Did DARPA Just Develop Autonomous Drones To Hunt Humans?

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) latest creation of the Fast Lightweight Autonomy (FLA) program, a new class of algorithms for quick drone navigation in cluttered environments, reminds us of the 2013 American post-apocalyptic science fiction film, Oblivion.

Here is a short clip of Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) in the movie, battling against killer drones that use artificial intelligence to navigate and hunt ‘alien scavengers’, and moments before this scene, it was revealed to Harper that alien scavengers were actually humans.

While DARPA’s FLA program has yet to mount a directed energy weapon with enough kilowatts to blast a human into smithereens, it seems like the agency responsible for emerging technologies for use by the military has entered into Phase two flight tests — demonstrating advanced algorithms in drones could autonomously perform tasks dangerous for humans — such as pre-mission reconnaissance on the modern battlefield in a hostile urban setting.

So, yes, this confirms DARPA is developing human-hunting drones, however, it is more on a reconnaissance basis, rather than human-killing drones in Oblivion.

According to the DARPA press release, Phase one flight tests were completed in 2017, as engineers were able to refine their software and improve sensors on the drones to increase efficiency. Experiments were conducted in a controlled environment at the Guardian Centers training facility in Perry, Georgia, and aerial tests showed the quadcopters were able to navigate in urban settings as well as indoors autonomously. Some of the autonomous flight scenarios included:

  • Flying at increased speeds between multi-story buildings and through tight alleyways while identifying objects of interest;

  • Flying through a narrow window into a building and down a hallway searching rooms and creating a 3-D map of the interior; and

  • Identifying and flying down a flight of stairs and exiting the building through an open doorway.

“The outstanding university and industry research teams working on FLA honed algorithms that in the not too distant future could transform lightweight, commercial-off-the-shelf air or ground unmanned vehicles into capable operational systems requiring no human input once you’ve provided a general heading, distance to travel, and specific items to search,” said J.C. Ledé, DARPA program manager.

“Unmanned systems equipped with FLA algorithms need no remote pilot, no GPS guidance, no communications link, and no pre-programmed map of the area – the onboard software, lightweight processor, and low-cost sensors do all the work autonomously in real-time.”

“FLA’s algorithms could lead to effective human-machine teams on the battlefield, where a small air or ground vehicle might serve as a scout autonomously searching unknown environments and bringing back useful reconnaissance information to a human team member. Without needing communications links to the launch vehicle, the chances of an adversary detecting troop presence based on radio transmissions is reduced, which adds further security and safety,” Ledé said.

He pointed out the technology could be useful in a search-and-rescue scenario, where FLA-equipped drones could scan in radio silence behind enemy lines for a downed pilot, crew members, and even lost soldiers.

During Phase two, a team of engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Draper Laboratory streamlined the number of onboard sensors to lighten the drone for higher speed.

“This is the lightweight autonomy program, so we’re trying to make the sensor payload as light as possible,” said Nick Roy, co-leader of the MIT/Draper team. “In Phase 1 we had a variety of different sensors on the platform to tell us about the environment. In Phase 2 we really doubled down trying to do as much as possible with a single camera.”

DARPA asked the team of engineers to include software that builds a geographically accurate map of the surrounding area as the drone flies. Using advanced software, the drone recognized roads, buildings, cars, and other objects and identified them as such on the map, providing clickable images as well. After the mission, the drone returned to home base and allowed the human team members to download the media content.

“As the vehicle uses its sensors to quickly explore and navigate obstacles in unknown environments, it is continually creating a map as it explores and remembers any place it has already been so it can return to the starting point by itself,” said Jon How, the other MIT/Draper team co-leader.

DARPA asked a separate team of engineers from the University of Pennsylvania to reduce the drone’s size and weight for autonomous flight indoors. UPenn’s quadcopter ” took off outside, identified and flew through a second-story window opening with just inches of width clearance, flew down a hallway looking for open rooms to search, found a stairwell, and descended to the ground floor before exiting back outside through an open doorway,” said the press release.

The drone’s reduced weight and size brought new challenges for engineers since the sensors and computers used in Phase one were too large for the smaller vehicle.

“We ended up developing a new integrated single-board computer that houses all of our sensors as well as our computational platform,” said Camillo J. Taylor, the UPenn team lead. “In Phase 2 we flew a vehicle that’s about half the size of the previous one, and we reduced the weight by more than half. We were able to use a commercially available processor that requires very little power for the entirety of our computational load.”

An important feature of the UPenn drone is its ability to create a detailed 3-D map of unknown indoor areas, avoid obstacles and have the ability to enter and exit buildings, while hunting for humans.

