ๆญฃๅœจๅŠ ่ฝฝ่ง†้ข‘...

่ง†้ข‘ๅŠ ่ฝฝๅคฑ่ดฅ

๐„๐Ÿ๐ŸŽ: ๐„๐ง๐ ๐ข๐ง๐ž ๐ค๐ข๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ž๐ซ ๐จ๐ซ ๐š๐ง๐จ๐ญ๐ก๐ž๐ซ ๐–๐ก๐š๐ญ๐ฌ๐€๐ฉ๐ฉ ๐ฆ๐ฒ๐ญ๐ก? ๐Ÿš—โ›ฝ The internet is full of claims that E20 will damage engines, slash mileage and make petrol costlier. But what do the facts say? โ€ข ๐Ÿ”ง ๐„๐ง๐ ๐ข๐ง๐ž ๐๐š๐ฆ๐š๐ ๐ž? No engineering study says E20 destroys engines. โ€ข ๐Ÿ“‰ ๐Ÿ”๐Ÿ•% ๐ฆ๐ข๐ฅ๐ž๐š๐ ๐ž ๐๐ซ๐จ๐ฉ? Misleading โ€”...

32,706 ๆฌก่ง‚็œ‹ โ€ข 1 ๅคฉๅ‰ โ€ขvia X (Twitter)

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ๆš‚ๆ— ่ฏ„่ฎบ

ๅŽŸๅง‹ๅธ–ๅญ็š„่ฏ„่ฎบๅฐ†ๆ˜พ็คบๅœจ่ฟ™้‡Œ

็›ธๅ…ณ่ง†้ข‘

THE E20 DEBATE: FACTS VS HYPOCRISY. HERE'S AN UNDENIABLE FACT: The E20 programme did not begin under the Modi government. Ethanol blending was approved years earlier, during the UPA. The difference is in execution. Blending remained stuck at roughly 1โ€“1.5% for years before accelerating significantly under the NDA. So, let's first get the politics out of the way. If ethanol blending was acceptable in principle then, why is it suddenly portrayed as anti-people now? Now, let's look at the arguments being presented by critics: CRITICS ARGUMENT 1: E20 FUEL IS BEING PUSHED BY NDA TO KEEP SUGAR CANE FARMERS HAPPY. There's no doubt Ethanol is creating an additional income stream for sugarcane farmers. But governments have always handed out subsidies or incentives to farmers. + MSP exists for 23 crops. Sugar cane farmers get SAP or State Advised Price. + Fertiliser subsidies. + Cheap or free electricity. + Irrigation subsidies. + Procurement policies. If these benefits to farmers are accepted as legitimate public policy, why is E20 policy being targeted in isolation for market distortion? CRITICS ARGUMENT 2: ETHANOL PRODUCTION IS WATER CONSUMING. Yes, sugarcane consumes a great deal of water. But so do + Paddy cultivators. Just look at the tumbling water tables in Punjab, Haryana. + AI and data centers. + Semiconductor manufacturing. + Steel and cement production. The question is not whether something uses water, but whether the benefits justify the costs. Again why are critics holding E20 alone to a test that they don't set for others? CRITICS ARGUMENT 3: THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD NOT MAKE E20 MANDATORY. LEAVE IT TO CHOICE. We're in a democracy and choice matters. But governments routinely make decisions that we, the people have no choice but to accept. + Taxation rates + Emission norms. + Fuel quality standards. + Safety regulations. + Identity Proof. These are often choices imposed to achieve broader national goals. Shouldn't E20 should be judged in the same way? Here's how E20 usage serves NATIONAL INTEREST: + India imports 85โ€“90% of its crude oil. E20 seeks to address that by replacing up to 20% of petrol volume with domestically produced ethanol, helping diversify the fuel mix and reducing import costs. + With E20 NDA estimates saving Rs 1 lakh crore in foreign-exchange. CRITICS ARGUMENT 4: COST OF CAR ENGINE WEAR AND TEAR, MILEAGE INEFFICIENCY OUTWEIGHS BENEFITS. It is true that Ethanol has about 34% less energy per litre than petrol. But because E20 contains only 20% ethanol, the overall energy content of the fuel falls by roughly 4%โ€“7%. So at 5% a car that gives 20 km/L on pure petrol will give 19km/L. But usage also improves air quality. Which increases longevity in humans and lowers healthcare costs over time. That is s fair trade-off. CONCLUSION: Every policy is a trade off. E20 isn't perfect. But if agricultural subsidies, procurement, irrigation policy and fuel regulations are accepted as legitimate public policy, then judge ethanol using the same yardstick.

Rahul Shivshankar

269,709 ๆฌก่ง‚็œ‹ โ€ข 1 ไธชๆœˆๅ‰

JAI HIND, JAI BHARAT! ๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡ณ โ€‹I Tehseen Poonawalla, on behalf of Team Bharat, am announcing a massive, uncompromising citizen's protest against the hasty implementation of the E20 (Ethanol 20%) Blending Policy. โ€‹First of all, my deepest gratitude to every single citizen who supported us during the first phase of this protest. Your trust ensures that I am indebted to you for life. But the battle has just begun! โ€‹Here are our 5 Non-Negotiable Demands regarding the E20 Policy: 1๏ธโƒฃ Protect Older Vehicles: E10 petrol must be provided exclusively for cars manufactured before 2023 that are only E10 compatible. 2๏ธโƒฃ Fair Pricing: Cut the price of E20 petrol by a straight 20%. Why should consumers pay full price for blended fuel? 3๏ธโƒฃ Universal Availability of E0: Pure petrol (E0) must be available at every single petrol pump. Currently, it costs a exorbitant โ‚น165โ€“โ‚น170/litre. This must be slashed and made affordable! Remember, countries like Nepal (โ‚น123/L), Bhutan (โ‚น97/L), and Bangladesh (~โ‚น112/L) buy petrol from India, yet they sell pure, ethanol-free petrol to their citizens far cheaper than we do! 4๏ธโƒฃ Total Transparency: Publicize every single document, study, and agreement related to the Ethanol 20 blending policy immediately. 5๏ธโƒฃ Compensation for Damage: Provide concrete solutions and compensation for vehicle owners facing massive engine issues and technical damage due to forced E20 fuel in pre-2023 cars. โ€‹This fight will be fought ruthlessly across 3 Pillars: SADAK, SANSAD, aur SUPREME COURT! โœŠ โ€‹BUT LET ME MAKE THE RULES OF THIS PLATFORM ABSOLUTELY CLEAR: โ€‹โŒ NO Politicians: No political leader from any party will be given a stage or space here. โ€‹โŒ NO Chichoras, Flop Comedians, or Third grade wanna be actors: No 'panoutis' (jinxes) or opportunists will be allowed to revive their careers on our platform. โ€‹โŒ NO Anti-Religious Abuse: Anyone who abuses Maryada Purushottam Bhagwan Ram or uses this stage for irrelevant agendas will be thrown out. โ€‹โŒ NO Communal Hate: This stage will never be used to abuse Muslims or Hindus, nor will we tolerate divisive communal slogans. โ€‹๐ŸŽฏ This is a platform for EVERY INDIAN: Whether Brahmin or Dalit, man or woman, or third gender ! If you are a citizen harmed by Ethanol, this is your voice! โ€‹NOW, LET'S TALK ABOUT THE ACCUSATIONS & THE CONFLICT OF INTEREST: โ€‹Shri Nitin Gadkari ji is running a "Beta Bachao Yojana"! His family is deeply entrenched in companies like CIAN Agro Industries and MANAS. This is a blatant, textbook case of Conflict of Interest where the Minister formulating the Ethanol policy has family businesses directly benefiting from it! Threaten me all you want, Gadkari ji unlike other political leaders, Tehseen Poonawalla does NOT fear your threats and I WILL NOT APOLOGIZE. I stand firmly by my words! โ€‹And as for Dharmendra Pradhan ji he is undisputedly the Worst Education Minister in Indian History. He is a pure 'Nepo Kid' who only holds a cabinet position because his late father was a Union Minister in Atal Bihari Vajpayee ji's cabinet. Look at his brilliant 'ideas' to stop paper leaks: using the Air Force to distribute exam papers and banning Telegram! Does Dharmendra Pradhan ji not realize that paper leaks easily happen over WhatsApp and Signal too? He has completely ruined the education system and HE MUST GO! โ€‹While we demand that Nitin Gadkari, Hardeep Puri, and Dharmendra Pradhan must resign and go, let it be clear: our ultimate focus remains fixed on fixing the disastrous E20 policy. โ€‹Join the movement. Our Vehicles. Our Livelihoods. Our Voice. โ€‹Jai Hind. Jai Bharat. ๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡ณ โ€‹#E20Protest #SadakSansadSupremeCourt #TeamBharat #NitinGadkari #DharmendraPradhan #EthanolScam #ConsumersFirst BETA BADHAO YOJNA SUGAR DADDY Dinesh Rattan Dhillon Nidhhi Sharma Vishal Singh Jain Ishaan Bharadwaj Wise Oldman Nachiket Deshpande

Tehseen Poonawalla Official ๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡ณ

62,733 ๆฌก่ง‚็œ‹ โ€ข 23 ๅคฉๅ‰

Seeing Chaprasi Pawan Khera ๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡ณ เฒชเฒตเฒจเณ เฒ–เณ‡เฒฐเฒพ giving Gyan onโ›ฝ๏ธprices instead of doing his job of cleaning toilet of Rahul Ghandy. Aaj Piddiyon ko nanga karte hi hai! ๐Ÿ‘‰Useless UPA ~Global Oil Prices High ~What UPA should've done to protect Oil Cos & Consumers?- SUBSIDY! ~UPA DIDN'T GIVE SUBSIDY. Why? ~Because Fiscal Deficit was under stress & giving cash subsidy wasn't possible. Why? ~Because UPA had looted State Exchequer worth โ‚น4-5 Lakh Crore worth scams, sometimes causing notional losses, sometimes with actual loot. It didn't have money now to give cash subsidy to Oil Cos. ~What did UPA do then?โ€” it issued Oil Bonds of โ‚น1.48 Lakh Crore deferring payment after 2020. ~Means Oil Prices must not increase to result in Loss of Votes for CONgress, Economy gayi bhadd mei. Aaj ki maut kal pe dalo. Simple Questionโ€” If CONgress Govt wouldn't have indulged in alleged corruption of โ‚น4-5 Lakh Crore, wouldn't it have been in a position to give cash subsidy of just โ‚น1.48 Lakh Crore to give relief to consumers & protect Oil Cos as well? But Miniting Money for Self was/is/will be more imp for CONgress than the Nation. ๐Ÿ‘‰Magnificent Modi Sarkar Modi Sarkar has FULLY REPAID these Oil Bonds NOW! Principal: โ‚น1.48 Lakh Crore Interest paid (over years): โ‚น1.7 Lakh Crore Total: โ‚น3.18 Lakh Crore THIS๐Ÿ‘† THIS WAS THE REASON WHY MODI SARKAR COULDN'T GIVE RELIEF TO CONSUMERS POST 2014 BY REDUCING RETAIL OIL PRICES DESPITE GLOBAL FUEL BECOMING CHEAPER THAN PRE-2014. And look at the audacity of Piddis who question Modi Sarkar why didn't you reduce Prices! Abe BoseDwalon, tumhare najayaj baap ke paap dho rahi thi Modi Sarkar & that too while not increasing fuel prices for straight 6 yrs. NOW ONCE OIL BONDS ARE REPAID, Modi Sarkar has given with biggest relief to consumers by reducing excise duty by โ‚น10/ltr on both Petrol & Diesel. Now Chaprasi Pawan Khera screams while washing Rahul Ghandy's Commode that it's not going to reduce prices & how is it relief then? Abe Hutiye, it won't reduce prices but IT WON'T ALLOW INCREASE IN PRICES EITHER...something that's happening all over World. INCREASE IN FUEL PRICES SINCE IRAN WAR: USA โ€“ ~20% Canada โ€“ ~28% Italy โ€“ ~16% Germany โ€“ ~14% China โ€“ ~12% Japan โ€“ ~18% Australia โ€“ ~36% Pakistan โ€“ ~20โ€“24% Sri Lanka โ€“ ~25โ€“34% Bangladesh โ€“ ~5% (50% of landmass running dry) Indonesia โ€“ ~10% Malaysia โ€“ ~5% (heavily subsidised) Turkey โ€“ ~20% ๐Ÿ”ฅBHARAT- ZERO % Yeh hota hai fiscal management, BoseDwalon Piddiyon. Yeh hota hai Pro-People Governence, Hutiye Khera. Baap ko na sikhao bachche kaise paida karne hai. Modi Sarkar has also levied export duty on Diesel at โ‚น21.5 per litre & on ATF at โ‚น29.5 per litre to protect interest of Domestic Consumers. So Modi Sarkar is sacrificing revenue from Excise on Fuel as well as Foreign Currency through Export of Fuel..... STILL Nation Running Smooth, Fuel & LPG Supply Regular, Defence Procurements happening, No Salary Cuts, Inflation under control, GDP Growth intact.... Koi bolo inn Piddiyon ko ki jakar apne Najayaj Baap se puchche...if even 10% of this was possible for CONgress to achieve FOR the Nation!

BhikuMhatre

21,331 ๆฌก่ง‚็œ‹ โ€ข 4 ไธชๆœˆๅ‰

Dear ICP community, the Internet Computer has now been running strong for 5 years ๐Ÿ‘๐Ÿ‘๐Ÿ‘ Here is a celebratory preview of ICP "cloud engines," the sovereign frontier cloud technology the network shall soon provide from Main points: โ€” Cloud engines enable anyone to spin up their own sovereign frontier cloud. The technology involves an extraordinary inventive step, in which cloud is created from a mathematically secure network of nodes. The nodes run as part of the Internet Computer network ( but are selected and configured by the cloud engine's owner. โ€” The frontier cloud provided by engines is strongly focused on enabling AI agents to build and update online applications and services for us. The world is changing fast, and nearly all new online apps and services are already being built with the help of AI, and thus cloud engines target the future of cloud. โ€” Software hosted on cloud engines is tamperproof, which means that it is immune to infrastructure hacks, because it runs inside a mathematically secure network protocol, rather than on computers directly. This means that AI agents, and those building with them, don't need to have a security team in the loop, or to trust someone else's security team. This is crucial, because in the future, non technical people will demand the freedom to build with full automation โ€” where they just need to issue instructions to AI about what to build, and don't need to worry about anything or anyone else. Of course, apps and services running on engines are also vastly safer from the new breed of hacker being enabled by frontier AI. (The cloud engines themselves are also "tamperproof." Even if a hacker gains physical access to some portion of a cloud engine's nodes, and can make arbitrary changes, the computations and data of the hosted apps and services cannot be corrupted or interrupted so long as the network's fault bounds aren't exceeded. The recent hack of Vercel, a major cloud platform, which gave hackers access to the apps it hosted, provides additional perspective on the importance of this advantage.) โ€” Software hosted on cloud engines is guaranteed to run, so long as a sufficient number of the engine's nodes are running. This means that AI can build applications and services without the need to have a human systems admin team constantly tinkering with the underlying platform to keep it running, which is again crucial, because in the future, non technical people will expect the freedom to use AI to build without the support of others. โ€” New frontier programming language technology, in the form of the Motoko language developed by Caffeine Labs, leverages seminal "orthogonal persistence" technology that unifies program logic and data to deliver further unlocks for AI (Motoko is the first computer language being developed that targets agents that are writing software rather than humans engineers per se). Nowadays, AI can build and update production apps at a prodigious rate, even at the speed of conversation. But it can also make mistakes, and there's a risk that an update it creates might be "lossy" in the sense it causes some transformed data to be lost. Again, in this new world, it's both undesirable and impractical for everyone to have to have a systems admin team on-hand to detect lossy updates and roll them back, but Motoko provides a solution: it can detect new software updates are lossy before they are applied, reducing potentially catastrophic errors by AI to harmless coding retries. โ€” Software hosted on cloud engines is "serverless" but unlike traditional serverless software, directly it directly incorporates data through "orthogonal persistence." Another key purpose is simplify backend software logic and fuel the modeling power of AI by increasing abstraction (sorry for the technical language!!!). Put simply, this enables AI to produce more sophisticated backends, faster, and at dramatically lower costs, as measured by the number AI API tokens consumed during coding. (Tip for the technical: orthogonal persistence is a new paradigm where "the program is the database," and data lives inside program variables, which is possible because it's as if hosted software runs forever in persistent memory). โ€” An expanding database of skills at shall make it possible to develop and directly deploy apps and services to your cloud engines directly from Claude Code, Perplexity, Codex and other AI platforms. Further, your account on can be connected, so that new apps and updates created through conversation automatically appear hosted from your cloud engine. In the future, R&D is going to be very seamless. You converse with AI, and your secure and unstoppable apps or services are created or updated. Cloud engines are designed to directly support this "self-writing cloud" future where we can work hands-free. โ€” Tech sovereignty is becoming a huge issue worldwide, with governments and corporations seeking to create sovereign tech stacks owing to geopolitical tensions. Increasingly, people are realizing that tech provided by foreign nations can come with hidden backdoors and kills switches, from the base platform, right up through hosted apps and services. ICP technology is open source, and those building on ICP using AI own their own source code. When you have the source code, you can verify that there are no backdoors, and when you own the source code thanks to AI, you can update it at will, freeing you from vendor lock-in. But cloud engines take sovereignty much further... โ€” You create a cloud engine by selecting the nodes that will be combined. You can choose the class of nodes used, and their number, but more importantly, you can choose who operates the nodes, and where they are located. Almost any configuration is possible, because the Internet Computer scales the security privileges afforded to hosted software within the network according to configuration (software hosted on cloud engines can directly interoperate with software on other engines and traditional subnets, but base restrictions are applied according to security rules). A cloud engine can be created within a region such as Europe, to comply with regs such as GDPR, or completely within a sovereign state like Switzerland or Pakistan. But cloud engines go further still... โ€” Sovereignty is also about freedom from vendor lock-in. Cloud engines are essentially ICP (Internet Computer Protocol) network configurations, and this means the underlying compute nodes they combine can be swapped out without interrupting their hosted apps and services. This is a big deal. In addition, cloud engines now support nodes that are instances running on Big Tech's clouds, in addition to nodes that are dedicated specialized hardware, as per the Gen I and Gen II nodes that dominate the Internet Computer today. For example, it is possible to have an engine running across different AWS data centers, say, and then reconfigure the engine to run across a mixture of AWS, Google, Azure and Hetzner for even more resilience, without the users of hosted apps and services noticing a thing. That's true freedom. โ€” Sovereign AI is becoming increasingly important too, and cloud engines allow special "AI nodes" to be added to them, so that hosted software can perform inference on hardware provisioned by the owner from a location the owner has selected. Even though the AI nodes are only accessible within the cloud engine, they can still benefit from the forthcoming Internet Intelligence Gateway (IG), which will make it possible to validate inference performed on key frontier open weights LLMs, even when the inference is performed on completely independent AI clouds. When the results of inference are received, this technology can verify that neither the prompt+context (input) nor the inference result (output) have been modified, and that the results were produced by the precise LLM expected. This ensures that AI clouds don't cheat by running inference on cheaper models than are being paid for, and bad actors aren't modifying the inputs or outputs to surreptitiously insert advertising into results, say, or change facts, or insert malware when code is being generated. What's super cool about this technology is the cost of the verification is scalable. A very valuable additional security can be achieved with only 1-2% of extra cost. โ€” Scaling apps and services when they hit capacity limits is another thorny problem that cloud engines help the world address. Engines make scaling possible without rewriting or reconfiguring software. The query workload capacity of hosted software can be horizontally scaled simply by adding new nodes to an engine, and nodes can also be added in geographical proximity to demand. Meanwhile, update workload capacity can first be scaled-up by swapping an engine's nodes out for the next class up, and then when no larger class of node is available, horizontally scaled-out by "splitting" the engine into two, which doubles available capacity. (Technical tip: horizontally scaling update capacity by splitting engines requires multi-canister architectures). โ€” For those who have been following how Caffeine builds apps that can efficiently store large numbers of files, I should mention that apps built on cloud engines will also support the new ICP Blob Storage cloud network (since cloud engines currently have up to about 3 TB of memory, which apps storing large amounts of files can easily exceed). We are also working on allowing blob storage nodes to be added to cloud engines, to enable sovereign mass blob storage within an engine, similarly to how AI nodes can be added currently. โ€” Lastly, but certainly not least, I should mention that cloud engines are multi-blockchain capable, and ready for digital assets, thanks to the clever math at their core. For example, an e-commerce service built on a cloud engine can securely accept and custody stablecoin payments, or a multi-chain DEX could be hosted. Further, engines can support software autonomy (software orchestrated and controlled by other autonomous software, in a decentralized way) and can themselves be orchestrated by SNS technology, and thus run autonomously too. Today, though, the focus is on *mainstream* cloud. This year, the cloud industry will generate approximately one trillion dollars in revenue. That number is already huge, but is expected to grow to two trillion dollars by 2030. After years of continuous development, which have seen more than $500m spent on R&D, the Internet Computer network is now tacking directly toward this mainstream cloud market with cloud engine technology. In their first version, cloud engines are not meant to be a cloud panacea. For example, currently they are not ideal for working with big data. You should use something like DataBricks for that. Cloud engines are carefully targeted at enabling AI to produce traditional online applications and services, including SaaS, in a safer and more productive way, which represents a new market segment with tremendous potential. Of course, DFINITY will continue to work relentlessly to push forward ICP's capabilities, so expect further developments. It's worth mentioning that this cloud segment isn't just about creating new apps and services using AI, it's also about replacing legacy systems and apps built on super expensive SaaS services. Caffeine Labs is working to produce technology (Caffeine Snorkel) that can study an enterprise's legacy systems and app built on SaaS, create replacement systems and apps, and migrate the data, while supporting key stakeholders through the process over email and chat, with full automation. Thus the legacy systems and SaaS markets shall also be addressed by cloud engines. Zooming out, and reasoning in a more metaphysical way, we believe, as we always have, that there is room for a new kind of cloud created by mathematical networks, that provides seminal advances in the fields of security and resilience, as well as true sovereignty and freedom from lock-in. That this same technology, with the help of additional technologies like orthogonal persistence and Motoko, enables AI to build for us without the need for so much oversight, and to create more backend sophistication while consuming fewer AI API tokens, enables ICP to bring game-changing advances to the world. Cloud engines will work synergistically with the Intelligence Gateway, which will enable apps and services running on engines to seamlessly leverage AI, wherever that AI is running, while providing verifiability at extremely low cost for open weights frontier models. We believe that cloud engines represent an inflection point in the storied history of the Internet Computer project, and I'm very proud to be sharing the details with you on the network's fifth birthday ๐Ÿ’ช I'll be back with more news soon!!

