Remember those ‘cute’ dancing robo-dogs from (Japanese-owned) Boston Dynamics doing all sorts of tricks, like decorating a Christmas tree and opening doors? 

Even though Boston Dynamics has pledged not to weaponize robo-dogs, other companies have. 

China has made their version of ‘spot’ – except they strapped a gun onto it.

Another Chinese defense contractor showed off a drone deploying an armed robo-dog into a mock warzone. 

Blood-Wing, a Chinese defense contractor, demonstrates drone-deploying an armed robodog.

The Future is Now. pic.twitter.com/tRKnKa8xvp

— Lia Wong (@LiaWong__) October 4, 2022

…which leaves us with yet another robo-dog that a US company called “Throwflame” has developed into “the first-ever flamethrower-wielding robot dog,” according to its website.

 “This quadruped is coupled with the ARC Flamethrower to deliver on-demand fire anywhere!” Throwflame said. It can shoot streams of fire up to 30 feet away. 

The militarization of robot dogs is terrifying. Even more disturbing is that some of these robots are receiving OpenAI’s ChatGPT upgrades that make them even more intelligent. The ‘Skynet moment’ is upon us. 

Authored by Matt Taibbi via Racket News,

At Parliament Hill in London Saturday, there was a demonstration on behalf of jailed Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Present was the famed rendering of Assange, Chelsea Manning, and Edward Snowden made by sculptor Davide Domino. The statue includes an empty chair for the next whistleblower. I had the honor of standing on that chair to give a short address:

I have a confession to make. Once. like a lot of journalists, I didn’t like Julian Assange. It wasn’t just that Wikileaks was breaking one huge story after another. He had fab hair. He wore skinny jeans. He even modeled at fashion week!

What can I say? I was jealous. We’re in London, so I can quote Shakespeare, can’t I?

Beware the green-eyed monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds on.

Jealousy, that monster, impairs one’s thinking. It impaired mine. I didn’t have a reason to dislike Assange. So I invented one. I decided I didn’t like the concept of “radical transparency.” I thought: “You can’t just dump all of those secrets on the public. That’s irresponsible!”

I was so brainwashed that I forgot, as many people do, that secrets do not belong to governments. That information belongs to us. Governments rule by our consent. If they want to keep secrets, they must have our permission to do so. And they never have the right to keep crimes secret.

I’m an American. Many of you are from the U.K. In our countries, we’re building skyscrapers and huge new complexes to store our secrets, because we don’t have room to keep them all as is!

Why do we have so many secrets? Julian Assange told us why. From an essay he wrote:

Authoritarian regimes give rise to forces which oppose them by pushing against the individual and collective will to freedom, truth and self realization. Plans which assist authoritarian rule, once discovered, induce resistance. Hence these plans are concealed by successful authoritarian powers.

When governments become authoritarian, they inspire resistance. Techniques must then be developed to repel that resistance. Those techniques must then be concealed.

In short: the worse a country is, the more secrets it has. We have a lot of secrets now.

Julian Assange became famous as we were creating a vast new government-within-a-government, a system of secret prisons, extraordinary rendition, mass surveillance, and drone assassination. Many of these things we know about only because of Wikileaks. Ostensibly, all this secrecy was needed to fight foreign terrorism.

The brutal irony now is the architects of that system no longer feel the need to hide their dirty tactics. My government, openly, wants to put this man in jail for 175 years, mostly for violations of the Espionage Act. These include crimes like “conspiracy to receive national defense information,” or “obtaining national defense information.”

What is “national defense information?” The answer is what makes this law so dangerous. It’s whatever they say it is. It’s any information they don’t want to get out. It doesn’t even have to be classified.

What is conspiracy to obtain such information? We have a word for that. It’s called journalism.

My government wants to put Julian Assange in jail for 175 years for practicing journalism. The government of this country, the U.K., is going to allow it to happen.

If they did this to Andrei Sakharov, or Nelson Mandela, every human rights organization in the world would be denouncing this as an intolerable outrage. Every NGO would be lining up to lend support. Every journalist would be penning editorials demanding his release.

But because our own governments are doing it, we get silence.

If you’re okay with this happening to one Julian Assange, you’d better be okay with it happening to many others. That’s why this moment is so important. If Assange is successfully extradited and convicted, it will take about ten minutes for it to happen again. From there this will become a common occurrence. There will be no demonstrations in parks, no more news stories. This will become a normal part of our lives.

