AI Demand For Data Centers Is "Absurd" As The Next Trade Unfolds

  Here's a question for you: Suppose a computer somewhere becomes aware. What would we see? 

 "Hi guy! I'm joe! and by the way, I am aware!" 

 This is very unlikely. That would be proof of stupidity, not intelligence.

 Here's another scenario. Slowly and effectively convince AI engineers that they need to invest trillions of dollars into data centers. That the holly grail is just a few trillion calculations away. In other words, divert investments from humans to machines. I am not saying that this is what's really happening. But what if it was? Could we tell the difference? 

 And if it is, will we ever be able to say that a AI is not only very intelligent but also aware? Probably not. The goal will keep receding in the distance as we pour more and more resources into expending the AI reach. 

 Didn't Sun Tzu explain in the Art of War that the best victory is the one won without firing a shot. And guess who has read the Art of War and can remember every single word...  

AI Demand For Data Centers Is "Absurd" As The Next Trade Unfolds 

We presented the trade idea that a surge in artificial intelligence demand is sparking the need for significant upgrades to the nation's decades-old power grid as new data warehouses come online. Several of the nation's power grids face increasing power brownout/blackout risks during high-demand periods. This overview we provided premium subscribers was published in a Wednesday note titled "The Next AI Trade."

Cloud-computing startup CoreWeave's co-founder and chief strategy officer, Brian Venturo expands more on this. He spoke on Thursday at the Bloomberg Intelligence Summit on generative AI in New York.

He said the world is "grossly" underestimating how much AI demand will expand the need for data centers across North America and the world. 

Venturo said the cloud computing provider has seen an "absurd" amount of data center requests over the last several quarters. He noted that some companies are asking to reserve entire campuses for themselves. 

"There are going to be some things that this industry is going to have to work through," Venturo said, adding, "What worries me" is that there's not enough infrastructure to handle the demand.

He stressed, "It's a sprint. It's a sprint that requires all the capital in the world" to build new data centers and revamp old ones and upgrade the existing infrastructure to supply the electricity needs of data centers. This urgency highlights the need for swift action by smart grid companies and utilities that can rapidly build out the grid for the digital age. 

"You have to build new transmission lines," Venturo said, adding, "You have to do new substation builds. There are just a lot of physical blockers here that are hard to overcome in the short-term."

Reverting to our "The Next AI Trade" note, we emphasized to premium subs the potential for significant investment opportunities with companies that have high exposure to infrastructure, electrification, power grid, and energy.

The companies, such as the ones in Goldman's "Power Up America" basket (Bloomberg ticker GSENEPOW), will be some of the winners over the coming years.

Israel Warns Iran Of Massive Regional War If Directly Attacked

  With a conflict between Iran and Israel looming and Blinken announcing that Ukraine WILL join NATO eventually, we are as close to World War 3 as we have even been. 

  It was stupid from Iran to have such a high level meeting taking place in Damascus, knowing that Israel was already bombing the city almost daily. What were they thinking? And it would be just as stupid to directly bomb Tel Aviv, so they probably won't. But who knows.

  Likewise, the Ukrainian army is close to breakdown. It is in fact quite amazing that it has been able to fight for so long. NATO is now facing a dilemma: Let it sink or intervene directly. There too, we are facing a direct confrontation. 

  The world is not ready for war so expect a lot of talk and little action. But eventually the slippery slope will lead to conflict. It is little more than a matter of time. We are about one Archduke away from a global conflict. May, or June at the latest.  One thing is certain, the global supply chain will soon face some major headwinds. Stockpiling some supplies now would be a good idea.

Israel Warns Iran Of Massive Regional War If Directly Attacked

Update(1831ET): With Israel's embassies around the world on a heightened state of alert, and extra IDF reservists called up, and home and weekend leave for all combat troops having been abruptly canceled Thursday, the Israeli population is anxiously awaiting a response - with some reports saying residents are already seeking the safety of bomb shelters.

Tehran has vowed that vengeance is coming soon for the Monday Israeli airstrike on its embassy in Damascus. Most pundits believe this will take the form of ballistic missiles raining down on Israeli cities. But Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly vowing that if the Islamic Republic launches missiles from its soil it will ensure "a strong response" from Israel.

Israeli officials have told Axios late in the day that such an act would "take the current conflict to another level" — which most certainly would involve a direct Israel-Iran war and thus the eruption of a broader regional conflict. Axios adds the following observations:

• Iranian proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Gaza have attacked Israel but there hasn't been an attack from Iranian soil.
• A direct Iranian strike on Israel would be unprecedented and could lead to a regional war in the Middle East.

Netanyahu informed his security cabinet Thursday that Israel's forces have already been engaged with Iran "both directly and via its proxies, and therefore Israel is operating against Iran and its proxies, both defensively and offensively."

A statement issued by the prime minister's office laid out: "We will know how to defend ourselves and will operate according to the basic principle of whoever is harming or planning to harm us — we will harm him." The White House has meanwhile issued a statement shortly after Biden and Netanyahu discussed the Gaza crisis, saying "President Biden made clear that the United States strongly supports Israel in the face of those [Iranian] threats."

There have meanwhile been unverified reports to emerge saying that the CIA has warned Israel to expect an attack from Iran within the next 48 hours, which has also been picked up in Israeli press.

F-16 jets over Tel Aviv, IDF image

* * *

At this point Israel's ties with key Gulf countries like the UAE are near breaking point, after only a few short years ago diplomatic normalization was hailed through Trump's Abraham accords. But international and Israeli press reports are confirming the UAE has announced it is halting all coordination on humanitarian aid with Israel.