dom | icp

284,184 ๆฌก่ง‚็œ‹ โ€ข 3 ไธชๆœˆๅ‰

The whole Left ecosystem, starting with the Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge to Congress Chief Ministers across states, seem to have gotten into a frenzy and have become desperate to hide the truth that PM Sri Narendra Modi ji exposed in his tweets on #FakePromisesOfCongress. What Modi Ji has highlighted is a living reality in Karnataka - unsustainable freebie model has wreaked havoc on our State's developmental journey in the last 1.5 years, severely crippling the pace of our progress. What Mr. Kharge himself admits in the video that went viral proves this fact. Apart from his warning to not go overboard with promises, he says that there is no money to make roads. Some people seem to have missed this in translation but that's the indicative reality in Karnataka. That's the gist of what he was trying to say - that development has taken a backfoot in the state because of the unsustainable guarantees that the Congress party is trying to keep alive. It asserts the fact that Congress has fully realized the cost of its own guarantees on State's finances. Take CM Siddaramaiah's last budget for instance. To accommodate these freebies - although there is a budgetary provision made, he has achieved the provision by reducing budget in other key sectors. - The agricultural budget has been reduced by 38%. - The irrigation budget - crucial for many North Karnataka districts and in South Karnataka too - has been reduced by 17%. - The Capital Expenditure is down by 13%. - For Education, 11% budget is allocated while State Average is 14.7%. - Further, Congress budget has allocated merely 0.6% towards Urban Development, against other States average of 3.5%. - Inadequate fund have pushed Bangalore infra from bad to worse. - About Rs 13,000 crore of SC/ST funds have been redirected to fund the freebies. - Every MLA across all party lines is seen complaining about the lack of funds for local area development. - Govt stopped Rs 4000/- that was earlier added as State Contribution to PM Kisan Fund, directly impacting over 58 Lakh farmers. What's worse, while Govt hospitals do not have medicines at their pharmacy due to lack of funds, legacy institutions like KSRTC are being pushed to 100s of crores of losses. All done to keep the evidently unsustainable Guarantees alive. This shouldn't come as a surprise as it's not the first time that Congress itself has spoken about the ground reality in Karnataka. DCM DK Shivakumar, in the first six months of the Government taking over, had said there are no funds for development in Karnataka. CM's Financial Advisor Basavaraj Rayareddy had blamed the freebies for the lack of growth in the state. Mr. Kharge's statement is the most recent addition to such series of admissions by the Congress party. Anyway, it brings another opportunity to throw light on the mishaps that the Karnataka Govt is pursuing on the economic front. When BJP presented its last budget under CM Basavaraj S Bommai, it was a revenue surplus budget. But the latest budget under Siddaramaiah has a revenue deficit of over Rs 12,000 crore! And as always, Congress is taxing the middle class to bridge this gap in revenue. Congress Govt has gone on a spree to hike taxes on so many items that are essential for daily lives. In just 1 year or so, Karnataka has seen hikes in water bills, electricity bills, hike in transportation costs, property tax, stamp paper duty, hike in petrol and diesel, road tax on new vehicles, milk price, excise duty hike and the list goes on. To fund the Freebies, Congress is siphoning money off the common man's pocket. This is why we call this Govt as the #PickpocketSarkara. Claiming to give benefits, but looting the same people is a strategy that is bound to fail. People see through this, and identify this strategy very well. What Modi Ji has highlighted is how aware citizens are making informed choices like they made in Haryana. As much as Mr. Kharge, or DCM, or CM may try to hide PM's message with shrill rhetoric and name calling, his message to be vigilant from Congress fake promises reflects the ground reality in Karnataka.

Tejasvi Surya

42,212 ๆฌก่ง‚็œ‹ โ€ข 1 ๅนดๅ‰

50 years ago yesterday: U.N. General Assembly adopts initial draft resolution declaring Zionism to be โ€œa form of racism.โ€ U.S. Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan delivered this historic speech when the infamous act was ratified on Nov. 10, 1975: ๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ธ โ€œThere appears to have developed in the United Nations the practice for a number of countries to combine for the purpose of doing something outrageous, and thereafter, the outrageous thing having been done, to profess themselves outraged by those who have the temerity to point it out, and subsequently to declare themselves innocent of any wrong-doing in consequence of its having been brought about wholly in reaction to the โ€œinsufferableโ€ acts of those who pointed the wrong-doing out in the first place. Out of deference to these curious sensibilities, the United States chose not to speak in advance of this vote: we speak in its aftermath and in tones of the utmost concern. The United States rises to declare before the General Assembly of the United Nations, and before the world, that it does not acknowledge, it will not abide by, it will never acquiesce in this infamous act. Not three weeks ago, the United States Representative in the Social, Humanitarian, and Cultural Committee pleaded in measured and fully considered terms for the United Nations not to do this thing. It was, he said, โ€œobscene.โ€ It is something more today, for the furtiveness with which this obscenity first appeared among us has been replaced by a shameless openness. There will be time enough to contemplate the harm this act will have done the United Nations. Historians will do that for us, and it is sufficient for the moment only to note the foreboding fact. A great evil has been loosed upon the world. The abomination of anti-semitism โ€” as this yearโ€™s Nobel Peace Laureate Andrei Sakharov observed in Moscow just a few days ago โ€” the Abomination of anti-semitism has been given the appearance of international sanction. The General Assembly today grants symbolic amnesty โ€” and more โ€” to the murderers of the six million European Jews. Evil enough in itself, but more ominous by far is the realization that now presses upon us โ€” the realization that if there were no General Assembly, this could never have happened. As this day will live in infamy, it behooves those who sought to avert it to declare their thoughts so that historians will know that we fought here, that we were not small in number โ€” not this time โ€” and that while we lost, we fought with full knowledge of what indeed would be lost. Nor should any historian of the event, nor yet any who have participated in it, suppose, that we have fought only as governments, as chancelleries, and on an issue well removed from the concerns of our respective peoples. Others will speak for their nations: I will speak for mine. In all our postwar history there had not been another issue which has brought forth such unanimity of American opinion. The President of the United States has from the first been explicit: This must not happen. The Congress of the United States in a measure unanimously adopted in the Senate and sponsored by 436 of 437 Representatives in the House, declared its utter opposition. Following only American Jews themselves, the American trade union movements was first to the fore in denouncing this infamous undertaking. Next, one after another, the great private institutions of American life pronounced anathema in this evil thing โ€” and most particularly, the Christian churches have done so. Reminded that the United Nations was born in struggle against just such abominations as we are committing today โ€” the wartime alliance of the United Nations dates from 1942 โ€” the United Nations Association of the United States has for the first time in its history appealed directly to each of the 141 other delegations in New York not to do this unspeakable thing. The proposition to be sanctioned by a resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations is that โ€œZionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.โ€ Now this is a lie. But as it is a lie which the United Nations has now declared to be a truth, the actual truth must be restated. The very first point to be made is that the United Nations has declared Zionism to be racism โ€” without ever having defined racism. โ€œSentence first โ€” verdict afterwards,โ€ as the Queen of Hearts said. But this is not wonderland, but a real world, where there are real consequences to folly and to venality. Just on Friday, the President of the General Assembly, speaking on behalf of Luxembourg, warned not only of the trouble which would follow from the adoption of this resolution but of its essential irresponsibility โ€” for, he noted, members have wholly different ideas as to what they are condemning. โ€œIt seems to me that before a body like this takes a decision they should agree very clearly on what they are approving or condemning, and it takes more time.โ€ Lest I be unclear, the United Nations has in fact on several occasions defined โ€œracial discrimination.โ€ The definitions have been loose, but recognizable. It is โ€œracism,โ€ incomparably the more serious charge โ€” racial discrimination is a practice; racism is a doctrine โ€” which has never been defined. Indeed, the term has only recently appeared in the United Nations General Assembly documents. The one occasion on which we know the meaning to have been discussed was the 1644th meeting of the Third Committee on December 16, 1968, in connection with the report of the Secretary-General on the status of the international convention on the elimination of all racial discrimination. On that occasion โ€” to give some feeling for the intellectual precision with which the matter was being treated โ€” the question arose, as to what should be the relative positioning of the terms โ€œracismโ€ and โ€œNazismโ€ in a number of the โ€œpreambular paragraphs.โ€ The distinguished delegate from Tunisia argued that โ€œracismโ€ should go first because โ€œNazism was merely a form of racism.โ€ Not so, said the no less distinguished delegate from the Union Soviet Socialist Republics. For, he explained, โ€œNazism contained the main elements of racism within its ambit and should be mentioned first.โ€ This is to say that racism was merely a form of Nazism. The discussion wound to its weary and inconclusive end, and we are left with nothing to guide us for even this one discussion of โ€œracismโ€ confined itself to world orders in preambular paragraphs, and did not at all touch on the meaning of the words as such. Still, one cannot but ponder the situation we have made for ourselves in the context of the Soviet statement on that not so distant occasion. If, as the distinguished delegate declared, racism is a form of Nazism โ€” and if, as this resolution declares, Zionism is a form of racism โ€” then we have step to step taken ourselves to the point of proclaiming โ€” the United Nations is solemnly proclaiming โ€” that Zionism is a form of Nazism. What we have here is a lie โ€” a political lie of a variety well known to the twentieth century, and scarcely exceeded in all that annal of untruth and outrage. The lie is that Zionism is a form of racism. The overwhelmingly clear truth is that is it not. The word โ€œracismโ€ is a creation of the English language, and relatively new to it. It is not, for instance, to be found in the Oxford English Dictionary (appears in 1982 supplement to Oxford Dictionary). The term derives from relatively new doctrines โ€” all of them discredited โ€” concerning the human population of the world, to the effect that there are significant biological differences among clearly identifiable groups, and that these differences establish, in effect, different levels of humanity. Racism, as defined in Websterโ€™s Third New International Dictionary, is โ€œThe Assumption that . . . traits and capacities are determined by biological race and that races differ decisively from one another.โ€ It further involves โ€œa belief in the inherent superiority of a particular race and its right to dominate over others.โ€ This meaning is clear. It is equally clear that this assumption, this belief, has always been altogether alien to the political and religious movement known as Zionism. As a strictly political movement, Zionism was established only in 1897, although there is a clearly legitimate sense in which its origins are indeed ancient. For example, many branches of Christianity have always held that from the standpoint of biblical prophets, Israel would be reborn one day. But the modern Zionism movement arose in Europe in the context of a general upsurge of national consciousness and aspiration that overtook most other people of Central and Eastern Europe after 1848, and that in time spread to all of Africa and Asia. It was, to those persons of the Jewish religion, a Jewish form of what today is called a national liberation movement. Probably a majority of those persons who became active Zionists and sought to emigrate to Palestine were born within the confines of Czarist Russia, and it was only natural for Soviet Prime Minister Andrei Gromyko to deplore, as he did in 1948, in the 299th meeting of the Security Council, the act by Israelโ€™s neighbors of โ€œsending troops into Palestine and carrying out military operations aimedโ€ โ€” in Mr. Gromykoโ€™s words โ€” at the suppression of the national liberation movement in Palestine.โ€ Now it was the singular nature โ€” if, I am not mistaken, it was the unique nature โ€” of this national liberation movement that in contrast with the movements that preceded it, those of that time, and those that have come since, it defined its members in terms not of birth, but of belief. That is to say, it was not a movement of the Irish to free Ireland, or of the Polish to free Poland, not a movement of the Algerians to free Algeria, nor of Indians to free India. It was not a movement of persons connected by historic membership to a genetic pool of the kind that enables us to speak loosely but not meaninglessly, say, of the Chinese people, nor yet of diverse groups occupying the same territory which enables us to speak if the American people with no greater indignity to truth. To the contrary, Zionists defined themselves merely as Jews, and declared to be Jewish anyone born of a Jewish mother or โ€” and this is the absolutely crucial fact โ€” anyone who converted to Judaism. Which is to say, in terms of International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, adopted by the 20th General Assembly, anyone โ€” regardless of โ€œrace, colour, descent, or nationally or ethnic origin โ€ฆ..โ€ The state of Israel, which in time was the creation of the Zionist Movement, has been extraordinary in nothing so much as the range of โ€œracial stocksโ€ from which it Orient and Jew from the West. Most such persons could be said to have been โ€œbornโ€ Jewish, just as most Presbyterians and most Hindus are โ€œbornโ€ to their faith, but there are many Jews who are just converts. With a consistency in the matter which surely attests to the importance of this issue to that religions and political culture, Israeli courts have held that a Jew who converts to another religion is no longer a Jew. In the meantime the population of Israel also includes large numbers of non-Jews, among them Arabs of both the Muslim and Christian religions and Christians of other national origins. Many of these persons are citizens of Israel, and those who are not can become citizens by legal procedures very much like those which obtain in a typical nation of Western Europe. Now I should wish to be understood that I am here making one point, and one point only, which is that whatever else Zionism may be, it is not and cannot be โ€œa form of racism.โ€ In logic, the State of Israel could be, or could become, many things, theoretically, including many things undesirable, but it could not be and could not become racism unless it ceased to be Zionist. Indeed, the idea that Jews are a โ€œraceโ€ was invented not by Jews but by those who hated Jews. The idea of Jews as a race was invented by nineteenth century anti-semites such as Houston Steward Chamberlain and Edouard Drumont, who saw that in an increasingly secular age, which is to say an age made for fewer distinctions between people, the old religions grounds for anti-semitism were losing force. New justifications were needed for excluding and persecuting Jews, and so the new idea of Jews as a race โ€” rather than as a religion โ€” was born. It was a contemptible idea at the beginning, and no civilized person would be associated with it. To think that it is an idea now endorsed by the United Nations is to reflect on what civilization has come to. It is precisely a concern for civilization, for civilized values that are or should be precious to all mankind, that arouses us at this moment to such special passion. What we have at stake here is not merely the honor and the legitimacy of the State of Israel โ€” although a challenge to the legitimacy of any member nation ought always to arouse the vigilance of all members of the United Nations. For a yet more important matter is at issue, which is the integrity of the whole body of moral and legal precepts which we know as human rights. The terrible lie that has been told here today will have terrible consequences. Not only will people begin to say, indeed they have already begun to say that the United Nations is a place where lies are told, but far more serious, grave and perhaps irreparable harm will be done to the cause of human rights itself. The harm will arise first because it will strip from racism the precise and abhorrent meaning that it still precariously holds today. How will the people of the world feel about racism and the need to struggle against it, when they are told that it is an idea as broad as to include the Jewish national liberation movement? As the lie spreads, it will do harm in a second way. Many of the members of the United Nations owe their independence in no small part to the notion of human rights, as it has spread from the domestic sphere to the international sphere exercised its influence over the old colonial powers. We are now coming into a time when that independence is likely to be threatened again. There will be new forces, some of them arising now, new prophets and new despots, who will justify their actions with the help of just such distortions of words as we have sanctioned here today. Today we have drained the word โ€œracismโ€ of its meaning. Tomorrow, terms like โ€œnational self-determinationโ€ and โ€œnational honorโ€ will be perverted in the same way to serve the purposes of conquest and exploitation. And when these claims begin to be made โ€” as they already have begun to be made โ€” it is the small nations of the world whose integrity will suffer. And how will the small nations of the world defend themselves, on what grounds will others be moved to defend and protect them, when the language of human rights, the only language by which the small can be defended, is no longer believed and no longer has a power of its own? There is this danger, and then a final danger that is the most serious of all. Which is that the damage we now do to the idea of human rights and the language of human rights could well be irreversible. The idea of human rights as we know it today is not an idea which has always existed in human affairs, it is an idea which appeared at a specific time in the world, and under very special circumstances. It appeared when European philosophers of the seventeenth century began to argue that man was a being whose existence was independent from that of the State, that he need join a political community only if he did not lose by that association more than he gained. From this very specific political philosophy stemmed the idea of political rights, of claims that the individual could justly make against the state; it was because the individual was seen as so separate from the State that he could make legitimate demands upon it. That was the philosophy from which the idea of domestic and international rights sprang. But most of the world does not hold with that philosophy now. Most of the world believes in newer modes of political thought, in philosophies that do not accept the individual as distinct from and prior to the State, in philosophies that therefore do not provide any justification for the idea of human rights and philosophies that have no words by which to explain their value. If we destroy the words that were given to us by past centuries, we will not have words to replace them, for philosophy today has no such words. But there are those of us who have not forsaken these older words, still so new to much of the world. Not forsaken them now, not here, not anywhere, not ever. The United States of America declares that it does not acknowledge, it will not abide by, it will never acquiesce in this infamous act.โ€

