From Newsgroup: comp.misc

The two main items in <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnzPuVCyhpU>
may be highly political, but they are compu-related.

The first one is about a certain countryrCOs ongoing attempts to paint
itself as a pro-Western Good Guy, even as it commits human-rights
abuses on neighbouring peoples whose land it wants to steal. This has
worked well back when rCLmainstream mediarCY (e.g. TV, newspapers) were
the main influencers of public opinion. But in the online world,
things are a bit more of an uphill struggle. ItrCOs no good trying to
suppress reporting of bad news in one media channel, if it can simply
pop up in a dozen others, is it?

Example: they are now filing a lawsuit against the New York Times for
rCLblood libelrCY over its documenting of certain atrocities committed by
their troops. You think this has a chance of succeeding? Maybe, if it
werenrCOt being undermined by the not-so-secret boasts of those troops themselves: far from being apologetic over their crimes, they glorify
in them, and there are those in the local media and the leadership who
think of them as heroes for committing them.

The second one is about the Spanish province of Arag||n, which is
trying to become the rCLVirginia of EuroperCY. This is in reference to the
fact that the US state of Virginia has more AI data centres than any
other place in the world. In this item, we discover that the Big Tech
lobbyists have somehow managed to persuade EU lawmakers to pass
measures to ensure that the financial details of their deals to set up
these data centres -- I guess this includes the prices they are paying
for water, electricity etc -- are kept from the public. Which of
course makes it rather harder for voters to determine whether the
business case is actually worth it, in terms of the cost to the local
people and the environment, or not.
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