It is known that evil must tell you what it is planning to do.
The Future
What could happen in 2023…
- 1. Increase in oil prices to $ 150 per barrel and gas prices to $ 5,000 per 1,000 cubic meters.
- 2. The return of the UK to the European Union.
- 3. The collapse of the European Union after the return of the UK and the abolition of the euro as the currency of the former EU.
- 4. The seizure by Poland and Hungary of the western regions of the former Ukraine.
- 5. The creation of the Fourth Reich on the basis of Germany and the satellites that joined it (Poland, the Baltic countries, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, the Kiev Republic, etc. marginals).
- 6. The war between France and the Fourth Reich. The partition of Europe, including the new partition of Poland.
- 7. Separation of Northern Ireland from the Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and accession to the Republic of Ireland.
- 8. The Civil War in the USA, the separation of California and Texas into independent states. Creation of the union State of Texas and Mexico. The subsequent victory of Elon Musk during the US presidential election in some of the states assigned to the Republicans after the Civil War.
- 9. Transfer of all major stock exchanges and financial activity from the USA and Europe to Asia.
- 10. The collapse of the Bretton Woods financial system, including the collapse of the IMF and the World Bank. Abandoning the euro and the dollar as world reserve currencies. The return of the gold standard. Transition to the active use of digital fiat currencies.
Once the destruction of these targets has been completed, the remnants of the infrastructure will be mined, and the area planted with sensing devices. The armies will then begin a rapid, staged withdrawal behind Russian lines where the process of fortification and entrenchment has already begun“ Civilians and disarmed Ukrainian troops – except for the Ukro-Nazi units — will be allotted one or two corridors through which they will be permitted to leave the zone. They’d better not dawdle.”…
NOVEMBER 29, 2022
“It seems probable that Russia will impose a solution. If, as expected, it becomes clear that the West can’t or won’t negotiate, it will behoove Russia to implement a maximalist solution. Or alternatively, Russia “bargains” by showing that it can create a dead zone in Western Ukraine as big as it likes. If Ukraine and its US minders don’t come to their senses, that dead zone will be awfully big.” Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism
How does this end?
How does Russia create a “neutral” Ukraine that isn’t armed-to-the-teeth by Moscow’s enemies? How do they prevent Kiev from conducting joint-military drills with NATO or placing missile sites on Russia’s border? How do they stop the Ukrainian Army from shelling ethnic Russians in the east or training far-right paramilitaries to kill as many Russians as possible? How does Putin change Ukraine into a good neighbor that doesn’t pose a security threat and that doesn’t fuel anti-Russian hatred and bigotry? And, finally, how does one resolve the conflict peacefully if one side refuses to negotiate with the other? Check out this clip from an article at Mint News:
“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday signed a decree formally announcing the “impossible” prospect of peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russian President Vladimir Putin…
“He (Putin) does not know what dignity and honesty are. Therefore, we are ready for dialogue with Russia, but with another president of Russia,” Zelensky said on Friday. (Mint News)
The fact that Zelensky will not negotiate with Putin does not mean there will be no settlement. It just means that Zelensky will have no voice in the outcome. As the more powerful country, it has always been within Russia’s ability to impose a settlement that achieves its basic national security objectives, and that is precisely what Putin will do. The settlement will not be ideal nor will it completely end the hostilities, but it will provide a layer of protection from Russia’s enemies which is the best that can be hoped for given the circumstances. Regrettably, the settlement will also terminate Ukraine’s existence as a viable, contiguous state. And– after Russia has finished its special military operation– Ukraine will face a dismal future as a deindustrialized wasteland that is entirely dependent on its allies in the west for its survival.
Here is an excerpt from an article by Moscow-based journalist John Helmer who thinks the Russian army will clear a vast area of central Ukraine in its upcoming winter offensive, and that much of that land will become part of a 100-kilometer-wide Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that will protect Russia from Ukrainian missile and artillery attacks. As Helmer notes, the model for this military-imposed settlement is “the armistice of Panmunjom of July 27, 1953, which ended the Korean War…. On the ground inside the UDZ (Ukraine Demilitarized Zone) there may be no electricity, no people, nothing except for the means to monitor and enforce the terms of the armistice.” Here’s more from Helmer:
Military source:…. Once the destruction of these targets has been completed, the remnants of the infrastructure will be mined, and the area planted with sensing devices. The armies will then begin a rapid, staged withdrawal behind Russian lines where the process of fortification and entrenchment has already begun.”