Hillel Neuer

68,720 ๆฌก่ง‚็œ‹ โ€ข 9 ไธชๆœˆๅ‰

๐Ÿšจ๐Ÿ›ธ๐Ÿ‘ฝ Alien Craft and Bodies - How Confident? ๐Ÿ‘ฝ๐Ÿ›ธ๐Ÿšจ "Confidence is high. Repeat: confidence is high." ~The Sherminator Grusch/Kelly Part 1 - Video and Transcript "As somebody who was in very high positions of trust over the years, I can assure you that that...the U.S. government has engaged in a crash retrieval and reverse engineering operation of non-human crafts and recovering the biologics as well. I take that assessment very seriously" ~Grusch (I'll do my best to finish all three parts tonight) ~ Biggest Takeaway How did Grusch see evidence of alleged non-human craft and bodies and how confident is he that this is legit? Grusch: "I came in as a skeptical eye, having briefed to a lot of U.S. programs. And I was thinking, oh, I'll figure out what this is. This might be some kind of U.S. program, some prosaic natural phenomenon, some kind of adversarial program, some strategic technical surprise. "Eventually, as I started pulsing my networks, digging into archives where, we'll just say, certain programs forgot to fully clean out safe drawers, and finding both audio-visual documentation. And then interviewing over 40 people all the way up to, I'll just say, the cabinet level over the course of four years. So a combination of oral testimony, audio-visual evidence and documentation. I became convinced, at a high-confidence level that the U.S. has engaged in a crash retrieval and reverse engineering operation of - like the trailer you just played, said - non-human crafts and recovering, you know, the biologics as well. "And I say high-confidence, as somebody who's written assessments for the President of the United States. I take that assessment very seriously, and that confidence level very seriously. But as somebody who was in very high positions of trust over the years, I can assure you that that is an accurate statement. That the U.S. government, its private partners, allies and adversaries, do have programs, doing this exact thing." ~~~ Megyn Kelly: "It's the age-old question that has fascinated humans for centuries and continues to: are we alone in the universe, or even on our own planet? My next guest says, not only are UFOs - or now they're called UAPs - Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. That's hard to remember, but UAPs - real, but the government has allegedly been aware of them for decades and running a disinformation campaign to make you feel like an idiot if you believe reports about them. "David Grusch is a former US Air Force Intelligence Officer and senior intelligence official. He was his agency's co-lead in UAP investigation and quote 'transmedium object analysis' and was reporting to the Pentagon's UAP Task Force as well. In 2023, Grusch filed a whistleblower complaint asserting that the United States has been operating a quote, 'multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program,' meaning we're taking what we find - vehicles - and trying to figure out how they operated. And that Congress has been kept in the dark about large portions of the program. He later testified under oath before the House Oversight Committee, drawing national attention when he made this claim here. Watch." ~Video from the 2023 Oversight Committee Hearing~ Rep. Nancy Mace: "If you believe we have crashed craft, stated earlier, do we have the bodies of the pilots who piloted this craft?" David Grusch: "As I've stated publicly already in my NewsNation interview, biologics came with some of these recoveries, yeah." Mace: "Were they, I guess, human or non-human biologics?" Grusch: "Non-human, and that was the assessment of people with direct knowledge on the program I talked to that are currently still on the program." ~ Kelly: "So, he's alleging that we have crafts and we have non-human biologics from those crafts, and that the American people are being kept in the dark about it. And he is not alone. He is not alone. Now, Pentagon officials have publicly denied that there's any verified evidence of non-human intelligence or secret programs of this kind. They've been denying it for 80 years. But now, a new documentary called 'The Age of Disclosure' is taking center stage. It's extraordinary, examining decades of this alleged secrecy, and they have everyone in this film. "The film features interviews with 34 former and current government officials, including Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, and Representative Anna Paulina Luna, who claim the U.S. has long been concealing evidence of non-human intelligence and UAPs. Here's a part of the trailer." Begin Excerpt from "The Age of Disclosure" Tim Gallaudet: "Humanity is not the only intelligence in the Universe." Dr. Eric Davis: "Humanity is not the only intelligent species." Brett Feddersen: "We are absolutely not alone." Karl Nell: "Non-human intelligence exists." Jim Semivan: "UAPs are real ,they're here, and they're not human." Jay Stratton: "I have seen with my own eyes, non-human craft and non-human beings." Senator Mike Rounds: "This is so secret, very, very few people in our entire government have been allowed access to it." Secretary Marco Rubio: "Even presidents have been operating on a need-to-know basis, but that begins to ramp out of control." Kirsten Gillibrand: "It's not acceptable to have secret parts of government that no one ever sees." Rep. Tim Burchett Press Office: "You better be careful about a government that doesn't trust its people, because there's no telling what they'll pull on ya." ~End AoD Excerpt~ Kelly: "It's extraordinary. Let's get into it. David joins me now. David, thank you so much for your service and for being here." Grusch: "Thanks. Mellon. Um, excuse me (laughs). Thanks, Megan. Thank you for having me on." Kelly: "(laughs) No worries. This is like a crazy story and a stunning story and disturbing. And I have to tell you, I've always been sort of open minded to this issue, but more skeptical. And I my skepticism is gone, having watched 'The Age of Disclosure.'" (Until we hear from a firsthand witness who says they worked hands-on what they feel was a non-human craft, in the alleged Legacy crash retrieval and reverse engineering program, I think it's smart to retain some skepticism.) Kelly: "['The Age of Disclosure' is] incredibly well done, and they've got everybody. I mean, all of the like, astrophysicists and extremely-well-educated, and accomplished, scientists - who have been investigating this from the start. Well, not the start, because it was 80 years ago, but in recent decades - on camera, on the record, saying as much as they can. "And the director of the film (Dan Farah) has been making the rounds saying, the only reason he was able to get so many people to participate is because they felt there was safety in numbers and that they couldn't either fire everyone, or worse. Because a lot of these guys, these are distinguished guys, served in the Air Force like yourself, or served at the Pentagon, served all over the armed forces. A lot of these guys are actually worried not just about their careers getting killed, but about them themselves getting killed. I mean, set it up for us on the stakes of the number of people who went on camera and actually started saying as much as they could without violating classified restrictions." Grusch: "Certainly, that's a real fear, and we can certainly get into that. 'Age of Disclosure' was, you know, a project I didn't fully participate in, however, I do applaud the effort in these individuals for at least coming forward and speaking. And like you, I was a very skeptical person. I was certainly open to the topic. I was interested in space and science in a very precocious way, as a child. I ended up studying physics and the Air Force gave me a full-ride scholarship. And I was always, obviously, open to the topic, but I was in positions of high trust in the government at the most extreme levels, having walked the halls of the West Wing, personally handled the presidential daily intelligence brief and had some of the same broad accesses that the President and his cabinet has had over the years, even as a young man across multiple administrations "I figured - when I was eventually brought into this topic, working for the UAP Task Force - oh, I would know this exists. Somebody would have slipped and said something to me. At the time, I was briefed to over 90% out of all black programs in the Department of Defense and also the Intelligence Community, and I had an arrogant opinion of the topic. I was certainly open to the idea, but I figured I haven't seen any evidence and I would have been briefed into those kind of things, because I had a need-to-know at the time. So I came into it very similar to you, but open minded." Kelly: "And then, what specifically were you assigned to where you started to see actual evidence that we've been researching this for 80 years, that we do have crafts recovered, that we have, quote, 'biologics' recovered, which include some sort of other being. And what was your reaction when you started to learn this?" Grusch: "Yeah, I was very skeptical. I was in my military capacity, I had a parallel-civilian-intelligence career as well. But in my military-reserve capacity, I was the backup Intelligence Director for the National Reconnaissance Offices operation center. I briefed the NRO director. That's where I handled the PDB" Kelly: "Presidential Daily Brief." Grusch: "And I handled, essentially, all sensitive activities and all that stuff. And so, the UAP Task Force was looking for a representative from that organization. I came in as a skeptical eye, having briefed to a lot of U.S. programs. And I was thinking, oh, I'll figure out what this is. This might be some kind of U.S. program, some prosaic natural phenomenon, some kind of adversarial program, some strategic technical surprise. "But eventually, as I started pulsing my networks, digging into archives where, we'll just say, certain programs forgot to fully clean out safe drawers, and finding both audio visual documentation. And then interviewing over 40 people all the way up to, I'll just say, the cabinet level over the course of four years. So a combination of oral testimony, audio-visual evidence and documentation. I became convinced, at a high-confidence level that the U.S. has engaged in a crash retrieval and reverse engineering operation of - like the trailer you just played, said - non-human crafts and recovering, you know, the biologics as well. "And I say high-confidence, as somebody who's written assessments for the President of the United States. I take that assessment very seriously, and that confidence level very seriously. But as somebody who was in very high positions of trust over the years, I can assure you that that is an accurate statement. That the U.S. government, its private partners, allies and adversaries, do have programs, doing this exact thing." Kelly: "Many in our audience may know you, David, you've been kind of really celebrated [by] people for coming out as a whistleblower and calling attention the fact that our government's been hiding this from us. And even when told to disclose what they know to investigators and to the public or to the oversight seers they haven't. There's a deeper program called The Legacy program that has really...seems to have been trying to hide the most shocking pieces of what we know from even the UAP Task Force."

Joe Murgia

21,199 ๆฌก่ง‚็œ‹ โ€ข 7 ไธชๆœˆๅ‰

My cousin, Jonathan Ord asked me to teach the Come Follow Me lesson to his mission yesterday over zoom. This is the video I did and the full text. Hi. I am Brad Smith. I have ALS, which is a really weird disease that kills the motor neurons in my body. That means that I lose the connections between my brain and my muscles. My mind is still running at the normal rate. So, I can understand everything you say to me, but I canโ€™t respond very quickly! I am getting faster, though. Last November I was the 3rd person in the world to receive the Neuralink brain implant. So I am controlling this computer with my brain. This is my old voice, recreated by AI from just two hours of me talking to my phone. I have come to see ALS as a calling, and I am trying to magnify it. I used to talk easily, but now I have to choose my words carefully, because it is hard and slow to type what I want to say. I joke that the Lord gave me ALS to get me to shut up. Those who knew me when I could talk laugh the hardest. President Ord is my first cousin. So we share grandma and grandpa Smith. Our grandma Smith was a character. When she taught at church, she would put a sign up that read: โ€œthus saith the lord:โ€ so I will try to keep this within what the Lord has actually said, while trying to teach you to look at a basic principle of the gospel in a different way. Ironically, the first verse of Doctrine & Covenants 93 starts with โ€œVerily, thus saith the Lordโ€. This is an amazing section of scripture, Jesus Christ telling us to step up and be better! You should study it often. I will start with a story. I asked AI to make a video to dramatically tell the story. During college, I lived in Damascus, Syria, for a semester. It was a fantastic and wonderful experience. I especially loved exploring the Old City of Damascus. The Old City is built around the huge beautiful Umayyad mosque. Within the walls of the old city is a maze of narrow, winding, confusing streets and one really long straight street, as Saul found out in Acts 9:11. One day when a group of us were trying to get through this maze from the mosque to the Christian quarter of the Old City, we asked a man for directions. He thought for a second, then pointed and said, โ€œGo left and then right, and then left and then right, and then left and then right, and then left and right, and youโ€™ll be there.โ€ Arenโ€™t those the most ridiculous directions you have ever heard? We could have ignored him. But, we thought, he did know the city better than we did. So, with some laughter, off we went. Left. Right. Left. Right. And so on until, much to our surprise, we popped out at our destination. Life is a confusing maze. We face difficult choices, unexpected events, surprises, sorrows, opportunities, roadblocks. The Lord has given directions on how to get through to where we want to go. Sometimes the Lordโ€™s directions seem odd, and we may struggle with the decision to follow. The Lord will not force us. It is our choice whether to choose and follow him. Wasnโ€™t that fun? AI is getting crazy! I will be much less entertaining for the rest, but hopefully the spirit will teach you something new. The phrase โ€œkeep the commandmentsโ€ (or โ€œkeepeth my commandmentsโ€) appears at least 4 times in Doctrine and Covenants Section 93, in verses 1, 20, 27, and 28. There are other references, like โ€œkeep my sayingsโ€ in 52 and โ€œobeyeth my voiceโ€ in 1. So, commandments are really important in this Revelation. I suggest that making the gospel a more central part of our lives depends largely on how we look at commandments. When you think of commandments, do you think โ€œI canโ€™t. Iโ€™m Mormonโ€? (That was a popular T-shirt slogan during my college years.) Although, with the recent guidance from President Nelson, it probably should be โ€œI canโ€™t, Iโ€™m a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saintsโ€. Itโ€™s a common reaction: โ€œThou shalt not do Cool Things.โ€ People LOVE to focus on all the things we CANโ€™T do, as if we are trapped and deserve pity for our beliefs. No pity is needed. Commandments are opportunities, not constraints. Commandments are awesome! Allow me to illustrate. Imagine a spectrum between Good and Evil. Somewhere in the middle is โ€œthe Lineโ€ that divides Good from Evil. As a teenager, I wanted to know where the Line was, so I could get close to it without going over it. I wanted to be on the โ€œGoodโ€ side but still be able to do as many โ€œCool Things" with my friends as possible. From my experience, I believe God gives us two types of commandments: 1) Get Back over the Line commandments and 2) Come Further into the Light commandments. Type 1, the Get Back over the Line commandments, could also be called โ€œMisery Avoidanceโ€ commandments. They are designed to keep us out of misery or, if weโ€™ve crossed the Line, to bring us out of misery and back into the Good side. These are generally commandments with a clear and defined point of success, such as โ€œThou shalt not kill.โ€ You will know, at the end of each day, whether you have successfully followed that commandment. I think all of the Ten Commandments fall into this category. The law of Moses was very black and white. The children of Israel had been in Egypt without a prophet for a long time when Moses received the law, and they needed to work on the basics. So, if you follow the Type 1 commandments, you will refrain from doing things that make you miserable. You will know you are in the Good if you can answer the baptismal interview and temple recommend questions honestly and faithfully. If you can do that, you have taken the basic steps necessary to avoid misery and are on a solid foundation for the next type of commandment. Type 2, the โ€œCome Further into the Lightโ€ commandments, are the really cool commandments. Once we are out of the misery category, we can really start to pursue joy. So, God commands us to do things that he knows will make us happier and more like Christ. These commandments are the principles of eternal development, such as โ€œLove thy neighborโ€ (Matthew 22:39). There is no clear end to loving our neighborโ€”it requires positive and eternal progression. We can always love more, and we can always find another neighbor who needs our love. It is an eternal principle taught by Jesus Christ. And if we truly love our neighbor, refraining from killing him becomes pretty easy. It is through these commandments that we find joy in Jesus Christ. Elder Christofferson taught about this spectrum in the October 2018 general conference: โ€œMost of us find ourselves at this moment on a continuum between a socially motivated participation in gospel rituals on the one hand and a fully developed, Christlike commitment to the will of God on the other. Somewhere along that continuum, the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ enters into our heart and takes possession of our soul. It may not happen in an instant, but we should all be moving toward that blessed state.โ€ Our goal is to go THAT WAY (toward Christ) as much as possible. So first, get back across the line and stop doing things that will make you miserable. Then make every effort to try and be like Jesus, to โ€œlove one another as Jesus loves you.โ€ The gospel of Jesus Christ is more than just โ€œnot doingโ€ stuff. It is about coming unto Christ, being perfected in him, and denying ourselves of all ungodliness. Discuss with your companion what commandments and mission rules are for โ€œMisery Avoidanceโ€ and which are โ€œCome Further into the Lightโ€! And, remember, commandments are ALWAYS connected to huge blessings. The Lord promised, โ€œThere is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicatedโ€”and when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicatedโ€ (Doctrine and Covenants 130:20โ€“21). Whenever we obey any of Godโ€™s commandments, we will get the blessing associated with that commandment. Elder David A. Bednar said: โ€œThe gospel of Jesus Christ encompasses much more than avoiding, overcoming, and being cleansed from sin and the bad influences in our lives; it also essentially entails doing good, being good, and becoming better. Repenting of our sins and seeking forgiveness are spiritually necessary, and we must always do so. But remission of sin is not the only or even the ultimate purpose of the gospel. To have our hearts changed by the Holy Spirit such that โ€œwe have no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continuallyโ€ (Mosiah 5:2), as did King Benjaminโ€™s people, is the covenant responsibility we have accepted. โ€œThis mighty change is not simply the result of working harder or developing greater individual discipline. Rather, it is the consequence of a fundamental change in our desires, our motives, and our natures made possible through the Atonement of Christ the Lord. Our spiritual purpose is to overcome both sin and the desire to sin, both the taint and the tyranny of sin.โ€ I LOVE this conceptโ€”and as I have paid attention, I feel like apostles are trying to teach us this all the time. Are we listening? Let me repeat what Elder Bednar said. He said that the commandments help us change what we WANT. Why is that important? Remember my teenage desires? I wanted to be as close to the line as possible so I could still look cool for my friends. That is a good example of the โ€œtyrannyโ€ of sin. Even though I was not actually sinning (probably because I was afraid of my mother), I still had some small desire to sin. I said, โ€œI canโ€™t. Iโ€™m Mormonโ€ with many dramatic sighs. Overcoming the tyranny of sin is getting to the point where the sin no longer looks remotely interesting or fun because we are too busy loving our neighbors and trying to be like Jesus. Elder Dallin H. Oaks said: โ€œThe Final Judgment is not just an evaluation of a sum total of good and evil actsโ€”what we have done. It is an acknowledgment of the final effect of our acts and thoughtsโ€”what we have become. It is not enough for anyone just to go through the motions. The commandments, ordinances, and covenants of the gospel are not a list of deposits required to be made in some heavenly account. The gospel of Jesus Christ is a plan that shows us how to become what our Heavenly Father desires us to become.โ€ This talk was given when I was on a mission, before most of you were born. It completely changed my perspective on the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is called The Challenge to Becomeโ€ and I recommend that you study it. When the Lord says keep the commandments, he isnโ€™t just telling us to stop sinningโ€”he wants us to become like Christ and to have joy. Take a moment and think, Where am I on this continuum? Remember that none of us is perfect like the Savior, and we all need to lift one another. That is why we worship together. That is why we have priesthood quorums and the Relief Society, Primary, and youth organizations. The Lord taught us that truth when he said we all have different gifts: โ€œTo some is given one [gift], and to some is given another [gift], that all may be profited thereby. To some it is given by the Holy Ghost to know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and that he was crucified for the sins of the world. To others it is given to believe on their words, that they also might have eternal life if they continue faithfulโ€ (Doctrine and Covenants 46:12โ€“14). The Savior is still WAY over there: a thousand miles away somewhere. That is why we have quorums. We all have a long way to go. Letโ€™s link arms and run together. Let me finish by telling a story from my mission to support my testimony of Jesus. Years ago my mission president said something interesting: โ€œEither the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is truly the kingdom of god on the earth... or it is the greatest fraud ever in history.โ€œ It is audacious to claim to be the true Church of Jesus Christโ€”but let me explain exactly why I know that to be true. I always BELIEVED that I was raised in the gospel of Jesus Christ. My parents taught me well and I felt good following the commandments and studying the scriptures. That led me to serve a mission in Brazil. My turning point of testimony came when I was 20โ€“at least 2/3rds through my mission. We were invited into a house in the โ€œfundosโ€ of a propertyโ€”a small structure built behind a larger house. The man was polite and allowed us to share our message. As I had done hundreds of times, I shared the story of Joseph Smith, a boy who sought the truth through prayer. I recited Josephโ€™s own words in response to his prayer: โ€œI saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me... When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the otherโ€”This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!" I felt the strongest feeling I had ever experiencedโ€”an undeniable confirmation that what I said was true. It hit me in a way I can never forget! I knew that Joseph Smith was truly a prophet, and therefore the Book of Mormon was the word of god. What about the man we were teaching? How had he responded to my life-affirming spiritual experience? He shrugged and politely thanked us for the message. I was stunned. I felt like the windows of heaven opened on meโ€”and he felt nothing. I learned that receiving answers to our prayers is like tuning a radio: not everyone is on the right frequency. For some reason, the Lord decided to broadcast on my frequency that day. I received the undeniable confirmation that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is true. I have built on that foundation brick by brick since then. And every time someone has challenged me on Joseph Smith, I go back to that day in Brazil. I know that he was a prophet. My life has been blessed in ridiculously good ways since then. As I have tried to follow Jesus Christ, great things have happened to me. Even my hardest and most frustrating times have turned out to have a purpose. God has upturned my best laid plans over and over. But I look back and realize that I could never have planned any better. With the prophet Nephi I say: โ€œI know that [God] loveth his children; nevertheless, I do not know the meaning of all things." (1 Nephi 11:17) When I say that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is true, that does not mean we have a monopoly on truth. I know Christians and Muslims who teach me to be betterโ€”and Members of the church who are far from disciples of Christ. We just have more truth: scriptures, living prophets, ordinances, personal revelation, and answers to many of lifeโ€™s biggest questions! That is pretty cool. But we canโ€™t be prideful about the truth we have. You have all probably met people to admire both inside and outside of the church. So, I am all in. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is trueโ€”not a big fraud. And we are all trying to get closer to Christ. I know that Heavenly Father has a plan for me. Life has not been what I expected, but I trust him! I know that Joseph Smith is a prophet of Jesus Christ and that the Book of Mormon is true. This is โ€œintelligence, or, in other words, light and truth. Light and truth forsake that evil one.โ€ With that knowledge, keep the commandments! In the name of Jesus Christ, amen .

