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Anti-Empire

Anti-Empire

offsite link North Korea Increases Aid to Russia, Mos... Tue Nov 19, 2024 12:29 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link Trump Assembles a War Cabinet Sat Nov 16, 2024 10:29 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link Slavgrinder Ramps Up Into Overdrive Tue Nov 12, 2024 10:29 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link ?Existential? Culling to Continue on Com... Mon Nov 11, 2024 10:28 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link US to Deploy Military Contractors to Ukr... Sun Nov 10, 2024 02:37 | Field Empty

Anti-Empire >>

The Saker

Indymedia ireland

Indymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.

offsite link Fraud and mismanagement at University College Cork Thu Aug 28, 2025 18:30 | Calli Morganite
UCC has paid huge sums to a criminal professor
This story is not for republication. I bear responsibility for the things I write. I have read the guidelines and understand that I must not write anything untrue, and I won't.
This is a public interest story about a complete failure of governance and management at UCC.

offsite link Deliberate Design Flaw In ChatGPT-5 Sun Aug 17, 2025 08:04 | Mind Agent
Socratic Dialog Between ChatGPT-5 and Mind Agent Reveals Fatal and Deliberate 'Design by Construction' Flaw
This design flaw in ChatGPT-5's default epistemic mode subverts what the much touted ChatGPT-5 can do... so long as the flaw is not tickled, any usage should be fine---The epistemological question is: how would anyone in the public, includes you reading this (since no one is all knowing), in an unfamiliar domain know whether or not the flaw has been tickled when seeking information or understanding of a domain without prior knowledge of that domain???!

This analysis is a pretty unique and significant contribution to the space of empirical evaluation of LLMs that exist in AI public world... at least thus far, as far as I am aware! For what it's worth--as if anyone in the ChatGPT universe cares as they pile up on using the "PhD level scholar in your pocket".

According to GPT-5, and according to my tests, this flaw exists in all LLMs... What is revealing is the deduction GPT-5 made: Why ?design choice? starts looking like ?deliberate flaw?.

People are paying $200 a month to not just ChatGPT, but all major LLMs have similar Pro pricing! I bet they, like the normal user of free ChatGPT, stay in LLM's default mode where the flaw manifests itself. As it did in this evaluation.

offsite link AI Reach: Gemini Reasoning Question of God Sat Aug 02, 2025 20:00 | Mind Agent
Evaluating Semantic Reasoning Capability of AI Chatbot on Ontologically Deep Abstract (bias neutral) Thought
I have been evaluating AI Chatbot agents for their epistemic limits over the past two months, and have tested all major AI Agents, ChatGPT, Grok, Claude, Perplexity, and DeepSeek, for their epistemic limits and their negative impact as information gate-keepers.... Today I decided to test for how AI could be the boon for humanity in other positive areas, such as in completely abstract realms, such as metaphysical thought. Meaning, I wanted to test the LLMs for Positives beyond what most researchers benchmark these for, or have expressed in the approx. 2500 Turing tests in Humanity?s Last Exam.. And I chose as my first candidate, Google DeepMind's Gemini as I had not evaluated it before on anything.

offsite link Israeli Human Rights Group B'Tselem finally Admits It is Genocide releasing Our Genocide report Fri Aug 01, 2025 23:54 | 1 of indy
We have all known it for over 2 years that it is a genocide in Gaza
Israeli human rights group B'Tselem has finally admitted what everyone else outside Israel has known for two years is that the Israeli state is carrying out a genocide in Gaza

Western governments like the USA are complicit in it as they have been supplying the huge bombs and missiles used by Israel and dropped on innocent civilians in Gaza. One phone call from the USA regime could have ended it at any point. However many other countries are complicity with their tacit approval and neighboring Arab countries have been pretty spinless too in their support

With the release of this report titled: Our Genocide -there is a good chance this will make it okay for more people within Israel itself to speak out and do something about it despite the fact that many there are actually in support of the Gaza

offsite link China?s CITY WIDE CASH SEIZURES Begin ? ATMs Frozen, Digital Yuan FORCED Overnight Wed Jul 30, 2025 21:40 | 1 of indy
This story is unverified but it is very instructive of what will happen when cash is removed
THIS STORY IS UNVERIFIED BUT PLEASE WATCH THE VIDEO OR READ THE TRANSCRIPT AS IT GIVES AN VERY GOOD IDEA OF WHAT A CASHLESS SOCIETY WILL LOOK LIKE. And it ain't pretty

A single video report has come out of China claiming China's biggest cities are now cashless, not by choice, but by force. The report goes on to claim ATMs have gone dark, vaults are being emptied. And overnight (July 20 into 21), the digital yuan is the only currency allowed.