“Civilians and disarmed Ukrainian troops – except for the Ukro-Nazi units — will be allotted one or two corridors through which they will be permitted to leave the zone. They’d better not dawdle.”…
The sources agree there will be a new military demarcation line before the thaw next spring; they differ on how it is being drawn now, and how it will look next April. “For now the line will be on the Dnieper with the zone extending from the west bank into the rump Ukraine – my guess is at a depth of not less than 100km. This will put Russian territory out of the range of most Ukrainian artillery. A 100km-deep zone will also give the Russian forces time to detect and intercept anything in flight…
“In the northern sector – that’s from Kramatorsk and Slovyansk to Kharkov… these are garrisons and staging areas of hate on or near to Russia’s borders; they will not be spared ….(and) have qualified them for de-electrification, de-population, and de-nazification.”
“The point to emphasize, especially in the Russian operations in the north… will not seize and hold territory. … The idea won’t be to occupy the territory, let alone administer it, for any length of time. The goal will be to destroy enemies who raise their heads and the infrastructure they rely on; lay mines and sensors; and then withdraw.”
“Once the assigned transportation and logistics nodes have been taken, the job of destroying them by engineer units will begin. Bridges, roads, railroads, marshalling yards, rolling stock, airfields, fuel storage and dispensaries, electrical substations, transmission and communications towers, central offices, warehouses, laydown areas, agricultural equipment – anything that could possibly be used to support the Ukrainian-NATO effort east of the zone’s western border will be destroyed. That will be also be the ground forces’ job – more comprehensive and thorough than missile and drone strikes can achieve.”
“Civilians and disarmed fighters, without their motorized equipment, will be permitted to walk out of the zone to specially prepared buses (as Surovikin supervised in Syria) with whatever they can carry on their backs…. Anyone who chooses to stay inside the zone will be informed explicitly via radio, flyers, and loudspeaker that they are considered enemy combatants and will be targeted accordingly. After a prescribed amount of time, the ‘golden bridges’ for the exiting population will be destroyed. For those remaining they will have had no power, sanitation, or communications …”(“Ukraine Armistice– How the UDZ of 2023 will separate the Armies like the Korean DMZ of 1953”, John Helmer, Dances With Bears
Helmer sums it up perfectly. Putin is going to create a vast, uninhabitable no-man’s-land in the center of Ukraine that will separate east from west and end Ukraine’s existence as a viable, contiguous state. This is what a military-imposed settlement looks like. It’s not ideal and it doesn’t necessarily stop all the fighting, but it does address Russia’s basic security requirements which Washington chose to ignore.
Rest assured, that Washington will not like this settlement and will never agree to the new borders. But the United States will not have the final say-so in this matter and that is extremely important because Washington’s role as the “guarantor of global security” is now a thing of the past. Russia is going to decide Ukraine’s borders and that’s just the way it’s going to be. So, yes, we can expect to hear the gnashing of teeth at NATO Headquarters and the UN and at the White House, but to little effect. The matter is settled unless, of course, the US and NATO want to commit ground forces to the conflict which, we think, will precipitate a split in NATO that will inevitably lead to its collapse. Either way, Ukraine’s fate is going to be decided in Moscow not Washington, and that reality is going to have a significant impact of the distribution of global power. There’s a new sheriff in town and he is definitely not an American.
Bottom line: We think Helmer’s analysis is the most probable scenario going forward. Putin has shown admirable restraint to this point, but after 9 months of pointless drudgery and carnage, it’s time to wrap this thing up. Moscow has always had a sledgehammer in its toolkit and now it’s going to use it. We would have preferred that it didn’t end this way, but there’s no sense in crying over spilt milk. Washington wanted to stretch this war out for as long as possible to bleed Russia dry so it couldn’t project power beyond its borders or obstruct US plans to “pivot to Asia”. But Putin foiled that plan. He didn’t step into Washington’s trap and he’s not going to pump blood and money down a black hole. He’s going to settle this matter once-and-for-all and be done with it. This is from an interview with Colonel Douglas MacGregor:
“This entire conflict could have been avoided had we simply recognized Moscow’s legitimate interests in what happens in Ukraine…. What happens in Ukraine is important to Russians…. So, we could have intervened early on and said, ‘Let’s have a ceasefire and talk’, in fact, we could have listened to the Russians for the last 10 or 20 years about their concerns about what was happening inside Ukraine. And, I think now we see with the Zelensky regime– a very dangerous government that is incurably hostile to Russia (and) that responds exclusively to instructions from Washington– that has decided that it wants to fatally weaken Russia in any way possible… The solution to this is –not to join this futile and pointlessly destructive war with Moscow– (but) to get some sense into peoples’ minds in the government in Kiev.” Colonel Douglas MacGregor, “Ukraine is about to be Annihilated”, You Tube; 2:10 minute-mark
IMO, the decision has already been made. Ukraine is going to be split in two whether Washington likes it or not. That’s just the way it is.