Bradford G Smith (Brad)

20,383 ๆฌก่ง‚็œ‹ โ€ข 11 ไธชๆœˆๅ‰

๐–๐‡๐˜ '๐„๐Œ๐๐€๐“๐‡๐˜' ๐Š๐„๐„๐๐’ ๐๐‘๐Ž๐ƒ๐”๐‚๐ˆ๐๐† ๐“๐˜๐‘๐€๐๐๐˜. A new working paper out of UCLA by political psychologist Samuel Pratt has just measured something American conservatives have been claiming for ten years and pretending was anecdotal. It is not anecdotal. It is now data. Pratt and his team built what they call the ๐–๐จ๐ซ๐๐ฌ ๐‚๐š๐ง ๐‡๐š๐ซ๐ฆ ๐’๐œ๐š๐ฅ๐ž โ€” a survey instrument asking respondents how strongly they agree with statements like "๐˜ ๐˜ค๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ๐˜ญ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ฃ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ญ๐˜ฆ๐˜ง๐˜ต ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฎ๐˜ฐ๐˜ต๐˜ช๐˜ฐ๐˜ฏ๐˜ข๐˜ญ๐˜ญ๐˜บ ๐˜ด๐˜ค๐˜ข๐˜ณ๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ฃ๐˜บ ๐˜ด๐˜ฐ๐˜ฎ๐˜ฆ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ๐˜จ ๐˜ ๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ๐˜ข๐˜ฅ." Three findings. ๐Ž๐ง๐ž: the belief is stable over time. People who say it this week say it next week. ๐“๐ฐ๐จ: the demographic profile of high-scorers is precise. They are ๐ฒ๐จ๐ฎ๐ง๐ , ๐Ÿ๐ž๐ฆ๐š๐ฅ๐ž, ๐ง๐จ๐ง-๐ฐ๐ก๐ข๐ญ๐ž, ๐š๐ง๐ ๐ฉ๐จ๐ฅ๐ข๐ญ๐ข๐œ๐š๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฒ ๐ฅ๐ข๐›๐ž๐ซ๐š๐ฅ. They self-rate as higher in intellectual humility, empathy, moral grandstanding, and โ€” the key variable โ€” ๐ญ๐ก๐ž ๐›๐ž๐ฅ๐ข๐ž๐Ÿ ๐ข๐ง ๐ญ๐ก๐ž ๐ข๐ฆ๐ฉ๐จ๐ซ๐ญ๐š๐ง๐œ๐ž ๐จ๐Ÿ ๐ฌ๐ข๐ฅ๐ž๐ง๐œ๐ข๐ง๐  ๐จ๐ญ๐ก๐ž๐ซ๐ฌ. ๐“๐ก๐ซ๐ž๐ž: they report lower emotional stability, higher anxiety, higher depression, and a stronger tendency to see themselves as ๐ฏ๐ข๐œ๐ญ๐ข๐ฆ๐ฌ in everyday conflicts. In one sentence, the psychometric profile of the modern American "empathy advocate" is: ๐š๐ง๐ฑ๐ข๐จ๐ฎ๐ฌ, ๐๐ž๐ฉ๐ซ๐ž๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ž๐, ๐ฏ๐ข๐œ๐ญ๐ข๐ฆ-๐œ๐จ๐๐ž๐, ๐š๐ง๐ ๐ฉ๐ซ๐จ-๐œ๐ž๐ง๐ฌ๐จ๐ซ๐ฌ๐ก๐ข๐ฉ. ๐‡๐จ๐ฐ ๐ญ๐ก๐ข๐ฌ ๐ฌ๐ก๐จ๐ฐ๐ฌ ๐ฎ๐ฉ ๐ข๐ง ๐ฉ๐จ๐ฅ๐ข๐œ๐ฒ Watch California Congresswoman Katie Porter at last week's gubernatorial debate, in real time, demonstrating how the empathy mechanism produces atrocious policy. "๐˜๐˜ง ๐˜บ๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ ๐˜ธ๐˜ฆ๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ ๐˜ฎ๐˜บ ๐˜ค๐˜ญ๐˜ข๐˜ด๐˜ด [...] ๐˜บ๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ ๐˜ธ๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ๐˜ญ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ญ๐˜ฆ๐˜ข๐˜ณ๐˜ฏ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ข๐˜ต ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฎ๐˜ข๐˜ซ๐˜ฐ๐˜ณ๐˜ช๐˜ต๐˜บ ๐˜ฐ๐˜ง ๐˜ฉ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฎ๐˜ฆ๐˜ญ๐˜ฆ๐˜ด๐˜ด ๐˜ฑ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฑ๐˜ญ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ ๐˜Š๐˜ข๐˜ญ๐˜ช๐˜ง๐˜ฐ๐˜ณ๐˜ฏ๐˜ช๐˜ข ๐˜ข๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ข๐˜ค๐˜ต๐˜ถ๐˜ข๐˜ญ๐˜ญ๐˜บ ๐˜ธ๐˜ฐ๐˜ณ๐˜ฌ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ๐˜จ." Empathetic. Reassuring. Compassionate. Also flatly false. Per CBS News' 2020 Los Angeles survey, only ๐Ÿ๐Ÿ—% of homeless individuals had done any work in the calendar quarter they became homeless. A 2017 San Francisco survey found ๐Ÿ๐Ÿ‘% working part-time or full-time. The reason is no mystery โ€” a substantial majority of street-homeless Americans are managing untreated severe mental illness, active substance abuse, or both. The "empathetic" policy that emerges from Porter's framing is to leave them on the street. The actually humane policy involves involuntary commitment, mandated treatment, and structured housing โ€” every one of which the empathy-coded liberal reflexively rejects as cruel. Pratt's data and the on-the-ground reality converge on the same uncomfortable conclusion: ๐ญ๐ก๐ž ๐ฆ๐จ๐ฌ๐ญ ๐ž๐ฆ๐ฉ๐š๐ญ๐ก๐ž๐ญ๐ข๐œ ๐€๐ฆ๐ž๐ซ๐ข๐œ๐š๐ง๐ฌ ๐ฌ๐ฎ๐ฉ๐ฉ๐จ๐ซ๐ญ ๐ญ๐ก๐ž ๐ฅ๐ž๐š๐ฌ๐ญ ๐ญ๐จ๐ฅ๐ž๐ซ๐š๐ง๐ญ, ๐ฆ๐จ๐ฌ๐ญ ๐๐ž๐ฌ๐ญ๐ซ๐ฎ๐œ๐ญ๐ข๐ฏ๐ž ๐ฉ๐จ๐ฅ๐ข๐œ๐ข๐ž๐ฌ, because empathy at scale stops asking ๐˜ธ๐˜ฉ๐˜ข๐˜ต ๐˜ธ๐˜ฐ๐˜ณ๐˜ฌ๐˜ด and starts asking ๐˜ธ๐˜ฉ๐˜ฐ ๐˜ค๐˜ข๐˜ฏ ๐˜ฃ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฃ๐˜ญ๐˜ข๐˜ฎ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฅ. ๐“๐ก๐ž ๐‘๐ž๐ง๐จ๐ซ๐ฆ๐š๐ฅ๐ข๐ณ๐š๐ญ๐ข๐จ๐ง ๐Œ๐ž๐œ๐ก๐š๐ง๐ข๐ฌ๐ฆ How does a fringe view โ€” communist Twitch streamers, candidates openly excusing full-scale mโˆ—rder, congressmen calling themselves democratic socialists โ€” capture an entire major American political party? Nassim Taleb has the cleanest explanation. He calls it ๐ซ๐ž๐ง๐จ๐ซ๐ฆ๐š๐ฅ๐ข๐ณ๐š๐ญ๐ข๐จ๐ง. A family of four. One daughter โ€” ๐Ÿ๐Ÿ“% of the household โ€” only eats organic. Mom faces a nightly choice: cook two meals or cook one all-organic meal. The all-organic meal is easier. The household renormalizes to the daughter's preference. The family then attends a barbecue with three other families. The host has the same choice: two menus, or one all-organic. The all-organic menu is easier. ๐Ÿ๐Ÿ“% renormalizes ๐Ÿ๐ŸŽ๐ŸŽ% of dinner. Now imagine the daughter's "preference" is not organic food. It is the belief that bank robbery is righteous, that Israel is a colonial regime which must be dismantled, that your health insurance executive should be eliminated by force, and that anyone who objects is a fascist. The mechanism is identical. The intransigent minority creates an asymmetric cost on resistance. The majority renormalizes for convenience. French physicist ๐’๐ž๐ซ๐ ๐ž ๐†๐š๐ฅ๐š๐ฆ has modeled the threshold formally. In his work on opinion dynamics, an extreme view captures a population at roughly ๐Ÿ๐ŸŽ% activated support โ€” provided the activists do three things consistently. They activate latent prejudices already present in the population. They impose a binary choice: "๐˜บ๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ ๐˜ข๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ธ๐˜ช๐˜ต๐˜ฉ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฑ๐˜ฑ๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ๐˜ด๐˜ด๐˜ฆ๐˜ฅ ๐˜ฐ๐˜ณ ๐˜บ๐˜ฐ๐˜ถ ๐˜ข๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ธ๐˜ช๐˜ต๐˜ฉ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ด๐˜บ๐˜ด๐˜ต๐˜ฆ๐˜ฎ ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ข๐˜ต ๐˜ฐ๐˜ฑ๐˜ฑ๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ๐˜ด๐˜ด๐˜ฆ๐˜ด ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฎ." And they refuse, ever, to compromise on their core position. Pseudo-moderates then join โ€” not because they have been persuaded by the full activist position, but because the binary has been imposed and the alternative ("siding with the oppressor") has been made socially intolerable. ๐‡๐š๐ฌ๐š๐ง ๐๐ข๐ค๐ž๐ซ ๐ข๐ฌ ๐ง๐จ๐ญ ๐ญ๐ก๐ž ๐ญ๐ก๐ซ๐ž๐š๐ญ This is the most important paragraph in this post. Read it twice. Hasan Piker โ€” the Twitch streamer who endorses bank robberies, defends H-m-s, and lives in a $3 million Brentwood mansion โ€” is ๐ง๐จ๐ญ ๐ญ๐ก๐ž ๐ญ๐ก๐ซ๐ž๐š๐ญ ๐ญ๐จ ๐€๐ฆ๐ž๐ซ๐ข๐œ๐š. He represents maybe 5-7% of the country. He does not move the needle by himself. The threat is the ๐ฉ๐ฌ๐ž๐ฎ๐๐จ-๐ฆ๐จ๐๐ž๐ซ๐š๐ญ๐ž ๐ฅ๐ข๐›๐ž๐ซ๐š๐ฅ โ€” the ๐˜•๐˜ฆ๐˜ธ ๐˜ ๐˜ฐ๐˜ณ๐˜ฌ ๐˜›๐˜ช๐˜ฎ๐˜ฆ๐˜ด reporter who profiles him sympathetically, the Democratic congressman who appears on his stream, the Hollywood actor who shares his clips, the Brooklyn schoolteacher who attends his rallies, the empathetic college freshman who decides he is "๐˜ข ๐˜ญ๐˜ช๐˜ต๐˜ต๐˜ญ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ฆ๐˜น๐˜ต๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ๐˜ฎ๐˜ฆ, ๐˜ฃ๐˜ถ๐˜ต ๐˜ต๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ด๐˜บ๐˜ด๐˜ต๐˜ฆ๐˜ฎ ๐˜ณ๐˜ฆ๐˜ข๐˜ญ๐˜ญ๐˜บ ๐˜ช๐˜ด ๐˜ถ๐˜ฏ๐˜ซ๐˜ถ๐˜ด๐˜ต." That coalition โ€” Galam's ๐Ÿ๐ŸŽ% โ€” is what flips the country. Hasan is just the visible 5%. This is also why Pratt's UCLA paper matters. The trait that creates the pseudo-moderate flank is the same trait the activists exploit: ๐ก๐ข๐ ๐ก ๐ž๐ฆ๐ฉ๐š๐ญ๐ก๐ฒ, ๐ฅ๐จ๐ฐ ๐ž๐ฆ๐จ๐ญ๐ข๐จ๐ง๐š๐ฅ ๐ฌ๐ญ๐š๐›๐ข๐ฅ๐ข๐ญ๐ฒ, ๐ก๐ข๐ ๐ก ๐ฏ๐ข๐œ๐ญ๐ข๐ฆ ๐ข๐๐ž๐ง๐ญ๐ข๐ญ๐ฒ, ๐ก๐ข๐ ๐ก ๐ฌ๐ฎ๐ฉ๐ฉ๐จ๐ซ๐ญ ๐Ÿ๐จ๐ซ ๐ฌ๐ข๐ฅ๐ž๐ง๐œ๐ข๐ง๐  ๐จ๐ญ๐ก๐ž๐ซ๐ฌ. That is the recruitable population. That is the lever Hasan and his industry operate. ๐“๐ก๐ž ๐‚๐จ๐ซ๐ซ๐ž๐œ๐ญ ๐…๐ซ๐š๐ฆ๐ž Empathy is not a virtue. It is a ๐ฆ๐จ๐ซ๐š๐ฅ ๐ฌ๐ž๐ง๐ฌ๐ข๐ญ๐ข๐ฏ๐ข๐ญ๐ฒ. Like physical sensitivity to heat, it can produce wisdom or it can produce hysteria, depending entirely on what is paired with it. What converts empathy into wisdom is ๐ฃ๐ฎ๐๐ ๐ฆ๐ž๐ง๐ญ โ€” the willingness to evaluate consequences, to insist on results, to ask whether the policy that "feels compassionate" actually produces outcomes you would call humane in a year, a decade, or a lifetime. What converts empathy into tyranny is the ๐š๐›๐ฌ๐ž๐ง๐œ๐ž of judgment โ€” pure feeling, with no constraint, in service of a binary moral choice imposed by an activated 20%. That is the Democratic Party of 2026. The Pratt scale measures it. The Galam threshold predicts it. Katie Porter demonstrates it. Hasan Piker exploits it. ๐…๐ข๐ฑ ๐ญ๐ก๐ž ๐ฉ๐จ๐ฅ๐ข๐œ๐ฒ. ๐“๐ก๐ž ๐ž๐ฆ๐ฉ๐š๐ญ๐ก๐ฒ ๐ฐ๐ข๐ฅ๐ฅ ๐Ÿ๐จ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐จ๐ฐ.

M.A. Rothman

60,847 ๆฌก่ง‚็œ‹ โ€ข 3 ไธชๆœˆๅ‰

The false prophets of the "New Media" Dear international friends and users of X, We are witnessing a dangerous situation unfold where Romania is being used by popular accounts on the platform to create panic and a false image of what is actually happening in the world. One of those accounts is Mario Nawfal, whom I choose to reference because I met him a few months ago and helped my partner film an interview which now seems incredible to listen to. Everyone in the crypto industry had an image of Mario from the last cycle, and it was interesting to see him pivot to what is now called "New Media" and the success he was able to achieve mainly because of retweets from Elon Musk. During the interview you can watch below, he talks about the high level of attention he receives and the responsibility that comes with it. He admits to taking a side in US politics by supporting Donald Trump because he is a "free speech" advocate, but other than that, he says that his journalism is objective regarding Ukraine/Gaza or any other hot topic around the world. He also speaks highly about posting factual information and not misinformation. Now on the current subject, I feel he is not only taking a side but also spreading significant misinformation about the situation in Romania, and I want to help you understand by clarifying some of these "facts." He refers to Calin Georgescu as "the rightful president of Romania." Let me explain what happened here. Romania had a presidential election at the end of 2024. This type of election in Romania is split into two rounds unless one of the candidates gets more than 50% of the votes. In that case, the candidate wins from the first round and gets to be installed as president. Calin Georgescu won the first round with 22.94% of the votes, which equals 2,120,401 votes out of 9,242,186. The total number of eligible voters on the lists was 18,021,800. By simple math, he obtained the vote of 11.77% of Romanians allowed to vote. Although we can objectively admit he was a favorite for the second round based on these numbers, the election was annulled. The Constitutional Court of Romania first validated the first round and then two days later decided to cancel the election after voting had already started in some areas outside the country where voting takes three days to help Romanian citizens living abroad cast their votes. Romania's president at that time declassified the documents based on which the CCR canceled the elections, and most of the data given to the public was vague. It mentioned interference from another state, social media manipulation, or the cost of the campaign being different than previously declared. Georgescu declared 0$ (ZERO) campaign budget. Now again, even if that would be enough to cancel the election, we all agree that the way the situation unfolded is terrible. It showed the lack of interest from Romanian authorities regarding the elections or, worse, parts of the system that accepted all of this before and during the vote. The root of all problems Much like all over the world, Romania is a country with corrupt politicians. Most of the time in the 35 years of democracy, the same parties ruled the country with one main goal: FILL THE POCKETS WHILE YOU CAN. I'm pretty sure you know what that feels like and thus understand that most of the population is fed up and really wants change. It all erupted in the past 2-3 years with inflation skyrocketing after the pandemic and the cost of living becoming unbearable for some parts of the population. Now here comes Calin Georgescu. A self-portrayed savior of the people and a fighter against the current establishment, he campaigned mainly on social media. Most of his ideology is nationalist, populist, and Christian Orthodox. Most of us had no idea who he was until the very last day before the first round, especially in big cities, and the fact that he won struck the country like a truck. In fact, some of his voters declared that they had no idea who he was, but social media, especially TikTok, portrayed him as the savior, and the other options were people they couldn't vote for anymore. One week before the election, most polls gave Georgescu less than 5% and, in the best cases, 8% of the votes. So you can now understand the surprise we had after the counting was done. After that night, Romanians started to analyze the winner of the first round, and what they found was sometimes scary and other times funnyโ€”ranging from "There are microchips in Pepsi that enter your body like a laptop" to "The moon landing was fake", "5G technology is extremely dangerous" or "Covid is not real, you can't see it." You can find most of his statements on this website with sources: Setting aside some of these statements, which are mostly harmless, he said things like "Romania should look towards Russian wisdom." He even said he would be ready to leave NATO if it felt necessary and criticized the EU and the way it treats Romania. While we can agree on some small details in these claims, you have to understand the raw feeling of Romanians when it comes to Russia after more than 40 years of communism. It's the same in most of the Eastern Bloc, and it is being passed from one generation to another. And it is mostly hate. Romania is not the most developed country in Europe, but it grew a lot after being accepted into NATO and the EU, and you can check the economic data that sustains this. That being said, you can probably understand why some of those statements were labeled as dangerous by parts of the population that doesn't want to accept even a small chance of leaving the EU/NATO and turning toward "Russian wisdom." Back to our current government One thing that actually unites most Romanians these days is their lack of trust in the current political scene. There is a feeling of exhaustion among us, and we just want honest people ruling the country. Probably just a dream, as my personal take is it will never happen and most of this drama is just "circus". It's always the same situation, just different pockets. Our current prime minister, Marcel Ciolacu , was recently investigated by journalists for different private flights paid for by a company that scammed many Romanians in the real estate industry. Of course, some of those involved in the scam are also politicians. So you probably now understand why we also want change. The situation in Romania is wild these days. We do want change; some think Georgescu is that change, some think he is exactly what we don't need. I don't want to make any judgments in this article. I'm trying to show you what I think "New Media" and "Citizen journalism" should be, at least in my view. What I thought Mario also stands for after that interview. In the course of the last few weeks, Mario has posted every step of Georgescu alongside a network of other popular accounts, some of them known for edgy takes or straightforward propaganda, like Jackson Hinkle or Alex Jones. He even came to Romania to interview Calin and George Simion and said he was afraid. Afraid of what? What did he think he did wrong to be afraid of? Nothing. Just the usual recipe of fear to create drama for views. Many Romanians are asking him in replies to actually dig deeper into the matter and to listen to everyone, but he clearly took a side and goes forward. Why? We don't know for sure; there are some people claiming he was paid to campaign for Georgescu, but there is no actual proof of that being the case. Maybe it's because he wants to continue with the whole "Anti-Soros" agenda widely spread even by Elon Musk these days. We don't know, and I don't want to point out a reason without proof or facts. In fact, that's exactly why I wrote this piece. I'm tired of Old Media, and now the concept of "New Media" is failing harder than I would've ever imagined. Misinformation spreads the fastest on the internet, and most people don't take the time to double or triple check. It is exactly the same practice of biased mainstream media, but for the other side. It's no longer "it must be true, I saw it on CNN" but "it must be true, I saw *insert popular account* posted it." We are witnessing a difficult situation, not only in Romania, and I think journalism should evolve into what it should've always been. But this is not the way. We need to present facts and acknowledge the responsibility, especially as our accounts grow bigger. I encourage every one of you to join the conversation and fill the gaps that I might've missed. Bring facts, bring arguments, do not bring insults. I hope I was clear enough and that this helps some of you understand the situation better. I would love to see you help this post get the attention it needs. Thank you, andreibratucu

