No, I’m Pretty Sure You’ve Crossed All Of Them Already

 

The oddly metallic voice speaking to the ex-CNN journalist Jim Acosta in an interview on Substack this week was actually that of a digital ghost: an AI, trained on the teenager’s old social media posts at the request of his parents, who are using it to bolster their campaign for tougher gun controls.

No parent in their right mind would ever judge a bereaved one.

Rubbish! If that were the case, the tabloids wouldn't exist!

If it’s a comfort to keep the lost child’s bedroom as a shrine, talk to their gravestone, sleep with a T-shirt that still faintly smells like them, then that’s no business of anyone else’s. People hold on to what they can.

But they've not kept it to themselves, have they? They've chosen to use it to push a political viewpoint. 

But it’s precisely because it’s so hard to let go that grief is vulnerable to exploitation. And there may soon be big business in digitally bringing back the dead.

So the government can tax them?  

But while the legal rights of the living not to have their identities stolen for use in AI deepfakes are becoming more established, the rights of the dead are muddled.

The dead have no rights.  

What happens if half of a family wants Mum digitally resurrected, and the other half doesn’t want to live with ghosts?

What always happens, of course. Some lawyers get rich!  

We Know What The Real Fears Are

Civil liberties and anti-racism groups have called on Met Police to abandon plans to deploy Live Facial Recognition (LFR) at this year’s Notting Hill Carnival, warning of “racial bias.”

What they are actually afraid of is justice finally coming for black criminals who thought they had got away with it. 

In a letter to Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley, 11 organisations, including Liberty, Big Brother Watch, and the Runnymede Trust, described LFR as “mass surveillance” that “treats all Carnival-goers as potential suspects.”

It's a large gathering of black people - where else would you ecpect the police to look for wanted black criminals and black runaway children? 

The letter states: "There is no clear legal basis for your force's use of LFR. No law mentions facial recognition technology and Parliament has never considered or scrutinised its use,” according to the BBC."Notting Hill Carnival is an event that specifically celebrates the British African Caribbean community, yet the [Metropolitan Police] is choosing to use a technology with a well-documented history of inaccurate outcomes and racial bias."

Are they really saying that they all look alike even to technology? If someone is stopped after an indication and isn't the ewanted person, they can always show ID, can't they? 

Police will deploy around 7,000 officers each day during the August Bank Holiday weekend event, focusing heavily on public safety, particularly preventing knife crime and violence against women and girls.

So it Liberty, Big Brother Watch and the Runnymede Trust in favour of violence against women and girls then? Sure seems like it!  

 

Why Would Terrorists Bother, After All?

Thousands of police officers are braced for three days of carnage at the Notting Hill Carnival this weekend amid concerns over escalating violence and potential crushes. Scotland Yard said 7,000 officers and staff will be deployed each day from Saturday to Monday as they attempt to keep up to two million revellers safe in West London.

The Met clearly didn't manage to do what would have been far more sensible, and move the wretched thing to another, safer and more appropriate location. 

So we will now pretend that the threat to safety that mandated expensive and ugly anti-terrorist barriers on the streets has been abated for two days so a bunch of immigrants can have a knees up:

A series of 31 anti-terror concrete barriers were installed on Portobello Road last month by Kensington and Chelsea Council to help deter vehicle attacks in the popular market area of Notting Hill following counter-terrorism guidance issued by the Met. But the council said these 'hostile vehicle mitigation measures' will be removed for two weeks from today to ensure 'people can move freely and safely during the event'.

Quite why terrorists would bother attacking the Carnival, when they couldn’t possibly cause more terror and disruption than it does every single year, is I suppose the council’s ‘thinking’ here…

The Dangerous Wild Animals Act Is A Misnomer

Father, 38, dies after 'being bitten by venomous spider' he bought online just weeks before

Yes, Reader, he bought it *removes sunglasses*....on the web! Ahem!

Paying tribute to the dad-of-two, Kayleigh said: 'He was funny, caring, outgoing and such a people person. He was a brilliant dad to our two children and was always the life and soul of the party. 'He had bought five spiders online two or three weeks before and was obsessed with them. 'I think he bought them because he lived alone but he was always terrified of insects (Ed:Spiders are arachnids Kayleigh, so unlikely to have helped there, unless he planned to let them loose to eat any insects bothering him) when we were together. Even though we had split up, we were best friends. He put our children first.'

There's no news item covering this that mentions what species these spiders were, or even whether medical staff have confirmed a bite was the cause of death. But nevertheless, dim Kayleigh is demanding SOMETHING MUST BE DONE! 