By the way, I have never ever voted for the Cons in my life but this fake PM we have has changed this.
International security should be a collective effort, not a “zero-sum game,” India’s defense minister has said
The minister also warned about the growing impact of “information warfare” and fake news campaigns on political stability, which he said was used for “engineering the opinion or perspective of the masses.”
https://www.rt.com/news/566302-india-world-order-nations-superior/
Nov 10, 2022
FIEL PHOTO: Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh speaks in Kolkata, India, on July 15, 2022. © Global Look Press / Dipa Chakraborty
A truly stable and just global order can only be created when nations cease attempting to ensure their own security at the expense of others, Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh has said.
Speaking to the National Defense College on Thursday, Singh argued that the world should develop a collective approach to security.
“India does not believe in a world order where few are considered superior to others,” he said, adding that India’s own strategic policy should be “moral.”
If security were to become a truly collective enterprise, then the world could begin creating “a global order which is beneficial to all of us,” Singh added.
National security should not be seen as a “zero-sum game,” he insisted, adding that nations should instead seek to find “win-win” solutions that would benefit everyone.
“We should not be guided by narrow self-interest which is not beneficial in the long run,” the defense minister warned, calling for leaders to adopt a principle of “enlightened self-interest” that would make their nations more sustainable and resilient to shocks.
Russian oil ‘advantageous’ for India – FM
A “strong and prosperous” India should not be built at the expense of others, he said. Instead, New Delhi would prefer to “help other nations realize their full potential.”
The minister also warned about the growing impact of “information warfare” and fake news campaigns on political stability, which he said was used for “engineering the opinion or perspective of the masses.”
This information war is “most evident in the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine” where both sides use social media to “spread competing narratives about the war and portray the conflict on their own terms.”
The ideas expressed by Singh resemble the arguments made by Russia in early 2022 when it sought an agreement with the US and NATO to reduce the risk of a conflict on the European continent. At the time, Moscow similarly argued that the security of one nation could not be enhanced at the expense of others.
Moscow requested that NATO refrain from any military activity on the territory of former Warsaw Pact states that joined after 1997. It also requested that NATO vow not to expand further east. Its proposals for a long-term European security architecture were rejected, however.
Coming soon to your country. This is the future and the petty control freaks are salivating.
https://thenewamerican.com/analyst-united-states-will-cease-to-exist-by-2032/
Martin Armstrong
Nov 7, 2022
Donald Trump has the American public wondering whether he will soon declare another bid for the presidency, but will the nation as we know it even make it to 2024?
According to one economic forecaster, America’s days as we know it are numbered. Martin Armstrong, who previously predicted major events like the 2008 global financial crisis, said during a recent interview that “the United States will not exist after 2032” and that there may not even be an election in 2024 — pointing to widespread electoral fraud, corruption, and a loss of faith in the system.
Armstrong made his remarks during an appearance on Greg Hunter’s USA Watchdog.
“The cheating in the midterm election next week is going to be so great that it is almost impossible to make a prediction…. In a fair midterm election, the Republicans would win the House and the Senate,” Armstrong asserted in reference to the November 8 midterm elections.
“Where this ends up, who knows? It’s just so corrupt, it is over the top. It doesn’t matter who wins. Nobody is going to accept this thing, and that is the problem,” he added.
Armstrong claimed to have received emails from individuals living in Canada who have received ballots intended for Pennsylvania.
He believes that whichever side loses the midterms will not accept the election results, resulting in a total breakdown of the system.
“The United States will not exist after 2032. After 2028 and 2029, we are going to have to redesign a government from scratch. America is being destroyed,” he concluded.
