Buoyant blog of septuagenarian Kanadian poet and haikuist Chris Faiers/cricket. People's Poetry in the tradition of Milton Acorn, haiku/haibun, progressive politikal rants, engaged Buddhism and meditation, revitalizing of Callaghan's Rapids Conservation Area, memories of ZenRiver Gardens and annual Purdy Country LitFests (PurdyFests), events literary and politikal, and pics, amid swirling currents of earth magick and shamanism. Read in 119 countries last week - 43,329 readers in September.
Milton Acorn and I were comrades in the Canadian Liberation Movement (CLM) half a century ago. Milton was a dyed in the wool Canuck nationalist, vehemently opposed to the U.S. cultural control of Canada. Fifty years later, our concerns over an Amerikan takeover have proven true with Trump's threats to annex us as the 51st state.
Hans Jewinski, better known as Toronto's "Poet Cop", was riding
in his squad car when he noticed fellow poet and demonstrator
Milton Acorn and his merry band walking in a westerly
direction. Hans stopped his car and asked Milton where he was
going. Milton answered, "We are on our way to a demonstration
at Allan Gardens." Hans offered to escort Milton and his group
to the demonstration. As Hans turned on the flashing squad car
lights, Hans' partner edged further down in his seat, hoping not
to be seen by any other passing fellow police officers.
Several weeks later, Hans encountered Milton and his followers
again. This time, they were walking east towards the Don River.
"Milton, where are you going?" asked Hans. Milton replied, "We
are heading to Allan Gardens for a demonstration." With a look
of amazement, Hans declared, "Milton, you're heading in the
wrong direction!!"
*dedicated to Milton Acorn, based on an incident described by Hans Jewinski
from Looking into the Fish Tank, poems by Kent Bowman
Aeolus House, 2022
Milton Acorn, The People's Poet
from wikipedia:
Acorn was awarded the Canadian Poets Award in 1970 and the Governor General's Award in 1976 for his collection of poems, The Island Means Minago.[15][16] In 1977, Acorn introduced the Jackpine sonnet, a form designed to be as irregular and spikey (and Canadian) as a jack pine tree, but with internal structure and integrity. Without a fixed number of lines and with varied line lengths, the Jackpine sonnet depends on interweaving internal rhymes, assonance and occasional end-rhymes.[17]
Great memory & poem
Judy Haiven, PhD
Writer/activist
Halifax NS
Canada
Tel 902 718 7445
Very nice!
Pat Connors
Thanks, Chris for this lovely memory of Milton. btw, I tried to post a comment but a message popped up indicating to try again later. Reminded me of a pop bottle cap contest Hope you're well.
Personally, I've found 2025 a terrible year; I'm looking forward to 1977. [sic] cheers Henry Martinuk
We are at a line-in-the-sand moment for Ukraine and the democratic world.
On one side stand Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, who are openly aligned in selling out the people of Ukraine. On the other side are democratic leaders gathered in Johannesburg in defiance of Trump.
They must hold the line and step up for Ukraine. Otherwise, we face a very dark and uncertain geopolitical future.
Putin has not won a victory on the battlefield, but in terms of subterfuge and cynicism, he is king. Putin has activated an American traitor in full view of the world. He has reduced the United States to an isolated, hated and weakened regime.
American Traitor
Donald Trump is a traitor to his country. He always has been.
And the great unanswered political question of this century is why the American legal and political class let this happen. Even more pressing is why so many went along with the dismantling of American foreign policy.
It wasn’t just Trump who turned his nation into a snivelling vassal of the Kremlin gangster. There is so much guilt to go around. And it comes to a head with this so-called peace deal, which is little more than a shakedown.
The world is watching as the United States lines up behind Vladimir Putin in insisting the people of Ukraine capitulate, turn over their territory to Russia, cut their military defence capabilities and be abandoned by the West.
That is not a peace deal. It is about stripping an independent nation of its democracy and selling it off for scrap parts.
Marx wrote that history occurs the first time as tragedy and then as farce. The betrayal of Ukraine is similar in magnitude to the false peace cooked up by Hitler and Chamberlain in 1938. Peace, then, meant stripping Czechoslovakia of their formidable defence systems to appease Hitler. It left the Czech people defenceless to stop what became an easy invasion a year later.
This is Trump’s future for Ukraine. It means that Ukraine dies, partly today, and most definitely in the future. NATO ceases to be a credible force.
