It is becoming increasingly clear that some of America’s most serious problems can be traced back to our colleges and universities – or at least the ones educating the country’s most powerful people.
The Vietnam War era aside, it has traditionally been uncommon for events at universities to make national headlines. Absent something extraordinary, like a president giving a commencement address, a dramatic scientific breakthrough or the award of a prominent international prize to faculty, headlines with university names in them have tended to relate more to national championships in sports.
Not anymore.
Over the past few years, news items about events on college campuses have come to dominate headlines. The subjects are some of the country’s most fabled institutions. And the stories are often negative, if not outright shocking.
Last December, the congressional testimony of three university presidents—Claudine Gay from Harvard University, Elizabeth Magill from the University of Pennsylvania, and Sally Kornbluth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—set off a firestorm. Under questioning by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) about anti-Semitic speech and conduct on their campuses, the three women dodged and deflected, unwilling to state definitively that calls for the genocide of Jews violated university policies and codes of conduct.
The response was swift. Within days, Magill resigned. Gay survived the initial maelstrom, but the bad publicity prompted critics to start digging through her professional past, and she resigned less than a month later, following accusations of plagiarism in her research publications. Some of the nation’s largest donors to these universities—many of them Jewish—began announcing that they would cease or pull back donations totaling in the tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars.
The chaos on campuses has only increased since, with pro-Palestine protests and marches at dozens of colleges and universities, and horrific rhetoric bumping up against speech codes and demands for free speech. Across the country, Jewish students describe themselves as “living in a climate of hatred and fear” amid dramatic increases in anti-Semitic conduct, threats, slurs, and actual violence.
This week, Stanford University sophomore Theo Baker published “The War at Stanford” in The Atlantic, in which he describes how the Israel-Hamas war has affected his campus. One Arab American graduate student told Baker that he thinks President Joe Biden “should be killed” and that Hamas should rule America. Pro-Palestine protesters set up sit-in “camps” for months and shouted for the destruction of Israel, chanting, “We don’t want no two-state; we want all of ’48!” Guest speakers brought in to facilitate campus discussion of the complex issues have been shouted down. Stanford employees have been threatened (“We know where you live!”), the interim president’s home has been vandalized, and his effigy was carried around campus covered in fake blood. The administration, Baker says, seems paralyzed, indecisive and defeated.
This isn’t an isolated incident at Stanford, and the Israel-Hamas war hasn’t caused it. Last March—months before the Oct. 7 attack on Israel—Stanford Law School students shut down a talk being given by federal judge Kyle Duncan, shouting at him every time he attempted to speak or engage the audience, screaming epithets and holding up signs with vulgar accusations and calls for violence against Duncan’s daughters.
Similar behavior has been displayed at other schools, having nothing to do with claims of colonialism in the Middle East.
Swimmer and activist Riley Gaines was cornered and forced to hide in a classroom at San Francisco State University last year, prevented from giving her talk about limiting participation in women’s sports to biological women.
In 2017, author Charles Murray’s scheduled talk at Middlebury College was interrupted by a mob that later physically attacked him and his faculty host Allison Stanger. Stanger’s hair was pulled so hard by a protester that she suffered a concussion.
The poisonous rhetoric, intolerance, and violence is just the tip of the iceberg.
In an interview with The Daily Signal podcast host Rob Bluey last week, national pollster Scott Rasmussen described what he called “the most terrifying poll result I’ve ever seen.” A recent Rasmussen poll asked Americans “to suppose there was an election and it was close but your candidate lost. And if their campaign team knew they could win by cheating and not get caught, would you want them to do so?”
According to Rasmussen, only 7 percent of American voters overall said they’d rather cheat to win. But among the group that he calls “the elite,” that number jumped to 35 percent. Among the “politically obsessed elite” (those who “talk politics daily”), it was a staggering 69 percent!
So who are these “elite”?
Rasmussen explains that they are the top 1 percent of the population. They make more than $150,000 a year. They live in densely populated urban areas. They have not only college but postgraduate degrees. And large numbers of them “went to one of 12 elite schools.”
He doesn’t name them, but we can hazard a pretty good guess which schools they are.
“The reason I bring that up,” he continues, “is about half the policy positions in government, half the corporate board positions in America, are held by people who went to one of these dozen schools.” And, he says, they also shape “the mainstream media narrative.”
Not only does this group think it’s acceptable to cheat to win an election, but 70 percent believe there is too much individual freedom in the United States, and an equal number trusts the government—which, of course, they control. “They really believe,” Rasmussen says, “that if they could just make the decisions and get us out of the way, we would be a lot better off.”
What’s going on at our most prestigious and exclusive universities? How have they produced generations of amoral, condescending authoritarians? And how do we put a stop to it?
In Historic Reversal, US To Restart A Shut Down Nuclear Power Plant For The First Time Ever
Is the long awaited – and overdue – restart of the American nuclear age finally here?
In a move which may force the lunatic greens to storm the White House, on Wednesday the federal government announced that it would provide a $1.5 billion loan to restart a nuclear power plant in southwestern Michigan. NJ-based Holtec International acquired the 800-megawatt Palisades plant in 2022 with plans to dismantle it, but with support from the state of Michigan and the Biden administration, the emphasis has shifted to restarting the nuclear power plant by late 2025 instead.
What is remarkable is not that the US is throwing some money at a nuclear power plant – since the US sells $1 trillion in debt every 100 days, it may as well go full “Brewster’s Millions” (or rather “Trillions”) and spend it all asap; it is that this would be the first nuclear power plant to be reopened in the US, setting a precedent as atomic energy makes a triumphal comeback. Sure, it still faces hurdles, including inspections, testing and the blessing of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but those are just formalities: watch as new NPPs start springing up across the country next.
“Nuclear power is our single largest source of carbon-free electricity, directly supporting 100,000 jobs across the country and hundreds of thousands more indirectly,” said Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, a former Michigan governor, who in turn is repeating what nuclear advocates have been saying for decades. Restarting this particular plant will protect 600 union jobs and 1,100 throughout the community.
The Palisades plant is along Lake Michigan, a two-hour drive from Chicago. A Michigan utility, CMS Energy, owned it from 1971 until the plant was sold to Louisiana-based utility Entergy in 2007. It was shut down in 2022.
Holtec said it has long-term commitments so far from two electric cooperatives to buy power from the plant.
“The repowering of Palisades will restore safe, around-the-clock generation to hundreds of thousands of households, businesses and manufacturers,” said Kris Singh, Holtec president and chief executive.
Critics, of course, have emerged. A coalition of “greens” opposed to restarting what it derisively calls a “zombie reactor” has requested a hearing at the NRC.
Holtec spokesman Patrick O’Brien said it will take four to five months to finalize the financial deal with the government.
“It is a loan we have to pay back,” he said, explaining that unlike US taxpayer funds embezzled by Ukraine’s corrupt leaders and the US Military-Industrial Complex, this particular loan will be tracked and eventually repaid.
Nuclear energy is in the spotlight. Thirty-four countries, including the U.S., last week pledged to use it to reduce reliance on fossil fuels. In California, regulators in December said the Diablo Canyon plant could operate through 2030 instead of 2025 to guard against blackouts as the state shifts toward renewable power sources. Owner Pacific Gas & Electric said federal aid helped it repay a state loan.
“There is more enthusiasm toward nuclear power — in Congress, in the industry and also internationally,” said Najmedin Meshkati, an engineering professor at the University of Southern California who has inspected nuclear plants around the world.
There is another reason why nuclear energy is suddenly back in vogue: with projections for electricity demand over the next five years doubling from just a year ago – due to a building frenzy of AI data centers, federally subsidized manufacturing plants, and the government-driven electric-vehicle transition – the US has no choice but to go full-on nuclear, despite the howls of outrage from green activists and progressive voters.