More words here:
https://thenewamerican.com/analyst-united-states-will-cease-to-exist-by-2032/
Skynet is an interlinked system of facial recognition software-enabled surveillance cameras currently in operation in 16 Chinese provinces used to help public security organs crack down on crime and identify citizens in public through cross-reference with criminal and national identity databases held by the Ministry of Public Security and the National Citizen Identity Information Center (NCIIC). According to the CCP-owned tabloid Global Times, the system is fast enough to scan the entire population of the People’s Republic of China in under a second and allegedly has an accuracy rate of 99.8%.
What drives China and Russia is that sooner rather than later they will be ruling the Heartland.
“Hold high the great flag of socialism with Chinese characteristics, fully implement Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, carry forward the great founding spirit of the party, and unite and struggle to fully build a modern socialist country and to fully promote the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”
https://www.globalresearch.ca/china-xi-gets-ready-final-countdown/5796763
By Pepe Escobar
Global Research, October 19, 2022
***
President Xi Jinping’s 1h45min speech at the opening of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing was an absorbing exercise of recent past informing near future. All of Asia and all of the Global South should carefully examine it.
The Great Hall was lavishly adorned with bright red banners. A giant slogan hanging in the back of the hall read, “Long Live our great, glorious, and correct party”.
Another one, below, functioned like a summary of the whole report:
“Hold high the great flag of socialism with Chinese characteristics, fully implement Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, carry forward the great founding spirit of the party, and unite and struggle to fully build a modern socialist country and to fully promote the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”
True to tradition, the report outlined the CPC’s achievements over the past 5 years and China’s strategy for the next 5 – and beyond. Xi foresees “fierce storms” ahead, domestic and foreign. The report was equally significant for what was not spelled out, or left subtly implied.
Every member of the CPC’s Central Committee had already been briefed about the report – and approved it. They will spend this week in Beijing studying the fine print and will vote to adopt it on Saturday. Then a new CPC Central Committee will be announced, and a new Politburo Standing Committee – the 7 that really rule – will be formally endorsed.
This new leadership line-up will clarify the new generation faces that will be working very close to Xi, as well as who will succeed Li Keqiang as the new Prime Minister: he has finished his two terms and, according to the constitution, must step down.
There are also 2,296 delegates present at the Great Hall representing the CPC’s over 96 million members. They are not mere spectators: at the plenary session that ended last week, they analyzed in-depth every major issue and prepared for the National Congress. They do vote on party resolutions – even as those resolutions are decided by the top leadership, and behind closed doors.
The key takeaways
Xi contends that in these past 5 years the CPC strategically advanced China while “correctly” (Party terminology) responding to all foreign challenges. Particularly key achievements include poverty alleviation, the normalization of Hong Kong, and progress in diplomacy and national defense.
It’s quite telling that Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who was sitting in the second row, behind the current Standing Committee members, never took his eyes off Xi, while others were reading a copy of the report on their desks.
Compared to the achievements, the success of the Xi-ordered Zero-Covid policy remains highly debatable. Xi stressed that it has protected people’s lives. What he could not possibly say is that the premise of his policy is to treat Covid and its variants as a U.S. bioweapon directed against China. That is, a serious matter of national security that trumps any other consideration, even the Chinese economy.
Zero-Covid hit production and the job market extremely hard and virtually isolated China from the outside world. Just a glaring example: Shanghai’s district governments are still planning for zero-Covid on a timescale of two years. Zero-Covid will not go away anytime soon.
A serious consequence is that the Chinese economy will most certainly grow this year by less than 3% – well below the official target of “around 5,5%”.
Now let’s look at some of the Xi report’s highlights.
Taiwan: Beijing has started “a great struggle against separatism and foreign interference” on Taiwan.
The Shape of Things to Come in China. A New Stage in Economic and Social Development
Hong Kong: It is now “administered by patriots, making it a better place.” In Hong Kong, there was “a major transition from chaos to order.” Correct: The 2019 color revolution nearly destroyed a major global trade/finance center.
Poverty alleviation: Xi hailed it as one of three “major events” of the past decade along with the CPC’s centenary and socialism with Chinese characteristics entering a “new era”. Poverty alleviation is the core of one of the CPC’s “two centenary goals.”