The Saker >>

Lockdown Skeptics

The Daily Sceptic

offsite link News Round-Up Mon Oct 06, 2025 01:21 | Richard Eldred
A summary of the most interesting stories in the past 24 hours that challenge the prevailing orthodoxy about the ?climate emergency?, public health ?crises? and the supposed moral defects of Western civilisation.
The post News Round-Up appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Elon Musk Plans to Take on Wikipedia With ?Grokipedia? Sun Oct 05, 2025 19:00 | Richard Eldred
Elon Musk is taking on 'Wokepedia' with Grokipedia, an AI-powered encyclopedia aiming to cut bias, fix errors and add missing context.
The post Elon Musk Plans to Take on Wikipedia With ?Grokipedia? appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Pope Leo ? a Chip Off the Old Block (of Ice) Sun Oct 05, 2025 17:00 | Dr Roger Watson
Pope Leo XIV is basically Francis 2.0 ? soft on migration, preaching LGBTQWERTY wokery and now going 'full Greta' by blessing Arctic ice like it's holy water, says Dr Roger Watson.
The post Pope Leo ? a Chip Off the Old Block (of Ice) appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Should we Abandon Liberal Democracy in Favour of the Singaporean Model? Sun Oct 05, 2025 15:00 | Toby Young
For those who think liberal democracy is the best form of government, Singapore poses a challenge. It's a technocratic, one-party state characterised by ruthless central planning. Yet it's been astonishingly successful.
The post Should we Abandon Liberal Democracy in Favour of the Singaporean Model? appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Net Zero Crumbling Slowly at First, Then Suddenly Sun Oct 05, 2025 13:00 | David Turver
Net Zero has been slowly crumbling for years and is now entering the sudden collapse stage, says David Turver. The only people still backing it are the reality-denying zealots of DESNZ and the Climate Change Committee.
The post Net Zero Crumbling Slowly at First, Then Suddenly appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

Lockdown Skeptics >>

Voltaire Network
Voltaire, international edition

offsite link Will intergovernmental institutions withstand the end of the "American Empire"?,... Sat Apr 05, 2025 07:15 | en

offsite link Voltaire, International Newsletter N?127 Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:38 | en

offsite link Disintegration of Western democracy begins in France Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:00 | en

offsite link Voltaire, International Newsletter N?126 Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:39 | en

offsite link The International Conference on Combating Anti-Semitism by Amichai Chikli and Na... Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:31 | en

Voltaire Network >>

Iraq War Veteran and Milblogger wins Blooker Prize

category international | arts and media | news report author Tuesday May 15, 2007 12:00author by DM Report this post to the editors

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Iraq War Veteran, Colby Buzzell - Blooker Prize Winner. Photograph: Reuters
Iraq War Veteran, Colby Buzzell - Blooker Prize Winner. Photograph: Reuters

Blooking about the war
The last time an Iraq war veteran won a major prize he collected a lot more hard cash but a lot less attention. But that was when 24 year old Peter Willers Jepsen defeated 284 players in the Euro Poker Championship (http://peacenikhurler.blogspot.com/2007/04/iraq-war-vet....html), to win the biggest sum of a $1.385 million prize pool, picking up $433,000 for his win. Extracts I have read from US soldier Colby Buzzell's prize-winning book, which began online as a blook (blog book) while he was stationed in Mosul, Iraq, are quite disturbing, to put it mildly. Ranging from his recollection of how 'Lt Armeni's guts were spilling everywhere' after an RPG attack on a U.S. convoy to how he tried to 'waste an unarmed man' flying a scene of carnage, mourning the fact the 'somehow the bastard got away'. Well, by the tone of these couple of examples we can be fairly certain that Colby did indeed 'waste' a good few Iraqis on his tour of duty. War on terror? More like 'War of terror'. Then again, why should any of us be shocked at such an obscene account of violence, when we all know the disaster the invasion and occupation of Iraq has been.

