Church and state: Republicans revel in divine plan to turn Kansas into ‘conservative sanctuary’

Exaggerating, just a little bit. 🙄

TOPEKA — Adam Peters laced his sermon for Reno County Republicans with conspiracy theories about a liberal plot to turn their children against them, LGBTQ-friendly church pastors who signed a contract with Satan, the ubiquitous travesty of critical race theory, and make-believe enemies working to “foment violent conflict.”

Church and state: Republicans revel in divine plan to turn Kansas into ‘conservative sanctuary’

US developed AI tool to battle Russian disinformation Blinken

The Ukraine Content Aggregator is used to catch fake news and share data on it with foreign partners, the secretary of state says

US developed AI tool to battle Russian disinformation Blinken

H/T: Emil Cosman

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Secretary Antony J. Blinken at Freedom House 2023 Annual Awards Ceremony

The third thing I wanted to highlight. While we’re working to promote access to the internet for all, we’re also working to address threats to human rights that come with an open internet, including online harassment, abuse, disinformation.

Now, online abuse doesn’t, of course, target only human rights defenders. Instead, the internet and digital technologies are often used to amplify attacks on vulnerable groups – women, the LGBTQI community, marginalized ethnic or religious groups – and undermine our broader fight for human rights. So this year, we launched what is now at least a 12-country Global Partnership for Action on Gender-Based Online Harassment and Abuse. We’re encouraging private sector to become engaged with us as well.

We’re also working to address the massive challenge of online misinformation and disinformation – again, something familiar to everyone in this room. To cite one example, of course, Russia continues to push a steady, relentless stream of disinformation about its war of aggression against Ukraine, to lie about and cover up horrific abuses it’s committed, to try to justify committing others.

In response, the State Department has developed an AI-enabled online Ukraine Content Aggregator to collect verifiable Russian disinformation and then to share that with partners around the world. We’re promoting independent media and digital literacy. We’re working with partners in academia to reliably detect fake text generated by Russian chatbots.

G20 Beautification: Blossoming Tulips Cover Delhi But At What Cost?

The perceptive image of a ‘world-class city’ hardly allows slums to grow. It is against the ‘global aesthetics’ that determines the ‘beautiful’. So, whenever there is any event of global importance — be it the Asian Games, the Commonwealth Games or G20, the first victims of the beautification drive are the poor and the homeless.

G20 Beautification: Blossoming Tulips Cover Delhi But At What Cost?

The World Economic Forum has outed itself as anti-Palestinian

The World Economic Forum has outed itself as anti-Palestinian

A few months later, I received a letter indefinitely suspending my membership. My request for the reasons for my suspension and an appeal has gone completely ignored. So much for the values of “stakeholder capitalism” and “cooperation in a fragmented world” that WEF publicly espouses. More like racism, abuse of power, and lack of transparency. I have learned firsthand that some YGLs are informants leaking private communications directly to the WEF’s leadership. Feels more like an authoritarian regime that spies on its constituency and loathes free speech than a global forum. As for my former YGLs, only a handful of true leaders actually protested my suspension. The silence of the remaining supposed “young global leaders” was deafening, but in retrospect, I realize that their silence is expressive of the exact type of Machiavellian leadership that the WEF seeks to foster.

Related:

WEF—Code of Conduct:

The World Economic Forum adheres to the principles of independence, impartiality, moral integrity and intellectual integrity.

[2021] Can we improve the world by remaining impartial?

What do you do when violent conflict erupts, innocent people get killed, and human rights are being violated? I believe any person with a heart and a moral compass would feel compelled to condemn the aggressors. Not doing so feels wrong on a moral level, and could raise the risk of further escalation. Are we misguided then, as an international institution, to not speak out unequivocally when conflicts emerge, and innocent people suffer? Are we “hiding” behind our impartiality?

[2022] Klaus Schwab and Børge Brende Statement on Ukraine

We therefore deeply condemn the aggression by Russia against Ukraine, the attacks and atrocities.

More Mass Surveillance: FOIA Docs Reveal Illegal Snooping On US Residents’ Financial Transactions

If it can conceivably be considered a “third party record,” the government is going to seek warrantless access to it. The Third Party Doctrine — ushered into existence by the Supreme Court in 1979 — says there’s no expectation of privacy in information shared with third parties. That case dealt with phone records. People may prefer the government stay out of their personal conversations, but the Smith v. Maryland ruling said that if people shared this info with phone companies (an involuntary “sharing” since this information was needed to connect calls and bill phone users), the government could obtain this information without a warrant.

More Mass Surveillance: FOIA Docs Reveal Illegal Snooping On US Residents’ Financial Transactions

Netanyahu Says US Must ‘Reaffirm’ Alliance With Saudi Arabia + More [Abraham Accords]

Netanyahu Says US Must ‘Reaffirm’ Alliance With Saudi Arabia

The incoming prime minister said that he wants to build on the Abraham Accords, which his former government signed in 2020 to establish diplomatic ties with Bahrain and the UAE. Netanyahu said it’s “up to the leadership of Saudi Arabia if they want to partake in this effort.”

Saudi officials recently reaffirmed that they seek a Palestinian state as a precondition for normalizing with Israel. But in order to form a coalition government, Netanyahu gave Religious Zionism party leader Bezalel Smotrich, an ultranationalist settler, sweeping powers over the West Bank.

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