Important Takeaways:
- Automakers once again in meltdown mode; poised for another government-funded bailout because they followed government mandates and produced cars nobody wanted
- GM announces layoffs of 1,000 tech workers who wasted time and money designing expensive EVs and self-driving autonomous vehicles that average American consumer can’t afford and doesn’t want.
- The cuts come as automakers attempt to reduce costs during an industry downturn and as they’re spending billions of dollars on super-expensive all-electric vehicles and so-called software-defined vehicles. These include self-driving autonomous vehicles that are continuously gathering up and sending all your personal data to a central computer, then they sell it off to third parties. These cars will also include remote kill switches.
- In other words, the auto industry is pouring all of its R&D money into vehicles that nobody in their right mind would want to own.
- In fact, GM is being sued for illegally selling more than 1.8 million drivers’ personal driving data to insurance companies.
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Important Takeaways:
- Ukraine has foiled an alleged plot to overthrow the government that “would have played into Russia’s hands,” security officials in the war-torn country said Monday.
- In a Telegram post, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) claimed the plot organizers planned to trigger a riot in Kyiv on June 30 as a distraction to seize control of the Ukrainian parliament and remove the military and political leadership from power.
- It is unclear how viable the planned plot was, or if those accused have any connection with Russia
- Four suspects have been identified, with two held in custody, the SBU said. They face up to 10 years in prison if found guilty
- The suspect rented a hall with a capacity of 2,000 people and was looking to recruit military personnel and armed guards from private companies to “carry out the seizure” of parliament, the prosecutor’s office said.
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Important Takeaways:
- On March 5th, 2024, World Bank Group President, Ajay Banga, and Hans Vestberg, Chairman and CEO of Verizon, were guest panelists at the Global Digital Summit in Washington D.C., discussing “the power of digital technologies to accelerate poverty reduction on a livable planet and how the public and private sectors can collaborate to accelerate this mission.”
- The World Bank added that the summit ‘highlighted forward-thinking perspectives, cutting-edge technologies, and new insights centered on three pillars: (1) Connect, (2) Innovate, and (3) Transform.”
- With the digital landscape transforming so rapidly, Banga believes that these new investments in the digital space is needed for “governance.” He said, “I think that if governments embrace digital, they create transparency, they create clean governance, they create citizen engagement, and I think that is a very important part of digital that we are keen to be a part of.”
- Later in the conversation Banga was asked how they should go pitching their emphasis on governments making deeper and long term investments to build a sustainable digital framework. One of these things includes “a sense of crisis,” he claims.
- “A sense of crisis is your best friend. Never let a crisis go waste. A sense of crisis is your best friend in getting people to agree to tackle this triangle, along with the enabling tool of technology and the biggest headroom is geopolitics and fractionizing of the global order. That’s why I believe in digital for us.”
- “I think providing infrastructure is a core element. But on top of that, creating a digital identity platform for citizenry is kind of foundational. I believe your government should be the owner of your digital ID.” Vestberg agreed: “Absolutely, 100%,” he remarked.
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Important Takeaways:
- Thousands of demonstrators descended on the German capital Monday as a week-long protest over subsidy cuts in the agriculture sector reached a climax at the city’s famed Brandenburg Gate.
- Behind the crowd, tractors, which last week blocked highways across the country, lined the avenue cutting through Berlin’s Tiergarten park.
- “Without stability in the countryside, without agriculture our country has no future,” German Farmers’ Association President Joachim Rukwied said from the stage. “That’s why we are prepared to take to the streets.”
- Monday’s demonstration was also an outlet for general dissatisfaction with the government, adding to the mounting pressure on Chancellor Olaf Scholz after scrambling to fix a billion-euro budget blunder, which led to the subsidy cuts.
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Important Takeaways:
- There is no rule of law. It is always the will of those in power – nothing more. Even Charles Dickens has written about how corrupt the legal system had become back in 1853. Dickens wrote in Chapter I of his famous novel Bleak House, “In Chancery”
- Our greatest mistake was the merger of Chancery (Queen’s Bench) and Law (King’s Bench) in American courts. This allows the judges to circumvent the law and deny equal protection of the law at will. So, they can prosecute Trump for a novel theory that was never applied or intended when the law was written. They shift the burden to prove it is unconstitutional to the citizen, and the expense to vindicate your rights becomes impossible, so the state will always win by default. Court-appointed lawyers lose 99% of their cases because to get that job, the government must win. They have NEVER defended a citizen that I have ever known or witnessed. They are beholding to the state for employment and will NEVER bite the hand that feeds them.
- There is no rule of law to protect us anymore. The government has stacked the courts with former prosecutors who rule in favor of the government, making the conviction rate in the USA now approaching 99%. Worse still, the government can do as it likes, and you must go to court to say – hey! I have constitutional rights! Good luck.
- The government uses the law to persecute those they disagree with. John Stuart Mill wrote in his On Liberty in 1859, and nothing has changed.
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Important Takeaways:
- Young Americans are losing faith in democracy — educators must act now
- In December 2021, a study of young people conducted by Harvard’s Institute of Politics showed that 52 percent “believe that the country’s democracy is either ‘in trouble’ or ‘a failed democracy.’” Just 7 percent said that democracy in the United States is “healthy.” Another poll, also conducted two years ago, found that “Not only do younger Americans express greater skepticism about American democracy, their doubts extend to feelings about being American and whether the US serves as a moral example in the world.”
