The BBC reports on the comments of a UN judge, Patrick Robinson, that the estimate his group, the Brattle Group, has produced in their report "Reparations for Transatlantic Chattel Slavery" is an underestimate:
You need to bear in mind that these high figures, as high as they appear to be, reflect an underestimation of the reality of the damage caused by transatlantic chattel slavery. That's a comment that cannot be ignored.
The total reparations bill the report assesses 107 trillion dollars or 87 trillion pounds.
It seems that in the viewpoint of many organisations, it does not matter if monies have been paid; for the original sin of ethnic origin, certain demographics must be made to pay and pay and pay again, until all assets have been transferred from people have have never owned slaves to people who have never been enslaved.
Also note the terms of reference: Reparations for Transatlantic Chattel Slavery
Can you see how narrowly-focused this is to ignore all other slavery, past and present, but ensure that taxes can be levied upon the demographics that it's fashionable to despise?
Also bear in mind that Apple's Asimov fanfic has ninja robot assassins.
Asimov specifically created the Three Laws because he found the "killer robot" trope so bloody boring.
Also, re the foundation tech in the books, at one point, somebody from the remnants of the Galactic Empire takes a potshot at a Foundation agent ... and is shocked to find that the Foundation has managed to shrink shielding down to a personal level. The Empire has shielding, sure - on warships. That's how far ahead of the Galactic Empire the Foundation gets to.
I'm fairly sure that they know it's wrong, even if they will never admit this to anyone.
But it's a wrong they're willing to tolerate to build the society the want to build.
Remember, in the 1970s, German social workers were quietly aiding and abetting paedophiles because they felt that was a requirement of preventing any recurrence of Nazi ideology.
Why were randomly chosen leaders more effective? They led more democratically.
Given how this lot love to corrupt language, this seems to mean "Randomly chosen members of the public will allow themselves to be pushed around by the civil servants - whom we own"
They don't care about being hypocrites, as far as they're concerned, it's a matter of hierarchy. One in which anybody who's white or asian shouldn't even expect the police to show up if they're murdered on the street.
Similar thing happened with a guy I used to know back in Essex.
The man had land out Canvey way, and a bunch of gypsy squatters moved in. First year was a gimme, as he wasn't prepared for it - it was an empty field, so there wasn't anything in particular to secure, but once they were in, the police refused to remove them, and by the time they'd finished conducting industrial clearances in his area and departed, the land was uninhabitable, so the council forced him to pay for the cleanup. The next year the gypsies came, there was a substantial fence and gate, so they dismantled the gate hinges, same again, same refusal to remove, same fines and fees to clear up the land.
The year after that, he'd put in a four-foot-high earth berm to keep their vehicles out so they couldn't dump industrial waste on his land. The gypsies responded by stealing a bulldozer and clearing the berm out of the way.
After that - three years in a row of endless expense - he sold the land.
I mean, I get why. Your laser printer does not "own" copyright on the Picasso you just had it print.
Now, if Hollywood were to show that the use of the AI tool is subject to copyright - the techniques for modifying the prompt to deliver an appropriate response, or, if they get clever, conscious curation of the AI's base data set or something - they might have more room for argument here, no?
The thing is, with another president, another administration, I might give that some credence.
But this administration, this president?
They've shown nothing but contempt for the rule of law since the day they entered office - for them, it is nothing but a weapon to be pointed at a target.
This is one thing that seems quite common to Remainers: viewing the referendum as a moral choice between good and evil, rather than looking at the deal on offer.
EU membership isn't a particularly good deal if you aspire to be anything more than glorified cattle. The entire structure of the EU is designed so rather than being responsive to the demands of the population, it's instead focused on Rosseau's "general will", that is, what the EU's various powerful elites think the peasants should be distracted by. That's why the EU Parliament, the only bit actually elected, is - by design - completely ineffectual.
Oh, the terms have reference have been carefully crafted to ensure the buck stops with the Euro nations and America.
If you read the report, they've gone full CRT here. Any difference between white and black populations - earnings, incarceration rates, life expectancy, wealth, all of it is assumed to be due to racism and all of it is assessed as payable as taxes due to black populations simply for being white.
So any difference in average earnings now is arbitrarily determined to be down to me enslaving black people and thus due for reparations.
They also seem to carefully curate the interest rates they use over the centuries, embracing the highest interest rates they can find, but discarding low or negative interest rates - gotta pump those numbers up, right?