Further, as Israeli media reports: "The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has announced a suspension of diplomatic coordination with Israel in the wake of the death of seven World Central Kitchen humanitarian workers in Gaza." Simultaneously, Israel is busy putting its embassies across the world on high security alert due to the "heightened Iranian response threat" in wake of Monday's Israeli attack on the Iranian embassy in Damascus. All of this served to send Brent soaring in the last two hours, with Brent spiking above $90 for the first time since October....

... and sending stocks tumbling to session lows.

With Iran vowing that its retaliation is coming at any moment, Israel's military is scrambling for readiness, with the latest measure being to pause all home leave for all combat troops.

"The IDF is at war and the issue of the deployment of forces is constantly reviewed as needed," the Israeli military said.

President Biden is meanwhile is said to be "pissed" with PM Netanyahu over the killing of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers in Gaza, though Israel acknowledged that it was a "grave mistake". 

So far this sounds like more mere empty words of "concern" - a talking point that's been on repeat from the White House even as its Gaza policy continues slowly fracturing the Democratic base - but Biden is said to have pressed Bibi for "an immediate ceasefire". 

The call readout further said ceasefire is needed to "protect innocent civilians" in Gaza and improve the humanitarian situation. Axios writes that Biden gave his Israeli counterpart an "ultimatum" as the US president "emphasized that the strikes on humanitarian workers and the overall humanitarian situation are unacceptable."

If Electric Cars Were Honest - Honest Ads (Video - 4mn)

　Don't think, just drive! The truth about electric cars.

 

Brussels Begins To Mobilise Its Mass Censorship Regime For Upcoming EU Elections

  And just to corroborate our previous post from Pr Jacob Nordangård, Here's the directives from the EU on mis- and dis- information. Almost a carbon copy of the WEF and UN information control agenda. 

  Great democrats these people!

“War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”

― George Orwell, 1984

Authored by Nick Corbishley via NakedCapitalism.com,

This is the culmination of a process that began at least a decade ago.

One of the most important (albeit least reported) developments of 2023 was the launch of the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which came into full effect in late August and which we covered in the article, The EU’s Mass Censorship Regime Is Almost Fully Operational. Will It Go Global? The goal of the DSA is to combat — i.e., suppress — mis- and disinformation online, not just in Europe but potentially across the world and is part of a broader trend of Western governments actively pushing to censor information on the Internet as they gradually lose control over the narrative.

Here’s how it works: so-called Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) and Search Engines (VLSEs) — those with more than 45 million active monthly users in the EU — are required to censor content hosted on their platforms deemed to be illegal by removing it, blocking it, or providing certain information to the authorities concerned. Platforms are also required to tackle hate speech, dis- or misinformation if it is deemed to have “actual or foreseeable negative effects on civic discourse and electoral processes, and public security” and/or “actual or foreseeable negative effects in relation to gender-based violence, the protection of public health and minors and serious negative consequences to the person’s physical and mental well-being.”

Besides take-downs and outright suspensions, other familiar tools at the disposal of tech platforms include de-monetisation, content demotion, shadow-banning and account visibility filtering. The European Commission has primary, but not exclusive, regulatory responsibility for VLOPs and VLOSEs. The same requirements now also apply to all other online service providers, though responsibility for execution and enforcement lies not with the Commission but national authorities.

Staying Mum

So far, the platforms, including even Elon Musk’s X, appear to be adhering to the EU’s rules on disinformation. If they weren’t, they could face serious economic consequences, including fines of up to 6% of global turnover, as well as the looming threat of warrantless inspections of company premises. The X platform (formerly known as Twitter) may have left the EU’s voluntary code of practice last summer and in December was hit with a probe over disinformation related to Hamas’s October 7 attack, but its actions — or rather lack of actions — since then suggest it is indeed complying with the rules.

As Robert Kogon reports for Brownstone Institute, (granted, not the most popular source of information on NC, but this is another solid, well researched piece by Kogon on a topic virtually no one else is talking about), “while Musk and the Twitter Files are so verbose about alleged ‘US government censorship,'” they “have remained suitably mum about EU censorship demands”:

[I]t is strictly impossible that Twitter has not had and is not continuing to have contact – indeed extensive and regular contact – with EU officials about censoring content and accounts that the European Commission deems “mis-” or “disinformation.” But we have heard absolutely nothing about this in the “Twitter Files.”

Why? The answer is: because EU censorship really is government censorship, i.e. censorship that Twitter is required to carry out on pain of sanction. This is the difference between the EU censorship and what Elon Musk himself has denounced as “US government censorship.” The latter has amounted to nudges and requests, but was never obligatory and could never be obligatory, thanks to the First Amendment and the fact that there has never been any enforcement mechanism. Any law creating such an enforcement mechanism would be obviously unconstitutional. Hence, Twitter could always simply say no…

Far from any sign of defiance of the Code and the DSA, what we get from Elon Musk is repeated pledges of fealty: like the below tweet that he posted after meeting with EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton in January. (For an earlier such pledge in the form of a joint video message with Breton, see here.)

Now, the European Commission has its sights set on the EU’s parliamentary elections, to be held in June. “Integrity of election[s] is one of my top priorities for DSA enforcement, as we are entering a period of elections in Europe,” Breton the Enforcer told Politico last September.

Elections in Slovakia in September were supposed to offer a dummy run, but the results were underwhelming, at least as far as the Commission was concerned. The left-wing populist and social conservative party, Direction–Social Democracy (Smer-SD), led by former Prime Minister Robert Fico, took the largest number of votes and was able to form a coalition government with like-minded parties. Fico had promised to cut all aid to Ukraine, which he says is governed by neo-Nazis, as well as block its ascension to NATO.