Still, restarting a plant is not easy.
“It puts the onus and burden on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Holtec to double down on efforts to make sure this plant is safe enough and all the safety measures are intact,” Meshkati said of Palisades.
Meanwhile, keep an eye on uranium stocks and more importantly, on the price of uranium itself: as the nuclear renaissance begins in earnest, the world will need lots of uranium, and the supply chains will need years to catch up to demand, which means that what has already been one of the best performing commodities in recent years is set to rise that much higher.
Palestinian banks could be cut off from the Israeli banking system starting next week following a decision by Israel’s finance minister to cease dealings between the two financial institutions, according to a report on Thursday by Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has two days to convene a cabinet meeting to discuss reversing plans by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to isolate Palestinian banks from both the Israeli and international banking systems.
The Palestinian economy is based on the Israeli currency, the shekel, making it reliant on ties to Israel and its financial dealings with the rest of the world must go through the Bank of Israel and Israeli banks.
Earlier this month, the hardline minister Smotrich threatened to paralyze the Palestinian Authority’s economy in response to the United States imposing sanctions on four West Bank extremist settlers accused of violence against Palestinians.
Israeli banks have heeded the sanctions despite calls by Smotrich not to comply. Two Israeli banks, Israel Discount Bank and Bank Hapoalim, currently maintain the connections of Palestinian banks with the banking system in Israel and globally.
To protect them from lawsuits involving the Palestinian Authority for “transferring funds to terror groups”, the Israeli government has been issuing a waiver of protection for the two banks on an annual basis, signed by the finance minister.
Smotrich is now refusing to renew the arrangement, which has been in place for years. Without this protection, the PA will be stripped of immunity and the Israeli banks will be exposed to lawsuits and are expected to cut ties with Palestinian banks.
The consequences of isolating the PA from the financial world and Israel’s economy would significantly paralyze the Palestinian economy.
Any Israeli company that has business relations with the PA will no longer be able to deposit Palestinian cheques or receive payments from Palestinian banks, according to Haaretz. Even Palestinian workers, who must only receive their wages in a bank deposit according to a 2022 agreement between Palestinian and Israeli authorities, will not be able to continue receiving wages in Israel, unless they are made in cash.
Other areas that would be affected by Smotrich’s move include Palestinian export and import operations, which go through Israeli ports, and Palestinian tax funds, which are collected by Israel.
The latest crude oil purchase that the Department of Energy made as part of refill plans for the strategic petroleum reserve cost an average of over $81 per barrel, exceeding the $79 ceiling set by the federal government.
Per an Argus report, the DoE declined to comment on why it had bought the oil despite the higher price hinting at more news to come later today.
Back in 2022, to arrest an inexorable climb in retail fuel prices, the White House announced a release of 180 million barrels of crude oil from the strategic petroleum reserve. Critics warned the move would have a limited effect on prices but compromise the energy security of the country by reducing the level of crude in the SPR.
The final amount of oil released from the SPR ended up exceeding 180 million barrels with the DoE pledging to replenish the reserve in a timely fashion but only when prices were favorable. The SPR is currently close to a 40-year low as a result of the massive release.
The replenishing effort has been going on slowly, with three million barrels bought there and another three bought here as the very news of a planned purchase led to an uptick in prices.
This forced the department to update the price range, at which it would be buying, raising the top end from $72 per barrel last year to $79 per barrel. Yet oil prices have been on a climb recently and WTI broke the $80-yer-barrel threshold earlier this month.
As of March 22, the SPR stood at 363 million barrels of crude, Argus reported, citing Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm as saying that it should be back to normal by the end of the year. This, however, will not be a result of the replenishment effort but of the cancellation of 140 million barrels in previously planned SPR sales for the period to 2031.
If Americans Just Ate Healthy & Exercised, Then Politicians Wouldn’t Be Clamoring About $1,000 Weight Loss Drugs “Bankrupting” Medicare
If the food-industrial complex had not flooded the nation’s food supply with junk, if the government actively encouraged healthy lifestyles, and if efforts to address the obesity crisis didn’t rely solely on ‘miracle weight loss drugs’ pushed by the pharmaceutical industry, then maybe – just maybe – politicians wouldn’t be clamoring on Capitol Hill, or the elderly (somewhat senile) president in the White House, about out-of-control drug prices.
But since common sense has vanished in America and folks have given up on Peloton bikes for $1,000 monthly injections of “Wegovy,” the blockbuster weight loss treatment (also a diabetes drug called “Ozempic”) from Novo Nordisk, then socialists, such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), wouldn’t be reviving the discussion about high drug prices.
“Today, a new Yale study found that Ozempic costs less than $5 a month to manufacture. And yet, Novo Nordisk charges Americans nearly $1,000 a month for this drug, while the same exact product can be purchased for just $155 a month in Canada and just $59 in Germany,” Sanders said in a statement.
Sanders cited the study “Estimated Sustainable Cost-Based Prices for Diabetes Medicines,” conducted by researchers at Yale University, King’s College Hospital in London, and the nonprofit Doctors Without Borders. It was published in the journal JAMA Network Open on Wednesday.
In the study, researchers found Novo could produce the blockbuster drug for 89 cents to $4.73 per month, as opposed to the monthly retail price of about $1,349 for Wegovy, a semaglutide injection.
“As Chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), I am calling on Novo Nordisk to lower the list price of Ozempic — and the related drug Wegovy — in America to no more than what they charge for this drug in Canada,” Sander said.
He added: “The American people are sick and tired of paying, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs while the pharmaceutical industry enjoys huge profits.”
Sanders warned: “This outrageously high price has the potential to bankrupt Medicare, the American people and our entire health care system.
There is no rational reason, other than greed, for Novo Nordisk to charge Americans nearly $1,000 a month for Ozempic when it costs less than $5 to manufacture it and can be purchased in Germany for just $59. Novo must substantially reduce the price of Ozempic in the US now. pic.twitter.com/rdyF5MCQbX
Analysts have forecasted that the market for weight-loss drugs could reach at least $100 billion a year by the end of the decade, with the production of Wegovy and Eli Lilly’s Zepbound and Mounjaro. And a decent chunk of the weight loss drugs will likely be covered by Medicare.
“The profit margin is immense” on weight loss drugs like Ozempic, Melissa Barber, a public health economist at Yale and the study’s lead author, told Bloomberg. She added, “There should be a conversation in policy about what is a fair price.”
Rounding back to the intro of this note, Americans should eat better and exercise. Then, we don’t have to rely on the pharmaceutical-industrial complex. What’s odd is the government does not promote ‘common sense’ healthy lifestyles. Why is that? Are their donors pharma companies?
SingularityNET and the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance aim to wrest control of AGI away from Big Tech…
After a year of increasingly dire warnings about the imminent demise of humanity at the hands of superintelligent artificial intelligence (AI), Magazine is in Panama at the Beneficial AGI Conference to hear the other side of the story.
Attendees include an eclectic mix of transhumanists, crypto folk, sci-fi authors including David Brin, futurists and academics.
We’re at the conference run by SingularityNET, a key member of the proposed new Artificial Superintelligence Alliance, to find out what happens if everything goes right with creating artificial general intelligence (AGI) — human-level, artificial general intelligence.
But how do we bring about that future, rather than the scenario in which Skynet goes rogue and kills us all?
One of the best insights into why those questions are so important comes from futurist Jose Luis Cordeiro, author of The Death of Death, who believes humanity will cure all diseases and aging thanks to AGI.
He tells Magazine of some sage wisdom that Arthur C. Clarke, the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, once told him.
