THE GOLDEN AGE

Di


“America's golden age has begun”
Donald Trump

“We have the choice either to be architects or victims”
Buckminster Fuller




“È iniziata l’età dell’oro dell’America”


Un Donald Trump scatenato quello intervenuto virtualmente al World Economic Forum di Davos, in Svizzera, che riunisce ogni anno il gotha dell’economia e della finanza globali. 

Il presidente degli Stati Uniti, in collegamento da Washington, ha annunciato che “non ci sarà posto migliore sulla terra” per creare posti di lavoro, costruire fabbriche o far crescere un’azienda se non “nei buoni vecchi Stati Uniti”. Per tutti gli altri ci sarà da “pagare una tariffa”.

"Il nostro Paese sarà più prospero che mai, così come il Pianeta intero, che sarà più pacifico. Sono qui per rimettere a posto le cose”.

“L’ordine mondiale cooperativo che avevamo immaginato 25 anni fa non si è trasformato in realtà”, ha affermato la presidente della Commissione europea Ursula von der Leyen, ammettendo che “siamo entrati in una nuova era di dura competizione geostrategica”. 

Donald Tusk, ex presidente del Consiglio europeo e oggi premier polacco, ha esortato l’Europa a “rialzare la testa”. 

Il socialista spagnolo Pedro Sanchez ha incitato il blocco dei 27 a “difendere la democrazia” dalla “tecnocrazia della Silicon Valley”. 

L’Europa si trova ad affrontare “una sfida esistenziale” anche per la presidente della Bce, Christine Lagarde. 

Davos: il giorno di Trump

Alessia De Luca ISPI





The White House has issued an executive order under Trump's administration that prohibits federal funding, support, or promotion of medical procedures intended to transition a child's sex, citing concerns over their long-term consequences.

It labels these actions as 'chemical and surgical mutilation', arguing that they arise from the erroneous belief that sex can be changed through irreversible medical interventions. 

The administration claims affected children face permanent sterilization and severe complications, with many later regretting their decisions.

Key definitions are provided, identifying 'child' as anyone under 19 and including puberty blockers and surgeries in the mutilation category. 

The order also criticizes guidance from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) as lacking scientific integrity, mandates a literature review by the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and instructs an end to federal funding for gender-transition procedures.

The order directs the Department of Defence to exclude chemical and surgical mutilation of children from TRICARE coverage, affecting nearly 2 million under-18s.

Furthermore, the DOJ will investigate abusive practices by "sanctuary States".

Trump 2.0: White House Passes Order To Ban Federal Funding For Child Gender Transition Procedures

Manasi Kamble Free Press Journal



In the latest action to execute the president’s charge to root out “woke” ideology from the federal government, the Trump administration has ordered agencies to shut down programs, grants and other initiatives that “promote or reflect gender ideology”.

The memo mandated a review of all agency forms and communications that require an employee to identify a gender to ensure that only “male” or “female” could be chosen, and to replace any references to “gender” with “sex”.

“Gender ideology” was defined as “the biological category of sex with an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity, permitting the false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa, and requiring all institutions of society to regard this false claim as true”.

Last week, the personnel office sent similar guidance related to programs that promoted diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility.

Federal Agencies Ordered to End Initiatives That Support ‘Gender Ideology’

Erica L. Green New York Times

Chelsea Manning, the soldier jailed for her part in the Wikileaks affair, has revealed that she was transgender “in secret” while serving in the US army

"To ensure we have the most lethal fighting force in the world, we will get transgender ideology the hell out of our military. It's going to be gone".

The president also signed an executive order directing the Pentagon to determine a policy for transgender service members. 

The action does not immediately ban transgender service members; however, it does state that the Defense Department's policy for troop readiness is "inconsistent with the medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria".

The order also states that identifying as a gender that is "inconsistent" with one's biological sex "conflicts with a soldier's commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one's personal life" and that those doing so "cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service".

Another order addresses diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in the military, banning the use of race- or sex-based preferences in the armed forces, the Defense Department and the Homeland Security Department.

Trump signs executive orders for military, focusing on transgender service members, COVID, diversity

Kathryn Watson, Eleanor Watson, Sara Cook CBS News



The anti-gender or anti-rights movement is an umbrella term that refers to social movements mobilizing opposition to what they call “gender ideology” “gender theory” or “genderism”. 

These movements are opposed to the same things, which the United Nations identified as the rights of LGBTQ+ people, “reproductive rights, sexuality and gender-sensitive education in schools, and the very notion of gender”.

In the early 2000s, the Catholic Church began sounding the gender alarm, claiming that “violent attacks on the institution of the family” were taking place. The Church perceived new laws on same-sex marriage and abortion as corroding morals. 

Pope John Paul II declared that “misleading concepts concerning sexuality and the dignity and mission of the woman” were driven by “specific ideologies on ‘gender’”. This led to the emergence of the term “gender ideology”, which conservative and fundamentalist groups began using to refer to the broad swathe of issues they oppose, including LGBTQ+ rights, reproductive rights, and gender equality. 

The authors of a 2020 UN Human Rights report entitled “Gender Equality and Gender Backlash” identify three specific conservative groups who are behind these movements: governments, religious groups, and civil society groups. 