- Younger Americans, it turns out, “express far less pride in their nationality than older Americans…. (S)eniors are more than twice as likely as young adults to say they are extremely proud to be American (23 percent vs. 55 percent).”
- A more recent study of the civic outlook of younger voters notes that “Young adults are dissatisfied with our political system (57%), and most have no or little trust in government institutions (52%).” Fewer than half (48%) plan to vote in the next general election, compared to about two-thirds of the general public.”
- But the erosion of support for democracy among young people is not just an American problem. As Freedom House, a democracy advocacy group, puts it, “Democratic backsliding has become a global trend. Amid this environment comes a rash of statistics suggesting that the world’s young people are increasingly disengaged from political life: they’re voting less, rejecting party membership, and telling researchers that their country’s leaders aren’t working in their interests.”
- A September 2023 survey of people in 30 countries found that 86 percent of its respondents “prefer to live in a democratic state and only 20% believe authoritarian regimes are more capable of delivering ‘what citizens want.’
- Back in this country, 55 percent of young people currently believe that “the country is heading in the wrong direction, with 16 percent saying it’s on the right track and the rest (28%) saying they’re not sure.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Elections Are Bad for Democracy
- On the eve of the first debate of the 2024 presidential race, trust in government is rivaling historic lows. Officials have been working hard to safeguard elections and assure citizens of their integrity. But if we want public office to have integrity, we might be better off eliminating elections altogether.
- If you think that sounds anti-democratic, think again. The ancient Greeks invented democracy, and in Athens many government officials were selected through sortition — a random lottery from a pool of candidates. In the United States, we already use a version of a lottery to select jurors. What if we did the same with mayors, governors, legislators, justices and even presidents?
- How do we make sure that citizens chosen randomly are capable of governing?
- In ancient Athens, people had a choice about whether to participate in the lottery. They also had to pass an examination of their capacity to exercise public rights and duties. In America, imagine that anyone who wants to enter the pool has to pass a civics test — the same standard as immigrants applying for citizenship. We might wind up with leaders who understand the Constitution.
- To paraphrase William F. Buckley Jr., I’d rather be governed by the first 535 people in the phone book. That’s because the people most drawn to power are usually the least fit to wield it.
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Important Takeaways:
- Whether You Live in a Small Town or a Big City, the Government Is Still Out to Get You
- “I can’t remember what all Frank had fighting in the jar that day, but I can remember other bug fights we staged later on: one stag beetle against a hundred red ants, one centipede against three spiders, red ants against black ants. They won’t fight unless you keep shaking the jar. And that’s what Frank was doing, shaking, shaking the jar.”— Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle
- There’s a meme that circulated on social media a while back that perfectly sums up the polarized, manipulated mayhem, madness and tyranny that is life in the American police state today:
- “If you catch 100 red fire ants as well as 100 large black ants, and put them in a jar, at first, nothing will happen. However, if you violently shake the jar and dump them back on the ground the ants will fight until they eventually kill each other. The thing is, the red ants think the black ants are the enemy and vice versa, when in reality, the real enemy is the person who shook the jar. This is exactly what’s happening in society today. Liberal vs. Conservative. Black vs. White. Pro Mask vs. Anti Mask. The real question we need to be asking ourselves is who’s shaking the jar … and why?”
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Revelations 13:14 “…by the signs that it is allowed to work in the presence of the beast it deceives those who dwell on earth…”
Important Takeaways:
- What are AI experts afraid of?
- More than 350 AI researchers and engineers recently issued a warning that AI poses risks comparable to those of “pandemics and nuclear war.”
- They fear that AI will become so superintelligent and powerful that it becomes autonomous and causes mass social disruption or even the eradication of the human race
- “This is not science fiction,” said Geoffrey Hinton, often called the “godfather of AI,” who recently left Google so he could sound a warning about AI’s risks. “A lot of smart people should be putting a lot of effort into figuring out how we deal with the possibility of AI taking over.”
- Hinton used to think the danger was at least 30 years away, but says AI is evolving into a superintelligence so rapidly that it may be smarter than humans in as little as five years.
- There are calls for moratoriums on its development, a government agency that would regulate AI, and an international regulatory body. AI’s mind-boggling ability to tie together all human knowledge, perceive patterns and correlations, and come up with creative solutions is very likely to do much good in the world, from curing diseases to fighting climate change. But creating an intelligence greater than our own also could lead to darker outcomes.
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Ecclesiastes 5:8 If you see the extortion[a] of the poor, or the perversion[b] of justice and fairness in the government,[c] do not be astonished by the matter. For the high official is watched by a higher official,[d] and there are higher ones over them![e]
Important Takeaways:
- Get Ready: The Digital Dollar Is a Tool for Government Surveillance and Control
- Most of the world’s economies, including the United States, are rapidly ramping up to digitize their currency and ultimately end “paper cash” by creating a Central Bank Digital Currency (or CBDC for short).
- Part of the “Great Reset” agenda is to eliminate or reduce untraceable and untaxable cash and crypto transactions and clear the way to establish national government-controlled digital currency.
- The agenda is to get a CBDC in every country, get people used to it, and then connect those digital systems into a one-world digitized payment system.
- Does this sound too far-fetched? Consider that the U.S. Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors have already issued a white paper titled: “Money and Payments: The U.S. Dollar in the Age of Digital Transformation” as a “first step” in exploring the creation of a CBDC.
- Make no mistake, a centralized digital currency is coming.
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