[Videos claim that] Russian officials have evacuated over 150,000 children from Donbas in 2022 alone. It is unclear exactly how Russian sources are calculating this figure, and Ukrainian officials previously estimated this number to be 6,000 to 8,000.
[…]
Forced adoption programs and the deportation of children under the guise of vacation and rehabilitation schemes likely form the backbone of a massive Russian depopulation campaign that may amount to a violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and constitute a wider ethnic cleansing effort, as ISW has previously reported.
An ISW report that is two months old already should have raised more mainstream alarm. I mention it here for war crimes investigators in context of Microsoft reporting around the same time that it will continue working with Russian “schools”, which could in fact mean ethnic cleansing (including turning the children into waves of infantry suicide missions against their own families, as witnessed in Mozambique).
When you read far more generic statements about Russian aggression in the coming months, such as trying to mobilize 700,000 soldiers to achieve something, now you know.
In a report published last November, Amnesty International said: “Russian authorities forcibly transferred and deported civilians from occupied areas of Ukraine in what amounted to war crimes and likely crimes against humanity”.
In December 2022, the French association Pour l’Ukraine, pour leur liberté et la nôtre (“For Ukraine, for their freedom and ours”), asked the International Criminal Court to examine allegations of “genocide” amid the deportation of Ukrainian children.
Moscow has made no attempt to conceal its policy of child deportation. Removing Ukrainian children from occupied territories is part and parcel of the Kremlin’s propaganda, and in keeping with the “de-Ukrainisation” called for by Putin, who passed a law in May 2022 that made it easier for Russians to adopt Ukrainian children. It also made it harder for Ukrainian families to reclaim their kidnapped children.
Russia is basically repeating a Nazi German strategy in WWII of turning children into cannon fodder. I’m just waiting now for confirmation that the new “re-education” centers used in these war crimes all run on Microsoft.
A new study blandly argues that attraction to tyranny is tied to a belief, usually misplaced, in direct personal benefit.
…society’s portrayal of strong leaders as tough, often masculine, figures willing to do the dirty work of protecting the group…
Portrayal is right.
This is like saying society portrays toddler rants as dirty work of protecting its family. A portrayal doesn’t automatically make something true or accurate.
For some people, due to their upbringing, life experiences and beliefs, following a tyrannical leader is a sincere and sensible choice for themselves and the group they belong to, especially if they view the world as a dangerous place.
Taking excessive casualties was not a consideration, he said. “We see how the Russians treat their mobilized men — they are not people,” said [Oleksiy Melnyk, a former Ukrainian Air Force lieutenant colonel].
That’s the hard reality of tyranny, regardless of society’s portrayals.
I get the report saying there are people sincere in dehumanization of themselves and others, but sensible? Was it sensible being a Nazi because false benefits were promised based on lies? Was it sensible murdering neighbors to move into their homes and wear their clothes, while falsely calling them the aggressor? Are we supposed to think of the upside to mob violence or even war crimes?
Raised for generations with the (legitimate) belief that theirs was a martyred nation, many Poles found it increasingly hard to accept that their victimhood did not automatically grant them the moral high ground when it came to their behavior…
These are dangerous games where everyone loses — society regresses into self-harm — fighting under a false belief that parts of itself are an “other”.
A raging toddler is neither capable of nor intending family protection, any more than a broken clock can tell time. To imply that relativity somehow makes it right, is dead wrong — a form of science denial.
The study and its recommendations could benefit from advising that people really should think about whether things happen to them, or they make things happen. I’m reminded of a post I wrote in 2006 on WWII Kamikaze logic and motivations.
Invariably groups focused more on “things happen to them” (and associated fears) want solutions that are easy, routine and minimal judgement. This predisposes them to the false attraction of tyranny, especially during times of disruption (e.g. industrialization) where fraud is harder to detect. The broken clock is broken, no matter what society portrays it as. And it certainly isn’t sensible to say a broken clock can tell time.
“We’ve dug into not just to the language, the rhetoric in these documents, but also the data. And I’d say in that sense, our analysis really seals the deal on ‘Exxon Knew,'” Supran said. It “gives us airtight evidence that Exxon Mobil accurately predicted global warming years before, then turned around and attacked the science underlying it.”
[…]
“It was clear that Exxon Mobil knew what was going on,” Wuebbles said. “The problem is at the same time they were paying people to put out misinformation. That’s the big issue.”
There’s a difference between the “hype and spin” that companies do to get you to buy a product or politicians do to get your vote and an “outright lie … misrepresenting factual information and that’s what Exxon did,” Oreskes said.
Is there really a difference? Exxon is using disinformation to get people to buy its products and put its politicians into office.
The outright lies maybe used to be different back in the WWI Propaganda Office days of Woodrow Wilson, but by the 1930s (e.g. the inexplicable rise of petroleum cars instead of electric at that time) surely it’s been the same thing.
Here’s a example from Texas of how roads become far less safe as more Tesla were introduced, necessitating expensive infrastructure upgrades to save lives.