His account of fighting in Iraq's Sunni triangle has won the 'Blooker prize' (http://www.lulublookerprize.com/), worth $15,000, beating off stiff competition from over 110 entries from 15 countries. The former U.S. military machine-gunner turned writer, whose successful account entitled 'My War: Killing Time in Iraq', was voted the best book of the year based on a blog. The award is granted by Lulu (http://www.lulu.com/) which credits itself as 'the world's fastest-growing provider of print-on-demand books'. But it's quite probable that Buzzell's win will be last such victory for military personnel typing up their experiences online.

Milblog Clampdown
This is due to the irony of his success coming at the same time as the Pentagon's attempts to crackdown on the amount of free-blogging engaged in by soldiers in the theatre of war, citing security concerns and pressure on servers as the justification. Supervising officers will now have to check and censor the 'milbloggers' before they can place their entries online for the whole world to read. The Pentagon announced yesterday that they were blocking access, throughout their system of military computers and networks, to 13 popular websites, such as YouTube.

The pen is mightier than the sword
The memoir is based on Buzzel's experiences in Mosul, northern Iraq, where he was based for a year in 2004. He claims to have joined the army after a period of time when "I was living off Top Ramen [pot noodles] in a suburb of San Francisco and my life was going nowhere".
He discovered blogging by reading a Time article while in Iraq, and started posting eight months into his tour. Whatever one thinks of his book, and the little I have read doesn't make a good impression on me about the type of stuff Buzzell and his fellow soldiers got up to, it has already been translated into seven languages. Thankfully, his new found talent has led him to embark on a career away from the killing fields and the machine guns to freelance writing for Esquire magazine, among others. He's back living California, this time is Los Angeles.

He cites the deceased Kurt Vonnegut and Hunter S. Thomson as literary heroes of his. An unlikely duo one might think, but I was surprised to read the following words from Vonnegut, "My War by Colby Buzzell is nothing less than the soul of an extremely interesting human being at war on our behalf in Iraq." U.S. Today believe that "military recruiters won't be handing My War to prospective soldiers, who would do well to read one grunt's account of what they could be getting into." So it certainly seems that this real-life account of the terror U.S. soldiers perpetrate and experience on the ground in Iraq and elsewhere is a read those of us who are anti-war could learn a lot from. Indeed if Kirkus reviews are right about the potential impact the book contains, then we may even need to start promoting it: "If military recruitment is down now, wait till the kids read this book."

The following is an extract from Buzzel's book, as posted on the Guardian website:

My War: Killing Time in Iraq

Thursday August 4 2004

Down in the hatch, I was frantically scanning my sector when suddenly about 300 metres away from us, over by the traffic circle, I saw two guys with those red-and-white jihad towels wrapped around their heads creeping around a corner.......

More at http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2079657,00.html

Related Link: http://peacenikhurler.blogspot.com/2007/03/world-needs-little-nonviolent_30.html
author by Will Lynchpublication date Thu May 17, 2007 16:11author address author phone Report this post to the editors

I read it last year and I didn't particularly rate it - not a bad effort but not great either.

I would recommend Generation Kill by Evan Wright - excellent.

Even though it was set in the last Gulf War, Jarhead by Anthony Swofford is one of the best books I have ever read.

Dispatches by Michael Herr is cool too. Different War- Same Shit.

author by e_m_remarque_fan - == reincarnated ww2 fighter pilots ==publication date Wed Sep 26, 2007 18:44author address author phone Report this post to the editors

I have read a good number of battllogues, and jarhead was by leaps and bounds the weakest of them all.
About 90% of the material is training, drinking, and moaning about how marine brainwashing is a fantasy.

Read a book called (en) "all quiet on the western front" by Erich Maria Remarque.
(de: Im Westen nichts Neues)

 
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