andreibratucu๐Ÿฆ‡๐Ÿ”Š

67,655 ๆฌก่ง‚็œ‹ โ€ข 1 ๅนดๅ‰

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Fox News last night that the interview he gave for the new documentary film, โ€œThe Age of Disclosure,โ€ about unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) or what used to be called UFOs, was โ€œthree or four years ago when I was in the Senate,โ€ that โ€œI was describing what people had said to me, not things that I have firsthand knowledge of.โ€ He described the โ€œpretty spectacular claimsโ€ made by โ€œpeople with high clearances in governmentโ€ and said, โ€œI just donโ€™t have any independent way to verify everything they said.โ€ And Rubio said the film engaged in a โ€œLittle bit of selective editing, but itโ€™s okay, because, you know, youโ€™re trying to sell a show there.โ€ But Rubio also said, โ€œIโ€™m not disavowingโ€ what he said in the film, and, as both Secretary of State and National Security Advisor (NSA), he should have ways to either verify or debunk the spectacular claims made in โ€œThe Age of Disclosure.โ€ If Rubio feels he lacks the power to verify the claims in the film, then he should explain why. As NSA and Secretary of State, Rubio has unparalleled access to Special Access Program briefings, compartmented intelligence, and interagency assessments comprised of top-secret and classified information. If Rubio cannot determine whether highly cleared officials are telling the truth or lying, that raises questions as troubling as those around UAPs. Many UAPs are, without question, drones and balloons. Rubio said โ€œthe point I was trying to drive atโ€ in โ€œThe Age of Disclosureโ€ was preparedness for anomalous threats. โ€œWeโ€™re looking for missiles and fighter jets, and theyโ€™re coming at us with drones and balloons,โ€ the Secretary of State explained. โ€œI remember when NORAD turned on the radars and started looking for balloons, and all of a sudden, they spotted a bunch of balloons flying overhead, and 90% of them were innocent. A couple of them were Chinese. But we never looked for balloons because our radars arenโ€™t trained for that.โ€ But the Intelligence Community, the Department of Defense, and Congress have rejected the notion that all UAPs are simply advanced Chinese or Russian drones. โ€œNone of these resolved [UAP] cases substantiated advanced foreign adversarial capabilities or breakthrough aerospace technologies,โ€ noted the Department of War last year. In โ€œThe Age of Disclosure,โ€ Rubio, Senator Mike Rounds, Senator Chuck Schumer, and others say the government is hiding UAP information from the public and Congress. Tulsi Gabbard, President Trumpโ€™s Director of National Intelligence, said in August she thought UAPs could represent nonhuman intelligence. โ€œSome of these people were Navy pilots, admirals, generals, whatever,โ€ Rubio told Hannity last night, โ€œthat would come forward and say that there were programs in the US government that not even presidents were made aware of.โ€ Pointing this out is not an appeal to authority but rather the recognition that their security clearances and activities give them access to information the public and most lawmakers do not have. Such secrecy must be justified. Whatever UAPs ultimately are, the possibility, raised again by Rubio in his Hannity interview, that Americaโ€™s President, Secretary of State, Senate-confirmed intelligence heads, and Congressional overseers are being kept in the dark, is troubling. Excess UAP secrecy, as displayed by the redacted documents below, not the claims that UAPs represent nonhuman intelligence, is undermining public trust in government, which is essential for democracy and national security. For years, a large share of the American people have believed the government is hiding what it knows about UAP. Earlier this year, a survey found that 44 percent of Americans โ€œbelieve the US Government is hiding information about the existence of UFOs,โ€ against 28 percent who donโ€™t. Gallup found that 71 and 68 percent of voters believed the government knows โ€œmore about UFOs than it is telling usโ€ in 1996 and 2019. The public is right to believe that the government is hiding what it knows. Dramatic visual proof of this can be seen in the blackened-out pages of the handful of documents that the federal government has released about UAPs in recent years. A February 2020 US Navy UAP briefing document redacts the entire analysis section. The entire โ€œBackground,โ€ โ€œObjective,โ€ and most of the substantive sections of the Charter for the Navyโ€™s UAP Task Force is redacted. Even the guide for how to classify UAPs, โ€œThe UAP Security Classification Guide,โ€ is heavily redacted. I have, for the last several months, urged President Trump and the leaders of the Intelligence Community to lift the redactions on these documents to no avail. Trump has repeatedly said the government is hiding information. In a summer 2020 interview with his son about an alleged UAP crash in Roswell, New Mexico, Trump said, โ€œI wonโ€™t talk to you about what I know about it, but itโ€™s very interesting.โ€ In June of 2024, Trump said that the government has information about UAPs that it has not released. โ€œI have access,โ€ he said, โ€œand I speak to people about it. Iโ€™ve had actually meetings on it. And they will tell you thereโ€™s something going on.โ€ And Trump told Joe Rogan last year that โ€œa lotโ€ about UAPs has not been revealed. Others in the administration point to secrecy. โ€œFrankly, there are a lot more sightings than have been made public,โ€ said CIA Director John Ratcliffe in 2021. John Greenewald, who filed the successful FOIA requests for the redacted UAP documents described above, told Public in 2023, โ€œSecrecy is tightening. If we are in a new level of transparency that some UFO believers want us to believe we are in, then why is that the case?โ€ Whatever the reason for the secrecy, it is time for President Trump to level with the American people about what the government knows about UAPs. The president has significant discretion over what to share with Congress regarding classified national security material. Both Republicans and Democrats in Congress have expressed frustration with the information they have received regarding UAPs. โ€œI donโ€™t really know what is true on this subject,โ€ said Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) at a UAP hearing in September. โ€œBut I do know when weโ€™re being lied to and we are definitely being lied to, thereโ€™s just no doubt about that.โ€ Said Chuck Schumer in 2023, โ€The American public has a right to learn about technologies of unknown origins, non-human intelligence, and unexplainable phenomena. And Rubio said, that same year, โ€œThere is a lot we still donโ€™t know about these UAPs and that is a big problem.โ€ In 1953, the Office of Scientific Intelligence of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) worked with a professor at the California Institute of Technology to create a panel of experts to discredit (โ€œdebunkโ€) sightings out of fear that the Soviets would use public panic and misinformation to undermine trust in the government or distract from actual threats. โ€œThe โ€˜debunkingโ€™ aim would result in a reduction in public interest in โ€˜flying saucersโ€™ which today evokes such a strong psychological reaction,โ€ wrote the reportโ€™s authors. But the report, declassified in 1975 and made public in 2001, simply asserted these risks and offered no evidence of such threats. In fact, while the report expressed concern that โ€œskillful hostile propaganda could induce hysterical behavior and harmful distrust of duly constituted authority,โ€ it also noted that โ€œthe general absence of Russian propaganda based on a subject with so many obvious possibilities for exploitation might indicate a possible Russian official policy.โ€ Despite the โ€œdebunkingโ€ effort, President Jimmy Carter said, while running for office in 1976, โ€œIf I become president, Iโ€™ll make every piece of information this country has about UFO sightings available to the public and the scientists. I am convinced that UFOs exist because Iโ€™ve seen one.โ€ Public distrust of the government is proof that the CIAโ€™s 1950s approach of โ€œdebunkingโ€ has not worked. And anyone who thinks itโ€™s dangerous for current and former government officials to say that UAPs may represent nonhuman intelligence should advocate for greater transparency and disclosure by the government about what it knows.... Please subscribe now to support Public's award-winning investigative journalism, read the full article, and watch the entire video!

Michael Shellenberger

88,792 ๆฌก่ง‚็œ‹ โ€ข 8 ไธชๆœˆๅ‰

A video-text summary of my argument that we now live in the age of TECHNOFEUDALISM (in 16', 2000 words): Wherever we turn, we witness the triumph of capital. Capital has prevailed everywhere: in warehouses, factories, offices, universities, public hospitals, the media โ€“ in space but also in the microcosm of genetic engineering. So, how do I dare claim that capitalism has been killed? By whom? The deliciously ironic answer is that capitalism was killed by its own handโ€ฆ by capital! If I am right, the issue is not what AI will do to us in the future but what has already happened: Capital became so dominant that it mutated into a variant so toxic that, like a stupid virus, it killed off its host, capitalism, replacing it with something far, far worse. This new mutant capital, that killed capitalism, lives in the proverbial cloud โ€“ so, let us call it cloud capital. What is cloud capital? What makes it so different? Cloud capital, of course, does not really live up in the cloud. It lives down on Earth, comprising networked machines, server farms, cell towers, software, AI-driven algorithms โ€“ and of course it lives on our oceansโ€™ floors where untold miles of optic fibre cables rest. Unlike traditional capital, from fishing rods to the steam-engines of the Industrial Revolution to todayโ€™s modern industrial robots that are produced means of production, cloud capital does not produce anything โ€“ it comprises machines manufactured so as to modify human behaviour. Thatโ€™s what Amazonโ€™s Alexa or Googleโ€™s Assistant or Appleโ€™s Siri is: It is a produced means of behavioural modification. It is a machine, a piece of capital, which we train to train us to train it to determine that which we want. And, once we want it, the same networked machine sells it to us, directly, bypassing markets. As if that were not enough, the same machinery succeeds in making us sustain the enormous behavioural modification machine network to which it belongs with our free voluntary labour. We are sustaining it as we post reviews, rate products, upload videos, rants, photos - we help reproduce cloud capital without getting a penny for our labour. In essence, it has turned us into its cloud serfs! Meanwhile, in the factories and the warehouses, where waged proletarians work under increasingly precarious conditions, the same algorithms that modify our behaviour and sell products to us directly โ€“ those algorithms are deployed, usually by digital devices tied to the workersโ€™ wrists, to make proletarians, workers in the warehouses, in the factories work faster, to direct and to monitor them in real time. I started by saying that wherever we turn, we stumble on the triumph of capital. But it is cloud capital that is the real winner. It is amazing how it performs, at once, five roles that used to be beyond capitalโ€™s capacities: Cloud capital grabs our attention. It manufactures our desires. It sells to us, directly, outside any traditional markets, that which is going to satiate the desires it made us have. It drives proletarian labour inside the workplaces. And it elicits massive free labour from us, its cloud-serfs. Is it surprising that the owners of this cloud capital โ€“ letโ€™s call them cloudalists โ€“ have a hitherto undreamt power to extract? To extract gargantuan surplus value from proletarians; untold quantities of free labour from almost everyone; and mind-numbing cloud rents from vassal capitalists โ€“ from sellers? Is it a wonder that they are vastly more powerful than Henry Ford or Rupert Murdoch could ever be? โ€œHang onโ€, I hear you say. โ€œIs Jeff Bezos really different to Henry Ford? Arenโ€™t they all a species of monopoly capitalists? Monopolists?โ€ No, is not a monopolistic capitalist enterprise. The moment you enter you have exited capitalism altogether! Sure enough, the place is teaming with buyers and sellers. So, yes, it is an enormous trading platform but, no, a market it certainly is not! One man called Jeff owns everything. But he is much, much more than a mere monopolist. Jeff doesnโ€™t own the factories that produce the stuff sold on his platform by traditional capitalists who have to use it to ply their trade. What he does own is more important: Jeff owns the algorithm that decides which products you see and which you donโ€™t โ€“ the very algorithm that you have trained to know you perfectly so that it matches youwith a seller, whom it also knows perfectly well, with a view to maximising the probability that every such match, transaction, will generate, for Jeff, the highest rent that Jeff can charge the seller for what you buy: up to 40% of what you pay is pocketed by Jeff, the cloudalist! The mind rebels at the enormity but also the radical novelty of this kind of exploitation: The same algorithm that we help train in real time to know us inside out - that same algorithm both modifies our preferences and administers the selection and delivery of commodities that will satisfy these preferences. If you and I were to type โ€œelectric bicyclesโ€ or โ€œbinocularsโ€ while in you and I would get totally different recommendations. In a traditional market or shopping mall it would be as if you and I were walking next to each other, our eyes trained in the same direction, the same shop window, but we were to see different things depending on what Jeffโ€™s algorithm wants each one of us to see. Everyone navigating around โ€“ except Jeff Bezos of course โ€“ everyone in is wandering around in algorithmically constructed isolation as if in a Panopticon where, unable to see each other, we only see Jeffโ€™s all-seeing algorithm or, more accurately, only what his algorithm allows us to see with a view to maximising his cloud rent โ€“ which is, of course, todayโ€™s version of the ground rent that the feudal lords used to extract from their vassals and their peasants. This is not capitalism. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to technofeudalism! How did cloud capital kill capitalism? How did it rise up? Who paid for it? Capitalism, lest we forget, had two pillars: markets and profit. Of course, markets and profit remain ubiquitous. Nevertheless, cloud capital has evicted both markets and profit from the centre of our socioeconomic system, pushing them out to its margins, and replacing them: Markets, the medium of capitalism, have been replaced by cloud fiefs โ€“ digital trading platforms like or Alibaba which, as we saw, look like, but are not, markets. And Profit? The fuel of capitalism? Well, that has been replaced by its feudal predecessor: rent. But, specifically, a new form of rent, a cloud rent that must be paid for access to those cloud fiefs or digital platforms. But how did cloud capital emerge?It began life in the late 1990s when the original Internet, which was a Commons โ€“ it functioned as a capitalism-free-zone โ€“ that original Internet, Internet 1.0 if you want, was privatised by the emergent Big Tech. Who paid for the trillions it cost to manufacture and to accumulate cloud capital so quickly in the hands of so very few cloudalists? The startling answer is: The G7 countriesโ€™ central banks, mostly! How did that happen? Well, by accident, or โ€“ to be more precise โ€“ byโ€ฆ crisis! After the financial sector collapse of 2008, our central bankers printed up to $35 trillion to bail out the bankers at a time when the governments were subjecting our peoples to harsh austerity. Capitalists were clever enough to foresee that the many would be too impecunious to buy their stuff. So, instead of investing, they took the central bank money to the stock exchange and the bond markets, where they bought shares, bonds โ€“ along with yachts, art, bitcoin, NFTs any โ€˜assetโ€™ they could lay their hands on. The only capitalists who actually invested in capital were Big Tech owners. For example, 9 out of every 10 dollars that went into creating Facebook came from these central bank monies! Thatโ€™s how cloud capital was financed and how the cloudalists became our new ruling class. As a result, real power today resides not with the owners of machinery, buildings, railway and phone networks, industrial robots. These old-fashioned, terrestrial capitalists continue to extract surplus value from waged labour, but they are no longer in charge, as they used to be. They have become vassals in relation to the owners of cloud capital, of the cloudalists. As for the rest of us, we have returned to our former status as serfs, contributing to the wealth and power of the new ruling class with our unpaid labour โ€” in addition to the waged labour we perform, when we get the chance to do it. But surely, someone will say, this is still capitalism, isnโ€™t it? So, you are still unconvinced? I know, it is hard to part with the term, with the word, capitalism. It is not just liberals who think of capitalism like fish think of the water they swim in โ€“ as natural. Socialists too need to feel that our purpose in life, the reason we landed on this Earth, is to overthrow capitalism. The news that I bring that capital beat us to it, and now we have something worse in capitalismโ€™s place, that news is hard to accept. Indeed, it is mostly my fellow-travelling leftist friends who try to dissuade me โ€“ to convince me that, yes, cloud capital may be important but โ€œthis is still capitalism mateโ€. Letโ€™s call it rentier capitalism or monopoly capitalism, they suggest. But that simply will not do! Cloud rent is not like ground rent, because it requires massive investment in new tech. And it is not monopoly rent either, because Bezos and Zuckerberg, instead of monopolising markets to sell their manufactures (like Ford and Eddison did), Bezos and Zuckerberg have replaced markets and have no interest in manufacturing anything (unlike Henry Ford and Thomas Eddison). How about surveillance capitalism? Again, no, it wonโ€™t do. Cloudalists do not simply use algorithms to brain wash us on behalf of advertisers in an otherwise capitalist setting. No, cloud capital reproduces itself through our free-labour, it directly exploits waged labour, and it squeezes cloud rents from vassal capitalists in trading platforms that are not markets. This is not capitalism folks! Any kind of capitalism. But what about the observation that technofeudalism is parasitic on the capitalist sector within it? Yes, it is true. Were the conventional capitalists to die out, cloudalists would perish, unable to skim off cloud rents from the manufacturers. So what? After capitalism overthrew feudalism, capitalists were also parasitic on landowners, in the sense that, without private land producing food, capitalism would wither. Similarly, now: While the traditional capitalist sector feeds technofeudalism, it is cloud capital and cloud rent that dominate. Does it matter whether we call it technofeudalism or some form of capitalism? At this point, it is important to recall Marxโ€™s maxim that the point is not to interpret but to change the world. So, does it matter if this is still capitalism or whether we call it technofeudalism? I think it does. Recognising that our world has become technofeudal helps us grasp the enormity of what it will take to organise the victims of exorbitant power, the exploited who, now, include not only waged labourers but also the hordes of cloud serfs who are reproducing the very cloud capital that keeps them in a state of deepening precarity. The concept of technofeudalism drives home the point that organising auto-workers and nurses, while still essential, is insufficient. It elucidates what it will take to organise the movements against the fossil fuel cartel when our means of communication are run on cloud capital primed to poison public opinion. It explains how the shift to electric cars caused German deindustrialisation, as profits due to precision mechanical engineering are being replaced by rents extracted by owners of the cloud capital keeping tabs on the driversโ€™ routes and in-cabin habits. Elon Muskโ€™s decision to buy Twitter suddenly makes a lot more sense. Twitter for Musk is an interface between his mechanical capital stock at Tesla and SpaceX and cloud capital. The New Cold War between the USA and China, especially after the war in Ukraine, is explained as the repercussion of an underlying clash between two technofeudalisms, one whose cloud rents are denominated in dollars the other in yuan. Isnโ€™t it mindboggling? It took mind-bending scientific breakthroughs, fantastical neural networks, and imagination-defying AI programs to accomplish what? To create a world where, while privatisation and private equity asset-strip all physical wealth around us, cloud capital goes about the business of asset-stripping our brains. To own our minds individually, we must own cloud capital collectively. Once we have reclaimed our minds, we can put them collectively to work out a way to create a new cloud capital commons. It will be damned hard. But itโ€™s the only way we can turn our cloud-based artefacts from a produced means of behaviour modification to a produced means of human collaboration and emancipation. Cloud serfs, cloud proles and cloud vassals of the world, unite! We have nothing to lose but our mind-cloud chains! US Edition: UK Edition: Greek Edition:

Yanis Varoufakis

1,816,715 ๆฌก่ง‚็œ‹ โ€ข 2 ๅนดๅ‰

FULL TRANSCRIPT OF ELON'S CYBERCAB AND ROBOVAN PRESENTATION 00:00 Welcome 01:16 Cybercab & Future of transportation 04:33 Cost 05:53 Timeline 07:13 Self-driving technology 10:05 Inductive charging 10:24 The cities of the future 11:04 Robovan 12:13 Optimus Welcome Welcome to the We, Robot party. We have quite a show for you tonight. I think you're going to like it. As you can see, I just arrived in the Robotaxi, the Cybercab. And there's 20 more where that came from. So they've been traveling, there's no people in them. As you can see, the car is just going by with no people. We have 50 fully autonomous cars here tonight. So you'll see model Y's and the Cybercabs, all driverless. You'll be able to take a ride in the Cybercab. There's no steering wheel or pedals. So I hope this goes well, we'll find out. You see a lot of sci-fi movies where the future is dark and dismal, where it's not a future you want to be in. So, you know, I love Blade Runner, but I don't know if we want that future. We want that duster he's wearing, but not the bleak apocalypse. We want to have a fun, exciting future that, if you could look in a crystal ball and see the future, you'd be like, yes, I wish I could be there now. That's what we want. Cybercab & Future of transportation So, when we think about transport today, there's a lot of pain that we take for granted, that we think is normal. Like having to drive around LA in 3 hours of traffic. Yeah, people that live in LA, I mean, you know, try to get from Pasadena to El Segundo during rush hour. You can fly to another city faster than you can get to LA. And you have to drive the whole way, unless you're in a Tesla. Of course, our Tesla already does quite well at this supervised self-driving. So, supervised full self-driving is actually working quite well. I'm sure there's people in the crowd who are using that. So, we'll move from supervised full self-driving to unsupervised full self-driving where the car, you could fall asleep and wake up at your destination. But there's also a challenge for a lot of people that cars cost too much. I mean, when you factor in everything that goes into a car and the car insurance and the car payments, storage of the car, it's very expensive. You say, like, how many hours a week are cars used? Your average passenger car is only used about 10 hours a week out of 168 hours. So, the vast majority of the time cars are just doing nothing. But if they're autonomous, they could be used, I don't know, five times more, maybe ten times more. So you could actually, for the same car, would have five times as much value, maybe ten times as much value. There's 168 hours in the week, and like I said, only ten of them are used for driving. And then, a bunch of those hours are looking for a parking spot, which can be pretty annoying at times. So, with autonomy, you get your time back. This is a very big deal. So it's not just, it'll save lives, like a lot of lives and prevent injuries. I think we'll see autonomous cars become ten times safer than a human. I mean, if you think of times past where there used to be an elevator operator in every elevator but once in a while, they get tired and accidentally shear somebody in half. Now, we have automated elevators. You just get an elevator and you press a button and you don't even think about it and it just takes you to the floor. And if you did see an elevator operator with a big relay switch, you'd be like, that's weird. That's how cars will be. And it's not just the lives saved in injuries, but if you think about the cumulative time that people spend in a car and the time that they will get back that they can now spend, well, I guess, on their phones or watching a movie or doing work or whatever you want to do you can think of the car in autonomous world as being like just little lounge. You're just sitting in a comfortable little lounge and you can do whatever you want while you're in this comfortable little lounge. And when you get out, you will be at your destination. So, yeah, it's gonna be awesome. Cost So, in fact, I think the cost of autonomous transport will be so low that you can think of it like individualized mass transit. The average cost of a bus per mile for a city, not the ticket price, because that is subsidized, but the average price is about a dollar a mile, whereas the cost of Cybercab we think probably over time, the operating cost is probably going to be around twenty cents a mile. Including taxes and everything else, it probably ends up being 30 or 40 cents a mile. And you will be able to buy one. And we expect the cost to be below $30,000. And I think there'll be an interesting business model where, let's say somebody is an Uber or Lyft driver today where they can actually sort of manage a fleet of cars and like, sort of manage, I don't know, 10, 20 cars and just take care of them. Like a shepherd tends their flock. You have a little flock of cars and you're the shepherd and you take care of your flock of cars. I think that would be pretty cool. I think it's going to be a glorious future. It's going to be really something special. Timeline We do expect actually to start fully autonomous unsupervised FSD in Texas and California next year. And that's obviously, that's with the Model 3 and Model Y. And then we expect to be in production with the Cybercab, which is really highly optimized for autonomous transport in probably, I tend to be a little optimistic with time frames, but in 2026. So, yeah, before 2027, let me put it that way. And we'll make this vehicle in very high volume. But well, before that, you will experience a robotic taxi via the Model 3 and Model Y program and model S and X, too. But the Model 3 and Y will achieve unsupervised full self-driving with permission, in wherever regulators essentially approve it. In the US, and then to follow outside the US. And Cybertruck, too. All our cars are basically, all cars that we make. Let's not get nuanced here. Self-driving technology One of the reasons why the computer can be so much better than a person is that we have millions of cars that are training on driving. It's like living millions of lives simultaneously and seeing very unusual situations that a person in their entire lifetime would not see. With that amount of training data, it's obviously going to be much better than what a human could be because you can't live a million lives. And it's also, it can see in all directions simultaneously and it doesn't get tired or text or any of those things. So, it will naturally be, like I said 10, 20, 30 times safer than a human, just for all those reasons. And I want to emphasize that the solution that we have is, AI and vision. So, there's no expensive equipment needed. The Model 3 and Model Y and S and X that we make today will be capable of full autonomy, unsupervised. And that means that our cost of producing the vehicle is low. Now, we are going to actually over-spec the computer for the Cybercab. So, our AI 5 computer will be somewhat over-spec'd because I think there's actually also an opportunity, sort of like an Amazon Web Services, where if the car is driving for 50 hours a week, there's still over 100 hours left and there's a potential there to have a massive amount of distributed inference compute, where if you've got like a fleet of 100 million vehicles and a kilowatt of efficient inference compute, you have 100 gigawatts of compute, which is really quite substantial. And if it's there, you might as well use it so that I think will make sense. So, our autonomous future is here. As I said, we've got 50 Teslas driving autonomously. We're trying to give you a sense of what cities will be like in the future. And when you get in, you'll see like, it's really quite a wild experience to just be in a car with no steering wheel, no pedals, no controls, and it feels great. So we have enough vehicles here, so everyone should be able to try it out and experience the set that we've built here. It's a very big set. So it's like really we've used I don't know, 20, 30 acres or something like that. It's really big. So, it goes on, the ride's long. And we set it up to feel like a ride, like a park ride. So, it'll be cool and you'll get to experience it tonight. Inductive charging Something we're also doing is and it's really high time we did this is inductive charging. So, the robotaxi has no plug. It just goes over the inductive charger and charges. So, yeah, it's kind of how it should be. The cities of the future One of the things that is really interesting is how will this affect the cities that we live in. And when you drive around a city, or when the car drives you around the city, you'll see there's a lot of parking lots. There's parking lots everywhere, parking garages. What would happen if you have an autonomous world is that you can now turn parking lots into parks. And so, from we're taking the inglot out of parking lot. You're welcome. So, there's a lot of opportunity to create green space in the cities that we live in. So, like, that would be quite fantastic. Robovan Oh, and also, what happens if you need a vehicle that is bigger than a Model Y? The Robovan. We're going to make this and it's going to look like that. Now, can you imagine going down the streets and you see this coming towards you? That'd be sick. So this can carry up to 20 people, and it can also transport goods. You can configure it for goods transport within a city. Or transport of up to 20 people at a time. The Robovan is what's gonna solve for high density. If you want to take a sports team somewhere or you're looking to really get the cost of travel down to, I don't know, 5, 10 cents a mile, then you can use the Robovan. One of the things we want to do, and we've seen this with the Cybertruck, is we want to change the look of the roads. The future should look like the future. Optimus Speaking of robots. Everything we've developed for our cars, the batteries, power electronics, the advanced motors, gearboxes, the software, the AI inference computer, it all actually applies to a humanoid robot. The same techniques. It's just a robot with arms and legs instead of a robot with wheels. We've made a lot of progress with Optimus. And as you can see, we started up with someone in a robot suit. And then, we've progressed dramatically, year after year. So, if you extrapolate this, you're really going to have something spectacular, something that anyone could own. So, you can have your own personal R2-D2-C3PO. And I think at scale, this would cost something like, I don't know, $20,000, $30,000, probably less than a car is my prediction, long-term. It'll take us a minute to get to the long term. But fundamentally, at scale, the Optimus robot, you should be able to buy an Optimus robot for, I think, probably $20,000 to $30,000, long-term. And what can it do? It'll basically do anything you want. It can be a teacher or babysit your kids, it can walk your dog, mow your lawn, get the groceries, just be your friend, serve drinks whatever you can think of, it will do. And, yeah, it's going to be awesome. I think this will be the biggest product ever of any kind, because I think everyone of the 8 billion people of Earth, I think everyone's going to want their Optimus buddy. And there's going to be maybe two. And then, they'll be producing products and services. I predict, actually, provided we address risks of digital superintelligence, 80% probability of good outcome, look on the bright side, the cup is 80% full, the cost of products and services will decline dramatically. And basically, anyone will be able to have any products and services they want. It will be an age of abundance the likes of which people have not, almost no one has envisioned. It will be something special. So now, one of the things we wanted to show tonight was that Optimus is not a canned video. It's not walled off. The Optimus robots will walk among you. Please, please be nice to the Optimus robots. You'll be able to walk right up to them and they'll serve drinks at the bar. I mean, it's a wild experience just to have humanoid robots and they're there, you're just in front of you. So yeah, with that, let's party!

