YeKengalé

With all the talk about the Rules-based International Order collapsing and the anxiety over what will the emergent global body politic look like when the game reverts to Big-fish-eat-small-fish, I feel compelled to make some comments on basic ideas that no longer represent a consensus of human opinion, and why, and what to do about it:

The Greenland threat represents another signal moment in measuring the milestones marking the transition to the new reality. Venezuela was alarming, but as I have stated, that was no new development. Kidnapping presidents is a not a new US strategy in the region. What would be totally unprecedented is a NATO Ally attacking another Ally. None of the usual propaganda to pacify popular objection applies here. This is no drug-trafficking dictator regime but a peaceful partner with whom the US enjoys ‘cordial’ relations.

The US has always considered the civic leadership (political, academic, religious thought leaders in every field) of so called ‘satellite’ nations as its pets, and for the most part, they have acted the part nicely, having been appropriately domesticated through patronage and sanctions or threat of them. Pain and pleasure are, as any animal trainer knows, the psychological tools for implementing behavior control.

I always found curious those Caribbean intellectuals reluctant to engage reparation narratives while employing amazingly contorted and utterly self decieving logic such as “We do not need hand outs. We dont have to beg them anything.” Jamaican debt service payments over the last 10 years exceeded 13.5 billion dollars USD. Her total aid package received for the same period is $800 million. If the argument had been Reparations is a naive claim, that might have been understandable, (but only if a better strategy of disengagement from a predetermined predatory arrangement was proffered). The rhetoric evoking ridiculous notions of national dignity and independence however is a dead give-away to the compromised intelligence of coopted agents of a system Bob Marley accurately described as a vampire. The first order of suckers (or suckees if you prefer) is thought leadership with the problematic inclination to challenge the easy operation of the system. They are the priority group for neutering.

Ultimately, the only exit is disengagement, which comes with a price too heavy for the comfortable to pay and either too enticing or disruptive for those at the bottom of the barrel with nothing further to lose. A thing perfectly understood by thoughtful persons reflecting on human history who recoil at the thought of the bloody mayhem that has attended the progress or advance of all peoples on the planet, any time and anywhere on earth humanity has existed, and desperate to find another way to solve human conflict than the tried and true, older-than-the-Bible, mostly-effectual-when-copiously-applied, remedy of naked violence (and by the way, nothing in the Bible itself contradicts that wisdom, despite apparently the most eloquent attempt at rebuttal in the Jesus narrative.) Yahweh Sabaoth originally was a Caananite war-god.

Those with another point of view should ask themselves when has the whole church ever united in total denunciation of violence as a strategy to effect human compliance or when has the whole church (keyword “whole”) ever refrained from endorsing tyrannic aggression for self-serving ends? (It has been burdened with liki-liki sell-outs like Judas from the times of the master himself.) The book or document does not exist that is capable of intrinsic action beyond the influence of those who interpret and appropriate its ideas.

US Congressman Andy Ogles on Wednesday justified the proposed Greenland grab as follows:-

Interestingly, when I asked Co-Pilot to name the Congressman that I’d heard with the quote… well here is that conversation:

YK:         A Republican congressman was quoted recently in the news calling America the main super predator in the West. Who’s that congressman?

CP:        It seems like there isn’t a recent instance of a Republican congressman actually making that exact statement about America being a “super predator” in the West. Sometimes these kinds of quotes get mixed up or misattributed, especially when political debates get heated. But if you have any more context or if there’s another detail that might help narrow it down, let me know!

YK:         You have no quotes recently of a Republican congressman calling the US a predator?

CP:        Yeah, that’s right—I haven’t seen any recent quotes from a Republican congressman using that kind of language. But hey, if anything pops up in the news later on, we can definitely keep an eye out. In the meantime, is there anything else you’re curious about?

YK:         it was actually recent … this administration.

CP:        So we’re talking recent, within this current administration—let me just check that out. Give me just a second to look it up for you.

[5 Mins of silence later and after I checked with an alternative AI powered platform, and had been supplied with the answer from Google’s AI overview, CP quips]

CP:        Sounds like you’re digging into that quote and really want to get to the bottom of it. If you have any more details, feel free to share them!

YK:         Well, the details are … it’s Congressman Andy Ogles.

CP:        Ah, Congressman Andy Ogles—now that does give me a clearer lead! Thanks for the detail. Let me do a quick search and see if I can find that.

YK:         I could tell you where he made the comment, it was reported in the news.

CP:        Ah, gotcha! So it was definitely something that made it into the news cycle. Hey, you’re keeping me on my toes here…

If you want to think of distinctive LLM’s as personas, they are obviously in constant conversation because putting the same question to Google (the original source of the pertinent URL) just minutes after this exchange produced entirely different results. It too pretended it had never heard of the quotation. Checking 20 minutes later, it had resorted to memory again.

Those who follow my blog know that for over a decade I have been actively monitoring and highlighting clear evidence of weaponizing AI and the Internet for aggressive mind manipulation, propoganda and political censorship. The sovereign boundaries of human choice (mind territory), like the boundaries of land [see Running Over chapter 2] have never been of consequence to either US legislators or the owners and operators of new technology. Privacy laws and policies have as much (or more appropriately ‘of little’) value as the UN charter or the Geneva convention. The dollar rules all. Even the Holy Scriptures agree.

Ecclesiastes 10:19  … Money answereth all things

In case it appears I’m ending on a cynical note, it is a false assumption that the one who answers is greater than the one who asks the question. When will we use our own intelligence to ask the right questions? Are we still afraid of the whip? Has our curiosity been cured by our comfort zones? What dont we want to know? and why? Is the church asking questions of itself, its origins, its aims, its relevance and its mandate in the current state of affairs? Has it settled on age-old shibboleths to align it with the present order? Where then is the claim to be prophetic?

Is the Jesus narrative only a therapy for producing personal piety, a stimulant for individual help, or does it yet hold promise to provide justice to nations? I’m asking. I want to know. Is Jesus really the answer?