Chatbots pave the way for a surveillance state
Can anyone compete with China’s Artificial Intelligence super-system? Sleepy government bureaucracies the world over are finally waking up to the hard reality that they have virtually no chance. China is galloping ahead. Only last month, it unveiled its latest rival to San Francisco’s ChatGPT: the Moss bot, and this month it plans to release another. The UK lags far behind.
Lego has released a new range of ‘diverse’ children’s figurines, in a transparent attempt to lecture children about identity politics. This is not merely a cynical corporate branding exercise. It is the latest foray by our cultural elites into social engineering and moral instruction. It is an attempt to tell the proles and their kids what to think.
Russia is welding ageing naval turrets onto old armoured vehicles to make crude tanks as Vladimir Putin’s forces face worsening arms shortages.
The crudely engineered vehicles are being deployed in a likely attempt to shoot down Ukrainian drones as the armed forces grapple with crippling shortages of fighting machines and ammunition.
New emails uncovered by House Republicans probing the COVID-19 pandemic reveal the deceptive nature of Dr. Anthony Fauci.
They show he “prompted” or commissioned — and had final approval on — a scientific paper written specifically in February 2020 to disprove the theory that the virus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China.
Eight weeks later, Fauci stood at a White House press conference alongside President Trump and cited that paper as evidence that the lab leak theory was implausible while pretending it had nothing to do with him and he did not know the authors.
When the word came that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was going to make an announcement about foreign interference in Canadian elections, speculation mounted about what new thing this would be.
The answer was that there wasn’t much new, except for an unnamed new person, in the unfamiliar new role of “special rapporteur,” who would be empowered to recommend what should be done next. Including whether there should be an inquiry.
Make no mistake, this was a scrambling stall tactic, a way to hold off the critics baying for a public inquiry into Beijing’s interference in Canada’s elections. Those critics include the NDP, Mr. Trudeau’s partners in a parliamentary alliance that keeps his minority government in power.
An attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center is among the 23 protesters who have been charged with domestic terrorism after they allegedly hurled Molotov cocktails and fireworks at a future Atlanta police training facility, cops said Monday.
Thomas Webb Jurgens, 28, was one of the nearly two dozen people detained on Sunday in what police have described as a “coordinated attack” on the still-under-construction Atlanta Public Safety Training Center — dubbed “Cop City.”
Jurgens is a staff attorney with SPLC — the left-leaning, anti-hate group, according to the State Bar of Georgia and his since-deleted LinkedIn page.
Last week we learned that Walmart was closing its two remaining stores in Portland. We also learned that Mayor Ted Wheeler had turned down Nike’s request for help dealing with constant shoplifting at their currently closed store in northeast Portland. Nike had requested they be allowed to hire off duty officers to patrol the area and Wheeler said he couldn’t allow that because the city barely has enough officers to cover emergency calls as it is.
When I was initially contacted by the media last month concerning the Chinese government’s reported interference in our 2019 and 2021 general elections, I stated that a public inquiry was required to pursue the matter as fully as possible by an independent authority. It was important, I believed, for the full restoration of the trust and the confidence in our electoral system.
Nothing that has been publicly divulged since has caused me to reconsider my call for a public inquiry. To the contrary, I have only been further convinced that it is the only course of action that will satisfy Canadians in coming to terms with what CSIS documents described as a brazen invasion of our electoral system by Beijing. My reaction would be the same no matter which foreign entity was sowing doubt in our democracy: Our elections belong to us and to no one else, and the mere threat that this is not 100-per-cent the case demands significant action.
Old-school feminism was supposed to be about letting women choose their own lifestyles. Some might want to stay home to raise a family, while others might want to pursue a career instead. There wasn’t supposed to be a wrong choice — the point was to give women equal treatment in the workplace, not force them there.
Holy Freakshows Batman 😳 pic.twitter.com/OAPDAjn7Un
— The Black Spiderman🕷🕸 (@theblackspiderm) March 5, 2023
‘This is not about Ukraine at all, but the world order,’ said Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, a month after the invasion. ‘The unipolar world is irretrievably receding into the past … A multi-polar world is being born.’ The US is no longer the world’s policeman, in other words – a message that resonates in countries that have long been suspicious of American power. The West’s core coalition may remain solid, but it has failed to win over many of the countries that refused to pick sides. Moscow’s diplomatic mission to build ties and hone a narrative over the past decade has paid dividends.
Look at Africa. In March last year, 25 African states out of 54 abstained or didn’t vote in a UN motion condemning the invasion, despite huge pressure from western powers. Their refusal to side clearly with Ukraine was testament to Russia’s ongoing diplomatic efforts in the developing world.
The World Health Organization had a terrible pandemic. Continually lambasted for its role in the public health disaster, only last week another embarrassment landed: the lab leak hypothesis, which it relentlessly tried to knock down, was accepted as the most likely explanation for the coronavirus.
But none of the steps in Trudeau’s multipronged approach included a public inquiry, which opposition leaders had signalled earlier in the day was the only method of investigation they would support.
Instead, the decision on whether or not to call such an inquiry will be made by an independent, special rapporteur who will have a “wide mandate” to oversee the new probes and make recommendations on how Ottawa can better combat foreign interference and inform the public about such attempts.
The head of Russia’s Wagner private army says it is not getting the ammunition it needs from Moscow, as it seeks to gain control of Bakhmut.
The eastern city has seen months of intense fighting, as Wagner and regular Russian troops try to seize it.
But Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin says his army’s lack of ammunition could be “ordinary bureaucracy or a betrayal”.
Ukraine’s president and military commanders have agreed to strengthen their defence of Bakhmut.
A new bill that is moving swiftly through initial rounds in the Israeli parliament is garnering harsh criticism from the Palestinian leadership. The bill basically states that an Israeli citizen or resident who commits a terrorist act and agrees to receive payment for it from the Palestinian Authority is thereby stating a preference to receive benefits from the Palestinian Authority over those of the State of Israel. When the terrorist completes his prison sentence, he will then move to the place of his chosen alliance, the West Bank or Gaza Strip. Needless to say, this also means that re-entry into Israel is prohibited.
Sounds fair enough. Not, however, to Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh.