“That’s very important in indoor environments,” Taylor said. “Because you need to actually not just reason about a slice of the world, you need to reason about what’s above you, what’s below you. You might need to fly around a table or a chair, so we’re forced to build a complete three-dimensional representation.”

The next step, according to Taylor, is for the FLA program to be transferred to the Army Research Laboratory at the Adelphi Laboratory Center in Adelphi, Maryland for further development for potential military applications.

…And if these advancements are not mind-boggling enough, it is only a matter of time before the FLA program could be integrated into drones capable of autonomously hunting America’s enemies in the homeland or in some hybrid war overseas, sort of like in the movie Oblivion.

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How Democracies Turn Tyrannical

Authored by Richard Ebeling via The Foundation for Economic Education,

For most of the last three centuries, the ideas of liberty and democracy have been intertwined in the minds of both friends and foes of a free society. The substitution of absolute monarchies with governments representative of the voting choices of a nation’s population has been considered part and parcel with the advancement of freedom of speech and the press, the right of voluntary and peaceful association for political and numerous social, economic and cultural reasons, and the guarding of the individual from arbitrary and unrestrained power. But what happens when an appeal to democracy becomes a smokescreen for majoritarian tyranny and coalition politicking by special interest groups pursuing privilege and plunder?

Friends of freedom, including many of those who strongly believed in and fought for representative and democratically elected government in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, often expressed fearful concerns that “democracy” could itself become a threat to the liberty of many of the very people that democratic government was supposed to protect.

In his famous essay “On Liberty” (1859), the British social philosopher John Stuart Mill warned that tyranny could take three forms: the tyranny of the minority, the tyranny of the majority, and the tyranny of custom and tradition. The tyranny of the minority was represented by absolute monarchy (a tyranny of the one) or an oligarchy (a tyranny of the few). The tyranny of custom and tradition could take the form of social and psychological pressures on individuals or small groups of individuals to conform to the prejudices and narrow-mindedness of wider communities who intimidate and stifle individual thought, creativity, or (peaceful) behavioral eccentricity.

Mill also was insistent that while democracy historically was part of the great movement for human liberty, majorities potentially could be as dictatorial and dangerous as the most ruthless and oppressive kings and princes of the past. At moments of great collective passions and prejudices, individual freedoms of speech, the press, religion, of association, and of private property could be voted away, reducing the isolated person to the coerced pawn and prisoner of the political system due to sheer numbers in an electoral process. (See my articles, “John Stuart Mill and the Three Dangers to Liberty” and “John Stuart Mill and the Dangers of Unrestrained Government”.)

Constitutions limit what majorities can do through their elected representatives.

For this reason, many of the great social philosophers and reformers of the 1700s and 1800s were often strongly insistent that because of democracy’s double-edged sword of liberty or tyranny, it was necessary to restrain the powers and reach of governments through written and unwritten constitutions that limited what majorities could do through their elected representatives. Hence, the role and importance, in the American case, of the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution. 

The First Amendment states clearly and categorically, “Congress shall make no law” that might abridge some of an individual’s freedoms, including speech, the press, religion, peaceful assembly, and submission of grievances against the actions of government. Indeed, every one of those first ten amendments was designed to place some restriction on the use of political power to infringe upon or deny different aspects of an individual’s rights to his life, liberty, and honestly acquired property.

Ambiguities of language, nuances of interpretation, and changing attitudes have often resulted in debates and disagreements as to what and how such personal freedoms were to be understood and secured. But the underlying meaning and message should be considered beyond any doubt: there are aspects to the life and rights of the individual human being that government, even majoritarian government, should not and could not abridge, violate, or deny.

Both monarchs of the past and dictators more in the present have denied such limits on their power to command and coerce those under their control, including prohibiting words and deeds by those over whom they have asserted their rule. They have rationalized their claim to unrestrained authority by appeal to a “divine right of kings” or a higher meaning of “freedom” that expresses the “will of the people” as a whole through the tyrant’s supreme power.

One of the great linguistic tricks of the communists and many of the socialists of the twentieth century was to try to distinguish between false, or “bourgeois” freedoms in contrast to real, or “social,” freedoms. The former were those individual freedoms expressed in the Bill of Rights, which were labeled “negative” freedoms in that they “merely” protected a person against the aggression and coercion of others. “Positive,” or “social” freedoms required government planning, regulation, and redistributive control to assure that “need” rather than “profit” guided production and that the shares of income and wealth among the members of society were more equalized according to a prior notion of “distributive justice.”

Individual freedom only requires that each person respect the life, liberty and honestly acquired property of others and that he follows the rule of peaceful and voluntary association in all human interactions.

