Bastille Day, Artificial Intelligence, and the New Reign of Terror

The guillotine has gone digital.

Once it fell in public squares to cheers and bloodlust; now it strikes silently, with a click, a post, or a line of code.

The mob no longer needs to gather. Its outrage is algorithmically amplified, its punishment outsourced to invisible moderators and unaccountable systems.

As the 14th of July reminds us of the Bastille's fall, we must ask ourselves a difficult question: are we witnessing a new revolution - not with pitchforks and torches, but hashtags and hard drives?

The People are singing again.

Only this time, their chorus echoes through firewalls and fibre-optic cables.

How a turned head, a washing machine, and a handful of extraordinary coincidences made me wonder whether chance is ever just chance.

It’s been nearly 2 years since what many still call divine intervention unfolded before our eyes... an event that left us stunned, reflective, and, for some, humbled. As Donald Trump turned his head to glance at a graph on a screen, a bullet tore past him, grazing his ear. A fraction of a second either side, a fraction of an inch, and we would be telling a different story. Instead, the world saw a man brush death by the narrowest of margins: saved, perhaps, by nothing more than a glance. Or by something greater.

A miracle, some said. A coincidence, others argued. But either way, it was a moment that stopped the world. And it made me pause and think: how often do these moments really happen? What do we call them when they’re small and private, when there are no cameras, no headlines, no Secret Service scrambling?

Divine intervention is the belief that a higher power steps in - sometimes grandly, sometimes subtly - to shape human events. It can look like a miracle, or like blind luck. Sometimes, it looks like a well-timed glance. Sometimes, like a stranger holding a door a second too long. And let’s be honest - how many of us have muttered, “Hell, that was lucky,” and moved on?

RATTY NEWS FILM REVIEW

Dracula the Emu

No Stakes... No Steaks... No Hope.

Reviewed by Roderick (Whiskers) McNibble, Chief Film Critic, Ratty News

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ (Four Cheese Wheels out of Five)

I have attended many cinematic masterpieces over the years at the Dusty Gulch Drive-In.

I have also attended many films.

Dracula the Emu somehow manages to be both.

The opening scene immediately sets the tone as a terrified stockman sprints across the paddock yelling, "He's behind me, isn't he?"

He is.

Unfortunately, so is his barbecue.

The audience gasped.

Well... Mrs McFookit gasped.

Old Bushie just muttered, "Told him not to use tomato sauce."

From there the story unfolds with all the subtlety of a runaway road train.

The mysterious Dracula the Emu arrives in Dusty Gulch under cover of darkness, wearing an elegant black cape, glowing red eyes and a set of vampire fangs that would make any dentist consider early retirement.

Unlike traditional vampires, however, this one has developed a taste for premium Australian beef.

This immediately creates the central conflict.

Nobody can afford any.

A 94-year-old’s heartfelt plea about cruelty to animals, the neglect of children and the elderly, and our failing responsibility as caretakers.

The Measure of Our Humanity

Today you hear of so many incidents: I cannot call them stories, of cruelty, neglect, and downright "don't give a damn" attitudes that you reach the stage where you say, "Please don't go into the details. It is too upsetting."

I can't listen to any more distressing accounts of what someone has done to a child, an animal, or an elderly person.

We, as human beings, have brains.

We have hands and fingers. We have developed all sorts of things that can help those who depend on us, whether they belong to the animal kingdom or to our own species.

But if we don't speak out, who will? At 94, my sense of urgency is a reminder that time is short for all of us to act on what we know is right.

The More We Bury the Truth

The more we bury the truth, the deeper the innocent are buried with it.

It's easy to look back at history and wonder how ordinary people failed to see what was happening.

How could whole towns live in the shadow of barbed wire and later say they knew nothing?

After the Second World War, Allied forces marched German civilians through the concentration camps. Ordinary men and women - bakers, schoolteachers, shopkeepers - were made to walk past piles of bodies, to smell the stench of death, to see the emaciated survivors, and to confront the consequences of evil that had been allowed to grow in plain sight.

It was a reckoning.

Not only for those who committed the crimes, but for those who chose not to ask difficult questions.