She added that owning the spiders should require licenses.

Well, tough. It's an oddity that the Dangerous Wild Animals Act of 1976, that regulated the keeping of dangeous animals in the UK, and inadvertantly sparked years of 'British big cat' loons theorising that this was the cause of fortean reports of pumas and panthers prowling the countryside, doesn't regulate the keeping of any invertebrates. Despite some of them being far more potentially harmful, and to far more people (looking at you, palytoxic corals!) than any venomous snake or lizard.

And I can’t see anyone looking to change that, when they’ve proven unable to stop idiots buying dogs that eat them!

It Truly Is The ‘Land Of The Free’

Luckily for us, in the land of Starmer:

The US director of national intelligence says the UK has withdrawn its controversial demand to access global Apple users' data if required. Tulsi Gabbard said in a post on X, external the UK had agreed to drop its instruction for the tech giant to provide a "back door" which would have "enabled access to the protected encrypted data of American citizens and encroached on our civil liberties". The BBC understands Apple has not yet received any formal communication from either the US or UK governments. "We do not comment on operational matters, including confirming or denying the existence of such notices," a UK government spokesperson said.

You don’t comment, because what could you say, other than ‘Oh shit, we tried it on with the Yanks and they told us to get fucked again’? 

In December, the UK issued Apple with a formal notice demanding the right to access encrypted data from its users worldwide. However Apple itself cannot view the data of customers who have activated its toughest security tool, Advanced Data Protection (ADP), which prevents anyone other than the user from reading their files.

It beggars belief that the morons in government ever thought they stood a chance at strong-arming Apple - until you look at the morons in government that is!

Oh Dear, Nesrine, Are The Progressives Losing Their Grip On The Means Of Indoctrination?

Adding to the clamouring appetite for sharp challenge is a new information ecosystem where there are now more ways to dispute mainstream accounts of political reality.

Translation: the MSM can’t get away with lies and lying by omission any more…

The process of fragmentation combined with persistent monopoly is one that is mirrored in the media. Over the past two years alone, entire outlets have grown and flourished over what it seems is the media’s inability to adequately capture and express anger over Gaza. From Zeteo (dubbed a “breakout hit”) to Drop Site News, which launched only a year ago, now has almost 400,000 subscribers and closely works with journalists in Gaza, there is a vast appetite for more uncompromising discourse and intimate coverage of the Middle East and complicity on Gaza.

If you say so, Nesrine. But I think you’ll find most people are heartily sick to death of the constant bleating about Palestine.

Still, this has not diminished anger at mainstream outlets because it is understood that these organisations still have enormous reach and therefore power over public opinion, and by extension political outcomes. It is why the New York Times’s reports on starvation in Gaza have been heavily contested by pro-Israeli government voices, as the paper holds huge authority in the one country that has power over Israel.

Ah, one of the many, many fallacies Nesrine labours under is the fallacy that the media shapes public opinion, rather than reflecting it.

But all that residual power, from politics to the media, does not change the fact that something big is up for grabs – the default belief that these establishment institutions deserve their power, whether it can be taken away from them or not.

Nothing of course on how they've been found to have been abusing it? 

The risk now is of a sort of permanent bifurcation. On the one hand, increasingly out-of-control hysteria on immigration empowers ghouls like Farage and makes them and their poisonous rhetoric permanent features of our lives and politics, while rage over Gaza and economic policies constantly clouds the political atmosphere. On the other, a government is caught in the headlights, unable to tackle anything, while also hoping that it’s too big to fail and its opponents too small and diverse to succeed. What if the problem isn’t that the centre cannot hold, but that it can, and in doing so brings about a new, volatile, miserable status quo of escalating rage and impotent government?

Well, since that will provide you with more column inches than you already get, why are you worried? 

Gosh, I Wonder Why?

 

Being a Muslim in a country with a long colonial history, which has also had to deal with terrorist attacks carried out in the name of Islam, is an everyday challenge.

Well, yes, it would be... 

In January 2015, for example, I was as profoundly shocked as everyone else in France by the massacre of the Charlie Hebdo journalists in Paris. As the country mourned, I was invited by a major radio station to comment, but was first asked, live on air, to “dissociate” myself from the attackers.

Why did you have to be asked? Wouldn't any normal person automatically do so? 

I couldn’t hold back my tears – because, even with a media profile, I was reduced to the most racist perception of my identity. I was strongly defended that night by others who took part in the show, and received much support online, but I couldn’t help thinking of the millions of French Muslims who, unlike me, would have no microphone to defend themselves against vile accusations.