He said: ‘We have to be positive about the future because the images of the future — of what’s possible — begin with our minds. If we think we will self-destroy, most likely we will. But if we think that we will survive, [that] we will move into a better world [then we] will work toward that and we will achieve it.’ So it begins in our minds.”
Janet Adams, CEO of SingularityNET, warms the conference up with some yoga. (Fenton)
Beneficial AGI: The quest for artificial general intelligence
Humans are hardwired to focus more on the existential threats from AGI than on the benefits.
Evolutionary speaking, it’s better that our species worries nine times too often that the wind rustling in the bushes could be a tiger than it is to be blithely unconcerned about the rustling and get eaten by a tiger on the 10th occurrence.
Even the doomers don’t put a high percentage chance of AGI killing us all, with a survey of almost 3000 AI researchers suggesting the chance of an extremely bad outcome ranges from around 5% to 10%. So while that’s worryingly high, the odds are still in our favor.
Opening the conference, SingularityNET founder and the “Father of AGI,” Dr. Ben Goertzel, paid tribute to Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin’s concept of defensive accelerationism. That’s the midpoint between the effective accelerationism techno-optimists and their “move fast and break things” ethos, and the decelerationists, who want to slow down or halt the galloping pace of AI development.
Goertzel believes that deceleration is impossible but concedes there’s a small chance things could go horribly wrong with AGI. So he’s in favor of pursuing AGI while being mindful of the potential dangers. Like many in the AI/crypto field, he believes the solution is open-sourcing the technology and decentralizing the hardware and governance.
Dr Ben Goertzel on keyboards with his surprisingly good robot-fronted band. (Fenton)
What is the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance?
This week SingularityNET announced it has teamed up with the decentralized multi-agent platform FetchAI — founded by DeepMind veteran Humayun Sheikh — and the data exchange platform Ocean Protocol to form the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance (ASI).
It will be the largest open-sourced independent player in AI research and development and has proposed merging SingularityNET, FetchAI and Ocean Protocol’s existing tokens into a new one called ASI. It would have a fully diluted market cap of around $7.5 billion — subject to approval votes over the next two weeks. The three platforms would continue to operate as separate entities under the guidance of Goertzel, with Sheikh as chair.
According to the Alliance, the aim is to “create a powerful compelling alternative to Big Tech’s control over AI development, use and monetization” by creating decentralized AI infrastructure at scale and accelerating investment into blockchain-based AGI.
What are the benefits of AGI?
Probably the most obvious beneficial impact is AGI’s potential to analyze huge swathes of data to help solve many of our most difficult scientific, environmental, social and medical issues.
We’ve already seen some amazing medical breakthroughs, with MIT researchers using AI models to evaluate tens of thousands of potential chemical compounds and discovered the first new class of antibiotics in 60 years, one that’s effective against the hitherto drug-resistant MRSA bacteria. It’s the sort of scaling up of research that’s almost impossible for humans to achieve.
And that’s all before we get to the immortality and mind-uploading stuff that the transhumanists get very excited about but which weirds most people out.
This ability to analyze great swathes of data also suggests the technology will be able to give early warnings of pandemics, natural disasters and environmental issues. AI and AGI also have the potential to free humans from drudgery and repetitive work, from coding to customer service help desks.
While this will cause a massive upheaval to the workforce, the invention of washing machines and Amazon’s online businesses had big impacts on particular occupations. The hope is that a bunch of new jobs will be created instead.
Economic professor Robin Hanson says this has happened over the past two decades, even though people were very concerned at the turn of the century that automation would replace workers.
Hanson’s study of the data on how automation impacted wages and employment across various industries between 1999 and 2019 found that despite big changes, most people still had jobs and were paid pretty much the same.
“On average, there wasn’t a net effect on wages or jobs in automation of U.S. jobs from 1999 to 2018,” he says.
SingularityNETCEO Janet Adams and Sergey Shalyapin, the platform’s chief technology officer. (Fenton)
AGI could make better decisions than we can: SingularityNET CEO Janet Adams
Janet Adams, the optimistic CEO of SingularityNET, explains that AGI has the potential to be “extraordinarily positive for all humanity.”
“I see a future in which our future AGIs are making decisions which are more ethical than the decisions which humans make. And they can do that because they don’t have emotions or jealousy or greed or hidden agendas,” she says.
Adams points out that 25,000 people die every day from hunger, even as people in rich countries throw away mountains of food. It’s a problem that could be solved by “intelligent allocation of resources across the planet,” she says.
But Adams warns AGI needs to be trained on data sets reflecting the entire world’s population and not just the top 1% so that when they make decisions, “they won’t make them just for the benefit of the powerful few, they will make them for the benefit of the broader civilization, broader humanity.”
AI safety and ethics: Addressing the concerns
Anyone who watched the early utopian dreams of a decentralized internet crumble into a corporate ad-filled landscape of addictive design and engagement farming may have doubts this rosy future is possible.
Building high-end AI requires a mountain of computing and other resources that are currently out of reach of all but a handful of the usual suspects: Nvidia, Google, Meta and Microsoft. So the default assumption is that one of these tech giants will end up controlling AGI.
Goertzel, a long-haired hippy who plays in a surprisingly good band fronted by a robot, wants to challenge that assumption.
Goertzel points out that the default assumption used to be that companies like IBM would win the computing industry and Yahoo would win search.
A tattered copy of The Prometheus Project. (Source: Internet Archive)
“The reason these things change is because people were concretely fighting to change it in each instance,” he says. “Instead, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and the Google guys came along.”
The founder of SingularityNET, he’s been thinking about the Singularity (a theoretical moment when technological development increases exponentially) since the early 1970s when he read an early book on the subject called The Prometheus Project.
He’s been working on AGI for much of the time since then, popularizing the term AGI and launching the OpenCog AI framework in 2008.
Adams says Goertzel is a key reason SingularityNET has a credible shot.
“We are the biggest not-for-profit, crypto-funded AI science and research team on the planet,” Adams says, noting their competitors have been focused on “narrow AIs” like ChatGPT and are only now shifting their strategy to AGI.
“They’re years behind us,” she says. “We have three decades of research with Dr. Ben Goertzel in neural symbolic methods.”
But she adds that opening up the platform to any and all developers around the world and rewarding them for their contribution will give it the edge even over the mega-corporations who currently dominate the space.
“Because we have a powerful vision and a powerful commitment to building the most advanced, most intelligent AGI in a democratic way, it’s hard to imagine that Big Tech or any other player could come in and compete, particularly when you’re up against open source.”
“[We will] see a potentially huge influx of people developing on the SingularityNET marketplace and the continued escalation of pace toward AGI. There’s a good chance it will be us.”
HyperCycle CEO Toufi Saliba (Fenton)
Decentralized AI: Opening the door to open source development
The Prometheus Project proposed that AI was such an earth-shattering development that everyone in the world should get a democratic vote on its development.
So when blockchain emerged, it seemed like implementing decentralized infrastructure and token-based governance for AI was the next most practical alternative.
HyperCycle CEO Toufi Saliba tells Magazine this mitigates the threat of a centralized company or authoritarian country gaining immense power from developing AGI first, which would be “the worst thing that ever happened to humanity.”
It’s not the only potential solution to the problem. Meta chief AI scientist Yan Le Cun is a big proponent of open-sourcing AI models and letting a thousand flowers bloom, while X owner Elon Musk recently open-sourced the model for Grok.
But blockchain is arguably a big step up. SingularityNET aims to network the technology around the world, with different components controlled by different communities, thereby spreading the risk of any single company, group or government controlling the AGI.
“So you could use these infrastructures to implement decentralized deep neural networks, you could use them to implement a huge logic engine, you can use them to implement an artificial life approach where you have a simulated ecosystem and a bunch of little artificial animals interacting and trying to evolve toward intelligence,” explains Goertzel.