Proponents of anti-gender ideology generally agree that the concept of ‘gender’ is dangerous because it is changing the way our societies are structured. They view “traditional” social units – such as the male-headed nuclear family of a husband, wife, and children – as the only true or moral way to live.  

In the US, reproductive rights are being rolled back, following the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe V. Wade in 2022, which had protected the constitutional right to abortion for decades. Risa Kaufman, Director of US Human Rights at the Center for Reproductive Rights, described this decision as a “devastating setback”.  

Meanwhile, hundreds of bills targeting LGBTQ+ people – especially transgender people – have been introduced in state legislatures in recent years. At least 510 anti-LGBTQ+ bills were introduced in 2023, a new record according to data from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and nearly three-times the number were introduced in 2022. By the end of 2023, 84 bills were signed into law in 23 states.

In 2024, according to the Association of Women in Development, the concept of gender is now being used to attack all sorts of progressive “struggles”, including even environmental issues. 

American philosopher and gender studies scholar Judith Butler argues that “anti-gender movements are not just reactionary but fascist trends, the kind that support increasingly authoritarian governments”. Butler goes on: “The opposition to ‘gender’ often merges with anti-migrant furor and fear, which is why it is often, in Christian contexts, merged with Islamophobia”.




An “all-American” couple and their two young children were found dead inside their Pennsylvania home in what investigators described as an “unthinkable” and “unfathomable” murder-suicide.

Pennsylvania State Police say Paul Swarner, 35, shot his wife, Karen Swarner, 32, and their two young children, Evelyn, 5, and Connor, 1, before turning the gun on himself.

A family member spoke to Karen Swarner and “for all intents and purposes”, it appeared to be a “normal conversation”, Pennsylvania State Police Trooper Steve Limani said.

But when relatives were unable to reach the couple on Thursday, Karen Swarner’s father went to their house in Westmoreland County and found the family dead in one of the rooms.

A Ruger .22 handgun, the weapon investigators believe was used in the shooting, was recovered.

The couple had been married for 10 years and there had been no previous domestic violence calls that involved state police.

“I hope we’re able to find some answers”.







In an unnamed provincial city, a reporter who has just turned 33, the age his father was when he ended his life, is told by his editor to write a series of articles about three recent suicides. 

His only lead is a photograph of each of the victims after they died. His assignment is to unlock the meaning of these contradictory states. 

Questions multiply, as the novel turns into an investigation of the reasons for living.

Interspersed with the story are the results of statistical studies about suicide — by gender, race, nationality and age — dry asides that presage Bolaño’s factual accounts of brutality in his 2004 novel “2666”.

The reporter is prone to outbursts that seem fueled by an incurable frustration. He entertains himself by engaging in drunken brawls and attending boxing matches where he can “clamor for violence and destruction”.

He assures us that “this is normal” that his “belligerence is collective, and my atrocities mingle in the air with everyone else’s”. 

"THE SUICIDES" Antonio Di Benedetto

Michael Greenberg New York Times

 



Isotonitazene is a type of nitazene, a class of synthetic opioids up to 40 times stronger than fentanyl and up to 500 times more powerful than heroin.

Nitazenes were developed in the 1950s by a Swiss chemical company as a new type of painkiller, but the drug was so potent that it was never approved as a medicine. 

Even trace quantities can cause an overdose.

Decades later, nitazenes have re-emerged in the underground drug market: they have been detected in counterfeit prescription medicines, including fake oxycodone and benzodiazepines pills, and in street drugs, including cocaine, heroin and ketamine.

The super-strength opioid has already caused hundreds of deaths in Europe, the UK and North America.

A months-long open source investigation by Bellingcat and publishing partner Postimees has identified a trove of more than 1,000 online adverts selling six of the most common types of nitazenes and offering worldwide delivery. The ads also appeared on LinkedIn and the social media site X.

It established that a series of entities linked to the advertisements match listings for companies on China’s corporate register — including one registered company that is advertising scores of nitazenes online.

In 2019 China banned all variants of fentanyl, a potent opioid that is fuelling the most lethal drug crisis in America’s history. And in 2022, a “poppy ban” imposed by the Taliban led to a massive drop in opium production in Afghanistan, the source of virtually all the heroin supplied to Europe.

Experts say these factors have opened up a vacuum for alternative synthetic opioids – such as nitazenes – to emerge. “At some stage we know for sure heroin will dry out, and then there’s a danger that some of those people [drug users] may go into nitazenes”, said Thomas Pietschmann, a senior research officer with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. 

The suppliers of nitazenes, listed as Chinese companies, are shape-shifting entities. 

Sellers hide behind opaque business structures: they regularly change addresses, use multiple emails and phone numbers, and promote contact via messaging platforms such as Telegram. 

Others have ties to major criminal networks involved in the global illicit fentanyl trade. Hanhong Pharmaceutical Technology, for example, was sanctioned in October 2023 by the US Treasury for trafficking drugs including fentanyl and nitazenes into America. 

The company is owned by Du Changgen, leader of a China-based illicit drugs syndicate said to be responsible for manufacturing “ton quantities” of nitazenes, fentanyl, MDMA, methamphetamine and other chemicals.

