Has AI come to save the world, to destroy it or to destroy it in the guise of saving it?

Is AII, which supposedly enriches all our lives, a gigantic boon to humanity and/or a monstrous con where creators’ own work is fed back to them, a market bubble ready to burst as the last desperate gasp of Western capitalism and a devourer of water, electricity, oil and rare earth metals that threatens local communities and is part of a global grab of the world’s resources? On Culture & Barbarism 9 Dennis and Toby consider the range of these possibilities with special guest Joan-Pedro Caranana. We’ll look at this decidedly American phenomenon from our perspectives in Paris, Monterey and Madrid.

Trump who had once proclaimed the U.S. was in Syria for the oil, now claims to have returned Venezuela's oil to its rightful owners, the American oil companies

Like George Bush before him in Iraq, Donald Trump proclaimed that with Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro in chains, the U.S. has secured Venezuela’s oil. In this special episode of Culture & Barbarism Dennis Broe and Jack Shalom talk about why the European (and Chinese) response to Trump’s actions is rejoicing on the one hand and staying in the shadows on the other; what AI has to do with this new grab for oil; Trump’s attempt to ‘kill hope’ after the inaugural of Mamdani; and how a show trial can become a political trial exposing the blatant viciousness and hypocrisy of the empire.

In this episode with Dennis Broe and Special Guest Lee Camp, we discuss the new concentration and consolidation of right-wing media as it moves to capture mainstream (or center-right) media with the new dominance of Larry Ellison's proxy ownership of Paramount +, Tik Tok and attempted takeover of Warners. Lee Camp, who hosted his own weekly comedy news show for 8 years Redacted Tonight (and now on Unredacted Tonight) shares his insights and experience on censorship, censorship by omission, being de-platformed as well as on the continuing Neo-Con strategy of both Republicans and Democrats (we now have Hilary Clinton as Gaza-Genocide Denier) to wage perpetual war in Venezuela, the Middle East, Ukraine and elsewhere. More barbarism than culture, but that is what we are left with at the moment in a deteriorating West.

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