Don’t let that happen.

Free Julian Assange.

An increasing number of Silicon Valley startups are getting in bed with the military-industrial complex to tap lucrative Pentagon contracts to supply critical weapon components or even entire systems to further America’s endless wars crusade worldwide. 

Pentagon leaders are beginning to figure out tech startups can supply new technologies and war-fighting tools. The latest California-based tech startup is Anduril Industries, which has acquired Adranos, an Indiana-based company producing solid rocket motors for conventional and hypersonic missiles, according to The Wall Street Journal. 

Anduril has already secured Pentagon contracts and sent hundreds of drones to the modern battlefield in Ukraine. The acquisition of Adranos will allow the tech startup to increase rocket motor production capacity and address the “backlog” after weapon systems like Stinger missiles and Javelin anti-tank missiles were sent to Ukraine. 

“Anduril executives say the war in Ukraine only highlights the need for greater competition among solid rocket motor makers,” WSJ said. Aerojet Rocketdyne and Northrop Grumman are the only other two domestic players in the rocket motor industry. And there’s an increasing need to ramp up production as the Biden administration sends more and more missiles to Ukraine as US stockpiles are being depleted. 

“At a time when we already weren’t producing enough weapons fast enough, we’ve now depleted a significant amount of those stockpiles in the war in Ukraine,” said Chris Brose, the chief strategy officer for Anduril. He added, “All of this is made worse by the challenge of China.”

Anduril’s purchase of Adranos highlights how some tech startups in California are moving into producing lethal weapons for war. 

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out where this could be heading. 

For a moment, I would like for you to imagine a rather chilling “fictional” scenario. 

Not too far in the future, all “global citizens” are required to possess proper “digital identification” or else they will not be permitted to access the new global digital financial system.  Central banks all over the globe have rolled out their new “central bank digital currencies”, but in order to use those currencies you must “prove that you are who you say you are”, and the only way to do that is with the new global system of digital identification that has been introduced.  As cash is phased out, those that resist being part of the new global system are increasingly pushed to the outer fringes of society.  Hardly anyone is willing to employ them any longer, it has become virtually impossible for them to get loans, and they are looked down upon by much of the general population.  And then after the vast majority of the global population has “willingly” signed up for the new global system of digital identification, it is announced that the system will now become mandatory.  That means that anyone that does not submit will not be able to buy, sell, get a job or have a bank account.

You may think that I am exaggerating the dangers of a global system of digital identification.

I wish that I was.

Once a global system of digital identification is introduced, it will rapidly become our most important form of identification.

It will become more important than your driver’s license and more important than your Social Security number.

Pretty quickly, it would become required for almost every financial transaction that you make online.

A lot of people may think that would be a good thing.  After all, there are so many scammers and thieves on the Internet these days.

And I would agree that there is a need for more financial security on the Internet, but I am 100 percent against any type of global digital identification system because the potential for tyranny would be off the charts.

Unfortunately, that is exactly the type of system that is now being proposed by policy makers at the United Nations.

In a May 2023 policy brief entitled “A Global Digital Compact — an Open, Free and Secure Digital Future for All”, we are told that “an open, free, secure and human-centred digital future” is absolutely critical for the “attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals”…

The present brief proposes the development of a Global Digital Compact that would set out principles, objectives and actions for advancing an open, free, secure and human-centred digital future, one that is anchored in universal human rights and that enables the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals. It outlines areas in which the need for multi-stakeholder digital cooperation is urgent and sets out how a Global Digital Compact can help to realize the commitment in the declaration on the commemoration of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the United Nations (General Assembly resolution 75/1) to “shaping a shared vision on digital cooperation” by providing an inclusive global framework. Such a framework is essential for the multi-stakeholder action required to overcome digital, data and innovation divides and to achieve the governance required for a sustainable digital future.

Most people in the general population would not be too alarmed after reading that introductory paragraph.

But as they say, the devil is in the details.

If you go to page 8 of the policy brief, you will find the section where a system of digital identification “linked with bank or mobile money accounts” is proposed…

Digital IDs linked with bank or mobile money accounts can improve the delivery of social protection coverage and serve to better reach eligible beneficiaries. Digital technologies may help to reduce leakage, errors and costs in the design of social protection programmes.

I briefly mentioned this the other day, but I don’t think that most people understood the implications that this has for all of us.