In October 2023, the US Treasury also sanctioned Jiangsu Bangdeya New Material Technology, a Chinese company accused of shipping protonitazene and metonitazene to Florida since April 2022. 

Authorities said an intermediary company that accepted wire payments on behalf of Jiangsu Bangdeya was “affiliated with” Yip Chuen Fat, who is the subject of a US $5 million bounty for information leading to his arrest or conviction. Yip Chuen Fat is alleged to have operated the Yuancheng Group, a chemical company accused of trafficking methamphetamine, fentanyl and other synthetic drugs to America.

Hiersun Biotech Company Limited is another entity linked to online advertisements for nitazenes. An email address for this company is listed as a contact on another website which, according to a report by a select committee of the US Congress, appeared to be controlled by Yafeng Biological Technology, a chemical company owned by a state prison accused of human rights abuses.

Guangzhou Wanjiang Biotechnology Co., Ltd. is registered as active and currently lists a range of nitazenes online.

Its Telegram account regularly posts images and videos of various drugs, including nitazenes.

In April 2019, Estonia became the first country in Europe to identify isotonitazene in drug seizures. New types of the drug followed and, over the years, Estonia recorded a rise in the proportion of nitazene deaths.

Estonia faced one of the first fentanyl epidemics in the world in the early 2000s, lasting nearly two decades and causing almost 1,500 deaths. 

Authorities in Norway have also seized nitazenes originating in China. 

One package of yellow powder, which was labeled as “nail paste”, was intercepted in Stockholm in August 2019. 

In the UK, authorities confirmed 179 deaths related to nitazenes between June 2023 and May 2024. 

In Ireland, nitazene outbreaks in 2023 caused 77 overdoses. 

Often the drugs are sold as fake painkillers, such as OxyContin or Subutex. 

Swedish authorities recently said nitazenes and other drugs had been ordered on Darknet websites, including Flugsvamp 4.0 and Archetyp. 

China banned nine types of nitazenes in 2024 in an effort to control their spread. But 23 variants of the man-made drug have now been confirmed worldwide, up from just one in 2019. 


Bellingat




Fentanyl is a synthetic drug. That means it’s not created from plants like marijuana or cocaine, but rather entirely from chemicals.

Fentanyl can be easy to make using compounds known as “precursors”. These are ready-made building blocks created from common industrial chemicals. 

Certain types of precursors are particularly prized by illicit fentanyl producers because they function as shortcuts to making the finished product.

A reporter traveled to Mexico’s Sinaloa state, home of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel, to speak with a freelance fentanyl producer about his craft. 

He operated in a poor neighborhood on the edge of the state capital Culiacán, an area controlled by the cartel that’s dotted with stash houses. 

He said whipping up the drug was as easy as “making chicken soup”.

This cook, who left school at age 12, got his start as an assistant to another producer. Fentanyl recipes are prized assets, he said. His mentor was stingy with information and forbade him from taking notes. 

Within six months the apprentice had memorized all the steps and went into business for himself. He said he sourced his chemicals from local brokers, who took orders on WhatsApp and delivered within hours. He’s since exited the trade due to threats from the cartel chieftains, who have barred freelance producers from manufacturing fentanyl in Sinaloa.

Virtually all the illicit fentanyl trafficked to the U.S. is produced in Mexico, according to U.S. authorities. Historically, the state of Sinaloa has been the epicenter of production, though crime syndicates in other regions of Mexico have entered the trade too. 

Traffickers in Sinaloa operate open-air labs in rural areas such as forests or remote ranches. They’ve also set up ventilated laboratories inside apartments and houses in cities such as Culiacán.

The most common way of making illicit fentanyl at the moment is known as the one-pot Gupta method. 

It’s named after an Indian scientist, Dr. Pradeep Kumar Gupta, who helped develop a streamlined process for synthesizing medical-grade fentanyl, an analgesic used in operating rooms worldwide. 

Gupta’s original method requires just three steps. The whole process takes place at room temperature and there’s no specialized lab equipment required.

His technique could also be used for the synthesis of thousands of different types of fentanyl analogs.

The Sinaloa cook told Reuters how he made fentanyl. One of the chemicals the cook sourced from local brokers was something he called “El 400”, is likely the immediate precursor 4-ANPP.

In 2023, U.S. authorities seized nearly 116 million fentanyl pills. But hundreds of millions more likely ended up on American streets.

In a 2023 indictment targeting the sons of the jailed Sinaloa cartel kingpin, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, U.S. officials estimated that $1,000 worth of fentanyl precursors can yield profits that are up to 800 times their original investment. 


Daisy Chung, Laura Gottesdiener, Drazen Jorgic Reuters




BREAKING: Bonnie Blue says she broke the World Record by sleeping with 1,057 men in 12 hours.

A prominent OnlyFans prostitute went viral for detailing in graphic detail for the first time how she broke the record for the most amount of sex had in a day.

The OnlyFans star shared the shocking tale of her stunt in a 30-minute video posted on YouTube. She revealed 'everybody had a great time' - and insisted she'll continue 'pleasuring' as many men as possible.

The video shows footage of Bonnie welcoming a line of men wearing balaclavas standing patiently in a queue to enter a large room where she was waiting for them.