I want to foster creative contributions from everywhere, and it may be some, you know, 12-year-old genius from Tajikistan comes up with a new artificial life innovation that provides a breakthrough to AGI.”
It’s possible the fate of the world may rest in this man’s hands. (Fenton)
What is HyperCycle? What is OpenCog Hyperon?
HyperCycle is a ledgerless blockchain that’s fast enough to allow AI components to communicate, coordinate and transact to finality in under 300 milliseconds. The idea is to give AIs a way to call on the resources of other AIs, paid for via microtransactions.
For now, the fledgling network is being used for small-scale applications, like an AI app calling on another AI service to help complete a task. But in time, as the network scales, it’s theoretically possible that AGI might be an emergent property of the various AI components working together in a sort of distributed brain.
“So, in that approach, the entire world has a much higher chance to get to AGI as a single entity,” Saliba says.
Goertzel didn’t develop HyperCycle for that reason — he just needed something miles faster than existing blockchains to enable AIs to work together.
The project he’s most excited about is OpenCog Hyperon, which launches in alpha this month. It “combines together deep neural nets, logic engines, evolutionary learning and other AI paradigms in the same software framework, for updating the same extremely decentralized Knowledge Graph.”
The idea is to throw open the doors to anyone who wants to work on it in the hope they can improve the METTA AGI programming language so it can scale up massively. “We will have the complete toolset for building the baby AGI,” he says. “To get something I would want to call it baby AGI we will need that million times speed up of the METTA interpreter,” he says.
“My own best guess is that Opencog Hyperon may be the system to make the [AGI] breakthrough.”
AI governance: The role of voting systems
Of course, decentralization does not ensure things will go right with AGI. As Goertzel points out, the government of Somalia was decentralized very widely in the 1990s under a bunch of warlords and militias, but it would have been preferable at the time to live under the centralized government of Finland.
Furthermore, token-based governance is a long way from being fit for prime time. In projects like Uniswap and Maker, large holders like a16z and the core team have so many tokens it’s almost not worth anyone else voting. Many other decentralized autonomous organizations are wracked by politics and infighting.
The surging price of crypto/AI projects has attracted a bunch of token speculators. Are these really the people we want to put in control of AGI?
Goertzel argues that while blockchain projects are currently primarily attractive to people interested in making money, that will change as the use case evolves.
“If we roll out the world’s smartest AI on decentralized networks, you will get a lot of other people involved who are not primarily oriented toward financial speculation. And then it’ll be a different culture.”
But if the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance does achieve AGI, wouldn’t its tokens be ludicrously expensive and out of reach of those primarily interested in beneficial AGI?
As Goertzel has told Magazine previously, our chances of controlling AGI after a certain point are slim. (Fenton)
Goetzel suggests that perhaps a weighted voting system that prioritizes those who have contributed to the project may be required:
“I think for guiding the mind of the AGI, we want to roll out a fairly sophisticated, decentralized reputation system and have something closer to one person, one vote, but where people who have some track record of contributing to the AI network and making some sense, get a higher weighting.”
Chinese Ex-Trade Minister Who Backed Trump Warns US That ‘Dismantling’ Global Trade Is Blowing Back On Ordinary Americans
President Joe Biden in late February said “unprecedented action” is being taken in response to an emerging scenario where “China’s policies could flood our market with its vehicles, posing risks to our national security.” He said at the time, “China is determined to dominate the future of the auto market, including by using unfair practice.”
This is but one leading example of what Beijing has complained about as being hardline moves of Washington targeting Chinese goods and thus eroding the very free trade system it once led the world in establishing. This week China’s former vice minister of foreign trade, Long Yongtu—who once expressed hope that Trump would get reelected as he’s “easy to read”—reflected on the past few years of changes since the Trump administration.
He spoke of Washington-driven efforts which are resulting in rising protectionism and supply chain decoupling at an event ahead of the opening of the Boao Forum for Asia. His talk emphasized that ultimately Washington’s anti-China trajectory is hurting ordinary Americans as Chinese companies scramble to buy up land in Mexicoas a necessary alternative to being able to do business directly in the US.
“These Chinese companies could have continued to make goods in China for America at reasonable prices, but now they have to bear the extra costs of migrating to Mexico, and US consumers are grappling with more expensive goods,” Long explained, citing a seven-fold increase in Chinese investors purchasing land in Mexican industrial parks going back to 2019.
“It is the globalized economic and trade systems that are at stake, they were built by the US and the West after World War II, but now the US is dismantling the system,” he continued.
The 81-year old Long, it must be remembered, served as China’s lead negotiator during its 15-year talks to join the World Trade Organization over twenty years ago, which happened in 2001. During his fresh comments, Long said, “The WTO has been marginalized, and I think the most urgent task today is how countries can work together to strengthen the function of the WTO and carry out some necessary reforms.”
A flurry of both US and international reports over the past couple years have amply demonstrated and documented the trend, replete with stories like the following in Economic Times:
Bill Chan had never set foot anywhere in Mexico, let alone the lonely stretch of desert in the north of the country where he abruptly decided to build a $300 million factory. But that seemed a trifling detail amid the pressure to adapt to a swiftly changing global economy.
It was January 2022, and Chan’s company, Man Wah Furniture Manufacturing, was confronting grave challenges in moving sofas from its factories in China to customers in the United States. Shipping prices were skyrocketing. Washington and Beijing were locked in a fierce trade war.
Man Wah, one of China’s largest furniture companies, was eager to make its products on the North American side of the Pacific. “Our main market is the United States,” said Chan, CEO of Man Wah’s Mexico subsidiary. “We don’t want to lose that market.”
That same objective explains why scores of major Chinese companies are investing aggressively in Mexico, taking advantage of an expansive North American trade deal. Tracing a path forged by Japanese and South Korean companies, Chinese firms are establishing factories that allow them to label their goods “Made in Mexico,” then trucking their products into the United States duty-free.
There are not just economic but potential geopolitical ramifications of the trend. If China is sweeping up vast property in Mexico for production, it raises questions over the extent to which in some cases Chinese government-affiliated companies could be ‘on America’s doorstep’ in greater numbers. This would have serious ramifications in any future hot conflict scenario, for example in a new Taiwan crisis.
China’s development creates opportunities for the rest of the world rather than poses threats, said Long Yongtu, former chief of the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) in south China’s Hainan Province on Wednesday.https://t.co/OjBZ6XJgc5pic.twitter.com/m3kGU1rZ55
Long in his Tuesday comments at the Boao Forum urged that “ordinary Americans should be better informed on the manifold benefits of free trade, and that discussions should return to the realm of common sense and the proven and objective laws of economics and trade.” He also declared that China’s global reach represents “opportunity” and should not be seen in the West as a “threat” – a common refrain of Beijing.
The current state of Central Bank Digital Currency Projects globally summarized by Efrat Enigson, independent journalist and host of the “You’re The Voice” podcast…
“What underpins a world order is always the financial system.
We are on the brink of a dramatic change where we are about to, and I’ll say this boldly, abandon the traditional system of money and accounting and introduce a new one. And the new one is what we call blockchain.
It means digital. It means having an almost perfect record of every single transaction that happens in the economy, which will give us far greater clarity over what’s going on. It also raises huge dangers in terms of the balance of power between states and citizens. In my opinion, we’re going to need a digital constitution of human rights if we’re going to have digital money.
Most people think that digital money is crypto and private, but what I see are superpowers introducing digital currency. The Chinese were the first. The US is on the brink of moving in the same direction. The Europeans have committed to that as well.”
