Weekly News-Feb16-2024
Here are our top 5 stories of the week.
#1 – Israel Unleashes Airstrikes on Lebanon
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Israel said on Wednesday that it has begun a “series of strikes” in Lebanon as a retaliatory response. An Israeli citizen was killed by a rocket that was fired from Lebanon, which is what provoked the Jewish nation.
According to Lebanese media outlet Al-Mayadeen, a mother and her two children were killed by the airstrikes in the town of Souaneh.
These new airstrikes will surely elevate fears of a major military confrontation between the two neighbors following months of cross-border violence. The Israeli military did not immediately offer further details of the airstrikes, which came hours after at least one Israeli citizen was killed and a further seven were injured in a rocket attack launched from Lebanon, according to a report by RT. Read full article >
#2 – Government Funds AI Tools For Whole-Of-Internet Surveillance And Censorship
by Debbie Herman | Brownstone Institute
I feel scared. Very scared.
Internet-wide surveillance and censorship, enabled by the unimaginably vast computational power of artificial intelligence (AI), is here.
This is not a futuristic dystopia. It’s happening now.
Government agencies are working with universities and nonprofits to use AI tools to surveil and censor content on the Internet.
This is not political or partisan. This is not about any particular opinion or idea.
What’s happening is that a tool powerful enough to surveil everything that’s said and done on the Internet (or large portions of it) is becoming available to the government to monitor all of us, all the time… Read full article >
#3 – The New Self-Amplifying RNA Vaccines Promise to be Double, Triple, Quadruple the Fun!
by Karen Hunt | Off-Guardian
Just when you thought you’d heard the last of the Covid vaccines—those mRNA vaccines you’ve come to “know and love” as MIT so endearingly puts it— there’s a new version in town.
Welcome to the next generation of self-amplifying Covid vaccines, also known as replicons.
No, they aren’t “replicants” like in my favorite movie, Blade Runner (the original from 1982).
Although, in a way, it is disturbingly like that. Except they’re replicating inside our bodies. Like a photocopy machine. Yeah, inside our bodies. Read full article >
#4 – OpenAI’s Sora Turns AI Prompts Into Photorealistic Videos
by Steven Levy | Wired
We already know that OpenAI’s chatbots can pass the bar exam without going to law school. Now, just in time for the Oscars, a new OpenAI app called Sora hopes to master cinema without going to film school. For now a research product, Sora is going out to a few select creators and a number of security experts who will red-team it for safety vulnerabilities. OpenAI plans to make it available to all wannabe auteurs at some unspecified date, but it decided to preview it in advance.
Other companies, from giants like Google to startups like Runway, have already revealed text-to-video AI projects. But OpenAI says that Sora is distinguished by its striking photorealism—something I haven’t seen in its competitors—and its ability to produce longer clips than the brief snippets other models typically do, up to one minute. The researchers I spoke to won’t say how long it takes to render all that video, but when pressed, they described it as more in the “going out for a burrito” ballpark than “taking a few days off.” If the hand-picked examples I saw are to be believed, the effort is worth it. Read full article >
#5 – Scientists Try Risky Air And Water Experiments Hoping To Stop Climate Change
by Mike “Mish” Shedlock | Mishtalk
Scientists desperate to stop or reverse climate change are dumping chemicals in the ocean and spraying saltwater in the air. What can go wrong? I discuss the short and long term.
The Wall Street Journal reports Scientists Resort to Once-Unthinkable Solutions to Cool the Planet
Dumping chemicals in the ocean? Spraying saltwater into clouds? Injecting reflective particles into the sky? Scientists are resorting to once unthinkable techniques to cool the planet because global efforts to check greenhouse gas emissions are failing.
These geoengineering approaches were once considered taboo by scientists and regulators who feared that tinkering with the environment could have unintended consequences, but now researchers are receiving taxpayer funds and private investments to get out of the lab and test these methods outdoors.