She admitted that at times she bedded groups of between 15-20 men at the same time, and that the whole event was 'like a rotating circle'.

'The first three to four hours was more intense. We did big, big groups, big numbers then we slowed it down, it was five at a time'.

Bonnie revealed that for the first three or four hours she was just having group sex with between 15 to 20 men at a time.

She admitted: 'I was like on my back, all positions, everyone was just on me all the time which I absolutely loved, but after about four hours of not seeing any light because everyone was on top of me I said I need it to like stagger out'.

She says that she then had sex with groups of five, and then 'one on ones'.

Explaining her reasons for the sex stunt, Bonnie, whose real name is Tia Billinger, tells an interviewer while lying in bed next to him: 'To say thank you. I would not be here if it wasn't for the subscribers, the followers, the people that like, comment. Even the guys who whinge and hate and give me s**t, I wouldn't have any of this if it wasn't for them.

'Me sleeping with a thousand people... allows me to say thank you to all the people that have got me to where I am.'

The video was filmed a day after Bonnie bedded the men in a mansion in central London.

Asked about the morality of her 'world record' and the backlash she has faced, she maintained: 'You're going to sit there thinking it's disgusting, it was horrible, but everybody had a good time, we were laughing, singing, slipping around on condoms like it was an ice rink and it wasn't an emotional, depressing situation at all, it was the complete opposite.

She added: 'Morally for me [it] is focused on pleasure, enjoyment, and I can't really understand why morally it would be wrong.'

Bonnie insisted that her focus while having sex for 12 hours was not on numbers and the 'world record' but on providing pleasure for her fans.

Bonnie is currently in the US recuperating from her world record, in which she topped the tally previously set by adult film actress Lisa Sparks, who had sex with 919 men in 24 hours in 2004.


Bonnie defiantly declared that she intends to organise more sex stunts in the near future, and that she has little concern for the criticism she has come under.

'You can sit there watching this thinking "Oh my God, you're disgusting", but I'm not asking you to do it nor are you hot enough to do it. So, you stay at home looking the way you do', she insisted.

During her marathon sex stunt, she never had a break of longer than three to four minutes and only had four breaks in total.

Bonnie reveals: 'Every time I would go out, like nip to the toilet upstairs, it's like three floors, all I would see [was] everyone curling around the stairs. I wanted to be really quick so I can get back downstairs. I absolutely loved it.'

She admitted that she did not take a break for the first seven hours and that, following the event, she has been left with a sore back and legs.

She also complained of having a sore throat from 'all the shouting and moaning'.

But she insisted that her body is 'sacred', adding: 'I want to share it how I want to, so for me it would be going to waste if I just kept it hidden in a bedroom by being pleasured by potentially one person. That's a waste to me.

'Morally to me it's wrong keeping it hidden'.


The adult subscription-based site decided to ban the actual footage as they said their services are "designed for creators who have completed our comprehensive onboarding process and choose to monetize their content”.

"'To keep our community safe, OnlyFans also verifies the age, identity and consent of all parties featured in explicit content on OnlyFans".

They said they 'don't allow a big number of non-OnlyFans creators' to be featured on a person's account 'even where release forms have been provided'.


Zara Woodcock Mirror



There is now an arms race among cyber hookers to see who can have sex with the most men in a day. Eventually someone is going to figure out a way to crack a million, which will be a pace of about 11 men a second. 

This insatiable quest for sexual self-debasement will be the primary driver of scientific and technological advancement in the future.

Needless to say, business over at OnlyFans is thriving. Back in the fall, it was reported that the website’s revenue for the previous year had cracked $1.3 billion. 

They are generating all of that money from the approximately 300 million “fan” accounts on the site. But the “fans” are all there for the hookers, or as OnlyFans refers to them: creators. 

This euphemism makes no sense, of course, because these women aren’t creating anything. They are selling their bodies to the lowest bidder. They are profiting from their own degradation and humiliation. This is not an act of creation, but of destruction — self-destruction.

According to recent reports, there are currently about 1.4 million American women producing pornography for OnlyFans. That number is undoubtedly a severe undercount. 

It doesn’t count all the women who “created” on OnlyFans in the past. And it doesn’t count the women who use other platforms to sell their bodies. 

This is a truly unprecedented circumstance. Suddenly, prostitution has become a career option, or a way to earn extra spending cash, for middle class and upper middle class women. 

The kinds of women who would never stand on a physical street corner now have the opportunity to sell their bodies on a virtual street corner. Some of them have even become multi-millionaires in the process. 

That is another thing that separates old fashioned prostitution from the newer variety. There are OnlyFans “creators” making $20 or $30 million a year. The highest paid star running backs in the NFL don’t make that much.

Through platforms like OnlyFans, prostitution — or “sex work,” as it is euphemistically called — is now mainstream. It is a part of popular culture in a way that it never was before. 

It has been validated, accepted, and therefore elevated, so that prostitution is not just a common practice, but a conventional one. 

The stage was set over the course of decades, with the proliferation of internet pornography. Nearly all of the moral guardrails around sex were torn down and replaced with a flimsy, woefully insufficient consent-based moral structure which says that anything is permissible so long as both parties verbally agree to it. 