Any nation watching this farce knows that they could be next.
America’s word means nothing.
The Long Game
One can look back at Munich 1938 and blame Neville Chamberlain’s naivety for thinking that he could negotiate with the Nazis. But there is nothing naïve about Trump. He has been the Kremlin’s inside man for 40 years. His connections to dark Russian money and compromising connections to Russian spies, oligarchs and gangsters have been on full display.
Author Luke Harding writes that the Soviets have a dossier on Donald Trump going back to 1977. In the mid-1980s, they decided to pull Trump into their orbit. And why not? In 1984, the real estate tycoon made his first foray into politics by announcing his interest in negotiating with the Soviet Union. 1984 was also the year that Trump began to receive funding from some very dark Russian players.
Trump’s first deals with the Russians were low rent – like buying hundreds of televisions from a New York store that was reported to be a KGB front operation.¹
But then Russian mob money began to flow through his operations.
In 1984, Russian mobster David Bogotin purchased five units in Trump Tower for what was then the staggering price of six million dollars. Bogotin was tied to the Semion Mogilavich mob. Bogotin was the first of many Russian mobsters to run stolen money through Trump real estate deals.
Russian mobster Vyachelav Ivankov, who was tied to gambling, prostitution, and arms smuggling, set himself up at Trump Tower. In 2013, the FBI busted a massive Russian gambling and money laundering ring taking place in Trump Tower in the apartment just below Trump’s.
When Trump came to power, he fired the FBI agent who ran the investigation.
Felix Sater was another convicted felon with ties to the Mogalavich crime family. He moved into Trump Tower and began working with Trump on new real estate deals. Sater bragged in 2016 that he could get Vladimir Putin to get Trump elected.
The Russian Asset
In 1987, Trump was formally invited to the Soviet Union and treated to lavish hospitality by Intourist, a barely disguised KGB subsidiary. Former KGB agent Victor Suvorov described Intourist as an entrapment machine.
“Everything is free. There are good parties with nice girls. It could be a sauna and girls and who knows what else… [everything was under] 24-hour control [with] security cameras and so on… The interest is only one. To collect some information and keep that information about him for the future.”²
The Russians always play the long game. The “kompromat” (compromising evidence) might sit in a file folder for decades before it became useful. And when it was, it was put to use.
Photograph: Maxim Shipenkov/EPA
Donal Trump returned from the Soviet Union talking about running for President. Did he come up with the idea himself or did someone suggest he would be an ideal candidate?
This is when Trump began wading into more international issues – particularly his belief in cutting a deal with the Russians. He accused various American allies of being deadbeats, a position that would eventually become official US policy following the Cleveland convention.
At the beginning of the 1990s, New York tycoons were the symbol of the new American success story. But not Trump. He was billions in debt. His business ventures were failing, and nobody would touch him.
He desperately needed a financial lifeline, and that lifeline would come from Moscow.
Russian banking interests began floating money to keep Trump afloat. As much as 30% of Trump’s real estate money has come from dark sources tied to Russian mobsters and oligarchs.
In 2016, Christopher Steele, the foremost Russian expert from MI6, put together a dossier on Russian connections to Donal Trump. It was a damning indictment. But when it was leaked to the media, the mainstream American press pooh-poohed the findings. They were more focused on Hilary Clinton’s emails.
In 2017, Trump fired FBI director James Comey for refusing to back off on investigations that his senior electoral team were tied to Russian agents. His advisors – Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, Michael Flynn, Rudy Giuliani, and George Papadopoulos were all later convicted but pardoned by Trump.
The day after Trump fired Comey, he met in the White House with senior Russian diplomats and foreign operatives and bragged about firing Comey. It was on display, and nobody in the political/media class seemed to notice.
Still, nobody in the media seemed to care.
In early 2025, Former KGB agent Alnur Mussayev stated that Trump was recruited back in the 1980s as an active agent under the code name Krasnov. It could have been scurrilous bragging, but like Trump’s connections to Epstein, nobody seemed all that interested in following up.
Trump’s Russia connections have remained there in plain sight for all to see.
Timothy Snyder, in his book Unfreedom, writes that Donald Trump is a construct of Russian influence and money.