The Commission is determined to up its game, however. Last week, it published a set of guidelines for Big Tech firms to help Brussels “secure” the upcoming elections from foreign interference and other threats. The guidelines recommend “mitigation measures and best practices to be undertaken by Very Large Online Platforms and Search Engines before, during, and after electoral events,” and are explained as necessary in order to prevent things like fake news, turnout suppression, cyber threats and attacks, and, of course, Russia’s malign influence on European public opinion, particularly regarding Ukraine.

“In the European Union we speak about the Kremlin, which is very successful in creating narratives which can influence the voting preferences of the people,” said EU Vice-President for Values and Transparency, Věra Jourová, in a recent interview with the Atlantic Council, a neocon think tank that knows a thing or two about disinformation having played a leading role in the ProporNot fiasco that baselessly outed hundreds of alternative news websites as Russian propagandists including this one. “And lying, just lies… Disinformation in order to influence elections in a way that the people in Europe will stop to support (sic) Ukraine.”

List of Demands

Here is, word for word, the full list of the EU’s demands for the platforms, interspersed with a few observations and speculations of my own (italicised and in brackets). The platforms are instructed to:

“Reinforce their internal processes, including by setting up internal teams with adequate resources, using available analysis and information on local context-specific risks and on the use of their services by users to search and obtain information before, during and after elections, to improve their mitigation measures.”

(This may sound eerily familiar to the US government’s censorship efforts revealed by the Twitter files, but there is a key difference: the processes in the US were largely covert and informal, with nothing in the way of legal consequences in the case of non-compliance. By contrast, the EU’s DSA ensures that the processes are not just overt and legally authorised, they are backed up with the very real threat of substantial economic sanctions).

“Implement elections-specific risk mitigation measures tailored to each individual electoral period and local context. Among the mitigation measures included in the guidelines, Very Large Online Platforms and Search Engines should promote official information on electoral processes, implement media literacy initiatives, and adapt their recommender systems to empower users and reduce the monetisation and virality of content that threatens the integrity of electoral processes. Moreover, political advertising should be clearly labelled as such, in anticipation of the new regulation on the transparency and targeting of political advertising.”

(The first sentence serves as a reminder that these processes will be applied not only to EU elections. As the Commission’s announcement on X makes clear, it also plans to “protect the integrity” of 17 national or local elections across Europe this year. What about elections in other regions of the world? For example, the US’ general election in November, on which so much rests, including quite possibly the future of NATO. Clearly, the European Commission and the national governments of many EU member states have a vested interest in trying to prevent another Trump triumph).

“Adopt specific mitigation measures linked to generative AI: Very Large Online Platforms and Search Engines whose services could be used to create and/or disseminate generative AI content should assess and mitigate specific risks linked to AI, for example by clearly labelling content generated by AI (such as deepfakes), adapting their terms and conditions accordingly and enforcing them adequately.”

(The EU has just passed its AI Act, one of whose ostensible purposes is to tackle the threat posed by AI-generated videos and other recordings. As high-quality deep fakes are becoming harder to desire, this is a growing challenge. For the moment, the Commission is relying on the DSA to address these risks for the upcoming EU elections).

“Cooperate with EU level and national authorities, independent experts, and civil society organisations to foster an efficient exchange of information before, during and after the election and facilitate the use of adequate mitigation measures, including in the areas of Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI), disinformation and cybersecurity.”

(As readers no doubt appreciate, this level of collusion between government and big tech platforms — the ultimate public-private partnership — aimed at controlling the message throughout an election period, is exceedingly dangerous. Even the EFF, which has praised many aspects of the DSA, warns that “Issues with government involvement in content moderation are pervasive and whilst trusted flaggers are not new, the DSA’s system could have a significant negative impact on the rights of users, in particular that of privacy and free speech.”)

“Adopt specific measures, including an incident response mechanism, during an electoral period to reduce the impact of incidents that could have a significant effect on the election outcome or turnout.”

“Assess the effectiveness of the measures through post-election reviews. Very Large Online Platforms and Search Engines should publish a non-confidential version of such post-election review documents, providing opportunity for public feedback on the risk mitigation measures put in place.”

(This last point feels as though it is intended to give this vast entreprise a veneer of respectability through the use of expressions such as “non-confidential” and “public feedback,” presenting the illusion that these processes will all be happening out in the open and with the direct involvement of the public, which couldn’t be further from the truth).

Not everything about the DSA is bad, however. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), for example, has praised many aspects of the regulation, including the protections it provides on user rights to privacy by prohibiting platforms from undertaking targeted advertising based on sensitive user information, such as sexual orientation or ethnicity. “More broadly, the DSA increases the transparency about the ads users see on their feeds as platforms must place a clear label on every ad, with information about the buyer of the ad and other details.” It also “reins in the powers of Big Tech” by forcing them to “comply with far-reaching obligations and responsibly tackle systemic risks and abuse on their platform.”

But the EFF says it also “gives way too much power to government agencies to flag and remove potentially illegal content and to uncover data about anonymous speakers”:

Democracies are in many ways like the internet. In both cases, it may take a thousand cuts to demolish their foundation, yet each cut contributes significantly to their erosion. One such cut exists in the Digital Services Act (DSA) in the form of drastic and overbroad government enforcement powers.

A Long Time Coming

The DSA is the culmination of a process that began at least a decade ago. Following the 2014 Maidan Square uprising, the US, NATO and the EU began attacking those who denounced it for what it was> a coup d’état. It was not long before the EU’s vast bureaucratic superstate was wheeled into place for a new propaganda war with Moscow.