Individual freedom only requires that each person respect the life, liberty and honestly acquired property of others and that he follows the rule of peaceful and voluntary association in all human interactions. Beyond this “negative” restraint on each of us, we are all at liberty to live our individual lives as we choose, guided by our own personal conceptions of value, meaning, and purpose in ordering and following our private affairs and dealings with others.

The notion of “positive” or “social” freedom requires the active and constant intervention of the political authority into the individual and voluntary interpersonal affairs of a country’s citizens precisely to command or prohibit how, when, where, and for what people may act and interact with others so as to direct and dictate certain results that those in government consider “good,” “just,” and “fair.” The individual and his actions are made subservient to and confined within the collective or community or national “interests” of the society as a whole as defined and enforced by the government.

In our day and age, one of the political tricks played by the “social justice” proponents and the redistributive advocates is to insist that what they call for and demand in terms of government economic and social policy is really the “democratic” will of the majority, and any opposition or resistance to it is a demonstration of that person being an opponent of “democracy,” therefore, an enemy of freedom and the free society.

An example of this is a recent article, “American Democracy on the Brink,” by noted economist and Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz, a professor of economics at Columbia University in New York. According to Stiglitz, a series of recent Supreme Court decisions demonstrate that “democracy” is in peril in America.

He repeats the now thread-worn charge that we do not live in a democracy today because the current occupant of the White House won three million fewer votes than his opponent in the 2016 presidential election. That Donald Trump won the election according to the presidential electoral rules specified in the U.S. Constitution in terms of winning an Electoral College majority is shoved aside and made into an implicit accusation that the Constitution itself is a rigged anti-democratic institution. One wonders, however, whether Joseph Stiglitz would be wearing sackcloth and ashes with his head bowed low if the 2016 outcome had put Hillary Clinton in the White House with an Electoral College majority but with Trump having won a majority of the popular vote. Somehow I doubt it.

Stiglitz’s first charge against “undemocratic” capitalism is the recent Supreme Court decision in favor of American Express concerning the company’s requirement that retail and other stores where customers purchase goods with the use of credit cards not offer special discounts to buyers to use cards with lower transaction fees than their own. Stiglitz sees this court decision as corporate anti-competitiveness at the expense of the retailer and the consumer—the few exploiting the many.

But as the high court reasoned, not all credit cards are equal, and therefore, it does not imply or require all companies issuing credit cards to charge the same transaction fees to stores. The bulk of American Express’ business involves “non-revolving” credit, that is, the large majority of American Express cardholders pay the full balance owed each month. Thus, American Express does not earn extended interest income from most of its customers through installment payments.

American Express customers who hold different types of the company’s cards with differing levels of services, perks, and discounts, tend to be, on average, in higher income brackets and spend more on various goods and services on, say, an annual basis. Thus, those shoppers paying with their American Express cards are likely to spend more, and on more expensive goods, thus more than making up the higher transaction fees American Express charges retailers. Furthermore, the attractiveness of many of American Express’ cardholder perks has competitively worked to prod other credit card companies into introducing their own versions of “points” for dollars spent, “cash back” incentives, and various other consumer services.

Implicitly, Stiglitz seems to have in the back of his mind the artificial economics textbook notion of “perfect competition,” one of the unrealistic and arbitrary assumptions of which is that each seller in a market sells a product interchangeably exactly like his rivals in that market—and that to differentiate your product from those of your competitors is, somehow, acting “anti-competitively.” Yet the very notion of “competition” understood as a rivalrous process is to constantly attempt to improve and distinguish your product from others. This includes offering what consumers may consider a better product that might sell for more than its competitors’ precisely because it’s not viewed as the same as theirs. (See my article, “Capitalism and the Misunderstanding of Monopoly.”)

Finally, no retailer is compelled to accept the American Express card as a form of payment in their place of business. And, indeed, some stores only take Visa or MasterCard precisely to avoid the higher transaction fees from American Express.

Stiglitz’s second criticism falls upon another recent Supreme Court decision that state and municipal employees will no longer be compelled to pay mandatory dues to public employee and teachers’ unions when they might not want union representation or oppose the political uses to which those funds are applied for political lobbying and campaigning. He raises a number of criticisms against the Court’s decision, including that “selfish” workers will choose to not pay dues and be “free riders” on the efforts of employee unions that improve the pay and work conditions of all in government jobs. He also charges that to deny unions the “right” to demand dues payments, whether individual public employees want union representation and political activism or not, is supposedly “undemocratic.”

