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Category: Politics

Chasing an economic boom, White House dismisses multiple risks of AI

Chasing an economic boom, White House dismisses multiple risks of AI

The New York Times reports: It was early November, and the stock market had grown jittery as investors recoiled anew over the enormous bets the nation’s largest technology companies had placed on artificial intelligence. But the skittishness playing out on Wall Street that day barely registered at the White House. Asked whether he harbored any fears about an emerging bubble, one that could damage the economy if it were to pop, President Trump brushed aside all doubts. “No,” he quickly…

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The danger of AI agents’ access to your personal data

The danger of AI agents’ access to your personal data

Wired reports: For years, the cost of using “free” services from Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and other Big Tech firms has been handing over your data. Uploading your life into the cloud and using free tech brings conveniences, but it puts personal information in the hands of giant corporations that will often be looking to monetize it. Now, the next wave of generative AI systems are likely to want more access to your data than ever before. Over the past two…

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Trump’s claims to Venezuelan oil are part of broader ‘resource imperialism’, experts say

Trump’s claims to Venezuelan oil are part of broader ‘resource imperialism’, experts say

The Guardian reports: Donald Trump’s recent claims that the US should keep Venezuelan oil from seized tankers are part of a broader belief in rightwing “resource imperialism”, experts say. In recent weeks, the Trump administration has escalated pressure on Venezuela, invoking drug-trafficking claims. This month, the US intercepted two tankers carrying Venezuelan oil and began pursuing a third, while intensifying its campaign against the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro. Critics have compared the offensive to the Iraq war, citing a familiar…

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The Gaza genocide radicalized the world

The Gaza genocide radicalized the world

Tareq Baconi writes: October 7, 2023, marked a paradigmatic rupture in how Palestine is discussed and imagined. Until that moment, international discourse had been trapped in the vocabulary of statehood and peace processes. The Palestinian question was framed as a conflict to be managed rather than a structure of domination to be dismantled, but October 7 forced the world to confront the realities Palestinians have long named: settler colonialism, the ongoing Nakba, Zionism, and Israeli apartheid. This rupture is not…

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Russia and China pledge support for Venezuela as Trump drives up pressure on Maduro

Russia and China pledge support for Venezuela as Trump drives up pressure on Maduro

The Guardian reports: China and Russia have expressed support for Venezuela as it confronts a US blockade of sanctioned oil tankers, while Donald Trump continues to ramp up his pressure campaign on the South American country’s president, Nicolás Maduro. Amid reports of slowing activity at Venezuelan ports, the US president again called for Maduro to leave power, and reiterated that the US would keep or sell the oil it had seized off the coast of Venezuela in recent weeks. Asked…

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Judges who ruled against Trump say that subsequent threats have changed their lives

Judges who ruled against Trump say that subsequent threats have changed their lives

NBC reports: In his almost 45 years as a federal judge, John Coughenour has seen it all, including high-profile criminal trials that put his own safety at risk. But this year, the 84-year-old senior district judge did something he hadn’t considered for a long time: He retrieved a gun he had stored at the federal courthouse in Seattle years ago and brought it back to his home in case he needed it to defend himself. Coughenour is one of dozens…

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Trump regime rewards tech fascists with travel bans on European tech regulators and researchers

Trump regime rewards tech fascists with travel bans on European tech regulators and researchers

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration is barring five prominent Europeans from the United States, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Tuesday, accusing them of being involved in online censorship of Americans, a claim they have disputed. The action sharply escalated the administration’s fight against European efforts to monitor content on major social media platforms, including Elon Musk’s X as well as Facebook and Instagram, both owned by Meta. The five include Thierry Breton, a former member…

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DOGE isn’t dead

DOGE isn’t dead

Wired reports: Since the beginning of the Trump administration, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the brainchild of billionaire Elon Musk, has gone through several iterations, leading periodically to claims—most recently from the director of the Office of Personnel Management—that the group doesn’t exist, or has vanished altogether. But DOGE isn’t dead. Many of its original members are in full-time roles at various government agencies, and the new National Design Studio (NDS) is headed by Airbnb cofounder Joe Gebbia,…

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Charlie Kirk’s memory is the only thing uniting Turning Point USA

Charlie Kirk’s memory is the only thing uniting Turning Point USA

Joe Lowndes writes: The first time I came across TPUSA was at the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, where I met a pair of bespectacled college students wearing matching light blue T-shirts that read “Socialism Sucks.” When I asked them about the shirts, the Turning Point representatives told me that their main concern was limited government and the free market. They did not have many allies in what was, at that time, a right-wing populist revolt in the party,…

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JD Vance pretends almost no Americans are antisemitic

JD Vance pretends almost no Americans are antisemitic

The Times of Israel reports: US Vice President JD Vance claimed in an interview on Sunday that almost no Americans are antisemitic and that concerns about antisemitic voices are raised as a way to avoid discussing “a real backlash to a consensus view in American foreign policy” on Israel. In the interview with the publication Unherd, Vance also downplayed concerns about Nick Fuentes, the popular far-right antisemitic podcaster, and said that Christianity is “very much at the heart” of America’s…

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Neo-Nazi terror group, the Base, steps up U.S. operations as FBI pulls back

Neo-Nazi terror group, the Base, steps up U.S. operations as FBI pulls back

The Guardian reports: Amid high-profile arrests in its Spanish cell, the American-born and designated neo-Nazi terrorist group the Base – once a major preoccupation of FBI counter-terrorism efforts – has all but faded from US headlines. But a flurry of online activities shows the group is still active stateside and considers the US an operational nerve center. Headed by Rinaldo Nazzaro, an ex-Pentagon contractor turned alleged Russian intelligence asset, the Base has been busy of late pursuing European expansion: besides…

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In Congress and at home, Ilhan Omar faces Trump’s anti-Somali racist attacks

In Congress and at home, Ilhan Omar faces Trump’s anti-Somali racist attacks

The New York Times reports: When Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, became an American citizen in 2000, she viewed her U.S. passport with pride. But ever since President Trump was first elected in 2016, she said, she has come to view it as a “document of safety.” “I have carried my passport with me since he first became president,” Ms. Omar, a Somali-born refugee who emigrated to the United States when she was 12, said in an interview on…

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Trump’s shuttering of the National Center for Atmospheric Research is Stalinist

Trump’s shuttering of the National Center for Atmospheric Research is Stalinist

  Michael Mann and Bob Ward write: The Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin would no doubt have understood and even appreciated the latest attack by the Trump administration on climate researchers and their work. The National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, is to be dismantled after more than 50 years at the forefront of global research on climate science and monitoring. This is the latest step in the administration’s climate Lysenkoism and its relentless purge of climate researchers who…

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CBS and CNN are being sacrificed to Trump

CBS and CNN are being sacrificed to Trump

Franklin Foer writes: The fate of Warner Bros. Discovery is no longer a regulatory matter. It is a medieval tournament, in which the king invites rival bidders to compete for his approval. To acquire the media company, the aspirants—Paramount and Netflix—will have to offer a sacrifice: Whoever can damage CNN the most stands to walk away with the prize. This is one of those moments in Donald Trump’s presidency when an event that would otherwise be recognized as a death…

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