Here are our top 5 most underreported or most bizarre stories of the week.
#1 – Satanic Temple Claims Abortion Is Part Of Their Religion In Effort To Block Abortion Bans
by Darlene McCormick Sanchez | The Epoch Times
A satanic group is continuing attempts to overturn abortion bans in pro-life states by filing lawsuits claiming abortion is part of their religion.
The Satanic Temple (TST), a nonprofit based in Salem, Massachusetts, has filed lawsuits in Missouri, Indiana, Texas, and Idaho that so far have been unsuccessful.
That hasn’t stopped the headline-grabbing organization from plaintiff-shopping for new religious freedom lawsuits to stop abortion bans, according to its website. Read full article >
#2 – Microsoft CEO hints that upcoming AI “misinformation” censorship tools might DISABLE your Windows PC for questioning establishment narratives about the election
by Ethan Huff | Natural News
To ensure the 2024 election goes smoothly for the globalists, Microsoft is unleashing artificial intelligence (AI) to stop the spread of “misinformation” that threatens to allow an unapproved candidate to win.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella revealed to NBC‘s Lester Holt on NBC Nightly News’ January 30 edition that his company hopes to use the latest advancements in AI technology to fight “disinformation” that he fears could result in another Donald Trump win.
“This is not the first election where we dealt with disinformation or propaganda campaigns by adversaries and election interference,” Nadella explained to Holt. Read full article >
#3 – Montana: The Unlikely Hot Spot for Mexico’s Drug Cartels
by Luis Miguel | The New American
The presence and influence of Mexican drug cartels is far more than a mere border issue. These transnational criminal organizations have a strong footing in the American heartland, infesting small towns with fentanyl and setting up operations on Indian reservations.
As reported by NBC News, the Sinaloa Cartel has pushed into Montana, where it is able to sell its fentanyl pills at 20 times the price they would go for in urban border areas.
Chad Anderberg, a Montana Division of Criminal Investigation agent, told the outlet of a former Mexican police officer working for the Sinaloa Cartel who was arrested outside Butte, Montana, upon being discovered to be in possession of two pounds of pure methamphetamine (an amount authorities said could supply a population of 2,150 for a number of days).
The arrest of the former Mexican policeman, Ricardo Ramos Medina, exposed a ring responsible for transporting at least 2,000 pounds of meth and 700,000 fentanyl-laced pills into Montana from Mexico over a period of three years. Read full article >
#4 – Terminally Ill Children in the Netherlands Can Now Be Euthanized Against Their Will
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On February 1, a Dutch law allowing the euthanasia of terminally ill children went into effect. The law legalizes the killing of children ages one through 12 who are deemed to be “suffering hopelessly and unbearably.”
Previously, the country allowed euthanasia of children older than 12, along with infants under age one who could be killed if their parents and doctors agreed and they faced an illness labeled as terminal or faced serious suffering. In 2023, lawmakers passed a controversial expansion of the eligibility guidelines to include children of all ages. Read full article >
#5 – Barbados Tech Minister says COVID Crisis Had the ‘Advantage’ of Introducing Digital ID
by Andreas Wailzer | LifeSite News
Barbados Tech Minister Marsha Caddle speaking at the World Governments Summit in Dubai – YouTube/Screenshot
The technology minister of Barbados has declared at the World Governments Summits (WGS) that the COVID crisis was “an advantage” because it enabled her government to introduce digital IDs for “each individual.”
During a panel discussion at the WGS in Dubai called “Digital Government: A Dream for Some, a Reality for Others,” Marsha Caddle said, “It sounds strange to say a crisis is an advantage, but during COVID, for example, we were able to do some work to make sure that each building has a single building ID.”
“Linked to that, each individual also has a new digital ID,” she added. “We’ve had about 90% uptake of that project so far, and we think that the two of those together are going to be able to allow us to fully digitalize government.” Read full article >