This revolutionary speech about a new financial system, was delivered at the World Government Summit in March 2022 in Dubai, by Philippa “Pippa” Malmgren, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and Chatham House; her father, Harald Malmgren served as a senior advisor to US Presidents Kennedy, Nixon, Ford and others. She’s a technology entrepreneur and economist, who served as Special Assistant to President George W. Bush, for Economic Policy on the National Economic Council and is a former member of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets and Corporate Governance.
Her words about the transition to a new world order that requires a new financial structure correspond well with the words of French President Emmanuel Macron in June 2023 at the Global Finance Summit in Paris: “The world needs a public financial shock to fight global warming, and the current system is not suitable for dealing with the world’s challenges.” The president of Brazil, Lula da Silva, also called for “a clean slate” and said the Bretton Woods organizations (World Bank, International Monetary Fund) do not serve their goals nor respond to society’s needs.
The Summit for a New Global Financing Pact. Photo: Ricardo Stuckert/PR
“THE NEW BRETTON WOODS MOMENT”
“A new international monetary system is taking shape, some call it the new Bretton Woods moment that needs to be seized to create a new global financial governance,” says the investigative journalist Whitney Webb in a recent sitdown interview, where she mention that according to Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of England & Bank of Canada and the UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance, the three pillars of the new multi-polar world are Digital IDs, CBDCs and ESG, through a global carbon market. All world governments are pushing this agenda, that in order for it to succeed, all monetary systems and supporting systems must become digital and rely on digital data.
A good example of this was revealed at an event of the Central Bank of Israel with the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) – which I attended – in September 2023 in Tel Aviv, where the “Genesis Project” was presented. As part of this project, “green” bonds are issued, based on carbon quotas in the CBDC infrastructure. This is how the climate agenda is linked to financial markets.
“DEBT SERFDOM”
“Stablecoins could be the way in which the US is further globalizing the dollar, spreading its adoption directly to the world’s general public in order to continue increasing its debt and encourage uptake and usage of the dollar”, says Mark Goodwin, Editor in Chief of Bitcoin Magazine, in this interview with Whitney Webb. He suggests that the politician’s outcry of de-dollarization and the weakening of the dollar are a distraction from perpetuating the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.
“While CBDCs are what people are becoming fearful and aware of, it may just be the red herring, and the real strategy of the US dollar’s survival is highly regulated stablecoins (such as Tether), which can easily be programmable, even more than CBDCs, as well as seized, regulated and controlled indirectly by governments. 100 billion dollars in treasuries were already purchased by Tether, its subsidiaries and owners. Tether is positioned alongside the top 20 nation states buying debt from the US, with around one tenth of China or Japan that have a trillion dollars debt to the US”.
This theory, together with the words of Mark Carney, Pippa Malmgren, Emmanuel Macron & Lula Da Silva, join the calls of global leaders and heads of states, pointing to the replacement of the monetary and financial world order, to introduce a new monetary system. Many experts say that we are reaching the end of the current fiat monetary system experiment, which is destined to collapse. Since world leaders are aware of this, they prefer to engineer a controlled demolition, to maintain control and steer the course, and enter the new era with power firmly within their grasp.
CENTRAL BANK DIGITAL CURRENCY SYSTEM (CBDC)
Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC), tie the financial freedom of citizens to the government and the banking establishment. The central bank issues its centralized digital currencies, and essentially creates a new monetary system, “fiat on steroids”, a system that takes everything that is bad in the fiat system, and adds more of it; surveillance, control, censorship, and enforcement capabilities. A modern prison? Indeed, the CBDC is the ultimate prototype of a prison without physical chains. By connecting CBDCs to digital identity cards, and to government systems such as universal basic income, social credits and more, we get the ultimate control apparatus. This apparatus will dictate to citizens what they’re allowed to purchase, what the permitted quotas are while limiting consumption according to rules and use cases, at programmed times, places and cadences. The system is able to determine the use of a geographic radius (geo-fencing), and to determine expiration dates on the money. Each remote controlled digital wallet can also be switched on and off by its operators. More than 130 countries are in the initial stages of piloting CBDC systems, of which 36 countries are in advanced pilots, and 3 countries have already launched systems (Nigeria, Jamaica and the Bahamas).
WILL RIPPLE (XRP) BE THE CHOSEN PLATFORM FOR CBDC?
Ripple, a digital payment network and transaction protocol that owns the cryptocurrency XRP, is considered one of the most popular cryptocurrencies, and is strategically positioning itself at the heart of government financial innovation, aiming to be the cornerstone of future CBDCs.
The company is in talks with about twenty governments around the world to develop their CBDCs using Ripple’s technology. In May 2023, Ripple launched a dedicated CBDC platform to assist central banks, governments and financial institutions around the world in issuing CBDCs and stablecoins. To date, Ripple has partnered with six governments for CBDC pilot projects: Georgia, Colombia, Montenegro, Hong Kong, Bhutan and the Republic of Palau.
The National Bank of Georgia, for example, has chosen Ripple as its technology partner for its CBDC pilot last year, citing Ripple’s technical expertise and team capabilities. Its interest in CBDCs is in leveraging modern technologies, such as the programmability aspect of CBDCs, aiming to create a platform with smart contract and programmable token capabilities to stimulate innovation in the financial sector.
In the case of Bhutan, Ripple’s technology was chosen in 2021 for the country’s CBDC project to enable advanced cross-border payments, and assist in “financial inclusion” – in line with Bhutan’s mission to increase financial inclusion in Bhutan to 85% by 2023.
In 2022, Ripple reached the final stage of the G20 Techsprint CBDC Hackathon, hosted by Indonesia and the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), and in August 2023, the Republic of Palau launched a USD-backed digital currency, developed by Ripple.
Promoting its platform as an infrastructure for a CBDC, Ripple advocates for government regulation of cryptocurrencies, and tries to position itself as the preferred solution for CBDC projects. Its claim to fame of being the ideal CBDC partner for governments is the combination of speed, efficiency, a sustainable and “green” blockchain network that uses little energy (compared to the Bitcoin network), and interoperability – the ability to communicate and work with CBDC solutions in other countries on the Ripple infrastructure. The company warns that there is a risk for CBDC adoption by the public, caused mainly by a lack of market education, and it encourages the programming and expiration dates capabilities, which are perceived by most of the public as particularly Orwellian features of CBDCs.
Ripple encourages the abolition of cash (and a move to a cashless society), and unsurprisingly, it promotes the climate agenda; The company’s website presents its commitment to a clean, prosperous and secure low-carbon future, with a plan to reach carbon net-zero by 2030.
Apparently, in line with Ripple’s expansion strategy vis-a-vis governments, the company makes sure to recruit employees who came from central and commercial banks. One of the company’s top executives is Andrew Whitworth, policy director at Ripple, who previously worked at the Bank of England. At the same time as his role in Ripple, Whitworth also serves as a Director of the “Digital Pound Foundation”, an organization that has declared itself the authority on the Digital Pound; it advises and influences the government’s decisions regarding CBDC projects and deployments. Clearly an inside connection such as this might give Ripple an advantage in shaping digital currency policies to fit their platform and solutions. Does this hint a conflict of interests, or at least an unfair play?
Another avenue through which institutional influence and implicit control over Ripple could manifest is via a legal battle with the SEC (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission) concerning the XRP cryptocurrency. Engaging in such legal disputes inevitably positions Ripple in a scenario where maintaining a positive relationship with institutions becomes crucial. Consequently, it’s no surprise that Ripple prioritizes governments, central banks, and financial institutions as its primary target audience in its market strategy.
China spent a couple of years rolling out relatively failed CBDC projects without widespread adoption, while injecting 30 million yuan as free money to encourage user adoption. Transactions using the digital yuan hit 1.8 trillion yuan (US$249 billion) in June 2023.