We have removed shame from society. Now we have soccer moms turning to prostitution for some extra spending money. One follows from the other.

This kind of behavior should be shamed. That goes for the customers, the men. Most people aren’t hesitant to call them out, nor should they be. But it also goes for the women. The women who choose this lifestyle. They are not resorting to it out of desperation, or forced into it. 

We should look at that choice with disgust and contempt, not acceptance and understanding. We should treat it with shame. 

Which is the primary reason why OnlyFans and all similar platforms should be outlawed. 

Prostitution is already illegal in most jurisdictions. It makes no logical sense that prostitution should be legal only if it is done with a camera and sold for a subscription. 




La senatrice Alessandra Maiorino nel 2020 ha denunciato Escort Advisor per favoreggiamento della prostituzione.

Purtroppo l’esposto è stato archiviato. 

Eppure la sentenza n. 141 del 2019 della Corte Costituzionale ha chiarito che, a proposito del caso Tarantini, punire chi agevola la prostituzione è legittimo.

Non solo ha sancito la legittimità della legge Merlin, ma ha chiarito una volta per tutte che la prostituzione non può essere considerata un lavoro, perché viola i principi fondanti del nostro ordinamento, come l’art. 3 e l’articolo 41 sulla libera impresa, che non può mai realizzarsi in contrasto con la dignità della persona umana.

Inoltre un vastissimo corpo di direttive, risoluzioni e report europei sottolinea proprio che scoraggiare la domanda è l’unica strada per ridurre questi fenomeni. 

Gli Stati che hanno legalizzato la prostituzione sono stati costretti nel tempo a rivedere la legge in senso restrittivo, perseguendo chi usufruisce di servizi da parte di persone vittime di tratta o coercizione. 

Ma se oltre agli intermediari, si puniscono anche i clienti le escort di Mike Morra rimarrebbero poi senza lavoro.

La nostra Costituzione dice che la Repubblica deve rimuovere gli ostacoli che impediscono il pieno sviluppo della persona. Lo Stato è inadempiente nel momento in cui una persona (una donna il più delle volte) deve ricorrere alla vendita del proprio essere per mantenersi. È lo Stato che deve farsene carico al contrario, offrendo sostegno e integrazione lavorativa.

Se il concetto di prostituzione viene sostituito da quello di lavoro in una istituzione così nevralgica come il Consiglio d’Europa, pensare poi di arginare il fenomeno della tratta e dello sfruttamento sarà ancora più difficile.

Le 10 migliori prostitute d'Italia secondo Escort Advisor

Irene Ciambezi Sempre News




The seven members of one of Scotland's biggest child sex abuse rings have been given life-long sentences.

Three victims under the age of 13 were subjected to horrific sexual abuse and violence in a Glasgow drug den dubbed "the beastie house" over a seven-year period.

Police said the children had suffered "unimaginable abuse", with the offences including rape, attempted murder and assault.

Judge Lord Beckett said: "Such depravity towards young children is beyond my experience".

The trial heard that the gang would hold "rape nights" and "dance and sex nights" in a squalid flat in Glasgow that was frequented by drug users.

A girl was raped by members of the gang while she was still young enough to wear a nappy.

She described the flat as the "dark and scary beastie house" because she had been locked in a cupboard with a box that was full of spiders.

The girl was also shut in an oven and a fridge and was forced to eat dog food.

Members of the gang also used Class A drugs in front of the children and caused them to consume alcohol and drugs.

Police were alerted by a man who had got to know the children. One of the victims became hysterical when she mistakenly thought she had been shut in a room.

The man and his wife then documented details of what the children recalled happening at the hands of the gang.

Mary Glasgow, chief executive at Children First, said: "This is one of the most extreme cases of abuse ever seen in a Scottish court, but every day children and young people in Scotland are experiencing violence and abuse".


Catriona Renton BBC 


The untold story of sexual assault in the age of porn is one we can no longer ignore. 

A Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner has witnessed an alarming rise in cases linked to exposure to pornography.

The perpetrators are getting younger, with the largest age group being 11 to 15 years old. 

Pornography is influencing behaviors in devastating ways, normalizing everything from incest fantasies to exploitation.

The cycle of abuse is universal and painful. Validation and empowerment are essential to help survivors on their healing journey.


Fight The New Drug

GirlsDoPorn, a wildly popular porn production company which garnered well over a billion views, ranking around the 20th most popular channel on Pornhub, and reportedly generating an estimated $17 million dollars in revenue, was active during a period of growing consumption of 'casting couch' Internet pornography.

Jane never agreed to do porn at all. She had flown to San Diego to participate in what she was told would be a fitness modeling job. But when she arrived, she was met by several men who took her phone, intimidated her into signing a contract she wasn’t allowed to read, plied her with drugs and alcohol, and trapped her in a hotel room where they told her she would be filmed for a porn video. 

Even after she tried to run away, the men physically forced her to comply. With no way out, Jane was violently raped on camera for over 6 hours.

The nearly hour-long video of her abuse was then released on the GirlsDoPorn website and published on nearly every major porn site, even using her full legal name in the title. When Jane first learned that videos of her rape had been published, she ran to the bathroom and was violently sick.