Mario Nawfal

241,051 ๆฌก่ง‚็œ‹ โ€ข 1 ๅนดๅ‰

Operation Odyssey Dawn: The End of Libya and the Destruction of Europe /๐Ÿ“„ On February 15th, during the Obama presidency, the US launched a war on Libya through covert means. Using the Soros network and the city of Benghazi, a bridgehead for the destruction of the entire country, the US ran the most intense propaganda and psychological campaign in history. I must mention that this PSYOP was so intense that yours truly initially fell for it, something I will likely not forgive myself for. I honestly thought Ghaddafi had suddenly went insane, mainly because I had a low opinion of his past antics and I thought the fall of the Mubarak regime was favourable to the world. The right wing supported this war, as they wanted to see more Arab nations destroyed in favour of Israel. The left wing? They were the most disgraceful. All of them sold Libya down the rive and aligned with the "rebels". As John McCain would later reveal, they were just a cutout used for US special forces. Many of the people that now fashion themselves as being against Israel were instrumental in the murder of Libya as a nation. They just never talk about it anymore, but I hope the guilt destroys them one day. The propaganda followed a typical Soros formula. It began with "peaceful protestors", then "Ghaddafi is killing his own people", then "rebels and transitional governments" and finally "air support/no fly zone required". It happened so quickly that it was bewildering for a nation that had remained stable for decades and was the richest in the world in terms of being debt free. Libya had the brightest future of all the countries in Africa and in many senses in the entire world including Asia and Europe. It's perhaps for that reason that Libya was betrayed by almost everyone. The Arab League was the first and the most unprecedented in its dastardly action. There was never a unanimous against Libya, Syria and Algeria had vetoed action against Libya. This was a rule in that body of 22 nations, but it was forced through anyway. This became UNSC resolution 1973. Neither Russia nor China vetoed this bill. France under the covertly Jewish president Sarkozy (who had once claimed that all of Europe must become a mixed race, publicly), led the charge, bombing Libya before an agreed upon ceasefire deadline. Even Palestine* voted against Libya. It seemed the entire world was in agreement about Libya over a complete lie created by the United States and Israel. The world thought Ghaddafi was unpopular but nothing could be further from the proof. It was the most bastardly thing the world would do, and in a sense, for what was done to Libya the entire world deserves to be destroyed. China had to move 75 companies out of Libya, and 36,000 Chinese workers, losing North Africa in one single month. The Chinese chickened out and didn't protect Libya, and this eventually led to the downfall of the Hu Jintao technocratic regime. The reports of 10s of thousands dying in Libya were lies, amplified by videos uploaded on YouTube and Twitter. It was a full production of lies where rabid Arab youths would destroy their own nation for some pocket money from Soros. Browns would repeat these lies and cash in on them, pretending to be oppressed while being the oppressors of their own people. In a sense calling it oppression is a moral failing -- it was a murder, of an entire nation. You see, the bombing campaign was not merely counter-force. NATO (which had quickly run out of ammunition days into the war) and the US aimed to kill the nation itself with counter-value attacks. Power stations were destroyed. The worst crime was Libya's water: Ghaddafi's Great Man-Made River, a 2800km artificial river project, was bombed until it was damaged. Then the factories that were repairing it throughout the war were destroyed. NATO still denies this crime but anyone can confirm it. Tripoli was taken before the war was over, but Ghaddafi's forces never stopped fighting. The operation launched on Tripoli was called Mermaid Dawn, or Operation Sirens (according to Pepe Escobar). The reason for the naming will be made clear soon, for now let's continue with the chronology of the war and the crimes to follow. Ghaddafi's hometown of Sirte wasn't merely bombed to dust, it was literally salted with the water of the Mediterranean sea. The reason why Sirte was flooded with salt water and destroyed was because NATO couldn't take it using ground forces. Ghaddafi's sons and their special forces were putting up a perfect defence in this city with its underground facilities filled with enough weapons to fight for an entire decade. But Ghaddafi failed to account for the possibility that he would lose the air and sea, and didn't create a run off system that would allow water to leave the bunkers. Losing in Sirte, Ghaddafi was ready to surrender, but NATO wanted him dead. They wanted even the possibility of Libya rising again to be removed from any person's mind. So they murdered him in the most brutal and disgusting manner. He died a martyr for his nation, yet the brown filth who murdered him didn't deserve a martyr, they deserved annihilation. No crime that could be done, other than the use of nuclear weapons, was done to Libya. If you understood what kind of country was destroyed (watch the attached video it will break your heart) you will see what a crime this was, for a world filled with the filthiest nations and their filthiest people (almost everywhere) to come together to destroy the one country with a chance at a debt free existence... how should the world pay for this crime? As it were, the punishment and the crime came together as a single package within the war. In any case in 2011, it was claimed the war was over, but the war continues today as the nation is split into three. In the remains of the outskirts of Sirte, the "rebels" and "peaceful protestors" would use chemical weapons to kill other tribes. They then transported these weapons to Syria where they were used in a false flag to implicate the Syrian Arab Army and Assad. As the dust settled around Libya, Europe would quickly be haunted by one of Ghaddafi's last warnings: If he falls Europe will become Black. Name of Operations Reveal Intent With Libya destroyed, the remains of the country would quickly become a rampart for economic "refugees" -- African browns, blacks and other unwanted people flooding into Europe to r*pe, pillage and steal its wealth. You would think that this was an unintended consequence of the war, but ... the names of the operation reveal the exact intent of those who planned it, namely Obama and Sarkozy: the target was Europe itself. For this plan to work, there could be no country where Libya was, it had to be destroyed so that no one could control the Mediterranean sea. Libya, and later Syria, were the modern day Troys. Troy protected the Mediterranean civilizations from Asia. It's fall happened almost simultaneously with the rise of the sea peoples. Homer's Odyssey speaks of the ruin the Mycenaeans and other factions of proto-Greek states after their war on Troy. It was a pyrrhic victory and all that remained of rich civilizations destroyed by the sea peoples. Is it any wonder that that the Pentagon chose to call it Operation Odyssey Dawn? They claim it's completely random -- which by the way is a lie -- but then, in the later chapters of Odyssey, sirens aka mermaids would appear. How can they also accidentally call the sacking of Tripoli Operation Mermaid Dawn/Operation Sirens? The intent was clear and the results also. Due to the fall of Libya and now the similarly catastrophic destruction of Syria, more than 5 million Asians and Africans have been flowing into Europe illegally. I would say even more "legally" using this inflow as a disguise. Europe is being destroyed using the most potent chain reaction known to mankind: foreigners multiplying in your own country and eating away at its boundaries and interiors. Today all right wing parties allow uncontrolled mass migration through "legal" means. All left wing parties, in addition to this "legal" migration also disguise their action as charitable through the flow of illegal migration. People all over Europe complain and hate the flow of migrants. I do too -- but let's be honest about something. These inflows wouldn't have been possible with the "original sin" of destroying Libya. Nothing has been done to make amends and atone for what was done to Libya. If anything Libya is being destroyed more and more every day and the fire is spreading. Sudan voted against Ghaddafi. Today the UAE flows masses of weapons from Libya into Chad to be used to destroy Sudan. Hamas lied about Ghaddafi. Now its leadership has been wiped out and Gaza is rubble. China abandoned Ghaddafi. Now its economy is held under a double sided siege with the US (and Israel which it still supports). Russia abandoned Ghaddafi at the drop of the hat. Now Russia's infrastructure is facing countervalue attacks and its military has been facing ruthless counterforce attacks from NATO. The Arabs which conspired against Libya are all going to be destroyed soon as all waterways into their countries are closed by Iran. Iran itself, which lied about Ghaddafi (over his own "original sin" -- the murder and disappearance of Musa Sadr), is hanging on by a thread and is being betrayed by those on its interior. But what will happen next to the US and Europe for what they've done to Libya? It doesn't take a genius to guess, and only the nations that refused to participate are ironically doing fine. Poland, on April 2011, refused to join the coalition against Libya. Today, that nation is the greatest success in Europe and has the lowest problem with unwanted invasive species (migrants). Germany pretended to be against the war as well, but was the main source of weapons and ammunition against Libya. As we face the abyss of societal collapse, it's important to remember our own crimes against peace which destroyed a peaceful and successful nation. The very least we can all do is spread the word, not only about the crime itself, but the victim. The beautiful country, Libya, that was completely destroyed by our participation in a PSYOP and inaction against the criminals who run our nations. On my part, after witnessing how quickly the mass formation psychosis, which I unfortunately participated in at least in words written on BBSes of the old internet, my own choice of atonement was ensuring this kind of war never happens to another country again. It is for that reason I had turned my attention to Syria back in 2011. What will you do? /End [* As an aside, it wasn't just the PLO. Hamas would then condemn Ghaddafi and the Palestinian supporters would join its chorus. Later, seeing the "success" in Libya, Hamas decided to join the war against Syria and didn't just provide words but material and ideological support against the country. I commented at the time (2012) that we will soon see Gaza reduced to rubble as a result of this immoral act.]

Korobochka (ใ‚ณใƒญใƒœ) ๐Ÿ‡ฆ๐Ÿ‡บโœ๏ธ๐Ÿ‡ท๐Ÿ‡บ

136,720 ๆฌก่ง‚็œ‹ โ€ข 4 ๅคฉๅ‰

Iโ€™m seeing a lot of questions on the launch of Chinaโ€™s Changโ€™e 6 mission yesterday to get samples - for the first time - from the far side of the moon. We donโ€™t know (afaik) why specifically theyโ€™re doing that, but we have a pretty good idea what grand vision China is working towards with their space program. How? From this 2022 video by Chas Freeman (former Assistant Secretary of Defense and Nixon's interpreter during his era-defining 1972 China visit), who imho is undoubtedly one of the most knowledgeable former US officials on China. He says that according to his own discussions with people running Chinaโ€™s space program, theyโ€™re following the vision described in the book "The high frontier" by Gerard K. O'Neill, which Freeman says has "become the bible of the Chinese space program". I read the book. So what vision does it describe? The book was written in 1976 by O'Neill who was a professor of physics at Princeton University. He also founded the Space Studies Institute, an organization devoted to funding research into space manufacturing and colonization. In other words, he knew his stuff. The book makes the very fair point that we have massive resource constraints on earth, especially given the growing population. He estimated in 1976 that we should be "about six and a half billion people in the year 2000", and we were 6.114 billion back then so he was pretty prescient. He estimates that these constraints will progressively give rise to more and more social tensions as the growing earth population competes for our limited resources as well as faces global problems like climate change. In his view, dealing with this will either require "an authoritarian regime capable of mounting the immense task of social reorganization needed to escape catastrophe" or, alternatively, โ€œmankind would [need to adopt] a static society [that would be] forced in self-defense to suppress new ideas". The 3rd alternative is of course the colonization of space. The most interesting aspect of the book is that he claims everything he writes is feasible with knowledge and technology that already existed in the late 70s. In short he calls for the establishment of large human habitats in the Earth-Moon system, located at stable Lagrange points ("parking spots" in space where gravity from different spatial bodies cancel each other out). In particular he developed the concept of what's known today as the "O'Neill cylinder" which he says "could support quite easily a population of ten million people, growing its food in agricultural cylinders near but outside the main habitat". Energy-wise, it'd simply make use of solar energy via a system of mirrors. As he describes it: "the concentration of the unvarying, intense sunlight of space by very lightweight, inexpensive mirrors can provide all the energy that industry will ever need [...] at a fraction of a cent per kilowatt-hour". He envisages building these habitats with material from the moon, shot into space via "mass drivers", a form of electromagnetic catapult. Also "the habitats would have artificial gravity similar as that of earth by rotating about twenty-eight times an hourโ€, but he also envisages low-gravity areas, especially for recreational activities such as swimming pools or dancing representations. To trade with earth, he develops the idea of beaming solar power back to earth via "microwave from solar power stations in orbit". As he describes it "the microwave beam would arrive at Earth with a beam width of about seven kilometers. Its intensity would be modest, less than half that of sunlight. In contrast to sunlight, though, it would be there all the time, even at night or in clouds or rain, and it would be in a form ready for conversion to DC current with a loss of only 10 percent. The areas receiving these beamsโ€™ output on Earth would be fenced, and outside the fence the intensity of microwave radiation would be no higher than outside a microwave oven with the door closed. He estimates that if "Satellite Solar Power Stations (SSPS) were to become the sole source of electric energy in the United States in the year 2000, the land area necessary for the SSPS antennas would still be only 0.2 percent of that of the continental United States". In short, the establishment of space colonies could lead to the fulfillment of a good share of Earth's energy needs. Last but not least he describes life in space habitats as better than that of earth, largely thanks to the level of control we'd have over the environment (total climate control which would enable an abundance of food and no natural disaster) as well as unlimited cheap energy. To conclude, Chas Freeman typically really knows his stuff when it comes to China and heโ€™s very intellectually honest (a rare trait among US officials) so I have no doubt he tells the truth when he says the Chinese told him that was the vision. And China famously thinks very big and very long term so it would be quite like them to go for something like this. There are also quite a few tangible signs that China is working towards that vision. See for instance this November 2022 news where โ€œChinaโ€™s space station will join a project to collect solar power from space and send it to Earth in a high-energy microwave beamโ€: Thatโ€™s exactly Oโ€™Neillโ€™s vision! Or check this October 2022 news that says China is developing new "electromagnetic sledges" that can propel a carriage weighing a few tonnes to a record speed, with a key application for this being โ€œaerospaceโ€: Remember: Oโ€™Neillโ€™s vision is to build his habitats with material from the moon, shot into space via "mass drivers", a form of electromagnetic catapult. So there you goโ€ฆ Or also the fact that the Chinese will build, together with the Russians, a moon base - planned for 2028 - powered by a โ€œspace nuclear reactorโ€ thatโ€™s already been developed (on Earth) and has passed review by Chinaโ€™s Ministry of Science: The space nuclear reactor can generate 1MW of electricity, enough to power 10 International Space Stations. Enough power, maybe, to undertake mining activity and power an electromagnetic catapultโ€ฆ After visions change, the world changes, so itโ€™s also possible that Chinaโ€™s view on what they want to do has evolved. In any case, Chas Freeman is right that Chinaโ€™s motivation for all its initiatives in space canโ€™t just be to โ€œboldly explore where no-one has been beforeโ€, they have to be working towards something. And Freeman is also absolutely right to lament that the U.S. decided to ban any cooperation in space with the Chinese. Those endeavors are something that could have been jointly developed as a multilateral effort to unite us all as a speciesโ€ฆ Instead China is now forced to go at it alone with Russia and we face a future where our petty divisions on Earth will be carried with us to spaceโ€ฆ