Recently, significant progress has been made: the two main payment services and applications in China – WeChat and Alipay – which have a traffic of about 3-4 trillion dollars per year, integrated the Chinese CBDC service into their applications. The central bank regulator made it clear that digital yuan isn’t meant to compete with the two payments giants. Rather, it’s supposed to play a complementary role.
Elon Musk, who owns, among other things, the Twitter/X platform, has stated that he wants to make the platform an “everything app” like the Chinese WeChat, including payment management. Will X also follow the Chinese route and integrate the CBDC solution into it, or will it try to become a CBDC infrastructure itself with the help of Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency, the Dogecoin?
The CBDC pilot in Nigeria didn’t exactly take off either, after the citizens took to the streets to protest the abolition of cash in the country, and resented the introduction of an unneeded digital solution, while demanding the return of cash. After a long and painful protest, the cash was returned alongside the new digital currency, which was not canceled and became part of reality. Furthermore, a new stablecoin is in preparation in Sandbox mode in Nigeria. The cNGN is a Naira stablecoin which some claim has more potential than the e-Naira to be widely adopted. “The stablecoin will be more broadly interoperable than the CBDC, which is only available in the central bank’s wallet. At launch, the central bank’s wallet usability was weak, although it is now quite good”, said Bolu Abiodun, a reporter at Techpoint Africa.
The UK saw a strong public backlash to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak last year, with more than 50,000 responses sent to the Bank of England following a public hearing on the Digital Pound, aka the UK’s national CBDC.
GERMANY – AWARENESS OF “EXCESSIVE SURVEILLANCE”
In Germany, the technical guidelines document for a digital currency of a central bank was published in January 2024. Below are several quotes from the document, reflecting the tyrannical nature of the new currency, and the awareness of the central bank for trust issues it can create:
Programmability is the institution’s authority to dedicate your money for certain uses, and to prohibit the use of your wallet when it is “outside the permitted scope”.
“The central bank can revoke CBDC notes, e. g. as an instrument of monetary control. Revocation of CBDC notes is performed by an authorized entity, the revocation authority, controlled and operated by the central bank.” This sounds like a technique to confiscate and apply a shelf life to money.
“Payments permitted under certain restrictions.. if the central bank sees fit to impose them” – the document lists restrictions that can be applied to wallets, depending on the amount of personal information that will be provided. For example, the amount of money in the wallet, the number of payments per day, the amount of money per transaction or per day.
The good news: The German central bank is aware of the possibility of public opposition to a surveillance system: “Many of these design choices are general decisions on the trade-off between excessive surveillance and legitimate monitoring functions for AML and KYC purposes in conjunction with measures for mitigating fraud and misconduct. These decisions are extremely sensitive in nature and can strongly influence the level of trust that users place into the CBDC”.
ISRAEL – THE DIGITAL SHEKEL WILL BE DISTRIBUTED THROUGH COMMERCIAL BANKS
Israel takes an extensive and active part in various CBDC pilots, such as the Sela project, Eden, Icebreaker and more, which I have reported on extensively in the past. The Deputy Governor of the Bank of Israel announced that in December 2024 a technical design document for the Digital Shekel will be published, and its implementation will then begin in partnership with the private sector.
The Bank of Israel’s latest document from last week covers the proposed architecture of the Digital Shekel. Here are some interesting points from the document:
The distribution of the Digital Shekel will be two-tiered: instead of direct contact between consumers and the central bank for funding and defunding, an indirect method similar to the distribution of cash today will be used. The banks will purchase digital shekels from the central bank in large quantities and transfer them to customers upon wallet charging.
The system will be able to apply and enforce limits, for example limits on the balance that users are allowed to hold in the Digital Shekel.
The system will support the possibility of applying interest on the Digital Shekel.
Users will be able to access the Digital Shekel through several payment providers, including credit cards, Google/Apple Pay, wearables, payment apps and more.
Unlike most retail CBDC solutions, Israel’s model allows users to open a wallet with a payment service provider (PSP) and connect to multiple third-party banks to fund and defund balances.
Another interesting development in Israel is the announcement of a plan to launch a new stablecoin pegged to the shekel, called BILS, by the exchange platform, Bits Of Gold. Crypto Jungle website reports that the Israeli Capital Market Authority approved the pilot, according to the draft principles published by the Central Bank of Israel. Interesting to note that the company providing the infrastructure for the issuance and custody of the currency is the Israeli technology giant “FireBlocks”, which took part in the “Eden” pilot project of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange for the issuance of digital bonds, built to adapt in the future to a potential CBDC infrastructure.
NO INTERNET? DON’T WORRY, GOVERNMENTS WILL TAKE CARE OF CONNECTIVITY ANYWAY
A number of CBDC pilots, like in India, the European Union and more, focus on the adoption of the system by everyone, even amongst people without internet access. The washed-up name “financial inclusion” implies that the system will not skip anyone, not even citizens without Internet connectivity in remote areas, or without reception. In India for example, there are 683 million people living without an internet connection and largely outside the control of the state. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) plans to bring these remote areas into a new surveillance network through various technological means. A successful launch of CBDC in India also corresponds with the government’s overarching goal of reducing cash usage and improving financial monitoring.
THAILAND – FREE MONEY FOR THE MASSES
In September 2023, the Thai government announced that any Thai citizen over the age of 16 who chooses to participate in the CBDC pilot, will receive free CBDC worth $280 (10,000 baht) – quite a lot of money in Thai terms. This digital money will be loaded into the digital wallet application and will be available for use within 6 months, and within a radius of 4 km from the residence of the registered citizens. The pilot targets low-income citizens as a first stage, and later expands to entrepreneurs and small business operators – provided they are registered in the tax system. In Thailand many citizens are not registered in the government systems and not everyone has a bank account. It seems that air-dropping “free money” is another tactic to lure citizens into government systems, with the bait of “free” controlled government money. But is there such a thing as “free lunch”?
THE EUROPEAN UNION – A POSITIVE MARKETING CAMPAIGN IN HIGH GEAR
The European Union launched a marketing campaign to promote the digital euro about six months ago, to start educating the European public about a reality where that they will be obliged to use a supervised digital euro, led by Christine Lagarde, who was previously convicted of crimes and was promoted to serve as the governor of the European Central Bank, the ECB.
The Digital Euro new marketing campaign. Source: Christine Lagarde’s Twitter account
At the same time, a charade is going on in the European Union Parliament where the dangers of CBDCs are being discussed, only thanks to the public awareness and discourse, while Lagarde rushes forward and kicks off the marketing campaign to instill in the public the following messages: the digital euro is easy, safe, fast and reliable. Not a word about its Orwellian capabilities to track, program, limit and condition activity through expiration dates, geo-fencing, and remote on and off switching.
In a discussion at the European Union Council in 2023, Lagarde emphasizes a point: the digital euro will not be anonymous. Privacy will exist in the system, but not anonymity. Let’s break this up in a different way: for the banks, the key to surveillance and control is identification. The bank must know who the citizen is and verify their identity, in order to exercise law enforcement or regulations, through technological restrictions. Lagarde’s claim that the technology will allow privacy but not anonymity is unfounded: apparently the central bank considers itself and the financial service providers some kind of God, since in front of them the citizen will be identified, and therefore it is not clear what kind of privacy can exist, without anonymity.
In a presentation from March 2024, the ECB presents a timetable for the Digital Euro. In November 2025, the development and implementation phase will begin, with the completion of the “democratic” legislative process.
The timing of the launch of the Digital Euro corresponds well with the European Union’s initiative to issue digital identity cards to all EU residents between now and 2030, to enable the necessary government identification and tracking of its citizens. Identical initiatives are enacted and promoted in many other countries around the world at the same time. Where I live, in Israel, ID cards and passports have been mandatory and digital for many years, and also biometric since 2013 – therefore there is no need to start the marketing campaign for the Digital Shekel yet, as the digital infrastructure exists hence the first step of digitalization is already done.