Opening up: China has become “a major trading partner and a major destination for foreign investment.” That’s Xi refuting the notion that China has grown more autarchic. China will not engage in any kind of “expansionism” while opening up to the outside world. The basic state policy remains: economic globalization. But – he didn’t say it – “with Chinese characteristics”.
“Self-revolution”: Xi introduced a new concept. “Self-revolution” will allow China to escape a historical cycle leading to a downturn. And “this ensures the party will never change.” So it’s the CPC or bust.
Marxism: definitely remains as one of the fundamental guiding principles. Xi stressed, “We owe the success of our party and socialism with Chinese characteristics to Marxism and how China has managed to adapt it.”
Risks: that was the speech’s recurrent theme. Risks will keep interfering with those crucial “two centenary goals”. Number one goal was reached last year, at the CPC’s 100th anniversary, when China reached the status of a “moderately prosperous society” in all respects (xiaokang, in Chinese). Number two goal should be reached at the centenary of the People’s Republic of China in 2049: to “build a modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced and harmonious.”
Development: the focus will be on “high-quality development”, including resilience of supply chains and the “dual circulation” economic strategy: expansion of domestic demand in parallel to foreign investment (mostly centered on BRI projects). That will be China’s top priority. So in theory any reforms will privilege a combination of “socialist market economy” and high-level opening, mixing the creation of more domestic demand with supply-side structural reform. Translation: “Dual-circulation” on steroids.
“Whole-process democracy”: that was the other new concept introduced by Xi. Translates as “democracy that works”, as in rejuvenating the Chinese nation under – what else – the CPC’s absolute leadership: “We need to ensure that people can exercise their powers through the People’s Congress system.”
Socialist culture: Xi said it’s absolutely essential “to influence young people”. The CPC must exercise ideological control and make sure the media fosters a generation of young people “who are influenced by traditional culture, patriotism and socialism”, thus benefitting “social stability”. The “China story” must go everywhere, presenting a China that is “credible and respectable”. That certainly applies to Chinese diplomacy, even the “Wolf Warriors”.
“Sinicise religion”: Beijing will continue its drive to “Sinicise religion”, as in “proactively” adapting “religion and the socialist society”. This campaign was introduced in 2015, meaning for instance that Islam and Christianity must be under CPC control and in line with Chinese culture.
The Taiwan pledge
Now we reach the themes that completely obsess the decaying Hegemon: the connection between China’s national interests and how they affect the civilization-state’s role in international relations.
National security: “National security is the foundation of national rejuvenation, and social stability is a prerequisite of national strength.”
The military: the PLA’s equipment, technology and strategic capability will be strengthened. It goes without saying that means total CPC control over the military.
“One country, two systems”: It has proven to be “the best institutional mechanism for Hong Kong and Macau and must be adhered to in the long term”. Both “enjoy high autonomy” and are “administered by patriots.” Xi promised to better integrate both into national strategies.
Taiwan reunification: Xi made a pledge to complete the reunification of China. Translation: return Taiwan to the motherland. That was met with a torrent of applause, leading to the key message, addressed simultaneously to the Chinese nation and “foreign interference” forces: “We will not renounce the use of force and will take all necessary measures to stop all separatist movements.” The bottom line: “The resolution of the Taiwan issue is a matter for the Chinese people themselves, to be decided by the Chinese people.”
It’s also quite telling that Xi did not even mention Xinjiang by name: only by implication, when he stressed that China must strengthen the unity of all ethnic groups. Xinjiang for Xi and the leadership mean industrialization of the Far West and a crucial node in BRI: not the object of an imperial demonization campaign. They know that the CIA destabilization tactics used in Tibet for decades did not work in Xinjiang.
Shelter from the storm
Now let’s unpack some of the variables affecting the very tough years ahead for the CPC.
When Xi mentioned “fierce storms ahead”, that’s what he thinks about 24/7: Xi is convinced the USSR collapsed because the Hegemon did everything to undermine it. He won’t allow a similar process to derail China.
In the short term, the “storm” may refer to the latest round of the no holds barred American war on Chinese technology – not to mention free trade: cutting China off from buying or manufacturing chips and components for supercomputers.
It’s fair to consider Beijing keeps the focus long-term, betting that most of the world, especially the Global South, will move away from the U.S. high-tech supply chain and prefer the Chinese market. As the Chinese increasingly become self-sufficient, U.S. tech firms will end up losing world markets, economies of scale, and competitiveness.
