u/OCTOVENG

LLMs are an energy hungry, land hungry, money furnace that pollutes local communities and raises the cost of living of the residents, while offering not much of substance.

The U.S. government should not be wasting taxpayer money on this.

If OpenAI cannot offer a product good enough to produce a profit, it should be left to fail, them maybe we can stop sacrificing the poor and the planet for A.I. slop.

---

---

They want massive regulation to gut open source, under the auspices of 'safety'. When the only way to guarantee safety is open source availability.

Do not obey in advance.

Defend institutions.

Beware the one-party state.

Take responsibility for the face of the world.

Remember professional ethics.

Be wary of paramilitaries.

Be reflective if you must be armed.

Stand out.

Be kind to our language.

Believe in truth.

Investigate.

Make eye contact and small talk.

Practice corporeal politics.

Establish a private life.

Contribute to good causes.

Learn from peers in other countries.

Listen for dangerous words.

Be calm when the unthinkable arrives.

Be a patriot.

Be as courageous as you can.

The Algorithm over on Facebook is feeding me many (fake?) outrage posts about shed building.

"I paid a contractor $14,000" it starts out, "and I am just wondering, is this structurally sound"? followed by a photo of a huge installation, done incorrectly.

Apparently, "ragebait" posts get the most traction, attention, and the most prominent placement in my Facbook feed.

---

---

Your children may die of dehydration, but that is a sacrifice they're willing to make.

Also, Nestle tried to buy the Great Lakes, and said that access to water is not a human right.

---

---

There WAS a military component built directly into the Board of Peace structure.

The International Stabilization Force (ISF) is a peacekeeping mission comprising armed personnel from several countries, tasked with training a new Palestinian police force and working toward disarming Hamas. It was authorized by the UN Security Council in November 2025 and is subject to the command of the Board of Peace. So yes — countries joining the Board were explicitly signing up to provide soldiers operating under Trump's personal control.

At the inaugural Board of Peace meeting, five countries committed troops: Indonesia, Morocco, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, and Albania. The force was meant to be 20,000 strong. Egypt and Jordan committed to training police rather than sending combat troops. Representatives from 40 countries attended the meeting and pledged around $17 billion.

But here is the critical nuance your question cuts right to the heart of:

The ISF's stated mission was disarming Hamas, not physically removing Palestinians. However, critics — and the evidence — point to the practical effect being the same thing through different means.

The ISF's stated role was to help secure and demilitarize the Gaza Strip, primarily by facilitating the decommissioning of weapons, protecting civilians, and training a new Palestinian police force. But basic questions regarding the delineation of "peacekeeping" and "peace enforcement" remained unanswered, and potential contributors were wary of any scenario that could place them in conflict with Palestinians.

That last line is telling. The soldiers were supposed to disarm a population that had just survived a devastating war and refused to leave their land. The difference between "peacekeeping" and "forcing people out at gunpoint" was never clearly defined — deliberately.

The $1 billion seat was not just diplomatic — it bought control over who gets to rebuild.

Countries had to pay at least $1 billion to secure a permanent seat on the board. Members who paid permanently got lifetime tenure on the body that controls who receives reconstruction funding and which Palestinians "qualify" for the new Gaza.

The Carnegie Endowment flagged that Board of Peace plans would restrict aid and reconstruction to only "qualifying Palestinians" — meaning those who cooperated with the plan's terms. The World Food Program has categorized Palestine in 2026 as in a state of emergency, with around 77 percent of the population in Gaza facing acute food insecurity.

So the mechanism of displacement was not only guns. It was also this: withhold reconstruction money from Palestinians who refuse to accept the plan, while the land is simultaneously being planned as a luxury resort by a real estate developer. Starvation and rubble are powerful incentives to move, even without a soldier pointing a rifle.

The UN explicitly identified what was happening.

On February 19, 2026 — the same day as the inaugural Board of Peace meeting — the UN Human Rights Office released a report raising concerns over ethnic cleansing in both Gaza and the West Bank, stating that "intensified attacks, the methodical destruction of entire neighbourhoods and the denial of humanitarian assistance appeared to aim at a permanent demographic shift in Gaza." The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, stated: "This, together with forcible transfers, which appear to aim at a permanent displacement, raise concerns over ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank."

The Muslim-majority countries who joined were widely condemned by their own people for it.

Eight Muslim-majority nations — Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia, Pakistan, Qatar, and the UAE — were accused of supporting a "colonial" structure and imposing foreign U.S. governance in Gaza through the Board of Peace. Critics stated this undermined Palestinian self-determination and legitimized Israel's control over occupied territory.

And as of today — the entire military component has completely collapsed.

Three months after the ISF was announced with great fanfare, the American general appointed to lead the 20,000-strong force still has no force to lead, as none of the five countries that pledged troops have come through with any significant contributions. The Iran war has made it more difficult for Arab and Muslim leaders to openly cooperate with the United States and Israel, which many in the region view as aggressors.

The word "Gaza" does not appear once in the Board of Peace charter. Instead, its language suggests Trump was trying to create a rival UN Security Council to handle all kinds of world conflicts — with himself as permanent chairman, with veto power, designating his own successor, funded by $1 billion entrance fees from the world's governments.

So to directly answer your question: the Board of Peace was structured so that member countries could contribute military forces under Trump's command, which would enforce disarmament of any armed resistance, while economic pressure — controlling who gets reconstruction money — would do the quieter work of making 2.1 million people's continued presence on that land untenable. It was not designed as a blunt military expulsion. It was designed as a system in which military force, economic starvation, and real estate development worked together — with the soldiers provided by paying member states, the money controlled by Trump's board, and the hotels designed by his son-in-law.

The fact that it has largely fallen apart — no troops delivered, no money in the official fund, the ceasefire barely holding — does not change what it was designed to do.