This phase of the project is the “preparation phase”, the ECB reveals, in which they are preparing for the launch phase of the Digital Euro. Of course, we are reassured that no final decision has yet been made regarding the launch of the CBDC, and this will only happen with the approval of the “Government Council” after the completion of the democratic legislative process of the European Union. Therefore, in parallel with the democratic debate for or against the Digital Euro, the development of the technology will continue, in order to be prepared for the launch.
Central bank governors such as Lagarde and Bank of Israel Governor Amir Yaron insist that the CBDC is digital cash, and also insist that physical cash will not be abolished. It is possible that these central bankers feel the need to make a U-turn from the incriminating speech of the head of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), Augustin Carstens, who caused a public outcry when he stated in 2020 that the CBDC technology, unlike cash, will allow monitoring of financial transactions and will be a means of enforcement by the establishment:
“The key difference with the CBDC is the central bank will have absolute control of the rules and regulations that will determine the use of that
expression (money) of central bank liability, and also we will have the technology to enforce that.”
Agustín Carstens – BIS General Manager
THE FUTURE: CENTRALIZED AND CONTROLLED, OR FREE, DECENTRALIZED AND SECURE?
Ayn Rand, author and philosopher, said that “We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.” Are we taking giant steps towards a new monetary reality, where the fiat currencies we know become fiat on steroids, aka CBDCs? Or into the reality of “stable” and closely regulated cryptocurrencies, tethered to fiat? Either way, the feeling is that the establishment is doing everything to preserve the debt economy, and its inherent modern slavery. The only way to break these fiat-matrix boundaries is to opt out and enter into a new system, which seems to run in a parallel reality, the Bitcoin system. On the Bitcoin standard, under self-custody, no third party has the ability to confiscate, program or take over private assets. Not even the government or the state. Bitcoin uses a lot of energy for its mining, but this proof-of-work mechanism makes the blockchain network extremely secure and the Bitcoin currency very valuable. Bitcoin is “safe money”, which is out of reach for the establishment. Unlike most other cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin is a digital currency without intermediaries or third parties (peer-to-peer) in a decentralized and secure network, which allows everyone to be their own bank, instead of relying on banks and external parties. With a fixed and known supply, it represents the most powerful digital asset on the market as a store of value and as a unit of account, and in the future will also be used as a medium of exchange.
In my recent interview with the media and finance expert, and one of the most famous Bitcoiners, Max Keiser, he compared the CBDC to a parasitic and centralized cancer: “If you were to look at the amount of energy that Bitcoin uses and the rate at which it’s increasing, you would say good is triumphing over evil. So this gives me a lot of hope. And I don’t think centralization in anything works at all, except cancer. Cancer is the only thing that seems to work to be overly centralized and parasitic. That’s the cancer model, but I think we’re gonna win against the cancer of CBDCs.”
Putin Threatens To Attack Western Air Bases Hosting Ukrainian F-16s
This week Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Torzhok air base in Tver Region which hosts the 344th Training Center for Russian combat pilots. Some or many of these aviators who will likely go on to fly missions in Ukraine.
In an address to the pilots, Putin referenced accusations frequently voiced by Western leaders that he intends to expand the war in Ukraine by attacking NATO and other European countries. He called the claim “utter nonsense” but went on to issue a warning about US-made F16 fighters jets.
Describing that US “satellites” in Eastern Europe (for example, Poland) have no reason to be afraid, he said, “The claims that we are going to attack Europe after Ukraine – it is utter nonsense and intimidation of their own population just to beat the money out of them.”
European countries have indeed been seeking to ramp up their defense sectors and spending, especially following two years of arming Ukraine which has largely depleted domestic stockpiles.
A translation in Politico quoted Putin as further saying “…the possibility of an attack on some other countries, on Poland, the Baltic states, the Czechs are scared. It’s just nonsense,” and that Russia has “no aggressive intentions toward these states.”
The Russian president further reiterated in the talk that the special military operation in Ukraine was launched out of the necessity of “protecting our people on our historical territories.” Referring to the NATO alliance, he said: “They came right up to our borders… Did we go across the ocean to the borders of the United States? No, they are approaching us, and they have come very close,” according to a Russian media translation.
Putin also took the opportunity to address international reports that Kiev will soon be given its first batch of F-16 fighter jets. According to his words as summarized in EuroNews:
At the same meeting, he warned Ukraine’s Western allies against providing air bases in their countries from where the F-16s could launch sorties against the Kremlin’s forces, saying those bases would be a“legitimate target.”
The F-16s require a high standard of runways and reinforced hangars to protect them when they are on the ground.
Military analysts have said the arrival of potentially dozens of F-16s won’t be a game-changer, though Ukrainian officials have welcomed them as an opportunity to hit back at Russia’s air dominance. Putin insisted the F-16s “won’t change the situation on the battlefield.”
That’s when he vowed before the pilots and trainees, “We will destroy their warplanes just as we destroy their tanks, armored vehicles and other equipment, including multiple rocket launchers.” Significantly, he upped the ante with this threat, given he made clear that even bases in Western countries could be targeted if Ukraine flies sorties from them.
State-run RT has also sought to emphasize this in relaying Putin’s words in the following:
F-16s flown by Ukrainian pilots but based in third countries will nevertheless be legitimate targets for Russia, Putin added.
“Of course, if they are used from airfields of third countries, they become a legitimate target for us, wherever they are located,” he said.
Beginning last summer the Kremlin began highlighting that F-16 fighter jets are capable of carrying tactical nukes which are in select NATO countries’ possession. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov for example at that time explained, “Moscow can’t ignore the nuclear capability of US-designed F-16 fighter jets that may be supplied to Ukraine by its Western backers. He went so far as to say that it will be seen as a threat from the West “in the nuclear domain.”
I wonder how many people have recoiled with horror at what happened in the House of Representatives recently. I am referring to the decision, effectively, to ban the social media platform, TikTok, in the United States (to ‘protect Americans from foreign adversaries’), because it supposedly affords the Chinese government the opportunity to ‘spy’ on Americans and manipulate their thinking.
Well, one thing is sure – judging by the margin by which this motion was adopted by the House, and the quality of some of the opinions aired on the topic (that I have listened to), there was precious little thinking going on around the room, with some notable exceptions (352 votes for, 65 against), such as Representative Thomas Massie (R) of Kentucky. What thinking there was – such as the excellent argument put forward by Massie – was not sufficient to sway the rest of the delegates in the direction of common sense.
So what was this non-debate about TikTok all about? Most readers would probably already know about it, but it bears repeating, lest the intricacies of the hidden assumptions escape one’s attention. In sum, as mentioned earlier, it comes down to the claim that China is using TikTok to spy on American citizens, and in addition to influence their thinking and behaviour. This, despite the glaring fact that – as Clayton and Natali Morris argue in the first video linked above – the US spies on its own citizens with impunity, not to mention that it also conducts espionage on China.
The two investigative reporters of Redacted further highlight the remarkable speed with which the US Congress has addressed the putatively urgent issue concerning TikTok, while allowing the arguably far more urgent matter of thousands of illegal immigrants streaming across the American border to continue unabated. The further irony is, of course – also stressed by the Morris duo – that these illegal immigrants include a far more salient ‘Chinese threat;’ namely, the large numbers of young, ‘military age’ Chinese men. And yet, the border issue is clearly not seen in the same light of urgency as TikTok!
Should the US Senate confirm the House’s vote to ban this short video app (application) – which is likely – thousands, if not millions of Americans who depend on it for their livelihood, would be left high and dry. This does not seem to have bothered the members of the House either.