Xi also did not mention the U.S. by name. Everyone in the leadership – especially the new Politburo – is aware of how Washington wants to
“decouple” from China in every possible way and will continue to provocatively deploy every possible strand of hybrid war.
Xi did not enter into details during his speech, but it’s clear the driving force going forward will be technological innovation linked to a global vision. That’s where BRI comes in, again – as the privileged field of application for these tech breakthroughs.
Only this way we can understand how Zhu Guangyao, a former vice minister of finance, may be sure that per capita GDP in China in 2035 would at least double the numbers in 2019 and reach $20,000.
The challenge for Xi and the new Politburo right away is to fix China’s structural economic imbalance. And pumping up debt-financed “investment” all over again won’t work.
So bets can be made that Xi’s third term – to be confirmed later this week – will have to concentrate on rigorous planning and monitoring of implementation, much more than during his previous bold, ambitious, abrasive but sometimes disconnected years. The Politburo will have to pay way more attention to technical considerations. Xi will have to delegate more serious policymaking autonomy to a bunch of competent technocrats.
Otherwise, we will be back to that startling observation by then Premier Wen Jiabao in 2007: China’s economy is “unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated and ultimately unsustainable”. That’s exactly where the Hegemon wants it to be.
As it stands, things are far from gloomy. The National Development and Reform Commission states that compared to the rest of the world, China’s consumer inflation is only “marginal”; the job market is steady; and international payments are stable.
Xi’s work report and pledges may also be seen as turning the usual Anglo-American geopolitical suspects – Mackinder, Mahan, Spykman, Brzezinski – upside down.
The China-Russia strategic partnership has no time to lose with global hegemonic games; what drives them is that sooner rather than later they will be ruling the Heartland – the world island – and beyond, with allies from the Rimland, and from Africa to Latin America, all participating in a new form of globalization. Certainly with Chinese characteristics; but most of all, pan-Eurasian characteristics. The final countdown is already on.
*
This article was originally published on Strategic Culture Foundation.
Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is a correspondent and editor-at-large at Asia Times and columnist for Consortium News and Strategic Culture. Since the mid-1980s he’s lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore, Bangkok. He has extensively covered Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia to China, Iran, Iraq and the wider Middle East. Pepe is the author of Globalistan – How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War; Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad during the Surge. He was contributing editor to The Empire and The Crescent and Tutto in Vendita in Italy. His last two books are Empire of Chaos and 2030. Pepe is also associated with the Paris-based European Academy of Geopolitics. When not on the road he lives between Paris and Bangkok.
He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Featured image is from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Pepe Escobar, Global Research, 2022
It’s happened before. It will happen again. But this time it’ll be much worse.
Photo: David Parry/PA
POSTED BY: KIM CARR VIA DAILY STAR
Although there may be some beneficial uses for AI, the dark side of humanity will misuse it in extremely destructive ways. Already, AI has been elevated above the control of nation-states and human government, and its creators are intentionally recreating the future without public input. ⁃ TN Editor
The creator of the first robot artist is warning that the rise of artificial intelligence is “apocalyptic” – and we are “hurtling” toward AI taking over from humans.
Aidan Meller, who is behind the ultra-realistic Ai-Da robot, reckons within three years we will face unimaginable changes as man merges with machine.
He also believes Elon Musk is correct when he claims nuclear war would have less impact on mankind than AI.
Aidan says: “I agree with Elon Musk that AI is a bigger threat than nuclear war – but it could also be remarkable too.
“There is every right to feel nervous about the rise of AI.
“We are hurtling towards them taking over humans so we need to have a heart of ethics.
“We are merging with machines – be warned, this is a changing world.”
Aidan will be there with Ai-Da, who had an art exhibition at Glastonbury where she painted headliner Billie Eilish.
She will meet schoolchildren and create a new piece of artwork for the event.
Aidan adds: “AI is going to show a mirror to the dark side of being human.
“Technology is not good or bad, it’s how we use it. This exhibition will show how it came about and where we want to go.
The news station received confirmation from Xcel, which stated that 22,000 customers who signed up for the Colorado AC Rewards program were locked out of their thermostats on Tuesday.
Smartphones, smart meters, and smart thermostats are devices that will eventually be used against us all. It starts with the thermostat. Lou
https://www.rebelnews.com/coloradans_locked_out_of_smart_thermostats_sweltering_heat
September 01, 2022
As the summer heat reaches sweltering levels in Colorado, Xcel customers have found themselves unable to adjust their thermostats to keep temperatures down.
