The violence of the empire remains constant. Peace is never the goal.
By Caitlin JOHNSTONE
Just as things cool down a bit in the middle east, the US has relocated the USS Gerald Ford from the Mediterranean Sea to the Caribbean while the Trump administration discusses plans to bomb Venezuela.
The violence of the empire remains constant. Peace is never the goal. You get happy they're pulling the world's largest aircraft carrier away from Iran, then it turns out they're only doing it so they can move it to Venezuela. You get happy they're pulling out of Afghanistan, then suddenly they're waging a proxy war in Ukraine.
These days whenever you see the imperial war machinery getting pulled from one area, you know it's just going to be sent someplace else.
Peace is never pursued for its own sake, because there's nothing in it for the empire. There's too much power and money in nonstop warmongering for peace to be allowed to become the norm.
Which is just insane if you think about it. Every normal person wants peace in their own lives. None of us want our time on this planet to be disturbed by violence, chaos and bloodshed.
The western world has created a machine whose behavior goes against every healthy human impulse. The US-led world order has given birth to an out of control monster with an insatiable appetite for human flesh.
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Reuters reports that in 2024 the Biden administration had intelligence showing that the IDF was using Palestinians as human shields in Gaza. But Biden continued shipping genocide weapons to the Israelis the entire time he was in office.
You'll still periodically see online liberals trying to shame leftists for not voting for Kamala, but the more information comes out about what the Biden administration was up to during that time the more genocidal they look. Biden-Harris are looking worse with time, not better.
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When you see what a large-scale power broker Jeffrey Epstein was for Israeli intelligence, you understand why it's entirely reasonable to suspect that extensive state resources would be put toward an elaborate plot to murder him in his prison cell and make it look like a suicide.
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Vice President JD Vance and Fox News propagandist Sean Hannity spent some time furiously agreeing with each other during a recent interview about how wonderful Elon Musk's Grok AI is.
"I'm a Grok guy. I think it's the best. It's also the least woke," the veep said.
It's wild how Musk just openly showed the entire world in real time how powerful people can build political biases into AI services for their own benefit. He won't be the only one doing this. Just as trust in the legacy media collapses, the ruling class has created a replacement to retain control of the narrative.
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Generative AI stuff only looks impressive to mediocre people for the same reason a chess novice couldn't tell you whether they were playing against a Grandmaster or just someone who's pretty good at chess. We can only appreciate something up to the level of our own adeptness.
To someone who's not very bright, an AI's imitation of reasoning looks sharp. Someone with no aptitude for writing or appreciation for great literature will think its prose reads brilliantly. Its poetry looks good to those who don't understand poetry. Its "art" looks great to those with no artistic sensibility. It's music sounds awesome to those with no musical depth. Only those who are emotionally stunted and incapable of meaningful human connection will find them to be stimulating conversationalists and companions.
Like so much else capitalism produces, it's a product that's designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator. For everyone else it looks vapid and gross, just like daytime talk shows, Hollywood blockbusters, and trashy tabloids always have.
That's just how it works in a society which only elevates that which can generate profits. The food is designed to induce craving rather than facilitate health. The entertainment is designed to distract and sedate rather than to edify. The social media is designed to be addictive rather than to help people connect with each other. It's all geared to appeal to our baser instincts rather than to improve and inform us.
Anyone who is interested in actually growing as a person will have less and less use for anything GenAI has to offer. Past a certain point of personal development, it simply cannot satisfy.
Original article: caitlinjohnstone.com.au