GirlsDoPorn was a popular and well-recognized name in the porn world, and the victims were often forced to smile and pretend they were enjoying themselves. 

Although the GirlsDoPorn owners were eventually charged with sex trafficking, they had millions of viewers and operated unchecked for 11 years, despite numerous victims’ desperate pleadings to have the content removed.

 As Jane put it in our interview with her about her experience, “I didn’t know if they were going to kill me. Watching the video now, I can see it in my eyes. The quivering of my lips and my voice, I know exactly how I was feeling in that moment. But to anyone else who sees it, they see what they want and they think I was complicit”.

The fact of the matter is that sex trafficking in porn is a much bigger issue than most people realize. According to cases reported to the National Human Trafficking Hotline, pornography was the 3rd-most common form of sex trafficking, after escort services and illicit massage businesses.

Research suggests that when someone is consuming pornography, they’re participating in objectification.

And when consumers develop a pattern of objectification and dehumanization—viewing others as objects to be used rather than complex beings with individual agency—it can also become easier to commit violence against them.

Research has shown that porn consumers are more likely to express an intent to rape, less likely to intervene during a sexual assault, more likely to victim-blame survivors of sexual assault, more likely to support violence against women, more likely to forward sexts without consent, and more likely to commit actual acts of sexual violence. 

This desensitization toward sexual violence through the consumption of porn can then manifest in more willingness to buy sex, which increases the demand for individuals being trafficked for sex.

As long as there’s a demand for porn—especially porn that is extreme, abusive, or degrading—the porn industry will continue to exploit vulnerable people to meet that demand.

The Connection Of Porn And Sex Trafficking 

Fight The New Drug

Over 1,000 sites across 40 countries openly advertise sexual services online, creating a digital ecosystem where human trafficking thrives.

Traffickers are now connected with buyers online, making it easier than ever to exploit vulnerable individuals across borders. From “sugar daddy” sites to massage directories, traffickers cleverly use everyday platforms to hide their operations in plain sight. And it’s not just adults—many ads involve children, whose abuse is often hidden in coded language and obscure photos.

This isn’t just a human rights crisis; it’s a security threat. By enabling traffickers to network globally, these platforms make enforcement difficult and increase the risk to societies everywhere.

The misuse and exploitation of technology now plays a central role in both facilitating and expanding the crime of human trafficking across the globe.

From using mainstream social media and instant messaging platforms to find and exploit victims, to the use of online banking services and cryptocurrency to facilitate the movement of profits, 

technology has reshaped the threat of human trafficking.

Policy action to address technology-facilitated trafficking in human beings Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OCSE)






Durante il recente Gala del Festival di Primavera, uno degli eventi televisivi più seguiti in Cina, la tecnologia robotica ha incontrato la tradizione in una performance straordinaria. 

Protagonisti ben sedici robot umanoidi H1, sviluppati da Unitree Robotics, che hanno condiviso il palco con ballerini umani eseguendo insieme la tradizionale danza folk cinese Yangge.

I robot, vestiti con giacche floreali rosse, hanno mostrato movimenti sincronizzati e precisi, maneggiando fazzoletti rossi con destrezza, lanciandoli in aria e riprendendoli con precisione. 

La performance è stata frutto della collaborazione tra il rinomato regista Zhang Yimou, Unitree Robotics e l'Istituto delle Arti dello Xinjiang. Intitolata "Yang BOT", ha rappresentato una fusione armoniosa tra innovazione tecnologica e patrimonio culturale.

I robot umanoidi di Unitree incantano la Gala di Primavera con una danza tradizionale

HDblog




Swarms of autonomous robots, capable of coordinating and executing complex tasks, are a futuristic vision that is quickly becoming a reality. 

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) wanted to see whether a human could effectively supervise a heterogeneous swarm of more than 100 robots, even in challenging real-world scenarios.

While brief moments of overload occurred, the human operator successfully managed the tasks overall.

The study was led by Julie A. Adams, the associate director of research at Oregon State University’s Collaborative Robotics and Intelligent Systems Institute. It was conducted under DARPA’s OFFensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics (OFFSET) program, which aims to explore the capabilities of robot swarms in complex, tactical scenarios. 

The largest mission involved a whopping 110 drones, 30 ground vehicles, and up to 50 additional vehicles.

“The presented results demonstrate that a single human can deploy a swarm of 100 heterogeneous robots to conduct real-world missions”.


Mihai Andrei  ZME Science

Something fundamental to us, as humans, is being exploited for inhuman ends. We are primed to seek out new information; yet our relentless curiosity makes us ill equipped for the infinite scroll of the information age, which we indulge in to our detriment.



“The Shallows” (2010) warned about what the internet was doing to our brains. 




Books like Tim Wu’s “The Attention Merchants” and Shoshana Zuboff’s “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” have traced how our attention has been measured and monetized — sliced and diced into salable packets so that it’s now commodified like never before.





“Social media is not successful because it goes against our instincts and desires. It’s successful because it gives us what we want”. 

Tech companie ply us with the digital equivalent of junk food. They engineer how we relate to one another online by selecting for content that whips up strong emotions to draw us “deeper into the feed”.