AP Photo/Eric Risberg
As the summer heat reaches sweltering levels in Colorado, Xcel customers have found themselves unable to adjust their thermostats to keep temperatures down.
After temperatures climbed to 90 degrees Fahrenheit on Tuesday, Colorado residents subscribed to Xcel found that they were unable to cool their homes when they were informed by their thermostats that they were locked out from adjusting the air conditioning due to an “energy emergency.”
Xcel Energy is the company that makes these products.
“Normally, when we see a message like that, we’re able to override it,” said Arvada resident Tony Talarico in ABC’s Denver Channel:
In this case, we weren’t. So, our thermostat was locked in at 78 or 79.
Numerous Xcel customers took to Twitter to complain about their experiences, with some complaining that their homes were locked to a scorching 88 degrees.
The news station received confirmation from Xcel, which stated that 22,000 customers who signed up for the Colorado AC Rewards program were locked out of their thermostats on Tuesday.
Continue: https://www.rebelnews.com/coloradans_locked_out_of_smart_thermostats_sweltering_heat
I wonder how long it will take us, the vast majority of real humans, to remove or recycle these useless parasites that have prevented the evolution of the species since the beginning?
“There is the pandemic experienced as an inconvenience by the super-rich, and the pandemic experienced as a catastrophe by the working class. Only a revolutionary overturn can protect the population from the virus and remove from society the cancerous growth of multimillion and billion-pound wealth threatening its very existence.”
http://www.wsws.org
By Michael Barnes
4 April 2020
“London is to billionaires what the jungles of Sumatra are to the orangutan. It is their natural habitat”—Boris Johnson, Conservative Party Mayor of London, 2014.
“I welcome the fact that we have got 140-plus billionaires in London. That’s a good thing. I welcome the fact that there are more than 400,000 millionaires. That’s a good thing”—Sadiq Khan, Labour Party Mayor of London, 2016.
London, the centre of grotesque inequality in Britain before the COVID-19 pandemic, has inevitably become an epicentre of the pandemic within the UK. The city is a concentrated example of the class divisions cleaving through the whole of British society.
On the evenings of March 26 and April 2, as millions of Londoners joined a country-wide applause for the self-sacrifice of grossly underequipped NHS staff, where were the super-rich that Johnson and Khan lauded as essential to society’s wellbeing? While the Tory government bailed out big business to the tune of £380 billion, the multi-millionaires and billionaires escaped to secluded islands and safe havens in private jets, climbed aboard luxury yachts for extended vacations, settled into their country retreats, or bunkered down in their mansions and luxury apartments.
A few weeks ago, private jet booking service PrivateFly said it saw a huge increase in bookings as clients evacuated back to the UK from disease-hit countries. Others were arranging private flights out of Britain to avoid planned lockdowns.
Those poorer multi-millionaires who could not afford private jets were using concierge company Quintessentially. The company’s spokesperson said, “Members who are travelling commercially are choosing to book elite services at airports, not your typical first-class lounge. For example, private terminals where guests are greeted and given their own suite. Check-in, customs and security are all done privately, and guests are then taken to the doors of the aircraft. Members can request for the jetty to be cleared so they minimise the interactions with other passengers on their way to their seat.”
Luxury retail agency Quintessentially Estates said that early in the crisis their phones were hot with inquiries about “Scottish castles, mansions with bunkers, Cotswolds manor houses with moats, uninhabited Caribbean islands to buy, superyachts for a long charter and private jets to get clients home from abroad without their having to go near international airports.”
The London rich who could not escape buy designer face masks and attend eye-wateringly expensive Harley Street practices for private testing and expensive intravenous vitamin infusions. Others have moved to country homes or leased them for up to ￡50,000 a month, according to the Daily Mail.
As reports began to emerge that London doctors, hospital workers, bus workers and a 13-year-old child were dying of COVID-19 across the capital in horrific circumstances, the elite had other concerns. One London financier is reported by Forbes to have complained that the lockdown was preventing her showing off her expensive jewellery: “I’m just not sure when my next ball will be.”