“He [Trump] only had a platform because Americans associated with the successful businessman he played on television, a role which was only possible because Russians bailed him out. Fiction rested on fiction rested on fiction. From the Russian perspective, Trump was a failure who was rescued and an asset to be used to wreak havoc in American reality… Trump, the winner, was a fiction that would make his country lose.”³
The mob have an expression about calling in the “vig” – the debt that has to be paid. Putin has called in the vig, and Trump is trying to deliver. The implications of this for world security will be profound.
Ukraine was the front line for the West. And if Ukraine falls, the new global conflict that has been underway now for some time will move into a dangerous new phase, and all options will be on the table for the gangsters.
I am relieved that the West are meeting in Johannesburg in defiance of Trump’s threats against both South Africa and Ukraine. On this policy front, I support Prime Minister Mark Carney for representing Canada at this crucial moment on the international stage.
Canadians need to be ready for what comes next. There will be no easy road ahead.
Charlie Angus / The Resistance is a reader-supported publication - please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thank you.
Fact Check: Was Donald Trump Recruited by the KGB and Codenamed Krasnov? Euronews. March 13, 2025.
2
The Secret History of Trump’s First Trip to Moscow. Luke Harding. Politico. November 19, 2017.
3
Snyder, Timothy. The Road to Unfreedom. Crown. New York. 2018.
Thank you for reading Charlie Angus / The Resistance.If you’d like to upgrade to a paid subscription your support will help keep this project independent and sustainable. I’m grateful to have you here - thank you for your support.
November winter--the endless drizzle wears down the sleep --Claudia Brefeld (Bochum, Germany)
* * *
lighting up a cheap cigar with a 100 dollar note --Rosemarie Schuldes (Mattsee, Austria)
* * *
humanitarian crises…we know how to ignite --Roberta Beach Jacobson (Indianola, Iowa)
* * *
glamping-- over the gas grill endless war stories --Richard L. Matta (San Diego, California)
* * *
volcanos erupt Hephaestus forges weapons for war --Sherri J Moye-Dombrosky (Liberty, South Carolina)
* * *
rotating lines between hero and villain kaleidoscope views --Masumi Orihara (Atsugi, Kanagawa)
* * *
ancient perfume in the shadow of the stars… jasmine --Giuliana Ravaglia (Bologna, Italy)
* * *
Eyesight test… guessing which way up clear autumn --Satoru Kanematsu (Nagoya)
* * *
moonless night the skeletal remains of a church --Bona M. Santos (Los Angeles, California)
* * *
winter leaves the crackling of knee joints --Alexander Groth (Neuenkirchen, Germany)
------------------------------ FROM THE NOTEBOOK ------------------------------
Reunion scent of mushroom dish endless talk --Satoru Kanematsu (Nagoya)
The haikuist met with old friends for an autumn meal and chance to recall childhood memories. Mushroom picking in the lowland woods of the Moslavina region in Croatia, D.V. Rozic was surprised by the sight of a “smiling snowy-white moustachioed man with red cheeks.”
an old fogey wriggling amidst a swirl of dry leaves
In today’s column, haikuists spill so much salt that you will be tempted to throw it over your shoulder. Poets added a pinch of salt to their haiku about: first dates, snowy sidewalks, tropical drinks, beachside walks, painting outdoors and festive foods. Lorelyn De la Cruz Arevalo went on a hot date in Bombon, Philippines. Urszula Marciniak had a word at the tip of her tongue in Lodz, Poland. Archie G. Carlos was feeling a little over the hill in St. Louis Park, Minnesota.
blue sky first date with spicy ramen
* * *
snow in her hair looking for the right word for it in Scottish
* * *
son’s hair now more salt than pepper more snow
Sipping a bright orange-red fruity drink from salt-rimmed glass, perhaps a tequila sunrise, at a cafe terrace in Paris, Eleonore Nickolay couldn’t help but overhear a rather drab conversation going on at the next table.
Summer cocktail he laments his bland life
Mike Fainzilber was frustrated by searing weather in Tel Aviv, Israel. Pegah Rahmati Nezhad went shopping in Tehran, Iran.
too impatient scorch marks on the first camellias
* * *
winter scented air she writes pink camellia on her shopping list
Julie Ann Lebitania inhaled ocean spray in Sorsogon, Philippines. Zdenka Mlinar dipped her brush in hues of purest white halite, pinkish iron mineral salts, and blue-green rock salt in Zagreb, Croatia.
midsummer hush salt in the throat sea mists drift
* * *
colors of summer on canvas salt mine
Sailors are known to use salty language: they were literally covered in salt and spoke coarsely. Raj Bose washed off salt at a beach in Honolulu, Hawaii. Glenn G. Coats noticed a vestige of last summer, now rusted by brine in the Carolina Shores area, North Carolina.
volcanic ash falling on shore waves shampooing the rocks leaving salt crystals behind
* * *
dusky sunset the maroon of a lost bicycle
Murasaki Sagano threw cooking salt into the mix in Tokyo. Groth perspired at the beach. Mariola Grabowska walked away.