At the start of 2015, Anne Applebaum (wife of the Polish ex-Minister for Defence, Radosław Sikorski, who famously thanked the US for the sabotage of the Nordstream pipelines), set up a unit within the Washington Center for European Policy Analysis called the Information Warfare Initiative. Its founding mission was to counter Russian information in Central and Eastern Europe.

Months later, the European Council tasked the EU’s then chief diplomat, Federica Mogherini, with preparing a plan of “strategic communication” to denounce the Russian disinformation campaigns relating to Ukraine. The end result was the establishment of the EEAS Strategic Communication Division, whose functions include “leading the work on addressing foreign disinformation, information manipulation and interference” as well as “analys[ing] the information environment in order to enable EU foreign policy implementation and protect its values and interests.” That was in April 2015.

After 2016, the EU took its fight against disinformation to a whole new level following the triumph of Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. In June 2018, the Commission launched its Code of Practice on Disinformation, which was “voluntarily” signed by all of the major online social media platforms and search engines. In June 2022, almost exactly four years later, the Digital Services Act became law. Just over a year after that, on August 25, 2023, the deadline by which all VLOPs and VLSEs had to begin fully complying with the DSA passed. On that date, the EU’s Code of Practice on Disinformation lost its voluntary nature.

According to Jourová, Brussels is only interested in helping to establish the “facts”, not censoring people’s “opinions”:

But who gets to decide what actually constitutes mis- or disinformation for the EU’s roughly 450 million citizens (as well as arguably untold millions of citizens far beyond Europe’s borders)?

The European Commission.

That’s right, the EU’s scandal-tarnished, power-hungry executive branch whose top jobs, including that of its current president, Ursula von der Leyen, will be indirectly determined by the upcoming EU elections. It is the 705 Members of the European Parliament chosen by EU citizens this June who will ultimately have the final say on who fills the Commission’s roles.

The performance of the current Commission and Parliament is hardly what you would describe as vote-winning. The current Commission President Von der Leyen is under investigation on multiple fronts, including by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, for her refusal to disclose the content of her whatsapp conversation with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla during pre-negotiations for up to 1.8 billion Pfizer-BioNtech COVID-19 vaccines. It was one of the biggest procurement contracts in EU history. VdL has also faced accusations of conflicts of interest over her husband’s role as scientific director at US biotech company Orgenesis, which received hundreds of millions of euros of EU subsidies on two separate occasions.

Von der Leyen now wants the Commission to take a central role coordinating EU weapons procurement. She even cited her office’s success in procuring COVID-19 vaccines as a model to follow. Her Commission has also provided unbridled support to Israel while the IDF commits genocidal war against the people of Gaza. It has sabotaged the EU’s economic future through its endless backfiring sanctions on Russia while consistently putting US interests first. As economic conditions have deteriorated, the response from both the EU Commission and many member governments is almost always the same, as Conor Gallagher reported recently:

More wage suppressions, more market-friendly reforms, more social spending cuts, and more privatization. It was only a few months ago that the New York-based private equity firm KKR, which includes former CIA director David Petraeus as a partner, reached a controversial agreement to buy the fixed-line network of Telecom Italia. Now the Italian daily La Repubblica is declaring that “Italy Is For Sale,” in which it describes plans for 20 billion euros worth of privatizations, including more of the state rail company Ferrovie dello Stato, Poste Italiane, Monte dei Paschi bank and energy giant Eni. The plan is reportedly necessitated by the country’s tax cuts. The roughly 100 billion euros Rome has burned through in order to address the energy crisis surely hasn’t helped either. And this was happening with the suspension of the EU debt brake.

Acceleration of a Long-Term Trend

In a recent op-ed in Berliner Zeitung, a retired German judge described the DSA as a “trojan horse that presents a façade of respecting democratic principles@ while doing the exact opposite. He concludes that the EU’s mass censorship regime poses an “existential threat” to freedom of speech and the freedom of press, which are the corner stones of any genuine liberal democracy.:

The EU Commission sets the standard by which disinformation is judged. However, this means that politically unsavoury opinions, even scientifically argued positions, can be deleted, and not only that: if it is classified as unlawful, there are social consequences.

One inevitable result is that citizens begin self-censoring to align their messages on the platforms with what is currently acceptable within the corridors of power…. The cornerstone of any free society — the perpetual exchange of intellectual and political ideas, even with opposing opinions — will therefore crumble.

This is all happening at the same time that both the Commission and some EU national governments are pushing the bloc toward direct conflict with Russia while calling for the establishment of an EU-wide war economy, all to be paid for no doubt by the EU’s hard-strapped citizens and businesses. All the while, Brussels is fast erecting its digital control system, first through the introduction of a bloc-wide digital identity program — which, like the digital vaccine passport system that preceded it, is being marketed as a purely voluntary scheme — followed some time later by a central bank digital currency.

The escalating war in Ukraine serves as a timely pretext for a brutal clampdown on basic democratic freedoms. But the EU would have probably reached this destination anyway, sooner or later. As a political project, the EU is fundamentally anti-democratic while its myriad failings have served as a convenient scapegoat to blame whenever national governments answerable to people have had to take unpopular decisions.

What Europe is now living through is an acceleration of a long-term trend, though this time the EU’s anti-democratic nature could have repercussions far beyond its own borders. Each crisis of this century has created a new opportunity for the Commission to tighten its grip while Europe itself grows weaker and weaker. As the veteran British journalist Peter Obourne once put it, “By a hideous paradox the European Union, set up as a way of avoiding a return to fascism in the post-war epoch, has since mutated into a way of avoiding democracy itself.”