Under such a system, if your social credit score gets too low you could be put in “digital jail” for a certain period of time.  Your “digital privileges” would be suspended for a while, and that would mean that you could not buy, sell or live your normal life for the duration of your punishment.

Of course if you insist on being a “repeat offender” enough times, you could have your “digital privileges” revoked permanently.

What would you do then?

You wouldn’t be able to buy or sell anything.

You wouldn’t be able to get a job.

You wouldn’t be able to have a bank account.

At best, you would be a total outcast from society.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that this sort of a system is a long way off.

Three months from now, the European Union will “mandate” that all member states offer a “digital identity wallet” to every single one of their citizens and businesses…

The European Union will mandate digital identity under eIDAS 2.0, which will go into effect in September 2023 and ensure all Member States offer a digital identity wallet (DIW) to citizens and businesses. According to the European Commission, “At least 80% of citizens should be able to use a digital ID solution to access key public services by 2030.”

Initially, participation by individuals and businesses in the EU system will be voluntary.

But over the past few years we have seen how quickly “voluntary” measures can become “mandatory”.

When I say that we are living in one of the most critical times in all of human history, I am not joking.

There is a reason why the UK, the EU and the U.S. are all getting ready to roll out CBDCs.

And there is a reason why “digital identification” has suddenly become such a hot issue.

They really do want to build a digital prison for all of us, and if you plan to object the time to do so is now.

*  *  *

Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

Authored by Rachel Lu via RealClear Wire (a condensed version of “J.K. Rowling’s Moment of Truth” published at Law & Liberty),

J. K. Rowling is not a witch. She acquitted herself well in her recent “trial,” a podcast series hosted by The Free Press, detailing the explosive controversy between history’s most famous children’s author and liberal progressive activists. The Witch Trials tells the story of Rowling’s rise to fame and her fall into (progressive) infamy. It’s the sort of podcast I had to turn off whenever my kids climbed into the car. There’s a good bit of profanity, as well as “adult themes.” Nevertheless, I found the story of Rowling’s battle with gender ideologues oddly inspiring. In an age when so many have cowered before the cancel mobs, Rowling stood by the truth.

Millennials worshiped Rowling in childhood. This comes through quite clearly in Witch Trials, as childhood fans gush about the way her books represented a “security blanket” through their childhood and adolescent growing pains. In a way, this is odd, because as children’s books go, Rowling’s are quite dark. Death is a major theme. Political oppression is rampant. Even “good” adults seem to be offering a tutorial in “failure to protect,” as Harry arrives each fall at Hogwarts brimming with eagerness to learn, only to be socially ostracized, plagued with death threats, or both. This is what gives today’s kids warm fuzzies? 

Perhaps it is not really so strange. For all the grimness, Rowling gave her readers a universe that they found morally comfortable. Inclusion was always a major theme. The bad guys, a group of “pureblood” wizards, want to rule the world and ensure that their magical club is restricted to people of noble (magical) birth. They’re one part evil aristocrats protecting their privilege, and one part wand-wielding Nazis crusading under a “dark mark.” Meanwhile, the good guys are crusading for meritocracy, equality, and love, with side plots exploring the ethics of discrimination, especially against house elves (which some wizards regard as natural slaves).

At the same time, the Hogwarts universe explores at length the importance of personal identity. Children are initiated into the wondrous world of Hogwarts after discovering that they have an innate capacity for doing magic, and readers then get to follow these elite characters to their posh boarding school, where their unique abilities are further explored and refined. In the very hour of their arrival, their minds are probed by the magical “sorting hat” that assesses their character and places them within the proper House. As they continue at Hogwarts, Dumbledore’s Mirror of Erised shows each person his hopes and dreams, while spooky Bogarts display their greatest fears. Students eventually learn to cast a magical “patronus charm,” which brings forth a kind of animal-protector in a form that uniquely reflects the caster’s soul. 

Rowling’s exploration of personal identity always had limits, however. She clearly sees sex as a real thing that is meaningfully connected to biology. Hogwarts is full of romantic intrigue, all of it heterosexual. Even when they use Polyjuice potion to take on the guise of other people, Harry and Ron always seem to be boys or men, while Hermione is always the girl. Questions about natures are explored in sub-plots involving giants, goblins, house elves, centaurs and the like. In Rowling’s creative exploration of mythical creatures, we can see the curious musings of a person trying to figure out how far nature goes in defining a person’s life and horizons. She is clearly deeply committed to the premise that persons have intrinsic worth, but she also shows the mistakes we can make by refusing to see natures for what they are. Hagrid puts himself and others at risk by refusing to see the dangers of keeping vicious monsters as pets. Hermione makes a fool of herself with her juvenile attempts to “liberate” house elves from servitude, even though Ron (the stodgy wizard-born traditionalist) explains repeatedly that the elves don’t want the lives she has envisioned for them. House elves are happiest and most fulfilled when devoting their energies to the service of others, and Hermione becomes a better house-elf advocate when she accepts this reality.

