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From the newspapers
“The head of paramilitary group Wagner has slammed claims by the Russian defence ministry it had killed 1,500 Ukrainian soldiers in two days as ‘absurd science fiction’.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose mercenary troops have spent months fighting in Bakhmut on behalf of the Kremlin, has poured scorn on his country’s establishment after it claimed to have thwarted a second major offensive in Donetsk.
It comes as fighting continues to rage in the eastern provinces of the war-torn country, with Kyiv’s long-awaited ‘all or nothing’ counter-offensive believed to be getting underway.
Ukrainian forces have advanced in Novodonetske by up to five or six kilometres, local reports suggest, as officials claim ‘fierce battles are going on’ for control of the settlement.
Western sources have claimed that despite having to face hundreds of miles of entrenched Russian troops, the defences manned by Vladimir Putin’s troops could be ‘more fragile than thought’.“
[Daily Mail]
In the end, Russia has several times —perhaps many times— the number of both reserves and fresh recruits, potentially. It also has, should it choose to use them, tactical and even strategic nuclear weapons.
The Russian economy is strong, despite Western sanctions, whereas Ukraine’s economy is on its back, and the Kiev regime is only functioning because the EU, NATO etc continue to supply arms, ammunition, military training, medical supplies, cash, and food to the Ukrainian forces and civilian population.
“World leaders may have just two years left to tame artificial intelligence before computers become out of control, the Prime Minister’s AI taskforce adviser has warned.
It follows fears that humanity could lose control of super-intelligent systems, or that AI could launch novel cyberattacks or threaten democracy by propagating mass disinformation.
He added that the ‘existential risk’ is ‘what happens once we effectively create a new species – an intelligence that is greater than humans’.
A group of 350 experts last week signed a statement warning that AI needed to be treated as a threat on a par with nuclear weapons or a pandemic.
Asked whether it was possible to stop AI from becoming cleverer than humans, Mr Clifford said: ‘It’s certainly not inevitable. However, the reason people are starting to get worried, even the people making these systems… is that the rate of progress we’ve seen over the last two or three years has been pretty striking.
‘I think what the signers of the letter are saying is we’re on an exponential… these systems are getting more and more capable at an ever increasing rate.
‘And if we don’t start to think now about how to regulate, how to think about safety, then in two years’ time, we’ll be finding that we have systems that are very powerful indeed.’“
[Daily Mail]
Suddenly, everyone is waking up to this, but it may already be too late.
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Both sides are blaming the other, but the flood affects far more the southern, Russian-held, bank of the river, which is lower-lying. Also, the flood may deprive the Crimea, Russian-held and where over 90% of the inhabitants are Russian, of water.
On those bases, it seems more likely that the forces of the Kiev regime (with or without NATO help) are responsible, but that cannot be confirmed as yet.
Don’t forget “the men behind the wire”.
Peter Hitchens
A report published yesterday — hundreds of pages of devastating detail from experts at Johns Hopkins University in the U.S. and Lund University in Sweden — concluded the supposed benefits of lockdown were ‘a drop in the bucket’ when compared to the costs. Or, as I would put it, they were like burning down your house to get rid of a wasps’ nest.
This report (in fact a revised version of an earlier document first issued in May 2022) will shock many Lockdown enthusiasts by saying that closing the country saved as few as 1,700 lives in England and Wales in spring 2020.“
[Daily Mail]
Quite. (and “lockdown” is still, indirectly, killing millions worldwide; that’s even leaving aside the mortal dangers and other side-effects from the “vaccines”).
The pro-“lockdown”, pro-facemask loonies are still out there, waiting for another chance to express their psychological problems (disguised as personal or social concern etc).
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Ian Robert Millard 