More communication does not necessarily lead to more understanding. The title refers to a rare “super bloom” of California poppies in typically arid soil, an episode that drew selfie-taking influencers, flower-trampling crowds and a frenzied backlash. Left to our own devices, so to speak, we can get vain, careless, resentful and cruel.

“The deliberate, reflective practice” of composing a handwritten letter has been superseded by the “short, snappy” idiom of texting.

Social media has enabled us to let loose our worst instincts and transmit to a huge audience whatever thoughtlet comes to mind. Abundance, in this case, stokes conflict. “Different points of view are seen not as opportunities to learn but as provocations to attack”.

A deteriorating media ecosystem selects for clicks. 

“News, entertainment, conversation and all other forms of human expression would from now on be in direct competition angling for both the consumer’s fleeting attention and the algorithm’s blessing”, in our informational war of all against all.




The trivial amusements offered by online life have degraded not only our selves but also our politics. We get overstimulated when bombarded by stimuli, but we become restless when left alone with our thoughts.

Our phones — “little slot machines we hold in our pocket” — pull us in both directions, providing us with a simulation of sociability while exacerbating our loneliness, and capture our attention on the cheap. Social media entrepreneurs “can simply throw a million little interruptions at us, track which ones grab our attention and then repeat those”.

This particular stage of capitalism is fueled by a fracking of our minds. 

"SUPERBLOOM: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart" Nicholas Carr 
"THE SIRENS’ CALL: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource" Chris Hayes







The rise of Big Tech has fundamentally transformed the global economy, replacing capitalism with a new form of feudalism that concentrates power and wealth in the hands of a few.

Capitalism, as we once knew it, has been dismantled by the rise of digital platforms and the monopolistic power of tech giants like Amazon, Google, and Facebook. 

These corporations have created a new economic order that resembles feudalism more than traditional capitalism. 

In this system, wealth and power are concentrated in the hands of a few "lords" who control the digital infrastructure, while the majority of people are reduced to "serfs" who depend on these platforms for their livelihoods and social interactions.

The traditional capitalist cycle of investment, production, and consumption has been disrupted. Tech companies no longer need to produce tangible goods; instead, they profit by controlling data, algorithms, and digital ecosystems.

In this new system, the "lords" are the tech corporations that own the digital platforms. They control the means of communication, commerce, and even social interaction.

The "serfs" are the users, workers, and small businesses who depend on these platforms. They have little autonomy and are subject to the rules and algorithms set by the tech lords.

Unlike capitalism, where workers sold their labor for wages, in techno-feudalism, users and workers are often unpaid or underpaid for their contributions (e.g., creating content, providing data, or performing gig work).

Data is the new "land" in this feudal system. Just as feudal lords controlled land, tech corporations control data, which is the most valuable resource in the digital age.

Tech companies own and control the cloud, which serves as the infrastructure for the digital economy.

The 2008 financial crisis marked the beginning of the end for traditional capitalism. 

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the shift to techno-feudalism.

Techno-feudalism exacerbates inequality. 

Individuals and businesses are increasingly dependent on tech platforms, which dictate the terms of engagement. This undermines freedom and democracy, as decisions about what content is allowed, how algorithms work, and who gets visibility are made by a handful of corporations.

Tech companies have unprecedented power to influence public opinion, manipulate elections, and suppress dissent.

Varoufakis calls for a new social contract that reclaims the digital commons. This could include measures such as:

Nationalizing or regulating tech platforms to ensure they serve the public good.

Giving users ownership and control over their data.

Implementing universal basic income to address economic precarity.
 

EAARTHNET Substack





Il filosofo indaga lo spietato dominio dell’informazione partendo dal presupposto della trasparenza. Solo apparentemente rassicurante, la trasparenza sarebbe, al contrario, un processo di sottrazione, operato da una regia occulta, che sfrutta l’isolamento del cittadino o l’aggregazione in “sciami digitali” orientati da influencer. 

Questo regime usa le singolarità per creare profili comportamentali.

L’infocrazia decentrata e rizomatica è dominata dalla centralità di un comportamento privato eccedente, che fa sparire l’altro, l’interlocutore, rendendoci incapaci di ascoltare. 



Con l’intelligenza artificiale e il mondo dei dati trasformati in informazioni ne deriva un nuovo nichilismo in cui «è la stessa distinzione tra verità e menzogna a essere minata».

Al centro vi è la de-fatticizzazione della realtà. 

Il problema non è la menzogna, che riconosce la verità ma la distorce e se ne discosta, è invece l’apparire di un mondo in cui non si prevede alcun riferimento a fatti e a verità fattuali. 

E questo genera una crisi della verità. 

Da cui deriva la fruizione autistica dei contenuti, il rafforzamento autoreferenziale delle proprie convinzioni e opinioni. 





La perdita di fiducia nei fatti è l’esito di un processo non imputabile al processo di digitalizzazione, con tutti i suoi corollari, algoritmi, intelligenza artificiale, web, social network, bubble filter e via enumerando. L’eclisse dei fatti, per il pensatore tedesco, è legata a un livello ulteriore, l’estinzione dell’altro.

La digitalizzazione non fa altro che rafforzare il processo di iperculturalizzazione, «defatticizzazione della cultura».