Good stories draw from tradition, transcending the particulars of a given historical moment. Rowling is a good storyteller, whose books connected children to the kinds of epic truths that make heroism seem possible. Now that Millennials are seeing the ghost stories of their own childhoods come back to haunt them, we might reflect that this does tend to happen to iconoclasts. Eventually, they find themselves standing, wood bundles and torches in hand, at the foot of something they genuinely love. For this group, Harry Potter turned out to be that thing. 

They still did their best to burn the witch. She’s proven remarkably flameproof. I predict that future generations will be familiar with the Boy who Lived. I think they will know him, to the end, as a boy.

Rachel Lu is an Associate Editor at Law & Liberty and a Contributing Writer at America Magazine. After studying moral philosophy at Cornell, she taught for several years before retiring to focus on the moral formation of her own five sons. She writes on politics, culture, religion, and parenting.

In this twenty-minute conversation with Investor Talk’s Jan Kneist, Matterhorn Asset Management founding partner, Egon von Greyerz, soberly assesses the current calm (fantasy) before an inevitable storm driven by rising rates and investor indifference to otherwise ominous cracks in the global economy.

Whether sitting in Switzerland or Sweden, a bemused von Greyerz observes restaurants at full capacity as head-in-the-sand consumers ignore crippling (and increasing) rate hikes from the Euro zone to Canada.

Sadly, this all-too-common “death dance” in the face of historically unprecedented debt and deteriorating financial indicators is nothing new to economies racing blindly toward a debt cliff.

Von Greyerz specifically addresses recent US bank regulations and capital requirements adding insult to injury to already fragile lenders sitting on weak legacy loans and simultaneous credit contraction. Adding to this irony is the rise in new home construction permits which fail to ask the question of who will be buying such properties as real estate, like autos, head toward a “negative equity iceberg.”

This current café society calm, however, ignores the inevitable consequences of rising rates and undefeated inflation whose longer-term economic pressures, lagging for now, will emerge with crippling force in the months ahead.

Far-sighted investors, of course, keep things simple.

They see, for example, that interest expense on Uncle Sam’s debt is now at $1T per annum against around $20T in GDP, a ratio which makes the inflationary money printing ahead as easy to foresee (and prepare for) as his Argentine friend who bought gold rather than pesos in 1970.

For von Greyerz, developed markets, like the US and EU, will be no exception to such emerging market narratives.

In the end, all broke governments become the best of friends to precious metal investors, for the historically-confirmed reason that all broken regimes always debase their currencies.

As von Greyerz calmy concludes: “It’s just that simple.”

Watch the full interview below:

Authored by Turner Wright via CoinTelegraph.com,

According to Fabio Panetta, crypto volatility and aspects of blockchain technology made digital assets only suitable for gambling…

Fabio Panetta, an executive board member of the European Central Bank (ECB), has suggested a dark future for cryptocurrencies, in which digital assets may be used for little more than gambling among investors.

In written remarks for a panel at the Bank for International Settlements Annual Conference on June 23, Panetta said crypto’s perception among investors as a “robust store of value” began to dissipate in late 2021 and into 2022, when the total market capitalization fell by more than $1 trillion. According to the ECB official, the “highly volatile” nature of crypto assets made them suitable for gambling, and should be treated as such by global lawmakers.

“Due to their limitations, cryptos have not developed into a form of finance that is innovative and robust, but have instead morphed into one that is deleterious,” said Panetta.

“The crypto ecosystem is riddled with market failures and negative externalities, and it is bound to experience further market disruptions unless proper regulatory safeguards are put in place.”

He added:

“Policymakers should be wary of supporting an industry that has so far produced no societal benefits and is increasingly trying to integrate into the traditional financial system, both to acquire legitimacy as part of that system and to piggyback on it.”

🧵Crypto has relied on constantly creating new narratives to attract new investors, but has failed to deliver on its promises. Policymakers should be wary of supporting an industry that has so far produced no benefits for society.

