GAZA casualties, live statistics
Israel’s Murderbot is Programmed to Kill up to a Third of all Palestinian Civilians in Gaza
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The incredibly brave and resourceful Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham revealed Wednesday in a hard-hitting piece of investigative journalism that the Israeli military has used two artificial intelligence programs, “Lavender” and “Where’s Daddy,” to target some 37,000 alleged members of the military wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The programs used GPS to discover when a Hamas member had gone home, since it was easiest to hit them there, ensuring that his wife and children would also be killed. If he lived in an apartment building, which most did, then all the civilians in neighboring apartments could also be killed– children, women, non-combatant men.
Science fiction writer Martha Wells has authored a series of novels and short stories about a “Murderbot.”, an artificial intelligence in the body of an armored warrior. Her Murderbot, despite being lethal, is a good guy, and in noir style frees himself from the control of his corporate overlords to protect his friends. The Israeli army, in contrast, is acting much more robotically.
Lavender is just a program and doesn’t have a body attached, but uses Israeli fighter jet pilots as an extension of itself. The AI programs identified the Hamas militants according to vague specifications. It is known to have a 10% error rate and in other cases the supposed militant might have only loose connections to the Qassam Brigades paramilitary or the IJ. There was, Abraham writes, almost no human supervision over the working of the algorithm….
https://www.juancole.com/2024/04/murderbot-programmed-palestinian.html
Congressman calls for genocide: ‘It should be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima: Get it over Quick’
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – US Representative Tim Walberg (R-MI), a former pastor, called this week for a genocide, the Final Solution of the Palestinian Problem.. Michigan’s 5th congressional district stretches across the far bottom of the state, encompassing cities such as Albion and Jackson and abutting Ohio and Indiana. I don’t have any reason to think that the district is full of merciless psychopaths and mass murderers. Jackson has a famous ice cream shop, The Parlour, where the portions are to say the least generous, and which is pleasant to visit on a hot summer day. The district has a population of 768,000 and a median household income of $64,000 (for the US as a whole it is $74,580). It is about 85% white, with Hispanics, African Americans and mixed-race persons making up most of the other 15%. It has voted for a Democratic president in every election in this century and even favored Hilary Clinton over Trump. That Walberg represents this district demonstrates the axiom that Americans buy peanut butter more intelligently than they vote.
That is, the district is represented in Congress by a cruel would-be mass murderer. His soul lacks any hint of the milk of human kindness. Walberg, a fundamentalist former Christian pastor, once ran the homophobic, far right Moody Bible Institute in Chicago while supposedly representing a Michigan district, Walberg is against everything— a woman’s right to choose, the Affordable Care Act, gay marriage, and any attempt to counter the climate crisis. He went to Uganda to voice support for that country’s Anti-Homosexuality Act, which prescribes executions for gay people.
So genocidal tendencies were already apparent. Some 14 million American adults identify as LGBT in polling and apparently Rep. Walberg would happily see them all murdered. It should be remembered that some 90,000 gay men were rounded up in Nazi Germany, with as many as 15,000 sent to death camps, where perhaps 60% were killed. The only difference between Walberg and Heinrich Himmler, who created the Reich Central Office for Combating Homosexuality and Abortion, is that Walberg hasn’t yet found a way to implement his sadistic dreams.
At a meeting in Dundee with constituents on March 25, Walberg said that President Biden had spoken of our need to get aid into Gaza. He said, “I don’t think we should. I don’t think any of our aid that goes to Israel, to support our greatest ally, arguably maybe in the world, to the feet of Hamas, and Iran, and Russia. Probably North Korea is in there and China, too — with them, helping Hamas. We shouldn’t be spending a dime on humanitarian aid. It should be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Get it over quick.”..
https://www.juancole.com/2024/03/congressman-genocide-hiroshima.html
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Patrick Lawrence: Authorized Atrocities / Late-Imperial Duplicities
The Intellectual We Deserve (2018)
Israel’s Colonial Revenge Genocide in Gaza is the latest in a Long History of such Massacres
The west’s complete contempt for the lives of Palestinians will not be forgotten
Patrick Lawrence: Deeper Into Depravity
Renewed Fascism: In Gaza Western Elites Live Out Genocidal Fantasy Against Global South
A Conspiracy of Silence / The Killing Floor of Gaza
Michael Brenner: Europe-Jews-Muslims
After the truth-shower 