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New York, NY— Today, the AI Now Institute released a new report exploring how governments have used recent crises to pass a wave of water “relief” policies that not only expand the footprint of technology in the water domain, but also exacerbate water commodification, environmental racism, and economic extraction.

The use of technology - including artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer vision, and other digital data systems - is rapidly expanding across the water domain. Since March 2020, governments and private entities have enacted a wave of water relief policies in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, depleting water supply, and economic crises. Many of these newly enacted policies exacerbate the harms and inequities caused by tech-driven water management, allocation, and distribution decisions.

The report's authors argue that these policies fail to address the most urgent and fundamental needs of water transitions and water futures, and these policies put a premium on extractive economic growth over water justice or equity.

Guess what? I direct the following insight to, among others, the U.S. Congress, which annually and without comment, with only a few objectors, passes a trillion-dollar (and growing) military budget, by far the largest such budget on Planet Earth.

“You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.”

The words are those of Albert Einstein, in a letter to a congressman 75 years ago. He adds, pointing out a truth that is still waiting to resonate culturally and politically: “The very prevention of war requires more faith, courage and resolution than are needed to prepare for war.”

Although 2021 is now behind us, there are many issues that will linger for a while, or much longer, and will certainly dominate much of the news in 2022, as well. These are but a few of the issues.

NATO-Russian Brinkmanship 

Exasperated with NATO expansion and growing ambitions in the Black Sea region, Moscow has decided to challenge the US-led Western alliance in an area of crucial geopolitical importance to Russia. 

With Syria still embroiled in its own war, Israel has been actively rewriting the rule book regarding its conduct in this Arab country. Gone are the days of a potential return of the illegally occupied Golan Heights to Syrian sovereignty in exchange for peace, per the language of yesteryears. Now, Israel is set to double its illegal Jewish settler population in the Golan, while Israeli bombs continue to drop with a much higher frequency on various Syrian targets. 

Today marks the one-year anniversary of an assault by pro-Trump forces on the U.S. Capitol. Many questions linger about what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, but perhaps the overriding question is this: How could a segment of the Republican Party, once known by words like "prudence" and "probity," become so radicalized that such a violent, deadly event could happen?

Michael Edison Hayden tackles that question in an essay, titled "One year after Jan. 6, the Hard Right digs in," for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Hayden places Alabama-connected extremist Ali Alexander near the center of the radicalization effort. Writes Hayden:

An article by Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times last July is a prime example of western intelligentsia’s limited understanding of China’s unhindered rise as a superpower. “Becoming a superpower is a complicated business. It poses a series of connected questions about capabilities, intentions and will,” Rachman wrote.

To help us understand what this claim precisely means, the FT writer uses an analogy. “To use a sporting analogy, you can be an extremely gifted tennis player and genuinely want to be world champion, but still be unwilling to make the sacrifices to turn the dream into reality.”

At least, in Rachman’s thinking, China is capable of being a political actor, though it remains incapable of vying for the superpower status, as it supposedly lacks ‘the will’ to make the required ‘sacrifices’.

At the outset, the Israeli military decision to revise its open-fire policies in the occupied West Bank seems puzzling. What would be the logic of giving Israeli soldiers the space to shoot more Palestinians when existing army manuals had already granted them near-total immunity and little legal accountability? 

 The military’s new rules now allow Isreali soldiers to shoot, even kill, fleeing Palestinian youngsters with live ammunition for allegedly throwing rocks at Israeli ‘civilian’ cars. This also applies to situations where the alleged Palestinian ‘attackers’ are not holding rocks at the time of the shooting.

There are two top things about my profession. For me personally, a great benefit is being able to cover in person and even have access to great newsmakers who’d I’d probably never have the opportunity to meet and even talk to if I wasn’t a journalist. This ranges from seeing beauties such as Jennifer Lopez, Kerry Washington and Rosario Dawson in the flesh, reporting on Nobel Laureates the Dali Lama and Maria Ressa and interviewing geniuses like directors Oliver Stone and Alex Gibney. At the top of this list of notables who I’ve had the privilege, luck and honor to encounter is Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who died Dec. 26, prompting his homeland of South Africa to observe seven days of mourning this week.

10 years ago when Wikileaks released its diplomatic cables, what much of the Western media ignored were the revelations showing how the US’ imperial role in Latin America operated behind the scenes where diplomacy looked more like espionage. The US’ lack of respect for the norms of international diplomacy, is even more apparent today with its continued persecution of journalists like Julian Assange and diplomats like Alex Saab.

Those Americans who dare to challenge the strangle-hold that Israel and its friends have over US foreign policy will likely find themselves targeted even more aggressively in the upcoming year. Two weeks ago the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), widely reckoned to be the largest and most powerful component of the Jewish state’s lobby, declared that it will now begin directly funding political candidates who are perceived as pro-Israel. Up until now, AIPAC has preferred to operate somewhat in the shadows, representing itself as a organization that is in part “educational” to justify its 501(c)3 tax exempt status which it uses to send all new congressmen on propaganda trips to Israel.