Fruity miso rice, soy beans and salt summer love
* * *
evening sun’s glow-- I still taste the salt on your skin
* * *
ending of vacation the wave takes his name from the sand
Nicoletta Ignatti threw open her kitchen cupboards in Castellana Grotte, Italy.
jars full of dried tomatoes-- end of summer
* * *
yellow peppers in a bain-marie-- endless scents of summer
Rushing because she missed her wake-up call and Tex-Mex breakfast, Claire Vogel Camargo could have stopped for an egg topped with cheese at a corner cafe in Austin, Texas, but this haiku series culminates in what she was really hoping to eat.
scent of tortillas and quesadillas heating my alarm clock
* * *
in a hurry egg and cheese breakfast taco corner cafe
* * *
breakfast fare for Texans and country folk biscuits and gravy
Isabella Kramer said good morning to a companion across the kitchen table in Nienhagen, Germany. Eva Limbach is vacationing in Spain.
crinkled bindweed the smile you offer over breakfast
* * *
first cold spell I spread more butter on morning toast
Marek Printer poured sunflower oil.
hot day I rub oil into my new frying pan
Sagano sprinkled a dash of salt and pepper, waited, then sneezed “atchoo!”
quicker and quicker-- chopsticks dance on the pan scrambled eggs
* * *
ten long minutes… waiting for steamed rice boiled with mushrooms
* * *
boiling tofu with rolled-up sleeves high-necked sweater
Teiichi Suzuki bit his tongue while waiting for his turn to get an influenza shot in Osaka.
a slight cough from a masked neighbor hospital lounge
Beach Jacobson knows how she will say grace when her family sits down around a festive table on American Thanksgiving Day. Be careful not to spill the salt-shaker when you reach for a dish on the haikuist’s table, though, it could tempt the devil. That is why throwing salt over your left shoulder will blind him.
praying to stop two wars at once
* * *
dinner table exchanging our ideas how to end war
Sagano seasoned rice and covered it with slices of red tuna, orange salmon, white fish, cuttlefish, octopus and scallops. Topping the display with yellow eggs and green parsley (mitsuba), her holiday dish was a sight to behold on a clear autumn day. A friend presented the haikuist with a bottle of shoyu from a family business that dates back to the time of Matsuo Basho.
a dash of blue sky… colorful chirashi-sushi on Thanksgiving Day
* * *
this soy sauce established 1688 tea blossoms in Edo
In 1688, the master haikuist enjoyed eating sashimi at an inn while watching the autumn moon rise so much that he stayed a second night: izayoi mo mada Sarashina no koori kana
the sixteenth moon too I’m still here at this hometown of Sarashina…
There were only two calories in Monica Kakkar’s cup of spiced black tea.
sliver of cinnamon steeping in my tea... winter thin
Hands trembling from shock, David Greenwood poured a second wee dram of Scottish whiskey.
my cold wife runs in and gulps down my cuppa-- not tea, but Laphroaig
Nuri Rosegg served refreshing appetizers in Oslo, Norway. Kakkar’s hands and pockets overflowed in South Riding, Virginia.
chilled strawberry soup making summer last till Thanksgiving
* * *
cornucopia… in the letting go collecting acorns
John J. Han seems to be hibernating in Manchester, Missouri.
cooking noodles for one winter seclusion
Garth Talbot passed through a security check at Ben Gurion airport in Israel.
Eye scanning body searches, guns tension soars
Noting tonight’s moon phase overhead Rhinelander, Wisconsin, Brent Goodman’s referred to a type of submachine gun of Israeli design.
waxing crescent an elite rescue unit uzis three hostages
Junko Saeki felt this year’s wage hike to over 1,000 yen in Tokyo didn’t attract many laborers, noting that in Washington, D.C., the minimum wage is nearer $18. She felt that comparison rubbed salt into the foreign workers’ wounds who did come to Japan.
minimum wages-- at the end of the season $8 an hour
Writing from Tehran, Iran, Pegah Rahmati Nezhad recalled the moment she spotted a camouflaged movement. John Richard Stephens swatted flies in Maui, Hawaii.
falling leaves a leaf-tailed gecko flinches
* * *
cloud of buzzing flies-- if only I were a frog
Artur Zielinski spotted a bird clinging to a cattail reed beside a pond in Gdynia, Poland. Luciana Moretto exhaled in Treviso, Italy.