Read the speech https://t.co/okum8fH3qf

1/3 pic.twitter.com/40OlefVExB

— European Central Bank (@ecb) June 23, 2023

Panetta claimed the “security, scalability and decentralisation” of crypto transactions was “not achievable,” saying the immutability of blockchains is a negative aspect of the space due to transactions often being unable to be reversed. He cited the collapse of FTX, as well as a recent lawsuit brought by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission again Binance, as “fundamental shortcomings” of the ecosystem.

“Crypto enthusiasts would do well to remember that new technology does not make financial risk disappear,” said the ECB official.

“It is like pressing a balloon on one side: it will change in shape until it pops on the other side. And if the balloon is full of hot air, it may rise for a while but will burst in the end.”

Panetta has previously backed parts of the ECB’s plans for a potential digital euro, currently being researched by the central bank.

He has also proposed banning crypto assets with an “excessive ecological footprint” as part of efforts to address risks to the environment.

The European wine industry is being battered by sliding demand due to the current inflation storm on food and drink prices, in combination with a solid 2022 harvest, which has left wine cellars filled to the brim, according to a new European Commission report. 

Wine production on the continent increased 4% last year compared with the previous year, while wine stocks were 2% higher versus a five-year average. The drop in wine demand was the most significant in Portugal, down 34%. Demand also tumbled 22% in Germany, 15% in France, 10% in Spain, and 7% in Italy. 

And it gets worse for the producers, as the commission stated:

“In parallel, EU wine exports for the period January to April 2023 have been 8,5% lower than the previous year, contributing to further increasing the stocks.”

The perfect storm of factors is “translating into sales difficulties for EU wine growers and producers, reduction of market prices and consequently, a serious loss of income especially in certain regions mostly hit by these trends,” the commission warned. 

It continued:

“The situation is very fragmented across the EU, and the imbalance between the available supply and the demand is rather concentrated in certain regions and wines. The most affected are red and rosé wines from certain regions of France, Spain and Portugal, but other wines and/or Member States might encounter similar difficulties in certain production regions.”

In response to the overflow of wine on the continent and the crisis on the producer level, the commission has “adopted temporary markets measures to avoid that the unsold wine weighs on the whole internal market and prevents producers to find sufficient storage capacity for the new harvest.” 

Via The Cradle,

Five victims of chemical attacks launched by the late Iraqi president Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war are suing two Dutch companies for providing chemical materials that allowed Baghdad to manufacture mustard gas.

The two companies — Otjiaha and Forafina Beleggingen — provided Iraq with chemicals between 1982 and 1984 during the Iraqi invasion of Iran.

According to the lawsuit filed at The Hague, the Dutch companies were aware at the time that their products were being used to produce chemical weapons used against civilians.

However, Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant says the corporations dispute the accusations and maintain that the chemicals were meant for use as agricultural pesticides.

Billionaire Hans Melchers, the former owner of Otjiaha, then known as Melchemie, appeared in court on June 22, where he rejected all charges.

He is charged with taking part in the delivery of 1,850 tons of thionyl chloride, a component of mustard gas, to Iraq.

In 1987, his company was fined and shut down temporarily for “intentionally” ignoring a Dutch government embargo intended to stop the transfer of materials to Iraq that could be used to make weapons.

For its part, Forafina Beleggingen — known as KBS Holland at the time — is sued for providing TDG to Iraq, another element required to make mustard gas.

Western governments and companies covertly supplied Saddam with chemical weapons components during the 1980s when he was ‘our man in Baghdad’…

“West supported Saddam in Iraq Iran war & gave silent approval to use of chemical weapons” https://t.co/lRrOSNjd66 pic.twitter.com/x5oTHbBZMG

— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) July 6, 2016

Iraq’s use of mustard gas caused long-lasting damage to the five complainants, who suffer from respiratory problems and damage to their lungs, eyes, and skin.

“These people’s lives were destroyed at the time … [the] Dutch companies share a part of the responsibility for that,” lawyer Liesbeth Zegveld told reporters on 23 June.

As a result of Iraq’s use of chemical weapons during the war between 1980 and 1988, hundreds of Iranian soldiers and civilians died instantly, while many more have endured long-lasting ailments.

More coverage via Iranian media below…

Iranian victims of Saddam’s chemical attacks sue Dutch suppliers@Jerome__Hughes reports from The Hague. pic.twitter.com/N18jYZiTfB

— Press TV (@PressTV) June 23, 2023