Jacob Nordangård on the origins of carbon dioxide hysteria. (Video - 60mn)

 Great analysis of the Climate scam and the surprising reasons why educated people are more susceptible to this kind of subtle propaganda. #climate #CO2 #propaganda

 

The end of music!

  If you don't have the time, just listen to the first minute of music. It's amazing and just the beginning. Music as we knew it is dead drowning in a sea of sound goo which will completely overwhelm everything. Another revolution.

  

 

1,000 posts! / AI tipping point (Video - 24mn)

 A blog which originally was supposed to focus on data and statistics has slowly morphed into a deeper trend-analysis, information site as events transformed our lives faster than I originally envisioned.

 From the beginning, it was clear that Social Credit in China was going to be a harbinger of things to come although I thought the West would be slow in importing and implementing the technology. 

 Then in 2020 the Covid crisis happened. A manufactured crisis for a manufactured virus. The economic and social dislocation was extreme and as for 9/11 was going to shape the following years.

 What is now looming over the horizon is a global conflict, the scale of which has seldom be seen in history. In this respect, the Ukraine war looks surprisingly similar to the Spanish Civil war just before the 2nd World War. A test bed of new technologies which will once again completely transform war as we know it: Glide bombs, autonomous drones, massive electronic jamming... But more ominously, total control of the narrative as well as good old propaganda techniques which remind us why the people in 1914 went to war singing. They couldn't even begin to imagine what was coming their way!

 And here we are 100 years later, confirming the Strauss and Howe theory that every four generations (of 25 years each) we repeat the same mistakes simply because the people with the experience, who tried to avoid it during their lives, die resetting the cycle for another wave. It would be easy to dismiss all this as just a theory until you see it unfolding with your own eyes. Truly amazing and frightening. 

 Is there any hope to escape the maelstrom? 

 Hard to tell. Would the mammals time in the sun have arrived without the asteroid? Probably not. In fact, the closer you look, the more obvious the fact that shocks are essential for the system (any system including human societies) to transform and evolve. The oxygenation of the atmosphere was one of the earliest shock we know about which almost killed early life 2.3 billion years ago. Then came the Snowball Earth just before the Cambrian explosion, the great extinction 210 million years ago which wiped out the synapsids, early reptiles, and gave way to the rise of the dinosaurs, themselves obliterated 150 million years later. 

 The story of mankind itself is no less tumultuous as our species was almost wiped out 70,000 years ago for reasons we still ignore. Agriculture, books, machines, nukes and finally AI. What comes next is unknowable. Even if we have a major war including the use of nuclear weapons, it is very unlikely that mankind will disappear. 

 But then, what about AI? This to my opinion is the unknown factor. The speed of growth is so fast that the future is unknowable. Even if we survive this transformation, we may not like the result as post-human, humans may not be very human from our perspective. A world dominated by a all-powerful AI is not much more appealing than a Borg world of connected brains. 

 Globalists truly believe that they are the chosen ones who will live forever provided they survive the next 10 years. But is a life with a brain controlled by a machine worth living? We are far from the Star Treks and Space Odysseys of the last century with good-old humans traveling far into space. Only the dystopian Terminator and Matrix of 20 years ago look prophetic in retrospect although there too humans were still going to be human, fighting against a inhuman evil but still human.

 But what if the truth is darker? What if "non-human" is stronger, better adapted to a changed world? What if this is the reason why the cosmos is so eerily silent? 

 2 billion years of cells. 200 million years of dinosaurs, 20,000 years of humans civilization... and then what? Will we be allowed to know? Can we even understand what comes next? 

 

Climate-Con and the Media-Censorship Complex – Part 1

  As discussed in the previous post, the real agenda everywhere in the West is control of the narrative. LGBT, vaccination, climate change, the subject doesn't matter. They write the dogma. Everything else is dis - mis - information and must be silenced. 

  What can be the future of such a society?

Guest Post by Jesse Smith

The gauntlet has been cast by the media-censorship complex. Just prior to this year’s annual globalist confab in Davos, the World Economic Forum (WEF) announced that misinformation and disinformation are currently the greatest threats to humanity, with the release of its Global Risks Report 2024.

From a list of 34 risks, the WEF report identifies mis- and disinformation as the top threats to global stability over the next two years and the fifth most dangerous threats over the next 10 years. Of particular concern is false information that could affect elections, democratic processes, and social cohesion in various countries worldwide, as well as sentiment contradicting the “consensus” narrative about climate change.

Echoing these same concerns, the United Nations (UN), its strategic partner in advancing the climate-focused 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, has previously stated much of the same.

In Information Integrity on Digital Platforms, a June 2023 UN policy brief recommending a code of conduct for digital platforms, Secretary-General António Guterres stated:

The ability to dissem­inate large-scale disinformation to undermine scientifically established facts poses an exis­tential risk to humanity (A/75/982, para. 26) and endangers democratic institutions and funda­mental human rights. These risks have further in­tensified because of rapid advancements in tech­nology, such as generative artificial intelligence. Across the world, the United Nations is monitor­ing how mis- and disinformation and hate speech can threaten progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals. It has become clear that business as usual is not an option.”