While the super-rich complain of being bored in their gated mansions, masses of workers in London have lost their jobs or are forced to work in unsafe conditions with next to no protection from the virus. Every journey on London Underground has turned into a nightmare. Poorly paid workers wrap scarfs and handkerchiefs around their faces and crowd into train carriages. Labour Party Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has closed 40 out of 265 tube stations due to the numbers of staff self-isolating at home with COVID-19 symptoms because no serious safety measures were put in place.
Among those travelling on packed transport systems are tens of thousands of the capital’s construction workers—many on their way to build high-value apartments and houses. Both the Tory government and Mayor Khan have made deliberately vague statements about what constitutes “essential work,” allowing construction firms to decide for themselves. Twitter has been rife with the barbed comments of construction workers questioning why the luxury flats they must build were considered “essential.”
Another thriving industry is private tutoring. Tutors International, which provides elite tutoring services, says it has seen “a massive upswing in requests” since the COVID-19 outbreak.
While the super-rich carry on with their luxurious lifestyles as normal, the situation facing the working class is indicated by the Nightingale field hospital, officially opened on Friday in east London. The effort put in by workers to construct a facility from scratch has been tremendous. But the need for a 4,000-bed facility at such short notice highlights the gutting of the National Health Service (NHS) in London—leaving the population perilously exposed to the pandemic. Two new mortuaries, one in Newham and the other in Hillingdon, are also being built.
In the words of one health chief, a “tsunami” of cases is set to overwhelm London’s hospitals. On March 19, well in advance of the expected peak of cases, Northwick Park hospital in north-west London declared a critical incident after it ran out of ventilator capacity. One senior figure told the Health Service Journal, “Given we’re in the low foothills of this virus, this is f***ing petrifying.”
On Thursday, it was reported that one London hospital had nearly run out of oxygen over the weekend. NHS trusts in England have been given an urgent warning to limit the number of people on mechanical ventilators and continuous positive airway pressure machines.
Health chiefs are warning that an already overstretched London Ambulance Service will be unable to cope with the hundreds of extra patients needing hospital admission. Vehicles used to transport patients to non-urgent visits are being commandeered, but do not have the same medical equipment as an ambulance.
These conditions are putting London’s healthcare workers in danger. The lack of personal protective equipment and testing available to medical staff has become a national scandal. On Sunday, Thomas Harvey, a healthcare assistant at Goodmayes Hospital, London, died after treating a patient with COVID-19 with only gloves for protection. Across the capital, some hospital trusts have staff self-isolation rates of between 30 and 50 percent.
This Monday, a nurse in her 20s at King’s College Hospital, where eight COVID-19 deaths have occurred, committed suicide. Although the investigation into her death has drawn no conclusions, the experience in Italy where several health workers have committed suicide during the pandemic points to a similar trend beginning in the UK. Shortages are forcing medical staff to work incredibly long, harrowing shifts and make the traumatic decision to deny treatment to the most vulnerable.
The World Socialist Web Site reported on the crisis at Kings College Hospital Trust in January this year: “King’s hospital has a vacancy rate of 19.4 percent for nursing posts in cancer care, 15.4 percent in children’s care and 12 percent in operating theatres. At the Princess Royal hospital managed by the King’s Trust, 26.3 percent of nursing posts in acute and emergency care and 12.4 percent in the children’s care unit are vacant.”
The terrible personal consequences of such sharp social inequalities were summed up last weekend by the contrasting fates of Prince Charles, tested and cared for while presenting only mild symptoms of the disease, and Kayla Williams, a 36-year-old mother of three from Peckham, south London. Williams, the wife of Fabian, a refuse worker, died in her flat of suspected COVID-19 a day after calling 999 and being told to look after herself at home.
Fabian said, “I called 999 because my wife was breathless, she was vomiting, and she had pains in her stomach. As I was talking to them, she was getting worse and they told me to put her on the floor and to make her body flat. She [the paramedic] told me the hospital won’t take her, she is not a priority.” Williams was dead the next day.
Twitter erupted as Londoners contrasted the brutal inequality in treatment between Kayla and Britain’s royalty. The lesson has been burned into popular consciousness that we are not “all in this together,” as the government claims. There is the pandemic experienced as an inconvenience by the super-rich, and the pandemic experienced as a catastrophe by the working class. Only a revolutionary overturn can protect the population from the virus and remove from society the cancerous growth of multimillion and billion-pound wealth threatening its very existence.
Tales from the Conspiratum 