https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2023/09/20/war-profiteers-are-a-sign-of-a-profoundly-sick-society/
War Profiteers Are A Sign Of A Profoundly Sick Society
“War is good for business.”
So reads a quote from an arms industry executive in a recent Reuters article titled “At London arms fair, global war fears are good for business” about Europe’s biggest arms show, the biennial Defence and Security Equipment International. You will probably be unsurprised to learn that Reuters does not name the war profiteer whose quote inspired their headline.
The article describes the way the war in Ukraine and brinkmanship in Taiwan is leading to surging profits for the military industrial complex, with the UK doubling its arms exports in 2022 and worldwide military spending expected to continue to rise by four percent each year for the next five years. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, European military spending rose 13 percent in 2022 alone, bringing total global spending to an all-time high of $2.24 trillion.
“We are extremely busy,” an exaltant head of sales at an armored steel company tells Reuters.
War is good for business, and it’s expected to get even better. The world’s largest military contractor Lockheed Martin saw its stock rise by a whopping 37 percent last year — helped along by taxpayer-sponsored stock buybacks — and in a report titled “Lockheed Martin: Huge Growth Ahead”, an investment analyst for AlmaStreet Capital predicted last month that Lockheed’s massive profits will only continue to climb. Calling the escalated geopolitical tensions in the current political atmosphere “the most favorable condition that Lockheed Martin could possibly operate under,” the article’s author writes the following:
“Governments worldwide are increasing their budget for defense and security under this heightened geopolitical tensions worldwide. The US government is not an exception. As the largest contractor to the US government, Lockheed Martin is bound to be the biggest beneficiary of the increased defense budget. Given that the company already reached approximately 8% of YoY net sales growth in 2Q23, I believe escalating geopolitical tensions along with easing macroeconomic conditions would allow Lockheed Martin to soon achieve double-digit growth in net sales by the end of the year.”
So it’s no wonder that Lockheed CEO James Taiclet called the most recent hike in the US military budget “as good an outcome as our industry or our company could ask for.” There are vast fortunes riding on governments equipping themselves to kill large numbers of human beings.
There’s a popular quote, “It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society,” commonly attributed to Jiddu Krishnamurti but most likely coined by Kurt Vonnegut’s son Mark. Whenever I read reports like this about corporations raking in billions from death, suffering, and extremely dangerous acts of brinkmanship between military powers, I always find that phrase “a profoundly sick society” rattling around in my head.
It’s hard to imagine a society sicker than one in which corporations are not only allowed to profit from war and militarism, but to actually push for more of it using campaign donations, lobbying, and the funding of influential warmongering think tanks. It’s no less evil than if corporations were allowed to slaughter foreigners like livestock and sell their body parts for profit at industrial scale; the only thing that’s different is the payment plan. And yet the people who do this are celebrated as respected job creators instead of thrown into cages like the monsters they are.
This is not the sort of civilization we should strive to be well-adjusted to. It is no sign of health to be well-adjusted to a society in which someone can become a billionaire selling weapons of mass murder after lobbying the government to perpetrate those murders. It is no sign of health to be well-adjusted to a society in which the military industrial complex launders information through the media to promote its deadly products and agendas. It is no sign of health to be well-adjusted to a society in which war profiteering corporations can reap massive quarterly profits in a proxy war that was provoked by the west while pouring fortunes into think tanks which helped manufacture consent for those provocations and which spin the west’s actions in a positive light for the media.
If this society could give rise to something so depraved as the military industrial complex, then it is not the sort of society we should seek to blend in with. This is the sort of society we should want to stick out like a sore thumb in. The sort of society in which we should be swimming against the current when everyone else is swimming with it. The sort of society in which we say a resounding NO to things that everyone else is saying yes to.
This society has failed as spectacularly as anything can possibly fail. We live in a mind-controlled dystopia where war profiteers get to steer public policy, where the entire biosphere is being fed into the wood chipper of global capitalism while we rapidly accelerate toward nuclear armageddon. This is the most insane civilization anyone could possibly design. We should seek dissent and divergence from it to the fullest extent possible.
....
http://endoftheamericandream.com/while-barely-anyone-was-watching-leaders-at-the-un-made-a-7-year-agreement-to-implement-a-single-global-agenda/
While Barely Anyone Was Watching, Leaders At The UN Made A 7 Year Agreement To Implement A Single Global Agenda
Have you heard about the agreement that global leaders adopted at the United Nations during the “2023 SDG Summit” that was held earlier this week? On Monday and Tuesday, officials from all over the world gathered in New York City to commit their nations to fully implement the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals over the next 7 years. If you are not familiar with the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, you can find them right here. They are essentially a blueprint for how the globalists want the world to be run. Just about every area of human activity is covered by the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, and it would take extreme measures over the next 7 years in order to achieve all of them by the deadline.
But that was what the “2023 SDG Summit” was all about.
Leaders from all over the planet got together and pledged to do whatever is necessary to meet those goals on time.