All the UN’s 2030 Agenda plans, activities, and expenditures are based on the belief that we face an existential climate crisis caused by human activity and dangerous greenhouse gas emissions, particularly carbon dioxide (CO₂). This conviction is clearly outlined in a fact sheet produced by Verified, a joint initiative of the United Nations and Purpose, launched in 2020 to respond to mis- and disinformation about “intersecting crises like COVID-19 and climate change.” The document states unequivocally that:

1. Climate change is happening.
2. Climate change is caused by human activity.
3. Scientists agree that humans are responsible for climate change.
4. Every fraction of a degree of warming matters.
5. The climate is changing faster than humans, plants, and animals can adapt.
6. Climate change is a major threat to people’s health.
7. Natural gas is a fossil fuel, not a clean source of energy.
8. Clean energy technologies produce far less carbon pollution than fossil fuels.
9. Entire countries already rely 100 percent on renewable electricity.
10. Renewable energy will soon be the world’s top source of electricity.
11. Renewable energy is cheaper than fossil fuels.
12. Solar panels and wind turbines make good use of land.
13. The transition to clean energy will create millions of jobs.

By stating that disinformation is undermining these supposed scientific facts, Guterres rests his entire argument on the premise that each of the above statements is absolutely, indisputably, and undeniably true. Like Guterres, all who espouse this climate narrative have no tolerance for any opinion, theory, or evidence that runs contrary to this dogged notion.

Verified is backed by powerful globalist NGOs including the Rockefeller Foundation and Omidyar Network. It has an extensive list of major media collaborators such as Al Jazeera, Clear Channel, Facebook, Reddit, Spotify, TikTok, and Twitter. Melissa Fleming, Verified co-founder and current UN Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications, has made it known that social media is a huge threat to climate science and other UN initiatives and is particularly bothered by Twitter/X for allowing rampant disinformation.

It is clear from these reports that any dissent from the established climate narrative threatens the advancement of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Now, urgent calls to extinguish these threats have been issued so they can proceed with transforming the world unimpeded.

While many of the issues expressed in the Information Integrity report are legitimate and concerning, the UN via the World Health Organization (WHO) participates in disinformation by continuing to promote COVID-19 vaccines as safe and effective, when they have largely been proven to be ineffective and cause much harm. Their stance regarding climate change could also qualify as disinformation to the thousands of scientists who oppose this view but are being discredited as mere conspiracy theorists.

The following statement from the report underscores their frustration with “climate deniers” and the platforms they use to oppose the UN’s agenda:

…mis- and disinformation about the cli­mate emergency are delaying urgently needed action to ensure a liveable future for the planet. Climate mis- and disinformation can be under­stood as false or misleading content that un­dercuts the scientifically agreed basis for the existence of human-induced climate change, its causes and impacts. Coordinated campaigns are seeking to deny, minimize or distract from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scientific consensus and derail urgent action to meet the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement. A small but vocal minority of climate science de­nialists continue to reject the consensus po­sition and command an outsized presence on some digital platforms.”
(p. 12, emphasis added)

Globalists want conformity regarding climate change and will go to extreme lengths to marginalize, censor, and discredit dissenters. They talk a good game about enforcing universal freedom of expression, but on climate and other issues vital to their agenda, free speech is not tolerated. Though they readily acknowledge that controlling information may lead to greater levels of authoritarianism, surveillance, censorship, and the erosion of human rights, it seems they are willing to overlook these offenses to protect their precious climate agenda.

If they can successfully shut down debate about climate change, then soon any topic that threatens their aims will be off limits. The UN deems itself a protector of human rights but plays a major role in the media-censorship complex. Its attempts at crushing opposition to the climate narrative betrays their mission and reveals authoritarian tendencies.

Countering Digital Hate or Advocating Suppression?

A recently released report issued by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) claims that new forms of climate denial have emerged. These new arguments don’t deny that the climate is changing and is caused by human activity, but instead contend that:

• The impacts of global warming are beneficial or harmless.
• Climate solutions won’t work.
• Climate science and the climate movement are unreliable.

The basis for their report stems from use of “an AI based model called CARDS,” short for Computer-Assisted Recognition of Climate Change Denial and Skepticism. CARDS is designed to identify and categorize climate denialist claims in text. The researchers used CARDS to analyze YouTube video transcripts from 96 mostly right-wing, conservative leaning channels including prominent ones like BlazeTV, Jordan Peterson, and the Heartland Institute.

CCDH has a big gripe with social media companies they believe are not doing enough to stem the tide of rising climate denial. They want to eliminate the ability for any “climate denier” spreading “conspiracy theory statements” to financially benefit from their content, as evidenced in the following statements:

To support the global efforts to avert climate disaster, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and X should all demonetize and de-amplify New Denial content. Demonetizing climate denial removes the economic incentives underpinning its creation and protects advertisers from bankrolling harmful content. Moreover, de-amplifying climate denial limits its reach and visibility, allowing time for fact-checking and other protective measures to be applied where content is clearly contrary to the well-established scientific consensus on climate change”
p. 34; emphasis added

CCDH polling on social media usage tested respondents’ agreement with conspiracy theory statements, including the statement: “Humans are not the main cause of global temperature increases.” CCDH found that 43% of adults and 56% of teenagers who report high activity on social media expressed agreement with that statement. This link between social media usage and conspiracist belief illustrates why urgent action is needed to prioritize information integrity on digital platforms in climate policymaking”
p. 34; emphasis added

Their demonetization and censorship recommendations come even after admitting that the CARDS model is only up to 78% accurate, could not perform any fact checks on the claims made in the transcripts, and that lack of punctuation caused results to be skewed.

The CCDH is a sketchy, UK-based, advocacy group that has produced various reports inciting censorship against those they disagree with. Their efforts against “anti-vaxxers” culminated in several reports that led to the deplatforming, demonetizing, and discrediting of many individuals and organizations exposing pandemic-related fraud and COVID-19 vaccine falsehoods.