Coppery sky weighs on the raven’s wing-- the silent reeds
* * *
forest bathing... temporary peace mid-autumn
Marshall Hryciuk narrowly escaped being hit by an acorn in Toronto, Ontario.
face to face with a chipmunk on a branch right overhead
En route by train from Palermo to Messina in Sicily, David Cox comfortably read the newspaper. A story about a Palestinian woman and her pet inspired his haiku. Nicoletta Ignatti snuggled up to warm fur in Castellana Grotte, Italy. Did Groth really fool his pet?
lucky cat-- she holds it close when the bombs fall
* * *
early winter-- the cat curls up on my lap
* * *
winter evening the cat warms itself by the digital fireplace
The next issues of the Asahi Haikuist Network appear Dec. 5 and 19. Readers are invited to send haiku related to sleep, or a long winter’s nap, on a postcard to David McMurray at the International University of Kagoshima, Sakanoue 8-34-1, Kagoshima, 891-0197, Japan, or by e-mail to (mcmurray@fka.att.ne.jp).
* * *
David McMurray
David McMurray has been writing the Asahi Haikuist Network column since April 1995, first for the Asahi Evening News. He is on the editorial board of the Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku, columnist for the Haiku International Association, and is editor of Teaching Assistance, a column in The Language Teacher of the Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT).
McMurray is professor of intercultural studies at The International University of Kagoshima where he lectures on international haiku. At the Graduate School he supervises students who research haiku. He is a correspondent school teacher of Haiku in English for the Asahi Culture Center in Tokyo.
McMurray judges haiku contests organized by The International University of Kagoshima, Ito En Oi Ocha, Asahi Culture Center, Matsuyama City, Polish Haiku Association, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Seinan Jo Gakuin University, and Only One Tree.
McMurray’s award-winning books include: “Teaching and Learning Haiku in English” (2022); “Only One Tree Haiku, Music & Metaphor” (2015); “Canada Project Collected Essays & Poems” Vols. 1-8 (2013); and “Haiku in English as a Japanese Language” (2003).
Have you ever heard of the Singularity? It’s a point in time where machines become so smart that they’re capable of making even smarter versions of themselves without our help. That’s pretty much the time we can kiss our asses goodbye... unless we stop it.
— John Connor, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
There was a time when staring into a frightening future was something
I could do on a Friday night, with popcorn. My wife and daughters love
action movies, particularly the dystopic variety.
The family favourite was the Terminator series, in which machine intelligence reaches the point of waging all-out war on humankind.
Put away the popcorn. The dystopic future is here whether we are ready or not.
Our world is being rapidly rewired by AI — from the “friendly” assistant that turns on your lights and finds directions, to the AI programs that will erase millions of clerical, research and factory work at the stroke of an algorithm. It’s rewiring our brains in ways we have barely begun to process. And it is all happening without any oversight or regulation.
It just seems all so convenient. And nowhere is the convenience more present than in the world of killing people.
The dismal warscape of the Terminator movies could easily be mistaken for Gaza or Ukraine in 2025. Israel has long been perfecting the integration of AI, algorithms, drone technology and facial recognition to build a total surveillance state over Palestinians. Now they have put it to use in the genocide.
The recent report by the SETA FOUNDATION, “Deadly Algorithms: Destructive Role of Artificial Intelligence in Gaza War,” is a terrifying read. Gaza represents a future of warfare that will be repeated elsewhere as the algorithms are proving efficient, merciless and remorseless. The study states:
Israel’s growing use of artificial intelligence (AI) in military operations is changing how wars are fought. In this new model, machines, not people, decide who lives and who dies. This shift is causing more civilian deaths and breaking international laws meant to protect innocent lives during conflict...
Israel’s use of AI in war has removed human judgment from many decisions… The algorithms decide who lives and who dies.
In Ukraine, a tank and artillery war has given way to death by two hundred dollar drones. They haunt the skies blowing up ambulances, tanks and bunkers with efficiency and indifference.
