By The Anti Empire Project – Oct 24, 2024
They’re not worth your time.
Reading about Meta’s Israel Policy chief the other day reminded me that there are real human racist decisions without which “algorithmic suppression” cannot happen. We are deceived by the idea that our screens are controlled by “algorithms”. Actually, they’re controlled by racists.
Tech executives working with genocidal governments decide which news items we can see on our screens: news editors decide what those items contain. CBC policy, BBC policy, and a revolving door between the Israeli military and American journalism, as Jeremy Scahill mentioned.
That’s why I never saw the point of the supposedly groundbreaking stories about Lavender AI or the Where’s Daddy algorithm for killing people in Gaza. Really? Is an algorithm driving the bulldozer over hundreds of people? Is an algorithm dressing up in dead women’s underwear, playing with dead children’s toys, and taking photos for dating sites?
On today’s EI Livestream, Jon showed some aerial imagery from Rafah of before and after.
It’s not serious to think that any intelligence, artificial or otherwise, was applied in doing “targeting” that led to this destruction. We are talking about how many multiples of the Hiroshima nuclear holocaust’s worth of ordinance have been dropped on Gaza at this point (I think it’s around 4x now and counting). There’s no intelligent algorithm needed, only the sheer depravity to take the decision, the American bombs to drop, and the American planes to deliver them.
Well, that’s not all that’s needed. Because in north Gaza right now it’s a very intimate, hands on holocaust. In the Sde Teiman torture / death camp, it’s a hands on holocaust.
And according to a CNN story and an Israeli media story this past week (the latter written up in the Cradle), doing the genocide is driving the perpetrators crazy – so crazy that they can’t even talk about what they did in direct language, even in the expose. Instead of talking about the trauma of what they did, they talk about what they saw. Instead of talking about what they’ve become, they talk about being depressed and unmotivated. Their army psychologist tries to help them “normalize” the atrocities, but the subject of the CNN story killed himself. Can human compartmentalization be so total that you can commit mass murder and then retain the sense of the preciousness of life that you need to have relationships? Can racial supremacy really get you that far? It might not.
It’s a word I heard my whole life but I only bothered looking it up a few years ago: shibboleth, meaning a word that distinguishes one group from another. Speak for a few seconds and I’ll know from just a few words whether you’re pro- or anti-genocide.
Anti-genocide shibboleths include using the word “genocide” to describe what Israel is doing; using the word “resistance” to describe the people fighting Israel; using the word “martyr” to describe someone Israel has killed.
Pro-genocide shibboleths include calling the victims “terrorists”, phrases like “Hamas embeds in civilian areas”, “Hamas uses human shields”, and repeating the lies about October 7th.
Peter Thiel: From Gaza AI War Criminal to White House Puppet Master
I wrote last year that as far as the pro-genocide and anti-genocide sides go, that as they reject our (facts) and we reject their (lies), that soon “there will be no reason to talk to one another and no desire on either side to do so.” We’re pretty nearly there – not sure about you but I get less and less from watching anti-genocide people go on debate platforms to have it out with the genocidals (usually with a genocidal or fake friend of the anti-genocide movement hosting).
It’s good to keep track of these shibboleths. Knowing them can help: on the anti-genocide side we need to learn to find each other quickly and recognize who’s a waste of time. There isn’t any time to waste. Every day that our efforts fail carries an intolerable cost.
(Substack)