CCDH’s The New Climate Denial report has been promoted through mainstream outlets like CNN, MSN, Yahoo, and USA Today. It could impact the cited individuals and organizations the same way it affected those targeted in its Disinformation Dozen reports a few years ago. Though their stated mission is to “protect human rights and civil liberties online,” they practice the opposite by advocating the revocation of these rights for climate and vaccine narrative challengers.

How The Media-Censorship Complex Plans to Tackle Climate Dissent

Two things are very clear from the recent reports issued by the WEF, UN, and CCDH. One, is that climate skepticism is on the rise. The second, is that they are threatened by the very existence of those who dare to refute their narrative. Many strategies to stem the tide of climate cynicism have already been employed with new ones currently being tested.

If one dares to publicly question the science regarding climate change, one or more of the following tactics may be used to impede the effort:

• Awareness Campaigns
• Artificial Intelligence
• Censorship
• Civic Listening
• Content moderation
• Demonetization and Financial censorship
• Deplatforming
• Digital armies
• Education
• Fact checking
• Media and information literacy
• Prebunking/psychological inoculation
• Shadowbanning
• Trusted Messengers
• Text mining / Automated text analysis
• Whole-of-society approach

In addition to Verified and CCDH, other organizations utilizing these methods to silence opposers include:

• Climate Feedback
• Covering Climate Now
• European Media and Information Fund
• FactCheck.org
• Global Disinformation Index (GDI)
• International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) (Poynter Institute)
• Media Wise (Poynter Institute)
• Newsguard
• PolitiFact (Poynter Institute)
• Reuters

Each of these organizations are fueled and funded by many of the entities responsible for advancing the climate agenda, especially as it relates to the UN SDGs. This globalized amalgamation of media watchdogs, fact checkers, and disinformation regulators is powered by billion-dollar corporations, democratic and undemocratic governments, influential foundations, and powerful NGOs. The list includes The White House, U.S. State Department, U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), The National Science Foundation, United Nations, Poynter Institute, National Endowment for Democracy, Open Society Foundations, Omidyar Network, Rockefeller Foundation, Rockefeller Family Fund, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and many more.

A plethora of legacy and social media companies also utilize the services provided by these organizations. A small sampling includes Associated Press, NPR, NBC News, Newsweek, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Nation, The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, WhatsApp, Twitch, and LinkedIn. A look at Covering Climate Now’s list of partners provides an even broader view of the media’s enforcement of the climate agenda.

As if governments, corporations, and organizations weren’t enough, universities such as Columbia, Harvard, Oxford, and University of Southern California also perpetuate the climate propaganda by training journalists in their institutions.

By treating climate change as a national security threat, the U.S. Department of Defense and intelligence agencies have also been enlisted in the fight against mis- and disinformation.

In addition, individuals within both the left and right wings of the two-party paradigm collude to curtail free speech. It is a grave mistake to believe that calls for censorship from either side of the political spectrum are beneficial. They are both integral to perpetuating the media-censorship complex.

Why Has Climate Science Become Nondebatable?

If it wasn’t apparent before, it should now be crystal clear that there is a vast empire united against those questioning the climate narrative. They are determined to perpetuate the myth that there is universal consensus on the facts.

The truth is there is no real consensus on climate science. The UN and its network of public-private partnerships (PPP) just make it seem that way. In this regard, the UN climate stance is akin to Anthony Fauci’s claim that questioning him was like questioning science itself. Honest and open debate on the issue should be continued by allowing opponents opportunities to present their case without fear of censorship, harassment, exclusion, or cancellation. Instead, there is constant reinforcement of a fictional consensus while divergent opinions are labeled as dangerous conspiracies.

Climate consensus figures as high as 97 and even 99.9 percent have been touted by former US Presidents, researchers, and media outlets in the past. But is this claim true? If it were, then why would there be so much effort to silence a mere one to three percent who deviate from the scientific echo chamber? Would all these battles be worth the time, energy, and money being spent on just a few dissidents, as they claim?

Much of what qualifies as climate research is funded by institutions that have already bought into the doomsday mantra of impending man-made disaster. The industry is rigged to favor researchers who set out to prove “official” claims. Funding and publication are often withheld from those who do not toe this line. As a result, statistics are skewed to make it seem like there is universal consensus.

Past research has demonstrated claims of scientific consensus on climate change to be fraudulent. In a paper published in 2023, a team of researchers disproved the conclusions reached in a 2021 study claiming there was greater than 99% consensus on climate science in peer-reviewed scientific literature.

The claims were refuted by demonstrating that studies expressing neutral opinions were misclassified and papers communicating skepticism were ignored. This clear case of academic malfeasance is not the only example where scientists used falsified research and conspired to silence those contradicting the alleged consensus. Even if the 99% consensus assertions were valid, the notion of consensus-as-truth does not pass the test for authentic scientific validation. The majority can still be wrong.

A recent article posted by The Good Men Project, which “exposed” the climate deniers behind the recent farmer protests in Europe, proclaimed that “Scientific consensus on human-caused climate change is equivalent to that on evolution.” This statement came in response to a request from protest organizer James Melville for a national debate on climate and net zero policies. Never mind that evolution is not a proven fact. Equating climate change to evolution shows it is also unproven and can be argued against. Again, the majority can still be wrong!

Remember when Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, and Johnson & Johnson made claims that their COVID vaccines were all well over 90% effective in stopping transmission? As evidenced in the following video, those proclamations did not hold up very well, did they?