In the tradition of George Orwell’s “newspeak,” Stiglitz twists the meaning of words to assert that union compulsion is freedom and that individual freedom of choice is employer exploitation. For a good part of the last one hundred years, labor unions, especially beginning in the 1930s, were given a relatively free hand to force workers into union membership to have access to certain types of employment and to restrict the number of people who could look for and find gainful employment in various sectors of the economy.

In their heyday in the middle decades of the twentieth century, labor unions could shut down entire industries through strikes, threaten or use violence to prevent non-union workers from taking jobs their members had walked away from, and use their financial clout to influence labor legislation.

Their political and financial power is heavily dependent on their ability to compel mandatory dues from public employees.

Compulsory unionism has been a tyranny of a minority of workers manipulating wages and work accessibility at the expense of the majority of the labor force as a whole. Changing market dynamics have reduced union membership in the private sector from more than 20 percent of the labor force in 1983 to less than 7 percent as of 2017. On the other hand, today union membership in the government sector is more than 35 percent. Their political and financial power is heavily dependent on their ability to compel mandatory dues from public employees, many of whom are denied the freedom to express whether they, in fact, want to pay dues and have union representation.

What is more “democratic” than to allow individual workers to “vote” with the choice to freely belong to a union or not and to pay dues or not? The “free rider” problem is a bugaboo that some economists and public policy advocates have long used to justify various forms of compulsory payment of fees and dues.

There is nothing preventing unions, including in the government sector, from excluding “free riders” by negotiating wage and benefits that apply only to their members and not to others who have chosen to opt out of that union. Indeed, by following this type of path, it would soon be seen if non-union workers decide that the benefits from joining such unions are worth the financial expense of the dues to be paid out of their salaries.

Instead, Stiglitz, looking down on the labor affairs of ordinary workers from the Olympian perch of his academic heights, knows the “real” democratic choice that serves the “true” interests of workers better and more clearly than those public employees themselves. He may refer to a supposed “imbalance” between employers and individual workers that unions are to set right, but rather than allowing those individuals to decide whether they think they need and are willing to pay for union representation against “the bosses,” he wants to force it upon them. (See my article, “The Economic Case for Right-to-Work.”)

Concerning one other legal case, Stiglitz rails against a court decision that decided in favor of licensed reproductive health centers not being forced to supply patients with information about abortion options from which they might choose. He is indignant that the court did not impose compulsory speech on people. That is, that individuals and the organizations for which they work should not be forced to articulate ideas and alternatives with which they may strongly disagree.

The abortion issue has been and remains one of the most emotional and deeply contentious “hot buttons” in the public arena. Do you believe in “a woman’s right to choose” or do you believe in the “right to life”? It touches religious faith, the meaning of personhood and ownership of one’s own body, and the definition of the beginning of human life. Any wide social agreement about abortion lies far ahead on the horizon, if ever, given the scientific, faith-based, and personal divisions of opinion and beliefs.

To force anyone to express and explain the “other side” of this debate in terms of what a woman might or should do can only be considered an infringement on the freedom of conscience of the individual.

To force anyone to express and explain the “other side” of this debate in terms of what a woman might or should do can only be considered an infringement on the freedom of conscience of the individual. Would Stiglitz also demand–in the spirit of “democracy”—that clinics that offer abortion services be compelled to provide literature and lecturing to their patients on how abortion is “murder” and is a mortal sin that will send that woman to hell and into the arms of the devil for eternity? And to do it with serious conviction so as not to unfairly bias a woman’s decision? I doubt if Stiglitz considers applying the logic of his argument in a symmetrical fashion.

This issue, like the others, has little or nothing to do with “democratic freedom” as conveyed by Stiglitz in his article. Indeed, the emotional appeal to the “democratic” idea and sentiment is all a linguistic sleight-of-hand to direct attention away from the real issue: shall the individual have his or her freedom of choice undermined or denied in the marketplace or the mind by the assertion of the “majority will”?

Whether this “majority “ is real or merely a smokescreen for a minority to use the democratic appeal to impose their demands on many others, it stands as a denial and a threat to the peaceful choices and interactions of free individuals in society. It is a use of “democracy” as the latest weapon against human liberty.

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Bin Laden’s Son Marries Lead 9/11 Hijacker’s Daughter, Says Family

The son of the late al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden has married the daughter of the lead hijacker in the September 11th terror attacks, Mohammed Atta, according to a recent interview the family gave to The Guardian. 

The union was confirmed by Osama bin Laden’s half-brothers during an interview with The Guardian. Ahmad and Hassan al-Attas said they believed Hamza had taken a senior position within al-Qaeda and was aiming to avenge the death of his father, shot dead during a US military raid in Pakistan seven years ago.