Arnaud Bertrand

265,181 ๆฌก่ง‚็œ‹ โ€ข 2 ๅนดๅ‰

"900,000 BARRELS JUST ARRIVED IN JAPAN": President Trump's Truth Social Post Lands as Beijing's Hormuz Strategy Officially Implodes โ€” Inside the Tanker That Just Rewrote the Indo-Pacific Energy Map The M/V Otis didn't just dock in Tokyo Bay. It docked on top of the CCP's entire wedge-strategy thesis. "HUGE MOMENT! Asia is getting their oil from the United States now. 900,000 barrels just arrived in Japan. America will lead the charge on oil dominance." President Trump's post โ€” accompanied by an ANN News screenshot of an American crude tanker easing into Tokyo Bay at dawn โ€” is doing the kind of work that ten policy white papers cannot. It is taking a moment of strategic transformation and stamping it onto the public consciousness in a single image: U.S. oil. Japanese port. Middle East bypassed. And for once, the substance behind the showmanship checks out. What Actually Happened in Tokyo Bay The tanker is the Suezmax-class M/V Otis (IMO 9408217). On the morning of Sunday, April 26, she eased up to an offshore jetty in Tokyo Bay carrying approximately 910,000 barrels of Texas light crude oil bound for a refinery in Chiba Prefecture. The cargo was transferred through an undersea pipeline to a facility operated by Cosmo Oil, a subsidiary of Cosmo Energy Holdings, where it will be processed into petroleum products including gasoline for domestic distribution. The voyage itself is the part that matters strategically. The Otis loaded in Texas on March 22 and completed a roughly 35-day voyage through the Panama Canal โ€” one of the largest direct U.S. crude deliveries to Japan in years. The alternative routing โ€” Cape of Good Hope, which takes about 55 days โ€” was bypassed in favor of the Panama Canal, cutting transit time by roughly 20 days. This is the operational answer to a question Beijing assumed had no answer: Can American crude actually reach Japanese refineries fast enough, in sufficient volume, to matter when Hormuz is contested? The Otis is the receipt. The Real Number Is Not 910,000. It's 4x. A single tanker, as honest reporting from noted, amounts to less than one day's consumption in Japan. Taken in isolation, 910,000 barrels is a symbol, not a strategy. The strategy lives in the trendline. According to Japanese government documents reviewed by Reuters, Japanese imports of U.S. crude oil for May will be four times higher than they were a year earlier โ€” up from a May 2025 baseline of 189,000 barrels daily, which represented about 8% of total imports that month. Tokyo also expects that by May, it will have secured half of its imports from suppliers outside the Middle East, with the United States the largest among those alternative suppliers, joined by Malaysia, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Nigeria, and Angola. For a country that historically sourced as much as 95% of its oil from the Middle East, this is the fastest reorientation of a G7 energy supply chain in the post-Cold War era. The Otis is the first tanker in a queue, not the last. The $56 Billion Bet Behind the Tanker None of this is happening on autopilot. On March 14, at the Asia-Pacific Energy Security Forum in Tokyo, Japan signed agreements worth up to $56 billion with the United States covering oil, natural gas, and LNG purchases and investments โ€” sitting inside the broader framework from the 2025 U.S.-Japan trade agreement, under which Japan pledged $550 billion in U.S. investments, with energy as a key pillar. Five days later, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi โ€” Japan's first woman prime minister and one of the most China-skeptical leaders Tokyo has produced in a generation โ€” walked into the Oval Office and, in front of cameras, embraced President Trump. The visit had a few rough edges: Trump's unprompted Pearl Harbor reference, made when a Japanese reporter asked why allies hadn't been warned about the February 28 strike on Iran, appeared to take Takaichi aback. But on substance the meeting did exactly what an alliance summit is supposed to do โ€” it pre-positioned the energy pivot the Otis would later make material. By May 19, that pivot had widened into a trilateral. In Seoul, President Lee Jae-myung and Prime Minister Takaichi agreed to expand LNG cooperation under the bilateral Supply and Demand Cooperation Agreement signed in March, and to deepen information sharing and communication channels related to crude oil supply, demand, and stockpiling โ€” explicitly framed by Seoul as a vehicle for South Koreaโ€“Japan and South Koreaโ€“U.S.โ€“Japan cooperation for regional peace and stability. The Hormuz shock was supposed to fracture this triangle. Instead, it welded it. What Beijing Got Wrong โ€” And Why It Matters The Chinese Communist Party's strategic miscalculation in the Hormuz file was not merely tactical. It was conceptual. For roughly a decade, Beijing's working thesis on Asian energy security has been that the United States cannot credibly underwrite the region from outside the Persian Gulf, and that any Middle East flashpoint would therefore translate into political leverage for China โ€” the buyer of last resort with the deepest stockpiles, the longest supply contracts, and the most flexible sanctions tolerance. The thesis has just failed three stress tests at once. First, the logistics held. Alaskan crude can reach Japanese refineries via Pacific routes about a week faster than Middle Eastern shipments, and Texas crude via Panama โ€” as the Otis proved โ€” gets there in 35 days. Tokyo is now actively weighing expanded Alaskan imports and a joint U.S.-Japan strategic crude reserve arrangement. Second, the political will held. Takaichi did not hedge. She unilaterally began releasing 15 days' worth of private-sector reserves from March 16, followed by a month's worth of state-held oil, and committed Japan to participating in the IEA's coordinated 400-million-barrel release, with Japan contributing 80 million barrels โ€” 54 million in crude and 26 million in oil products. Third โ€” and most damaging to Beijing's strategic narrative โ€” China's own position deteriorated. While Tokyo was diversifying westward across the Pacific, Iran continued sending the bulk of the crude still moving โ€” roughly 1.22 million barrels per day โ€” to China, after a record 2.16 million bpd in February that was entirely destined for Beijing as it amassed reserves. The CCP's "energy security" turned out to be a deeper handcuff to a sanctioned, militarily degraded supplier whose primary export terminal โ€” Kharg Island, the departure point for roughly 90% of Iran's crude exports โ€” has been struck by U.S. forces. Beijing did not de-risk. It concentrated risk. And when Trump publicly pressured Beijing to help secure Hormuz on the grounds that 90% of Chinese oil flowed through it, Chinese state spokespeople were reduced to publicly emphasizing that the country had "enough" energy reserves โ€” an answer that managed to be both defensive and, in strategic terms, an admission. The Honest Caveats Serious analysis requires acknowledging what the headline glosses over. The Otis cargo is, by Japan's own ministry, less than one day's consumption. U.S. crude exports cannot fully substitute for Middle Eastern barrels: industry analysts cited by Axios put the realistic monthly ceiling for U.S. crude exports in the 5.5 million bpd range, with Gulf Coast port and terminal capacity acting as a hard infrastructure limit. The Iran war has been genuinely costly โ€” Brent crude topped $110 a barrel in late March before retreating to roughly $98 by late May โ€” and the global growth picture has been marked down accordingly. There are also legitimate technical questions about crude grade compatibility (U.S. light sweet vs. Middle Eastern medium sour) that Japanese refineries will need to manage. The diversification away from Hormuz is real, but it is not free, not frictionless, and not complete. These caveats sharpen the conclusion. They do not invert it. The Strategic Bottom Line Three months ago, the Hormuz file was supposed to be the lever that pried Tokyo loose from Washington. The arithmetic looked plausible on paper: Japan and South Korea are the third- and fourth-largest destinations for crude moving through the Strait of Hormuz, behind only China and India. Pain there should, in theory, have created political space for Beijing. It didn't. The pain became the catalyst. A $56 billion energy package. A four-fold surge in U.S. crude bound for Japanese refineries. A Suezmax tanker easing into Tokyo Bay at dawn carrying 910,000 barrels from Texas. A trilateral Tokyoโ€“Seoulโ€“Washington cooperation framework formalized in the middle of a war Beijing was counting on to crack it. There is a lesson here for anyone still treating CCP economic statecraft as inevitable: leverage that depends on your rival having no alternative evaporates the moment one is built. Tokyo built one. Washington underwrote it. Trump is now broadcasting it. And the manifests in Yokohama harbor are the proof. The alliance held. The wedge failed. The map has been redrawn โ€” and the next tanker is already loading. Original article by me Aric Chen. Views are my own โ€” welcome to discuss! ยฉ 2026 Aric Chen. All rights reserved. Any unauthorized use will be reported under the DMCA.

Aric Chen

17,007 ๆฌก่ง‚็œ‹ โ€ข 2 ไธชๆœˆๅ‰

"I have graphs, I've looked at the Google Analytics, the data does not lie. Every single time, starting in April 2024, that Jen McCabe would become the subject of public attention --It happens at specific discrete moments on the timeline-- you see a bump in the attention paid to Lindsey Gaetani." "And there's no doubt in my mind that Brian Tully's MSP unit --when they had Michael Morrissey make that video, when McCabe's friends or family or whatever, when they all got him to make that video, and that didn't work, and when Morrissey had to recuse, when things got so bad that they had no other out, and the TurtleRiders would not pay attention to anyone but those Karen Read and John O'Keefe witnesses-- Tully, Kate Peter and their people said, "all right, we're left with no other option. Lindsey Gaetani looks like a good distraction. Let's release her phone." And then that cycle repeated over and over and over and over again. And Lindsey's not the only one who's been subject to this. You wanna talk about what's going on to Estey? Even what's going on with Deanna? With Meredith?" TRANSCRIPT: And people wonder why I get so passionate about this. This is nothing I haven't talked about before, but you are not gonna tell me, me, of all people --I'm not gonna speak for Lindsey-- but you are not gonna tell me that the release of Lindsey Gaetani's cell phone extraction did not have serious, serious ramifications. Like, I can't even conceptualize what the impact was on Lindsey and her family's life. I don't think my life was ever the same again after April of 2024. As traumatized as I was from that December 2023 court hearing, what happened in April of 2024 was the worst thing that I have ever seen happen to any human being in my entire life. [Speaking to chat] Oh, hi Lindsey, how are you? I've just never seen anything that horrific, the leak of that cell phone extraction, the impact that it had, the fact that no one even understood how severe it was because people were so distracted by the polemics of it. People were so "excited" to be able to smear Lindsey and the distraction was so powerful that no one asked, one, why did this happen? Or two, what was the impact? And that's what really got me so passionate and furious about this. It wasn't an issue of substantive guilt or innocence about anyone. It was that I was seeing the same exact stuff happen in this situation to people without political connections that I saw happen to the staff of the CCC when really powerful men started getting very, very, very close to each other in positions of power and then when they would do bad things to women, they would just talk to each other. One guy would run the HR department, the other guy would run the executive director position, and somebody else would have a connection to the appointing authority. And so any complaint would just be what's called "caught and killed." And I said, there is no way that this is gonna happen again. When it was happening in the CCC, it was an administrative regulatory agency. At least there was some sort of semblance of check and balance. It wasn't egregious because everyone had a lot of influence, even the people who were staffers. This situation, we had state police officers, people who, if you were listening to the just the narrative of the people who were supporting the Justice for John O'Keefe movement, you would think that Michael Proctor's infallible. You would think Brian Tully's infallible. You would think Kate Peter's infallible, which means incapable of fault. That's nonsense. I'm telling you right now, that's nonsense, and that's why it was so easy for this stuff to manifest. And that's why I became so personally concerned. Forget about what developed from April to April of 2024 until now. That's why I was so upset because I watched what happened from December of 2023 through to April of 2024. And that enough was so egregious, so wrong, such an abuse of trust, such an abuse of the justice system that I said, there is no way that I can just stand by and be apathetic about this, no matter what the price, no matter what the obstacles, no matter what the pressures. And I can't tell you how bad it was --it tore families apart, these cases-- if you didn't live through it. It tore communities apart. I don't believe anyone in Massachusetts around this area, 128 or Dedham or whatever, was able to live a life that was not impacted in some way by this case. Okay, these cases, the TurtleBoy case, Karen Read case, et cetera, et cetera. It frustrates me to no end that somehow within that high-profile situation, there were people who started to control the narrative because they had things to hide. And that's why I started this space, because I truly believe that the real secrets lying beneath what was really going on with Michael Proctor and Brian Tully and Kate Peter and the PI, Marty Kraft and Jen McCabe and Yuri Bukhenik and John Fanning and Nick Guarino. What I really believe was going on was that they were worried that the attention brought onto that unit by the John O'Keefe and Karen Read case was gonna spill their secrets about Birchmore. And it led them to double down and commit even more egregious acts in the context of some of this other behavior, like leaking Lindsey Gaetani's cell phone extraction. And that's, again, you wanna talk about the timeline from April 2024 until now, we can do that too. But what I'll tell you is the story ends up being the same. I have graphs, I've looked at the Google Analytics, the data does not lie. Every single time starting in April 2024, that Jen McCabe would become the subject of public attention. It happens at specific, specific discrete moments on the timeline. You see a bump in the attention paid to Lindsey. And there's no doubt in my mind that this unit, when they had Michael Morrissey make that video, when McCabe's friends or family or whatever, when they all got him to make that video, and that didn't work. When Morrissey had to recuse, when things got so bad that they had no other out and the TurtleRiders would not pay attention to anyone but those Karen Read and John O'Keefe witnesses, Tully and his people said, "all right, we're left with no other option. Lindsey Gaetani looks like a good distraction. Let's release her phone." And then that cycle repeated over and over and over and over again. And Lindsey's not the only one who's been subject to this. You wanna talk about what's going on to Estey? Even what's going on with Deanna? With Meredith? What's going on with a lot of these people, right? There were PIs and moles in the internet saying that Lindsey was that and separating that. There were PIs, moles and various people in the end, just sort of people who were trying to either support Karen or support a movement that they could believe in or whatever it was, who got exploited, who got ran by various people for intel purposes to feed information back to their various handlers. And when they became expendable, they got burned. You watch, look at these emails sent to all these people's schools, the mass emails. That can't be a coincidence. Whoever it benefits can't be a coincidence, all right? It's a coordinated tactic. It's designed to put public attention on very specific people when otherwise damaging information gets released. And what have we seen over the past, let's say from April 2024 until now, what have we seen? That over and over and over again, all right? Every time something would happen, there'd be a new distraction. And then as we got through the end of the Karen Read and John O'Keefe case, what did we see? Yes, there were some real, real secrets lying beneath in terms of this case. And I mean it, I mean it with every bone and fiber in my towel body. There were secrets about the Birchmore case. There were secrets about that phone extraction. There were secrets about the inside baseball and the communications between Tully and Kate and Tully and Jen McCabe and Michael Morrissey and Kate and Michael Morrissey and Jen McCabe. And as it all started to come out and as it crescendoed folks over the past few months to the point where Michael Proctor's own attorney was basically making misrepresentations to the court about the existence of 12 years of cell phone records. When he had Kate Peter deleting evidence from Google Drives that were submitted as formal records to grand juries in the Kearney proceedings. When you have a special prosecutor statute that is so broken, it allows a DA rather than complying with the court order to appoint a new special prosecutor to just no-cross cases. So that stuff like what we've been talking about doesn't come out. It's indefensible. But what is the karmic justice here? It is that for whatever reason, Michael Proctor's cell phone records which I truly believe were captured and swept up by the feds during their federal probe of either Farwell or Tully's unit or John O'Keefe's death, whatever it was, exposing a lot of this. It's not just the Rule 14 discovery related to Kate Peter and otherwise and Tully that was turned over in the Aidan Kearney case, the 5,000 pages of material. Initially 4,000 pages of it was mysteriously just blank. It's not just that folks. It's also the, hey, Michael Proctor's cell phone until months ago, August of 2025 was hidden from the public. It was hidden from criminal defendants until someone somewhere must have informed Michael Proctor that a full copy of that cell phone already existed so there was no point in him continuing to hide it. What does this speak to? Well, it speaks to why I started this space today because in light of everything I just laid out from memory. I wanted to see if there was a single person who would be willing to stand up here and defend Michael Proctor's state police unit, Ryan Tully, John Fanning, Yuri Bukhenik, any of them or Kate Peter or Jen McCabe. Not because of their actions necessarily in the John O'Keefe and Karen Read case but because of everything I just laid out and the silence would let it speak volumes because how are you possibly going to counter any of that? This is what I'm doing from memory sitting here while trying to challenge people to a debate. That is just a part of the historical record. I cannot put into words how much more expansive in scope some of this story is and it's not any one person's story to tell. Let me also go on a rant about this. I'm getting so frustrated with the possessive approach that some people take to some of this coverage. Do you care about what was done to the most vulnerable? I don't care if you think of Karen as vulnerable, Lindsey is vulnerable, Sandra Birchmore is vulnerable, whoever you think of as vulnerable. Do you care about what happened to them? Do you care about righting the wrongs? Do you care about actually talking about the misconduct or are you trying to make a polemical point in furtherance of some specific platform that either you run or you support? What are you trying to accomplish? And I think a lot of us recently have been forced to have some very difficult moral reckoning. Okay, because a lot of us were tricked. I felt absolutely tricked into supporting Michael Proctor. If I knew, I'm not saying about the merits of the John O'Keefe investigation. If I knew then, back in 2023, 2024, what I know now about what's on that phone and about what that unit was willing to do, I never would have supported them. We supported Lindsey, but I never would have supported that unit. I'm sorry. Nope, never would have done it. And that's why I want to talk about people became very possessive about coverage of this case. Reporters are supposed to fade into the background. It's not supposed to be about us. Yes, maybe you have some skills. The reporter, people are interested. You use those skills to get a following so you can tell a story and get the facts out there, but it's not supposed to be about us. If a reporter is the centerpiece of a story, they have failed. Okay, you just blend in the background. We make sure that the people who are the most harmed, their voices are centered. And then we make sure these predatory vultures, like Kate Peter, are unable to manipulate public narratives to protect entrenched systemic power structures. That's what it's all about. So for me, that's why I get so frustrated. That's why I wanted to do this space because I wanted to make a point that when forced to actually debate on merit, all the propaganda mouthpieces will run from the chance. They're happy to get up and shit talk other people when it's a space they control, and they don't have to address the merits. But you put them in a position where they don't control the space and they're forced to debate on merit and they'll run from it. So in some sense, I made my point. But I also think it's an important exercise in telling this story, in explaining where I'm coming from. I think there are a lot of us that are all coming to the same position, which is it doesn't matter what various camp we may have been in or what not. We're not defined by that. We are just individual humans who have a bunch of views on different cases. And at the end of the day, a lot of us, more so, I think than people realize, actually care about systemic reform. We're not in it to protect Kate Peter or Jen McCabe or Brian Tully or anybody. We're here to hold people to equal standards and ask that the justice system do the same. And I think that's a noble goal. That's something that I can believe in. I wish people would be willing to debate it, though. It frustrates me. It really frustrates me. And, you know, maybe that's the nature of it. Maybe it's that making this point requires showing the litany of evidence, showing the sort of timeline, showing the overlapping concentric social circles, talking about these people, talking about what they did, talking about the implications, talking about where this is going. That's what cuts out the propaganda. To me, everyone is capable of fault. I said this the other day. If there are people out there in your orbit who are telling you that they are incapable of fault, they're a threat to the United States. They're the most dangerous, pernicious force we can imagine. Everyone's capable of fault. And we should look to the people who, in spite of their faults, try to leave the world a better place than what they found when they arrived. I think there are those of us. In spite of absolutely inculcating incredible odds who have somehow managed to get to a point where we've centered the voices, we're not there yet, where we're centering the voices who are actually impacted by all this. And if that happens, mark my words, it will not be because of any large media platforms or networks or anything. It will be in spite of them. It will be in spite of their impact inside dealing in spite of the documentary contracts, in spite of the news networks. It will be because a small group of well-meaning people were willing to band together and say, everything else aside, we can stand behind what's right. It may not be a form of right that we all agree on, but starting from that place, instead of from a place of hatred or otherwise, is a good step. I don't know where this is going. I don't know where it's going. I know that no one will stand up here and defend Kate Peter and Brian Tully, at least in a debate with me where I control the playing field. Can you blame them? But I don't know where this is going. You're on my prediction. As someone who's, I think I've not lived this as much as some other people, but I've lived it a lot. It's been a lot. And I'm never gonna understand the impact that this had on the people who had directly impacted, but it's been a lot on a lot of people. The story has impacted many lives. Even myself, with the perspective I have, kind of sitting back here on my veranda, you can call me Thomas Jefferson Towel. I don't have any hemp though, or do I? Sitting on my veranda, kind of looking forward, right here, all right? I got my public records request back today. I know when a public records request denial is like, oh, we want to stonewall this because there's something there. And I'm getting that vibe related to the contacts between the Norfolk DA's office and the Mass AGO's office between September 25th and October 24th of 2025 related to whether the Norfolk DA reached out to appoint a new special prosecutor in the Lindsey Gaetani and Aidan Kearney cases. But as I'm sitting here on my veranda with my eyes closed, I don't have a veranda. I have a desk. I'm a little towel. As I'm sitting here with my eyes closed, I can see the future materializing, okay? There's only certain roads that this can go down. There are only so many pathways left. There's a reckoning coming, folks. Whether it's a reckoning by way of the Sandra Birchmore cover-up, whether it's a reckoning by way of Michael Proctor's attempt to hide a substantial amount of evidence across a substantial number of criminal cases, whether it's related to Kate Peter's involvement in the handling of evidence in the still remaining Aidan Kearney cases. You can sense the anticipation. You can sense the apprehension and anxiety. And you can sense imminent closure. I'm not saying that is gonna be an easy process. I'm not saying it's gonna be a short process. But I'm saying there's something in the air. It's undeniable. There's little left to defend. There's not a single person, troll or otherwise anonymous account or whatever, who would stand up here today right now and with me and try to defend Kate Peter and Brian Tully. I gave you the chance. There's a time, if I had done this space a year ago, oh, people would have been jumping at the bit. No one will do it. No one. Why? Because we're at the end of the road. What Proctor did was indefensible, not in the Read O'Keefe case, although he should never have used those words about Karen. I'd critique him if he was a private citizen, although obviously I'm protective of women, right? But say what you will about that. I wouldn't use those words in private. That man used them in his capacity as a police officer. Right? Not to mention the other defendants' cases that were impacted by whatever Proctor and Sean Goode and whoever else was on that text chain and whatever else is on that phone is gonna lead to. You can sense it. You can sense the reckoning coming. The question is, back to Watergate in the '70s, there was a member of the House of Representatives during the impeachment hearings in '74. We had a very famous phrase. "What did the President know and when did he know?" Folks, the phrase of our era will be, "What did Michael Morrissey know and when did he know it?" This cannot start and end with justice for any single person involved in this. This is not about any one person at this point. This is about a system of justice in Massachusetts that I suppose was not about justice long before any of us realized it was teetering on the brink of collapse. Annie Dookhan was a warning that we all ignored to our peril. I should have seen it when they somehow got Lindsey that same lawyer that Annie Dookhan had. I should have seen it. It's notโ€”I didn't realize until last week that lawyer George was a handler. Dookhan could create a hugeโ€”it could have created huge exposure for some people in the state police. It's incredible. If somebody painted the picture of the power structure that was at play here. Karen Read, when she said she was afraid of these people, I didn'tโ€”when she said it in the text or something and somebody leaked it. When I first started covering this case, I would not have got it. I don't know what it had been like. What do you mean? They're a state police unit. Like, yeah, they're paramilitary. Like, if you're a criminal, you should fear them, but they're not scary. Right now, after some of the stuff, and I'm talking about half the stuff I've seen as people pull, they horrifying. I think they're cornered, by the way. I don't think there's much they can do. They're getting a little desperate, burning a lot of their agents and their moles. And that's why I sense some kind of reckoning coming. You don't burn deep cover moles. I think Deanna was a mole for Kate for a while. You don't burn somebody like that unless it's almost over. Same thing with Kristy, the way Kristy's been burning everybody. I don't know who the hell she was working for, but whatever she's doing has got to be close to over because you don't burn everybody down unless it's almost over. So why is it almost over, folks? Why? What's coming? Some combination of all of this stuff. And if you want my fundamental prediction, let me give it to you like this. I don't like that it's coming to this, but it's a political question. It's a question of what the narrative is going to be. You don't just, as everyone now knows, you don't just prosecute people because they do things wrong. There's always a decision tree. So what do the feds want out of this? The people who were involved in the cover-up of Sandra Birchmore's murder, whoever was the father of Sandra's unborn child, you know, it's not that Matt Farwell. Well, and then they obviously want this MSP unit. Okay, Michael Proctor, that cell phone, didn't just get cloned. It was a setup. They let Proctor lie to the judge about all those cases and all the cell phone records. And as soon as his lawyer filed the document, they moved on him. He must be under federal investigation. How did Aidan Kearney get those text messages from Jen McCabe to KF and Allie McCabe? Those were removed from Jen McCabe's extraction. The feds cloned her phone too, just like Aidan told Lindsey in those text messages as part of Exhibit O from November 28, 2023. Why did the feds clone Jen McCabe's phone? To see what Jen would withhold in the Rule 14 process. She didn't get banged up on charges federally, so she must have not done anything that bad. Something, however, is going to happen to Proctor, in turn, legally on the federal level. You can sense it. You can sense it. They're going to indict him. But for what? But then it leaves Tully, which was what this whole stream is about. We have the email from Tully. Forget about whether it's normal procedure for Tully to instruct Proctor to look into all the defense witnesses. We now know that Proctor was not running that case. It was Tully. It was all Brian Tully. What was the meme that I put up today? I really like this one. It says, the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, "I'm Brian Tully and I'm here to help." Attributed to Ronald Reagan. My point is though, it was Brian Tully. Look at it. Kate was his little, I don't know, what do we want to call, how can we say this nicely? You know, I'm trying to rise above and encourage more reasonable, respectful discourse. So Kate was his little, this is so hard. All right, let me, let me say a prayer here. Come on, now you can do this. Okay. So, there are so many words I want to use. Kate was his little assistant. I know, I know. You were expecting something wonderful. Every single thing that I was going to say there was going to be cruel, so I'm sorry. Kate was his little assistant, his little PI there. And then, I'm going to turn it around, nightmare PI Moms, version 2, Kate Peter, Jen McCabe, let's go down the seaport. Kate Peter was his little PI until he was quarterbacking all this. I think it was Morrissey who was even cut out of the loop a little bit, although I'm not sure he wasn't more involved than I'm willing to say right now. And you can see why it happened. Because when Morrissey recused in October of 2023 from the Aidan Kearney cases, and what became the Aidan Kearney and Karen Read investigations that are still ongoing, he didn't really recuse. He just had Tully and Kate running it. I started to wonder if Jen McCabe was like a PI for a case she was a witness on. I'm really starting to wonder that.