They are calling it “a new phase of accelerated progress”. The following comes directly from the official UN webpage about this summit…
The 2023 SDG Summit took place on 18-19 September 2023 in New York. It marked the beginning of a new phase of accelerated progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals with high-level political guidance on transformative and accelerated actions leading up to 2030.
Convened by the President of the General Assembly, the Summit marked the half-way point to the deadline set for achieving the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals. It was the centerpiece of the High-level Week of the General Assembly. It responded to the impact of multiple and interlocking crises facing the world and is expected to reignite a sense of hope, optimism, and enthusiasm for the 2030 Agenda.
The globalists really do intend to implement the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals by the time the UN General Assembly convenes in September 2030.
That is just 7 years from now, and so the clock is ticking.
During the “2023 SDG Summit”, global leaders “adopted a sweeping Political Declaration” in which they committed themselves to achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals within the next 7 years…
Kicking off the second half of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, world leaders at the SDG Summit 2023 today adopted a sweeping Political Declaration to reaffirm their shared commitment to end poverty and hunger everywhere, combat inequalities within and among countries and build peaceful societies that leave no one behind.
The adoption of the 10-page document, by the Heads of State and Government and high representatives gathering at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, came at a critical juncture as global crises — including armed conflict, adverse climate impacts and the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic — threaten the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.
The “Political Declaration” is 10 pages long, and you can read it for yourself right here.
On the fifth page of the document, we are told that there is an “urgent need to take the actions necessary to reverse declines and accelerate progress to achieve the 2030 Agenda and implement the SDGs.”
So what will it look like as we “accelerate progress” toward those goals?
Well, as Paul Joseph Watson has reported, a 20 mph speed limit is being slapped on every single residential road in Wales…
Unfortunately, extreme measures such as this will soon be implemented all over the world.
The globalists are absolutely determined to meet their climate goals, and all the rest of us will suffer as a result.
On the tenth page of the document that the global leaders at the UN just adopted, “the Summit of the Future in 2024” is referenced…
We look forward to the Summit of the Future in 2024 as an important opportunity to, inter alia, accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and its SDGs.
This exceedingly important meeting will be held just two months before the next presidential election in the United States.
At that gathering, UN member states are scheduled to adopt something called “a Pact for the Future”.
You can read about “the Summit of the Future” and the “Pact for the Future” on the official UN website right here.
On that page the UN openly admits that one of the purposes of “the Summit of the Future” is to “put in place a stronger international response playbook for complex global shocks, maximizing the use of the Secretary-General’s convening power in the form of an Emergency Platform”.
I have written about this “Emergency Platform” that is being proposed before.
Essentially, if there is any sort of a major “global shock” the United Nations will be given authority “to ensure there is a unified, global response to the crisis”.
So what kind of a “global shock” would trigger these emergency powers?
Well, a UN policy paper that was published some time ago explained that a future pandemic, a “major event in outer space” or even “unforeseen risks” would all qualify.
Ultimately, just about any sort of a crisis at all could be used to justify activating this new “Emergency Platform”.
And once it is activated, officials at the UN would have the power to extend the emergency powers that they have been given indefinitely.
Needless to say, this is an extremely frightening proposal.
We definitely do not want the UN to have emergency powers over the entire globe that could be extended indefinitely.
Sadly, the Biden administration is fully behind this plan.
And next September, the U.S. will agree to adopt the “Pact for the Future”.
Of course this is why they are rushing to get this done.
With Biden in the White House, the globalists are able to greatly advance their agenda.
But once he leaves, it will be a lot tougher.
So time is of the essence.
I wish that more Americans understood what the globalists are trying to do, but unfortunately the mainstream media barely talks about any of this at all.
We live in such perilous times, and those that wish to erode our freedoms are absolutely relentless.
....
https://www.blacklistednews.com/article/85349/your-wifi-can-see.html
Your WiFi Can See You
When police suspected Danny Kyllo, an Oregon man, of growing cannabis in his home they drove to his house with a thermal imaging device to scan it. They found hot pockets in the house, which were used to obtain a search warrant and subsequently bust Kyllo.
Fortunately, a 5-4 Supreme Court decision ruled the scan an unlawful search under the Fourth Amendment, requiring a warrant the police did not obtain. Score one for privacy, but the government is about to have a far more controversial and dangerous tool at its disposal to monitor what’s going on inside your home.
Unlike a thermal imager, this device is already in your home – and you put it there.
How It Works
WiFi is electromagnetic waves in the 2.4 and 5 GHz ranges. It’s the same thing as the light you see, only it can penetrate walls due to its much longer wavelength. Just like light (and echolocation) these waves also reflect off various surfaces and, when reconstructed properly, can be used to create an image.
Development of this technology goes back at least as far as July 2005, where researchers claimed at an IEEE Symposium that they had created an ultra-wideband high-resolution short pulse imaging radar system operating around 10 GHz. The applications for which were explicitly for military and police use, providing them with “enhanced situation awareness.”