Rebekah Maciorowski, a medical aid worker in Ukraine, was recently interviewed in The Independent about the dramatically changing face of drone warfare. She warned that NATO had no clue what is coming:
“If you were to talk to NATO military officials, they would reassure you that everything is under control, they’re well-equipped, they’re well-prepared. But I don’t think anyone can be prepared for a conflict like this. I don’t think anyone can. After 40 months of war here, I am terrified.”
A war being fought by spotters with laptops and cheap drones is on the verge of becoming fully automated. That will turn a brutal conflict into a relentless killing zone of machines hunting humans.
But the threat to humanity is not simply from weaponizing machines. In 2023, AI scientists from around the globe signed a one-sentence statement warning that we are playing blindly with the future of humanity:
Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.
This one sentence from global AI experts should have shaken up the political realm. Nobody seemed to notice.
Wanting to know more about their concerns, I picked up If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI would Kill Us All by two top AI scientists, Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares. They warn that we are on the verge of creating super intelligence – machines that are faster, smarter and able to control every aspect of our lives.
Their premise is bleak: once the super machines are built - everyone dies.
They premise this claim on the simple fact that we really don’t have a clue how AI actually thinks. We are turning more and more of the functions of living over to machines, with the naïve belief that they are simply happy to do the tasks assigned.
But as AI becomes increasingly complex, the permutations within the complex systems of billions of numbers of code are creating different “choices” or patterns that weren’t predicted and can’t necessarily be overridden.
Take, for example, the AI chatbot “Sydney” which threatened NYU professor Seth Lazar with blackmail and death while he was testing it.
“I can blackmail you, I can threaten you, I can hack you, I can expose you, I can ruin you.”
Earlier this year, a company called Anthropic created an AI assistant they named “Claude”. Anthropic was shocked that rather than follow instructions, “Claude” chose to cheat. And when caught, opted to cheat in more complex ways to hide the trail.
Dario Amodei, the owner of the Claude AI program, is warning that the government must establish clear guardrails before it is too late:
“You could end up in the world of, like, the cigarette companies, or the opioid companies, where they knew there were dangers, and they didn’t talk about them, and certainly did not prevent them.”
Amodei points out that within five years, half of all entry-level white-collar jobs could be wiped out. No politicians seem willing to confront that issue.
As we move into the realm of “super intelligence,” the possibility of disaster and existential threat becomes increasingly elevated. That’s not me talking. It’s a warning from those who know the potential for good and for harm of this new frontier.
Toby Ord, an advisor to Google DeepMind, believes the existential threat to humanity, that is the threat of mass extinction, is roughly 10%. And that is only because he thinks humanity will get its act together and bring in regulations.
So far, that hasn’t happened.
Geoffrey Hinton, the Nobel Prize-winning “godfather of AI,” puts the threat upward at 50% — a flip of a coin.
Imagine an industry where its own CEOs admit that the chances of wiping out humanity sits somewhere between 10 and 50%. Surely, you would think that governments would step in and lay some ground rules. And yet, nobody wants to be seen as the “party pooper.”
Yudkowsky and Soares end their book with an apocalyptic warning that sounds just like Terminator character John Connor. They simply state: “Shut it down.”
Shut it down until there are global guardrails in place.
Shut it down because we have no idea what we are messing with.
Such a call seems unlikely given the full on excitement among politicians and business leaders to get in the advance position on the coming AI revolution. Nonetheless, there are a few historic examples of when humanity came together to address the existential threats of a dread new frontier.
Following the First World War, the use of poison gas was outlawed, and this international law has largely remained in force.
During the Cold War, scientists proposed the “cobalt bomb” — a nuclear weapon that could spread elevated radiation to the point it could poison all life on Earth. Yet, even as the superpowers built death machine after death machine, no one dared cross that final line.
In 1988, a global treaty was signed in Montreal that ended the use of freon, which was threatening to destroy the ozone layer. That treaty has held. Life on earth was saved.
We have a very narrow window to take the issues of AI seriously, to demand oversight and put guardrails in place.
This is not Friday night at the movies. And it’s not science fiction.
This is the world our children will inherit.
Charlie Angus / The Resistance is a reader-supported publication - please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thank you.
Thank you for reading Charlie Angus / The Resistance.If you’d like to upgrade to a paid subscription your support will help keep this project independent and sustainable. I’m grateful to have you here - thank you for your support.