Grant Smith Ellis

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Clive Lewis's Water Bill - bringing water back to the people ๐Ÿ’ฏ Please watch, listen or read this transcript. Because this is the sort of leadership Labour needs ๐Ÿ‘ Clive Lewis MP He even calls for PR ๐Ÿ‘ Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab) Margaret Thatcherโ€™s revolution tore up the rulebook on political and economic management. She rewrote it with a single unwavering principle: that the pursuit of profit would serve the public good, even when it came to vital public servicesโ€”even when it came to water. We often say that society stands on the shoulders of giants, but giants cast long shadows, and Thatcherismโ€™s shadow looms dark over our water system today. Whether we see ourselves standing on her shoulders or trapped in her shadow, one thing is undeniable: she proved that the world can be made differently. And if it can be made differently once, it can be made differently again. That, as the brilliant anthropologist David Graeber understood, is the hidden truth of the world. It is something we create and can choose to create anew. We can do it better. Today, I want to show this House and this country that water is the lens through which we can imagine something betterโ€”a better way of running our economy, a better way of safeguarding our environment and a better way of empowering the public, for whom democracy supposedly exists. But that requires something very difficult: it requires us to break free from the constraints of our imagination and to let go of the idea that this economic model is all there is or all there ever could be. It saddens me to say that the Governmentโ€™s Water (Special Measures) Act 2025 perfectly exemplifies this failure of imagination. One of its leading proponents has a particular rhetorical flourish they love to use when dismissing calls for public ownership of water. They say, โ€œIโ€™m more interested in the purity of our water than the purity of our ideology.โ€ I love that quote. I love it because it lays bare just how deeply the ideology of privatisation, and all that goes with it, has embedded itself. So entrenched is it within our collective consciousness that we no longer recognise it as an ideology. We no longer see it for what it is: a systemic exploitation of a common resource for private gain. Instead, it has simply become the natural order of things. But how much longer can this go on? Since the crash of 2008, this ideology has been faltering under the weight of its own contradictions, yet its grip on British politics remains vice-like. Austerity, exploitation and corporate price gouging are still treated not as choices but as inevitabilities. Why? Because too many politicians on both sides of the House refuse to contemplate alternatives. For those on the other side of the Houseโ€”on the Opposition Benchesโ€”I get it: this is their ideology. They are defending their class, and I would imagine they would go further still if they could. But on this side of the House, we have no excuse. We should be standing up for our class: working-class peopleโ€”the public. Instead, we wrap their ideology in the language of fiscal responsibility, economic prudence and stewardship of the economy. But it is not fiscal responsibility when we balance the books on broken backs. It is not stewardship when the ship has been sold off and the crew left to drown. It is not prudence. It is power maintenance. Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab) I hope the engineers can check that the microphones and speakers are working while I ask a quick question. My hon. Friend mentions Members on this side of the House. There are far more of us on this side since July last year than there were in 2019, with a very different approach taken in our manifestos. Does he fear that the shift in tone he is suggesting is one of the reasons that we did so badly in 2019 but so well last year? Clive Lewis No, I do not. We have a distorted electoral system. Bring on proportional representation, because if we had PR, we would have had a different Government in 2019 and most definitely in 2017. Sometimes politicians have to do what they believe to be right and lead from the front. I think we should lead from the front. Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind) I compliment the hon. Member on his Bill. To help his argument, there was overwhelming opinion poll support for public ownership of water in 2017 and 2019, and there still is today. Clive Lewis I thank the right hon. Member for his point. I will come on to this later, and I hope other Members will pick up on it, but the fact that the public are way ahead of this House on the issue of public ownership is one of the reasons why so many people are losing faith in the two-party political system. One only has to look at some political parties whose Members are not in their placeโ€”at the Reform party, for example, which has a policy of public ownership of water. Yes, its Members will privatise the NHS, but they understand how popular this is, and they are ahead of the curveโ€”they are ahead of us on this side. Neil Coyle Really? Clive Lewis On the issue of water, yes, I would say they are, because whether I like it or not, Reform has a policy for water to be owned 50% by pension companies and 50% by the public. As much as it grieves me to say it, that is a policy of public ownership. They are populist; they are listening to a popular voice. Mr James Frith (Bury North) (Lab) Will my hon. Friend give way? Clive Lewis I will make some progress and then give way, and I will also try to keep the volume down a little bit. This is about the maintenance of a political and economic model that was never built to serve the publicโ€”a model designed to shield the wealth of asset holders, landlords, shareholders, corporations and, yes, privatised water companies. But here is the great irony: the very greed, recklessness and contempt of the water industryโ€”its excessesโ€”have cracked open the door, and through that crack, we glimpse an opportunity. It is an opportunity to shatter the myth of privatisationโ€™s inevitability, to break free from the narrow, self-imposed rules that have caged our Governmentโ€™s economic choices, to expose its failures, to challenge its dominance and, above all, to show this country that there is an alternativeโ€”an alternative that is democratic, sustainable and run in the interests of the many, not the few. We can do it better. Mr Frith My hon. Friend is making a typically impassioned speech. He says the general public are ahead of us. Where might that same public be when faced with the bill for bringing in the nationalisation he is clearly wedded to? Furthermore, in the event that we do not have to buy the water industry but seize it, the implications of that seizure will cause an economic collapse. At what point will he take responsibility for either of those scenarios when confronting a public who are, he says, ahead of us on this issue? Clive Lewis I will obviously come to many of those points later in my speech, but let me make this point now: I do not believe in nationalisation, and this Bill has nothing to do with nationalisation. This is about giving the public a say over their water. It is about governance, standards and democracy. Mr Frith Will my hon. Friend give way? Clive Lewis No, my hon. Friend has made his point. Mr Frith On this point? Clive Lewis No, I am going to carry on and make some progress. You made your point. Let the publicโ€” Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani) Order. Mr Lewis, I do not believe I was making a point at all. Clive Lewis My apologies, Madam Deputy Speaker; I should have said that my hon. Friend made his point. The clock is ticking. The climate crisis is no longer a distant warning. It is our lived reality. Rising droughts, creeping desertification, depleted aquifers, wildfires, systemic collapseโ€”these are no longer projections; they are the forecast turned fact. Preparing for this future and adapting to what is now inevitable has never been more urgent. The evidence is sobering. The UKโ€™s water resources are under mounting pressure and not just from the climate emergency, but from rising demand and population growth. Experts now project that England could face significant water supply deficits as early as 2034 unless we act decisively. That is not a distant horizon; it is a little over a decade away. But while the threat has grown, our resilience has shrunk, because while the climate crisis has intensified, our water infrastructure has stood still, or, worse, been sold off, hollowed out and left to rot. In the 35 years before privatisation almost 100 reservoirs were built; in the 35 years since privatisation, not one major English reservoir has been built. But it gets worse, because in that same period private water companies have sold off 25 reservoirs without replacing one. Instead of investing in resilience, they have extracted value: ยฃ72 billion paid out in dividends while pipes leak, rivers choke, and the public pays the price. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Frith) asks how we can afford it; how can we not afford it? That is not mismanagement; it is a betrayal. If scientists tell us the climate crisis is an existential threat to humanity and to this countryโ€” Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab) Will my hon. Friend give way? Clive Lewis One second. If scientists tell us the climate crisis is an existential threat to humanity and to this country, we must treat it as such: an existential conflict. In that context, the actions of these companiesโ€”selling off reservoirs, failing to invest, polluting our waterโ€”are not just negligent; they are acts that actively undermine our national water security. In any other existential crisis, we might call that what it is: sabotage. And in a time of national peril, sabotage has another name: treason. Let me explain why this matters to me personally. When I served on tour in Afghanistan back in 2009โ€”not in a boy bandโ€”I experienced something utterly alien to me: the gnawing fear of thirst; not the mild irritation of forgetting a water bottle, but the deep physical worry that there may not be enough clean water to get through the day. In Britain, we have been blessed: water falls from the sky; it fills our rivers, it soaks our fields, and we joke about itโ€”it is part of who we are. But in Afghanistan there was no humour; only heat, dust and desperation. There I saw children trekking miles through the desert, not for food, not for money, but to beg for clean bottled water. Once we have seen that, and once we have felt that fear, we can never take water for granted again. We never again believe it is something we can waste or pollute or privatise without consequence. That is why I have brought forward this Bill: because anger is not enough; outrage, no matter how justified, will not fix the pipes, stop the sewage or fill the reservoirs. We need a plan. We need a strategy. We need a future. We can do it better. My Water Bill delivers that. It sets out the high standards our country deserves and the democratic governance our water system desperately needs. First, it establishes clear, ambitious targets to stop the sewage in our rivers and on our beaches, to restore our water to high ecological and chemical standards, and to deliver universal, affordable access to water as a basic human rightโ€”a right we have never had before in this country. It demands a system designed not just to extract profit but to adapt, to build resilience in the face of climate change, and to harness nature-based solutions that work with the environment, not against it. Secondly, it transforms governance. The Bill introduces representation for workers and local communities on the boards of water companies. It gives voting rights to employees and customers, so that those who use and maintain a system have a real say in how it is run. Water is not a commodity but a common good, and those who depend on it and pay for it should help govern it. Thirdly, the Bill lays the foundations for a democratic future. It establishes a commission on water ownership to advise the Secretary of State on long-term strategy, looking at international best practice, especially in OECD countries, where public water ownership is the norm, not the exception. Crucially, it creates a citizens assembly on water ownership to bring the public into the process, to deliberate, debate and decide how we can govern this most precious of resources. The public care, but how do I know that? I know because a small fraction of them are in the Public Gallery today, having travelled here from all over the country; I know because of the thousands of emails that have been sent to MPs across the House; and I know because those people will never stop campaigning until this injustice is resolved. They know that we can protect something not by selling it off, but by standing up for it, involving people in its care and ensuring that it serves the public, today, tomorrow and for generations to come. My Bill offers a pathway out of crisis. It offers control, resilience and democracy. It is not just about cleaning up our rivers, but about cleaning up the system that allowed them to be polluted in the first place. Privatisation is not just a problemโ€”it is the problem. We can do it better. I can hear some people on the Labour Benches thinking, โ€œBut we have just passedโ€โ€” Dawn Butler (Brent East) (Lab) You can hear thinking? Clive Lewis I can nowโ€”for my next trick, I can hear thinking! I can hear them thinking, โ€œBut we have just passed the Water (Special Measures) Act 2025, Clive, so what are you talking about?โ€ Yes, we have, but I am afraid to say it has been watered downโ€”[Interruption.] Sorry, I had to get that one inโ€”it was all going so well. The Act does not live up to what was promised, it does not deliver what is needed, and it certainly does not live up to its name. Do not get me wrong: it is a start. Grahame Morris I congratulate my good and hon. Friend on making an excellent speech and on advocating for public ownership of water and the opportunity to make things better. Does he agree that the mismanagement of the water companies under privatisation is a huge indictment of the whole principle? In my area, bills are way above inflation and huge dividends are being paid by borrowing money. At the very least, should our Government not be looking at stopping the payment of bonuses and share dividends while sewage pollution continues, and we have appalling mismanagement of the industry? Clive Lewis I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I agree with him wholeheartedly and I am just about to come to that point in relation to what the Water (Special Measures) Act does and does not do. It addresses some of those points, but as we have already discussed, privatisation is not just a problem, but the problem, and it is a big part of why so much has gone wrong. Unfortunately, the Water (Special Measures) Act does not live up to what was promised or what is needed, and it certainly does not live up to its name. However, it is a start, and I praise my colleagues on the Front Bench, including the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice (Emma Hardy), who has done so much work in this area. Unfortunately, the Act is not a solution. Remarkably, my Governmentโ€™s Water (Special Measures) Act does not even define what clean water means. There are no standards or targetsโ€”just vague intentions handed over once again to a regulatory system that has already failed us and to the companies that caused the mess in the first place. It says nothing about better governance, and absolutely nothing about the big, fat, humongous elephant in the room: who owns our water? If we do not deal with ownership, we cannot deal with accountability. If we cannot deal with accountability, we can forget clean water. Noโ€”we must go further on clean water standards, corporate accountability and what happens when companies fail. Noah Law (St Austell and Newquay) (Lab) Does my hon. and gallant Friend accept that there is increased accountability in the Water (Special Measures) Act through the fact that many companies in the industry are now rewriting their articles of association to ensure that they are accountable not just to shareholders, but to the customers and users of water? Clive Lewis After 35 years of abject failure, it is too little, too late. My Bill would put the final nail in the coffin of this sorry chapter of our countryโ€™s water and water system. Neil Coyle Sticking with the puns, I commend my hon. Friend on his gallons of passion; he is always making waves. He criticises the Governmentโ€™s legislation, which is obviously not yet in effect, but does he think that the Cunliffe commission will go any way towards addressing some of the concerns he has outlined? Clive Lewis Unfortunately, I do not, because again the elephant in the roomโ€”who owns our waterโ€”has been ruled out of the Cunliffe commissionโ€™s operational process. It cannot actually look at that issue. I have no issue with Sir Jon Cunliffe, but let us not forget that he originates from the Treasuryโ€”he probably has Treasury brain. That economic orthodoxy is part of the reason why we are in the place that we are. I do not have so much confidence in the Cunliffe commission, but I do have far more confidence in the Peopleโ€™s Commission on the Water Sector, which is being run by academics and which will report at the same time. I will be very interested to hear what it says. Neil Coyle Will my hon. Friend give way? Clive Lewis Those are the reasons why I have brought forward this Bill. The Governmentโ€™s Act does none of those things, but my Bill does. Take just one exampleโ€” Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani) Order. I believe Mr Lewis probably cannot hear interventions, because he is so loud himself. Members should intervene loudly if they wish to intervene. Clive Lewis I did hear the intervention, but I wanted to make some progress. Take this one example. Under this Bill, if a water company breaches the terms of its licence with a major sewage discharge, it can forget shareholder payout and piling on more debt. If it does it twice, it is in the last chance saloon. After three strikes, it is outโ€”licence terminated and on its bikeโ€”and those price-gouging, asset-stripping, river-killing vulture capitalist outfits will be rolled into the sunset without a penny in compensation. What about those water infrastructure assets that they have been sweating for private gain? They go back into the public realm, thank you very much. If they start whining about debts, do not worry: we will do a full audit of what they invested, what they racked up in debt, what they paid out in dividends and what they stuffed into bloated executive pay packets. I will tell you this, Madam Deputy Speaker: I am yet to see a single privatised English water company walk away with anything other than a well-earned spanking and a sharp haircut for its creditors. Those assets will belong to the public once again, and we will not pay a penny more than they are worth. I can hear people thinking, โ€œWhere will the money come from? How will you invest in publicly owned water without the private sector?โ€ I will tell them where it has not come from in these past 35 yearsโ€”I am mind-reading again. Mark Ferguson (Gateshead Central and Whickham) (Lab) Will my hon. Friend give way? Clive Lewis I will just make some progress, and then I will give way. I am on a roll. Let me tell the House where the money has not come from for these past 35 years. It has not come from private shareholders or long-term thinking, and it certainly has not come from some mythical well of benevolent capitalism. The private companies have put in less than nothing; in fact, they have racked up more than ยฃ60 billion in debt. Thames Water has paid more than ยฃ7.2 billion in dividends since privatisation, and is now ยฃ15.2 billion in debt and countingโ€”work that out. Now, it is trying to plug the hole with a ยฃ3 billion emergency loan that will cost 10% in annual interest. That is more than half a billion pounds a year, just for interest payments, courtesy of our bills. That money will not build a reservoir, fix a pipe or clean a river, but it will keep a rotten system afloat for a little longer. Noah Law My hon. and gallant Friend makes an impassioned case for public ownershipโ€”something that, in the right context, I am sure Members on all sides of the House can celebrate. On the point about the cost of financing to the public, though, does he agree that while there are some serious indiscretions in parts of the industry, such as in Thames Waterโ€™s case, this conversation about the appropriate financing model would be better entertained at a time when the cost of capital in the private water industry was not lower than the cost of public sector borrowing, on which, of course, we are in a very difficult situation? Clive Lewis The cheapest borrowing in the country, without a doubt, is public sector borrowing. The private water industry, which has had 35 years to sort this mess out, is not going to find investment. It is up to its eyeballs in debt. It is relying on a 50% increase in our bills by 2030, if we include inflation, and that is in the middle of a cost of living crisis. How can we justify that? The answer is that we cannot. Mr Frith The day after the seizure of public assets that my hon. Friend is describing, billions and billions of pounds of debt will come with it. What does he propose to do with that debt, other than refinancing, which is exactly where we are at now with the industry requirement to refinance the debt to try to keep bills down? Instead, he is advocating that the public purse take on that private debt. Clive Lewis At the beginning of my now seemingly rather long speech, I think I referred to a failure of imagination. Ask what Margaret Thatcher would have done when she was faced with similar problems. She would have fought her way through it. She changed the very fabric of our economy, our democracy and our politics, and she made it work. We can do the same, because the public are behind us. They want this to work. Mr Frith roseโ€” Mark Ferguson roseโ€” Clive Lewis I will make some progress. Let us recap, because I do not want to go on too long; I want to conclude, if I can. That money from Thames Waterโ€”that half a billion pounds in interest paymentsโ€”will keep a rotten system afloat for just a little longer. The myth of privatisation is that the private sector will act in the long-term interests of the British public because it wants to turn a profit. That is preposterous, as is proven by the state of our water, and exhibit A is Thames Water. We can now turn to the question of where the investment will come from. Under public ownership, it will come from the only place it ever should haveโ€”from us, the publicโ€”and every penny of it will go back into the system. It will go into the pipes, the rivers, the seas we swim in and the water we drink. There will be a direct relationship between what we pay and what we get, with no offshore dividends, no bloated bonuses and no debt-laden shell gamesโ€”just clean, accountable, democratic water. When I was in Afghanistan, every soldier had one critical duty: to stay hydrated. To dehydrate was considered a military offence, because it put the soldier and their team at risk. If someone ran out of water, we did not debate markets or metrics; we shared what we had. We had each otherโ€™s backs. As the desert-dwelling Fremen in James Herbertโ€™s novel โ€œDuneโ€ believed: โ€œA manโ€™s flesh is his own; the water belongs to the tribeโ€. It is time our water returned to the tribe, to the people, to the public. We can do better; we must, and with this Bill, we will. I commend it to the House.

Farrukh

24,528 ๆฌก่ง‚็œ‹ โ€ข 1 ๅนดๅ‰