A few years later, in 2008, researchers at UC Santa Barbara created an initial approach for imaging with WiFi that they presented at IEEE ACC 2009. A year later they demonstrated the feasibility of this approach.
The Race Is On
Sensing the potential of this new surveillance technology, other researchers began piling on. Progress was initially slow but, in 2017, two researchers in Germany demonstrated the ability to do WiFi imaging using techniques borrowed from the field of holography. According to Philipp Holl, an undergrad student and lead study author who worked with Friedemann Reinhard of the Technical University of Munich to develop the new method, “The past two years have seen an explosion of methods for passive Wi-Fi imaging.”
At the time, the technology could only make out rough shapes of things. “If there’s a cup of coffee on a table, you may see something is there, but you couldn’t see the shape,” Holl says, “but you could make out the shape of a person, or a dog on a couch. Really any object that’s more than 4 centimeters in size.”
The Controversy Begins
In 2018 the team at UC Santa Barbara published a paper titled “Et Tu Alexa?” examining the potential threats of this emerging technology. They examined the problem of adversarial WiFi sensing and the risk to privacy resulting from the widespread deployment of wireless devices, which could be used to track your precise physical location, movement, and other physiological properties.
Fortunately, they also propose some countermeasures for defending against such attacks to reduce the quantity and quality of the WiFi signals captured by the attacker, such as Geo-fencing and rate-limiting. These methods are not as effective with IoT devices, though, due to the frequency with which they make transmissions.
The Breakthrough
Up until this point it was necessary to use frequencies higher than commercial WiFi (2.4 and 5 GHz) to achieve decent imaging resolutions. That all changed in February 2019 when a team from Michigan State University published a paper in IEEE Access outlining how they were able to use signals at 5.5 GHz, which matches the 802.11n/ac WiFi protocol, to create a 2-D image of two reflecting spheres and a reflecting X-shaped target, concluding “full 2-D imagery is possible by capturing the WiFi signals present in typical environments.”
Adding AI and Going 3-D
At MobiCom 2020, researchers from the University of Buffalo, presented their WiPose technology, touted as “the first 3-D human pose construction framework using commercial WiFi devices.” This system uses the 2-D imaging technology previously discussed to construct a 3-D avatar of the humans captured by it. The system uses a deep learning model that encodes the prior knowledge of human skeletons in the construction process of the 3-D model.
In 2019, former DARPA contractor Ray Liu launched his first commercial product in the WiFi sensing domain. Pitched as a way of “Making the world safer, healthier, and smarter,” the original military and law enforcement usages mentioned when this technology was born in 2005 were cast aside. The company claims the technology is so accurate that it can sense your breathing using nothing but standard WiFi signals.
In a 2021 company blog, Liu discusses the development of IEEE 802.11bf, a new WiFi protocol, which is aimed at standardizing WiFi imaging across all devices – thus making it easier for companies such as his to exploit compatible wireless networks. Liu was elected to serve as IEEE President for 2022, and the new standard continues to be developed to this day.
Further refinements to the imaging technology itself have been made. In late 2021 another paper was submitted to IEEE outlining how the researchers were able to achieve high-resolution imaging results with commercial WiFi signals using beamforming on the 802.11n/ac protocol.
Ready For Production
The perfect WiFi imaging system may have just been introduced to the world in December 2022, when researchers from Carnegie Mellon University married the latest in WiFi sensing technology to a human form estimation engine known as DensePose.
DensePose is a technology developed by Meta/Facebook, beginning in 2018. It’s very similar to the WiPose system we previously discussed and aims at “mapping all human pixels of an RGB image to the 3D surface of a human body.” The researchers modified DensePose so that, rather than taking an RGB image, it would be compatible with the imagery being produced by state-of-the-art WiFi sensing technologies. The resulting system “can detect the pose of humans in a room based solely on the WiFi signals passing through the environment.”
Big Brother's New Eyes
It’s telling how the pitch for this technology has pivoted from military and police use to keeping people safe in their own homes. The true purpose of this is obviously for law enforcement, the military, and intelligence agencies. We already live with mass digital surveillance and if you don’t believe that this won’t get incorporated into their plans to monitor everything you do, then you haven’t been paying attention.
Apart from putting CCTV cameras in everyone’s living spaces, this technology offers a comprehensive and supremely surreptitious way of putting eyes in every room of your house and place of work. Indeed, this just may become the norm. With nearly a third of Gen Z favoring the installation of government surveillance cameras in your home, this less-intrusive method may just find even broader support from the brainwashed masses. It will be possible to know where you are in the house and exactly what you’re doing, from sitting on the toilet to making love.
We’ve seen how easily intelligence agencies can get secret warrants to surveil anyone of particular interest. We’ve also seen just how easy it is for someone to become a target for surveillance. You very well might, one day, find your WiFi router and access points feeding imagery to an alphabet agency that didn’t like your social media posts, while armed thugs wait for the perfect moment to execute their next no-knock raid.
No comments:
Post a Comment