) stand back and do nothing!
Where the fck did the human race go? 'Cos they ain't payin' attention here.
Indu, read Anthony Lowenstein's book "The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World". It gets way more dystopian.
And unfortunately, as Lowenstein states in his book - he only just scratches the surface of Israel's depravity and evilness. He faced many challenges in digging deeper, and says that that his book exposes less than 10% of the reality of the methodology of the Israelis.
Hello Chang, thank you. I haven't got round to reading Lowenstein's book as yet. With regard to the utterly horrifying dangerous times that we are living in, very soon "dystopia" may be inadequate to describe it!
I am very concerned about small countries in the Global South like Sri Lanka, caught up and snared in this miasma. With severe austerity for the people, drowned in debt ( a fate worse than death ) and a ruling class beholden to US machinations and to Israel. And this was a country which had great social welfare stats with free healthcare and free education etc. After decolonisation it looks like they are being recolonised.
An autonomous killer drone would have no fear, no mercy and no regrets. It could never self-immolate as an act of conscience to protest a genocide.
How do you know? As I noted above, smart weapons that turn against their users are a staple of science fiction. You don't even need machines; I recall a landlord of my past who got vicious guard dogs because he feared crime. Guess who they attacked first.
Remote murder will soon be the province of petty tyrants warlords wall loving demagogues and drug dealers. There’s a movie I saw 15 years ago called Sleep Dealer which dealt with this distopian future
If anybody is unclear about who the real victims of Zionist genocide are, take a look at this: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/L3vBsuzbRSw?feature=share Tonight I had dinner with some liberal Democrat friends. They indicated that they were horrified and saddened by the war crimes in Gaza. I asked, based on that, if they'd vote for Biden again. "I'm sure as hell not going to vote for Trump!" was the response. So these college-educated people who've done well in life can stare at blood-soaked piles of murdered children and not turn against the real perpetrator, Joe Biden??? Americans dare not mock older Germans who could smell the burning flesh from ovens in the nearby Konzentrationslager yet swear they knew nothing about the genocide. Now WE have become them...
Here's a counterpoint: Let's hypothesize that this genocide continues (or expands into a larger war) 1 year from now and Trump is in power. Do you honestly believe that things will be any better/different under Trump?
US Foreign Policy and Global Geopolitics is above the level of Presidents. It doesn't matter if it is Trump, Biden, or some other 3rd party candidate. The US hegemonic system is setup in such a way that it is exceedingly difficult for any "one leader" to change trajectories and plans that have been decades in the making.
But Trump serves a purpose; his most rabid adherents will back whatever he endorses, the liberals will be up in arms and their derangement syndrome will kick in, and the whole US population will be at war with each other over more stupid identitarian bullshit. With the consumers (we aren’t considered citizens any longer) so distracted, empire can continue to march along creating bloodbaths around the world with fewer objections from a restive populace.
Totally accurate...and reflects the long process started when the simpleton, Truman, authorized the National Security Act of 1947. Although Trump will face endless chicanery from Marxist Democrats, he is unlikely to start more wars. He's got pals in Israel who may help him dampen the genocide. He gets along with Putin, which may help stabilize Ukraine. Biden is the real menace. His whole life, he's covered up his incompetence with lies, and now that he's senile, the Deep State manipulates him 24x7. When Russia wins and the UKA collapses, Neocons will push for nuclear response. Biden won't even notice until the sirens go off. Trump won't allow it. Risk level is evolving toward the that in the Cuban Missile Crisis. The difference is that in 1962 we had an intelligent President in the While House. Now we have a bumbling fool. Susan Rice, Biden's manipulator-in-chief is absolutely guaranteed to make the wrong decision.
Robotics technology has really exploded over the past few years. Imagine how robotics will be a decade from now. The Chinese already are trying to manufacture robotic humanoids. Hopefully we can develop robots for peaceful purposes but sadly this is just how technological advancement works. If it wasn't robots it would be something else. Humans will always find a way to configure something for destructive purposes.
I’m not sure why you threw China in to this issue. The article makes clear the manufacturers of such robots are international, including America. https://www.asme.org/topics-resources/content/10-humanoid-robots-of-2020
For sure Joy, the oligarchs who own this tech, owe allegiance to no nation. Only to the Billionaires Club - soon to be the Trillionaires Club.
I wasn't condemning China, I think that their efforts are commendable. I am pro-robotics, don't see why we should really be against them. I name dropped China because they seem to want to take non-military robotics further than everyone else does at the moment.
I appreciate your clarification. Your intention was not readily apparent to me. Thanks.
You're welcome, I admit I can be a bit cryptic sometimes, my apologies.
Cool, so videogames and reality now blend perfectly into each other. Instead of humans there are now remote controlled robots fighting and killing each other. A small step for mankind, a big step for the weapons industry. 🫣