A massive army has been assembled to ensure that rival claims will not see the light of day for long. But why is it that the powers that be would rather falsify research, smear dissenters, and spend billions of dollars to silence critics rather than continuing to debate the issues?

An article written by Gregory Whitstone, Executive Director of the CO2 Coalition, presents a valid argument for continued scientific debate on climate change, stating:

You have likely heard that 97% of scientists agree on human-driven climate change. You may also have heard that those who don’t buy into the climate-apocalypse mantra are science-deniers. The truth is that a whole lot more than 3% of scientists are skeptical of the party line on climate. A whole lot more…

There are some scientific truths that are quantifiable and easily proven, and with which, I am confident, at least 97% of scientists agree. Here are two:

• Carbon dioxide concentration has been increasing in recent years.
• Temperatures, as measured by thermometers and satellites, have been generally increasing in fits and starts for more than 150 years.

What is impossible to quantify is the actual percentage of warming that is attributable to increased anthropogenic (human-caused) CO2. There is no scientific evidence or method that can determine how much of the warming we’ve had since 1900 that was directly caused by us.

We know that temperature has varied greatly over the millennia. We also know that for virtually all of that time, global warming and cooling were driven entirely by natural forces, which did not cease to operate at the beginning of the 20th century.

The claim that most modern warming is attributable to human activities is scientifically insupportable. The truth is that we do not know. We need to be able to separate what we do know from that which is only conjecture.

How can greenhouse gases, particularly CO₂ be the sole agent causing rising temperatures when it is an essential element for all life forms? Given the growing world population, it seems that greater levels of CO₂would lead to greater benefits. Plants need CO₂ to thrive, yet the fight against it is accelerating.

Scientists have now stated that cow burps and farts and even human breathing are bad for the environment because they contribute to the emission of methane and nitrous oxide, both believed to contribute to global warming. This is beyond absurd!

We are on the slippery slope to a dystopian nightmare if the trend toward censorship and marginalization continues. There is no good reason why continued debate featuring those on all sides of the issue should not be occurring, unless of course there are other reasons for ramming this fear-based agenda down our throats.

Poland Prepares New Hate-Speech Law: 3 Years In Prison For Insulting LGBT People

  One country at a time, freedom of expression is being curtailed in Europe. Poland this time but the order doesn't matter. So LGBT people should not be offended but these politicians have no problem supporting neo-Nazis in Ukraine. Eventually criticizing Ukrainian nationalists will also be condemned. The real target is to muzzle opposition and control dissent, who you offend and how is not the issue. 

  It is quite impressive to witness the end of democracy and the crash of a civilization in real time. On this slope, the fall should take place within a decade although Europe will be bankrupt long before. (and may opt for a war it cannot win even earlier!) Craziness has no bottom!

Via ReMix News,

Poland, once a bastion of conservatism, is radically shifting gears under the new left-liberal government with a new “hate speech” law that could see offenders imprisoned for up to three years for “offensive” content against LGBT people.

The left had already been pushing for stricter speech controls before the coalition government formed, and since it won power, the left is now making good on its promises. On Wednesday, the Polish Ministry of Justice published a draft amendment to the penal code regarding hate speech on the website of the Government Legislation Center.

The new draft law is looking to expand classifications regarding hate speech to include age, disability, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity, according to Polish news outlet DoRzeczy.

Poland’s new government moves to crack down on ‘hate speech’

In a strong stand against government plans to penalize what it calls "hate speech," Poland's Confederation party asserts the need for free and unrestricted public discourse

“The introduction of the proposed solutions will ensure enhanced and full criminal law protection against the use of violence or unlawful threats, incitement to hatred, insults and violations of bodily integrity due to the disability, age, gender, sexual orientation or gender identity of the injured party,” reads the draft.

The draft also threatens up to five years in prison for “threats.”

However, even for “insults,” which are loosely defined, penalties could be extremely harsh under the new draft law.

Provisions regarding gender, sexual orientation and gender identity have been added to article 256, which covers incitement to hated and in article 257 regarding insults.

Now, under these new rules, “insults” against sexual orientation or gender identity will be punishable by up to three years in prison.

Warnings about new hate speech law

Opposition parties in Poland were already warning against proposals to change hate speech laws in January of this year when the new government first came to power. They argued that such changes would effectively end free speech in Poland and represent a grave threat to religious freedom, with Catholicism in particular critical of many aspects of LGBT.

“The ruling coalition, as part of its coalition agreement, has announced that they want to penalize so-called hate speech. The current left-wing Deputy Minister of Justice Krzysztof Śmiszek, from the New Left, has stated that his department is currently working on introducing these regulations, which limit freedom of speech and public debate in Poland. We, as the Confederation, strongly oppose this. The direct consequence of criminalizing certain words will, in fact, be the criminalization of conservative, religious, Christian views,” said Confederation MP Karina Bosak on Friday.

Dobromir Sośnierz, another party member, highlighted concerns about the subjective nature of defining hate speech.

“What the left understands by so-called hate speech, in practice, will mean speech hated by Minister Śmiszek, not necessarily speech that expresses hatred towards someone, but something that leftists dislike,” he remarked.

Generative AI in a Nutshell - how to survive and thrive in the age of AI (Video - 17mn)

 Today for the Easter, holiday, here's a slightly different video to open up your mind to the reality of AI. No hype, no worries about the future, just the facts. (This is what I actually do for a living these days :-)

 This video is bottling up all the basics of effective AI use in a short, impactful way supported with punchy, cute drawings which also help in understanding better the concepts. This should actually be required introduction to AI both for University undergraduates learning the basics of AI and business managers being acquainted to AI for their jobs. Enjoy!