When he reached Pierce Street, a Tesla turned the corner and drove into the bike lane. First, though, the vehicle hit the concrete barriers protecting the lane, bouncing over them, the force of the impact reduced before Fincham was hit and was thrust across the Tesla’s hood.
The crash broke Fincham’s ribs, badly bruised his body and left a permanent scar on his hand, but he made a full recovery.
“I’m walking around because of the infrastructure,” he told the editorial board recently.
That can’t be said for hundreds of other Houstonians, some of their deaths, and lives, memorialized by “ghost bikes” adorned solemnly on street corners throughout town.
I’m not exaggerating about Tesla. The company wouldn’t exist without fraud. It’s become a public nuisance.
In February of 2022 their latest “Full Self-Driving” was proven yet again to be the opposite of what was promised, soon almost crashing into a cyclist.
A video trying to highlight Tesla FSD’s safety benefits instead captures a scary near-miss with a cyclist.
You may remember a decade ago the crazy 2013 case, which now seems like ominous foreshadowing.
A 63 year-old retiree driving a new Tesla Model S last November crossed a double yellow line, drove up a hill, drove down a hill, and finally crashed into bicyclist Joshua Alper, killing him as a result. […] Jain has been charged with misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter in Alper’s death, and not a felony, because he “did not act in a reckless way” according to the report.
That driver wasn’t charged with a felony despite falling asleep at the wheel after… he claimed his Tesla had intoxicated him.
The Tesla CEO then tried to falsely cite this case as reason he created and promoted Autopilot as being safe for falling asleep, encouraging Jain-like intoxicated driving.
Source: Twitter
Think for a minute how incredibly deceitful and malicious Tesla’s CEO is — developing automation for harm while claiming it’s for safety. He claimed that one bicyclist death by a sleeping driver was his inspiration for Autopilot, which ever since has been implicated in drivers killing more and more people!
10 out of 10 “Driverless” Fatalities Were Caused by Tesla
He falsely promoted “Autopilot would have prevented cyclist killed”, despite people correctly sounding the alarm that his Autopilot was only a lane assist thus blind to cyclists sharing the lane.
Source: Twitter
That “idiot” was exactly right, Autopilot was a huge lie — intermittent lane assist is a nightmare for cyclists as I explained recently. It was truly tragic foreshadowing of the deaths ahead.
2021: Fell asleep (as instructed by the Tesla CEO) and, when approaching a curve, [Autopilot] crossed into the oncoming traffic lane and struck a pole on the opposite shoulder.
Tesla didn’t just do the opposite of what it shamelessly promoted, it did something even worse. Lately it has been proven to make drivers perform worse than if they drove other cars, not least of all because of a CEO repeatedly making false and misleading statements.
“Fred averaged 10,000 miles per year on his bike and with his wife by his side had cycled across America, Australia, Argentina, Chile, New Zealand, and a host of European countries in his retirement years,” [until a Tesla sharing the lane ran over him on a straight road].
The rider was cycling along 56th Avenue when a Tesla hit from behind.
Hit from behind? These avoidable deaths are a Tesla thing, apparently, part of their new design that removes safety features to increase car profits. A biker was killed July 7 and another on July 24 in 2022.
Michael Brooks, acting executive director of the nonprofit Center for Auto Safety, called on NHTSA to recall Tesla’s Autopilot because it is not recognizing motorcyclists, emergency vehicles or pedestrians. “It’s pretty clear to me, and it should be to a lot of Tesla owners by now, this stuff isn’t working properly and it’s not going to live up to the expectations, and it is putting innocent people in danger on the roads,” Brooks said.
Owners? Last but not least, in 2021 a surgeon used his Tesla as a weapon to murder a cyclist, spattering himself in blood:
Henkin, who turned 59 on Tuesday, told police the Model S was a loaner vehicle owned by Tesla and he was on his way to work. He said he believed he was traveling the speed limit, which he thought to be 35 or 40 mph, records say. [The posted limit was 20]. The next day, Tampa police Detective James Snell wrote up a warrant affidavit for Henkin’s arrest on a vehicular homicide charge. In an affidavit seeking a search warrant for the Tesla’s event data recorder, Snell wrote that he used a “time/distance analysis” of the video to determine the car was traveling in excess of 100 mph just prior to the crash. Data from the event recorder showed the car was moving about 83 mph a half-second before impact, records say.
…given the number of Model 3s you’re likely to see blasting down narrow side streets in the Heights these days, Tesla probably needs as many spare parts for its Houston customers as it can get.
Honestly I figured Texas would have gone that route (pun intended) with some kind of Tesla hunting license. It’s reached a point where non-gun-owning residents probably should apply for a permit to not own and operate a firearm.
On my last trip there, as I skinned a bloody buck from a successful hunting trip, I was told that we’re serving an obligation to kill deer because they’re a public nuisance.
It got me thinking that there definitely are too many Tesla, and their owners often intend harm if not just public nuisance…
So color me surprised that this state with the most guns is investing in public infrastructure instead, as if Texas wants to become a civilized society or something and protect people from Teslas.
Tesla Model 3 in 2021 crashed into a bicycle. Would stronger infrastructure have prevented injuries?
a blog about the poetry of information security, since 1995