It wasn't a 'racist' perception - Islam isn't a race. it's a belief. A stupid belief, but then so are many other religions.

...French Muslims present a paradox: we are part of every social sphere, yet many of us have not given up our cultural specificities. And that is precisely what we are blamed for – integration without assimilation. This is why the same government can claim it uses the law to fight against Muslim “separatism” while denouncing the threat of Muslim “infiltration”. Muslims can’t win: we are blamed for being part of the national community and for being outside of it.

Because every time yousqueal that you've 'assimilated' it turn out to be untrue, when you reveal your real allegience. 

The NHS Is Not Worth A Candle Anymore....

It's not just wholly captured by the transcultists, but by the 'politics of envy' crowd too.

The British Medical Association strongly advises pupils who want to be doctors that they need clinical work experience to even be considered for a medical degree. But now thousands of children, including those on bursaries – around a third of the estimated 650,000 private-school pupils in the UK – are struggling to find work experience at key hospitals.

And why? One reason. Ideology.  

One would-be medical student from Emanuel School in south London was told by King's College Hospital Trust – their local NHS trust – that pupils from private schools were not admitted on to their courses, even if they lived in the area.And the MoS has learned of another, on a 100 per cent bursary, who 'applied to every hospital trust and GP practice within an hour of her home' including Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Northampton General Hospital and Milton Keynes University Hospital but 'received either rejections or no responses from almost all' because of the school she attends.

Labour'a war on private schools has been enthusiastically taken up by all the big NHS trusts, so they are ensuring where you went to school is the determinining factor in whether they take you on, all while they plaster their hospitals with 'anti-racism' propaganda.

Last night, Gordon West, head of careers at prestigious independent school Stowe, said: 'This young woman is not from a wealthy background at all; she's from one of the highest priority groups there are. 'Policies like King's College don't account for stories like hers. By excluding private-school kids, they also shut out students on 100 per cent bursaries, many of whom come from families with very limited means.' He added that it was a common story for sixth formers desperate for medical experience to be turned away.

Well, it's not like we need home-grown medical personnel, is it? Not when we can import them from the Third World? 

Sources at NHS England said it was for individual trusts to allocate work experience placements.

Labour is a cancer in this country. And it's fully metastasised. 

Have You Tried Acting, Dear Boy?*

Equity has raised concerns about the casting process for an upcoming production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame in Concert, which casts a non-disabled performer in the title role, Quasimodo, arguably one of the most recognisable characters with a disability

Utter nonsense, yes, of course. But only to be expected from a once-respected organisation these days. 

 *allegedly the advice given to Dustin Hoffman by the great Laurence Olivier, after he said he'd stayed up for three days so he could portray fatigue convincingly in a scene.

Another Demand To Abolish Part Of Human Nature

As dating apps using height filters spark debate on “heightism”, the Blackadder star Tony Robinson has vented his anger at women who feel it is acceptable to comment on men’s height.

He seems to have got quite short about it!  

“Nowadays, you don’t pick on people’s looks, do you? It’s like kind of a new understanding over the last 10 or 15 years, you don’t deride people for what they look like,” the 5ft 4in actor, 78, told Elizabeth Day’s How to Fail podcast, admitting he had seen his shorter than average height as a problem in life.

Oh, Tony, we comment on people's appearances all the time!  Have you been living under a rock? 

The term “heightism” was first coined by the sociologist Saul Feldman in 1971. Dr Erin Pritchard, a senior lecturer in sociology and disability studies at Liverpool Hope University, believes much heightism is subconscious, but that it is ingrained. It has also not benefited from widespread acceptance movements.

Ah, sociologists! Where would we be without them? 

Who said ‘happier’ at the back!? There’ll be detention… 

The US state of Michigan, the US cities Santa Cruz, San Francisco and New York City, as well as Ontario, Canada and Victoria, Australia, are among the few to address height discrimination in civil rights law.

Who wouldn’t have bet on those particular places being the first to fall for this nonsense?  

Prichard said: “We need more voices like Tony Robinson coming out and saying it, to show this is not all woke nonsense, [to] just sort of sit down and listen to what they have to say and go, OK, these are their lived experiences.”

But it really is all woke nonsense - as is any attempt to try to persuade people to ignore their natural instincts and feelings in favour of whatever woke morons think they should believe and feel instead, in pursuits of some abstract concept of ‘fairness’…