But most egregiously, it is either lost on the members of the House, or they wittingly connive at the fact that this Act will endow the American President – Joe Biden, at present – with tremendous powers to control anything deemed to be under the influence of so-called ‘foreign adversaries,’ real or imagined. ‘Anything’ here includes not only comparable apps, but internet platforms and websites too. So, if X (formerly Twitter) is regarded by the incumbent of the presidency, for whatever reason, as posing a threat to US citizens in terms of influence or ‘manipulation’ by ‘foreign adversaries,’ it could be banned. It is redundant to emphasise the dictatorial potential of such a situation, but we’ll get to it later, anyway.
In Thomas Massie’s speech to the House he makes a telling distinction: while other speakers described TikTok as a Chinese ‘Trojan horse,’ he perspicaciously turns this metaphor back on the bill itself, insisting that it is itself the real Trojan horse. On March 12 he warned that anyone who thought it was not a Trojan horse would have to explain why there is a very telling exclusion in it, namely (quoting from the bill):
The term ‘covered company’ does not include an entity that operates a website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application whose primary purpose is to allow users to post product reviews, business reviews, or travel information and reviews.
This exclusion hides more than it shows Why? Because the exclusion pertains to ‘entities’ that are innocuous from a political point of view. But what about platforms like Rumble, X, or BitChute which, unlike YouTube and Facebook, are not censored, and therefore include many items to which the current regime (being part of the neo-fascist cabal) is hugely allergic? In other words, once signed into law, this Trojan horse bill could attack Americans from inside the walls of Troy, as it were, at the whim of the head honcho in the White House. And one need not add that, in the hands of its present occupant it would be a weapon of mass despotism.
Ironically, Senator Rand Paul’s insights concerning the House decision bring to light the unacknowledged lies and cover-ups lurking behind the ostensibly ‘open’ debate preceding the voting. He did not waste any time commenting (in the first video linked above) that:
Reactionaries who want to ban TikTok claim the data can’t be secured because the ‘algorithm’ is in China.
Not true.
The truth is the algorithm runs in the US in Oracle cloud with their review of the code. (NOT in China.)
Maybe we should examine the facts before committing violations of the 1st and 5th Amendments.
They want to ban TikTok because it’s ‘owned by China.’
Not true.
60% of the company is owned by US and international investors.
20% is owned by the company founders.
20% is owned by company employees, including over 7,000 Americans.
The CEO of TikTok is from Singapore, not China.
So ask yourself why they keep repeating this lie to scare you?
In characteristically courageous fashion, Rand Paul did not hesitate to expose the lies that were bandied about in the House, neatly repudiating them by providing the true state of affairs in each case. But he did not stop there. This was followed by:
My statement on the House TikTok ban.
The passage of the House TikTok ban is not just a misguided overreach; it’s a draconian measure that stifles free expression, tramples constitutional rights, and disrupts the economic pursuits of millions of Americans.
With an iron fist, Congress dictated an unrealistic and narrow path for divestment, effectively banning TikTok and ignoring its substantial investments in data security.
This act is not securing our nation – it’s a disturbing gift of unprecedented authority to President Biden and the Surveillance State that threatens the very core of American digital innovation and free expression.
Joe Biden must be overjoyed, licking his lips at the thought of having been gifted with the dubious means to silence his critics and opponents at will, at the cost of Americans and people in the rest of the world being informed through available sources of their choice. It would amount to a situation hardly distinguishable from one where the state owns all the media – in other words, an unadulterated dictatorship. That is, unless it is stopped at the Senate level, which is unlikely.
One wonders whether the outcome of Murthy vs. Missouri, before the Supreme Court today (March 18), dealing as it does with the troubling issue of censorship (and therefore with the implications and purview of the First Amendment), would have a noticeable retrospective effect on the TikTok ban, which – at bottom – relates to the same question.
What is astonishing about all of this is the apparent ease and rapidity with which the bill passed through the House, as Clayton Morris points out in the first video, linked above, highlighting the contrasting lack of interest in actively tackling the undeniable problem of unchecked ingress of illegal immigrants at American borders (referred to earlier). In a country which has always boasted about having the First Amendment, or rather, what it stands for – freedom of speech – which implies guaranteeing the continued existence of those sources of information which make freedom of expression possible, one might have expected the results of the vote to have been the other way around.
As it stands, is it far-fetched to read in these results the degree to which the collective mindset in the US has already morphed into one that is, incomprehensible as it may seem, receptive to despotic rule? I think not. The neo-fascist technocrats, who must surely have regarded the United States as the biggest hurdle to cross in their quest for world domination, must be writhing with uncontrollable convulsions of glee at present. After all, they are witnessing the crumbling of this erstwhile ‘bastion of freedom,’ which their puppet in the White House and his minions have set in motion with relative ease, it would seem.
A situation such as the one briefly sketched above as a distinct possibility, would eerily resemble what was the case in the early 1950s in the United States, which went by the name of the ‘Red Scare.’ The Eisenhower Library (online) provides this useful sketch of this lamentable episode in American history:
Senator Joseph R. McCarthy was a little-known junior senator from Wisconsin until February 1950 when he claimed to possess a list of 205 card-carrying Communists employed in the US Department of State. From that moment Senator McCarthy became a tireless crusader against Communism in the early 1950s, a period that has been commonly referred to as the ‘Red Scare.’ As chairman of the Senate Permanent Investigation Subcommittee, Senator McCarthy conducted hearings on communist subversion in America and investigated alleged communist infiltration of the Armed Forces. His subsequent exile from politics coincided with a conversion of his name into a modern English noun ‘McCarthyism,’ or adjective, ‘McCarthy tactics,’ when describing similar witch hunts in recent American history. [The American Heritage Dictionary gives the definition of McCarthyism as: 1. The political practice of publicizing accusations of disloyalty or subversion with insufficient regard to evidence; and 2. The use of methods of investigation and accusation regarded as unfair, in order to suppress opposition. Senator McCarthy was censured by the US Senate on December 2, 1954 and died May 2, 1957.]
Several things strike one in this excerpt, the first of which is the phrase ‘witch hunts,’ with its disquieting connotations of persecuting people on the basis of flimsy, but ‘useful’ evidence of supposed malpractice of some kind – such as having a black cat, metaphorically speaking, equivalents of which could include ‘misinformation,’ disinformation,’ and even (God forbid) ‘malinformation,’ all of which have been thoroughly tainted, from a mainstream perspective, with connotations of proverbial witchcraft. The TikTok ban would allow members of the Biden Inquisition to scream ‘Witch!’ at anything which does not gel with the official narrative, such as the items found on X, Children’s Health Defense, or BitChute, to mention only some likely candidates.
Then there is the related American Heritage Dictionary’s illuminating description, quoted in the excerpt above, which links McCarthyism explicitly with the ‘political practice of publicizing accusations of disloyalty or subversion with insufficient regard to evidence’ as well as with ‘the use of methods of investigation and accusation regarded as unfair, in order to suppress opposition.’ To anyone with a modicum of comprehension of what is at stake, this would appear to be uncannily apposite. Given its track record, could anyone expect of the Biden administration any ‘regard to (contrary) evidence’ where accusations of disinformation are concerned? Or the employment of ‘methods of investigation’ that are fair? Give me a break!
To sum up by using a currently popular term, Biden and his DOJ would ‘weaponise’ the TikTok ban to the hilt, to the detriment of the citizens of the US as well as American democracy. And make no mistake: democracy may never recover from what threatens to become nothing less than McCarthyism on steroids. While one has access to the means for resisting this conspicuous act of usurping the constitutionally ‘guaranteed’ rights and freedoms of the American people, one must avail oneself of these – before they disappear.