Il mondo diventa muto, non oppone più resistenza e dunque non offre più occasione di ascolto. Nell’Infocrazia viene escluso ogni riferimento a un mondo della vita condiviso. Gli unici elementi a contare sono quelli trasformati in dati ed elaborati in informazioni adatte al singolo utente, senza rendere possibile il riconoscimento della verità. Rendendo così il mondo uno spazio aperto al tribalismo.

La fine dell’agire comunicativo produce una cultura che sostiene una conoscenza interamente basata su dati informatici, dove Big data e AI garantiscono uno sguardo divino e dove si avvalora la teoria behaviorista dell’informazione.

I "Dataisti" sognano questa società senza sociale, che procede senza politica, soddisfatti di aver rotto il processo democratico con lo stordimento di una informazione iper-euforica.






Con Antiqua et Nova sapienza (Mt 13,52) siamo chiamati a considerare le odierne sfide e opportunità poste dal sapere scientifico e tecnologico, in particolare dal recente sviluppo dell’intelligenza artificiale (IA). 

La tradizione cristiana ritiene il dono dell’intelligenza un aspetto essenziale della creazione degli esseri umani «a immagine di Dio» (Gen 1,27). 

Come afferma il Siracide, Dio «ha dato agli uomini la scienza per essere glorificato nelle sue meraviglie» (Sir 38,6). 

Vi è ampio consenso sul fatto che l’IA segni una nuova e significativa fase nel rapporto dell’umanità con la tecnologia, situandosi al cuore di quello che Papa Francesco ha descritto come un «cambiamento d’epoca». 

Poiché l’IA continua a progredire rapidamente verso traguardi ancora più grandi, è di importanza decisiva prendere in considerazione le sue implicazioni antropologiche ed etiche. 

Antiqua et nova: Nota sul rapporto tra intelligenza artificiale e intelligenza umana

Chiesa Cattolica

'We have the choice either to be architects or victims'
Buckminster Fuller




The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Dicastery for Culture and Education released a document entitled “Antiqua et Nova: Note on the Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence”.

Bishop Paul Tighe said Antiqua et Nova is not the final word on AI but rather hopes to contribute to the debate by providing points for consideration.

"What we're trying to do at the moment is to offer people some perspectives from which they can begin to think critically about AI and its potential benefits for society, and then to alert people somewhat to what we need to think about to ensure that we don't inadvertently create something, or allow something to be created, that could be damaging to humanity and to society.

Many of us at the beginning of social media were very quick to embrace its extraordinary potential. We didn't necessarily see the side effects that emerged in terms of polarization, fake news, and other issues.

We're trying to focus on a more basic question about what it means to be human. 

Part of the question we have to ask is: what is it that is good for humanity? What is it that promotes human well-being? And that is a form of intelligence, which machines can't really replace. 

We're learning more and more that our minds are not separate from our bodies. They are not something that can simply be uplifted and put onto a computer. They're organic. We learn through doing. We learn through our emotions. We learn through our intuitions.

Calculation is a part of that, but it's not the whole story. 


UNESCO said that AI is leading to what they call an anthropological disruption. It becomes very important that we reflect critically on that, and that we don't bypass the question about the ultimate meaning of life.

Issues that emerge strongly in this document are ones about the risk of increased inequality with AI. You can see this, generally, in terms of the distribution of what has happened to digitalization, which has led to an increase of a very small number of extraordinary wealthy people who have extraordinary amounts of power, for which they are not necessarily accountable to other institutions". 





Isaac Azimov’s Robot series of novels comes to mind when thinking about humanity’s ultimate relationship with AI. 

"We know from past experience so many wonderful innovations that had great potential also became problematic for a number of reasons. 

We want to think critically about ensuring that AI will ultimately be harnessed by humanity, used by humanity in a way that ensures that it realizes its potential to be good for all human beings.

Carlo Ratti, an architect, quoted an American philosopher and architect, Buckminster Fuller, who said about all technology: 'We have the choice either to be architects or victims'.

Humanity needs to have ownership of the processes, and be attentive to ensure that there will be a sense of responsibility.

And that's where Azimov's Robot series comes in. Where will the responsibility lie? How do we ensure that it's not easily exploited by people who would use it for bad? How do we ensure that the databases which are conditioning AI are actually reflective of the whole of human experience, not just that that has already been digitalized. So, how do we ensure that it is something that reflects the best of us as humans?





Several canonical disciplinary measures remain in force against Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne, Archbishop Emeritus of Lima, Peru, who is a member of Opus Dei.

The accusations, which date back to the early 1980s, allege abuses committed by Cardinal Cipriani and resulted in a series of sanctions, including the obligation to leave his native Peru.

The 81-year-old Cardinal Cipriani, currently residing in Madrid, Spain, described the accusations as “completely false” in a statement.

“I have committed no crime, nor did I sexually abused anyone in 1983, nor before, nor after”, he wrote.

The Cardinal said he deemed it “serious” that information “apparently originating from confidential documentation” was being published and reiterated his “total rejection and disgust for sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable persons”.

Concluding the statement, the Archbishop Emeritus of Lima assured prayers for victims of abuse, stated he holds no “grudge” against his accusers, and affirmed his “complete innocence”.


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