Hamza bin Laden is the son of one of Osama bin Laden’s three surviving wives, Khairiah Sabar, who was living with her husband in a compound in Abbottabad, near a large Pakistani military base, when he was killed. He has since made public statements urging followers to wage war on Washington, London, Paris and Tel Aviv and is seen as a deputy to the terrorist group’s current leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri. –The Guardian

Hamza bin Laden. Photograph: AP

“We have heard he has married the daughter of Mohammed Atta,” said Ahmad al-Attas. “We’re not sure where he is, but it could be Afghanistan.”

“When we thought everyone was over this, next thing I knew was Hamza saying I am going to avenge my father,” said his brother, Hassan al-Attas. “I don’t want to go through that again.

Ahmad al-Attas, brother of Osama bin Laden. Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian

Western intelligence agencies have been trying to track Hamza bin Laden’s whereabouts for the past two years, according to The Guardian, as he is suspected to have become a “central hub of al-Qaida” as the organization itself “continues to be organised around Osama bin Laden’s legacy,” and may become galvanized around Hamza. 

Another son of Osama bin Laden, Khalid, was killed in a US raid in Abbottabad, while a third, Saad, was killed in a 2009 drone strike in Afghanistan. Letter seized from bin Laden’s compound suggest Hamza had been chosen as his father’s successor. 

Bin Laden’s wives and surviving children have returned to Saudi Arabia, where they were given refuge by the former crown prince Mohammed bin Nayef. The women and children remain in close contact with Bin Laden’s mother, Alia Ghanem, who told the Guardian in an interview that she remained in regular touch with surviving family members. –The Guardian

Alia Ghanem at home in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, with a picture of her son Osama bin Laden. Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian

 

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The Truth Is Always In The Middle, But America Has No Middle Left

Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

Incidents and Accidents, Hints and Allegations

Jeremy Corbyn is an anti-semite. Julian Assange is a rapist, a Russian agent and a terrorist. Donald Trump is an anti-semite, a rapist AND a Russian agent. Vladimir Putin wants to invade and enslave the entire western world and to that end employs Assange, Trump, maybe also Corbyn(?), as well as thousands upon thousands of hackers and murderers who make people vote for whoever Putin chooses, and poison former Russian agents on western soil.

These allegations, and there’s many more of them, have a number of things in common. Most importantly, they serve to change your mind. They serve to change your perception of reality. They seek to whip up your support for the very people and forces that launch them into the media.

Something else they have in common is that none of them has ever been proven, even though some of them are getting on in years. But they were never meant to be proven, simply because they don’t have to be. If your mind is a fertile breeding ground for such allegations, all that needs to be done is plant a seed, and plant another, and then water them day after day by repeating the allegations and make them ‘yummier’, until they sprout a plant or a tree ‘spontaneously’.

A third feature the allegations have in common is that as they change your perception of reality, you will be -more- inclined to support those who invented them for that exact purpose, so you will not oppose their -further- grab for power and wealth.

That Jeremy Corbyn would hate Jews goes against the man’s entire life history. But he’s been exceedingly weak in defending himself, and his Labour Party, against the accusations of anti-semitism, so the label sticks and has been very successful. Instead of explaining his position in the face of the unfolding and increasingly disastrous Brexit proceedings, all Corbyn gets to do is utter some feeble defence about his history with Jewish people. On Brexit, he’s been all but silenced. Even his own party merrily goes along with the smear.

The accusations concerning Assange in the Swedish rape ‘case’ are, if possible, even more preposterous, even if they have also ostensibly been even more successful. The Swedes, British and Americans involved in the narrative knew beforehand that all they needed was to plant a fragile seed. Julian had historically enjoyed a lot of support from women, and that was over in a heartbeat.

Sweden’s female(!) prosecutor, Marianne Ny, refused for 4 years to talk to Assange one on one and when she finally did, dropped the case right after. But that’s 4 years of allegations hanging over him, easily enough to serve the purpose of those allegations: plant a seed of doubt. By then, another -hollow- tree had sprouted: Assange was accused of working directly with the Kremlin.

He always denied this, but after negotiations with the US Justice Department in early 2017 were abruptly halted by then FBI-head James Comey and US Senator Mark Warner (D.-VA) as Assange offered to prove that it wasn’t Russians who provided him with files from the DNC server(s), Robert Mueller felt free to accuse him of working with Russia once again in his indictment of 12 Russians last month. Not only could Assange not defend himself by then, since he had been totally silenced, but Mueller didn’t even attempt to provide evidence.

And I’ve said this numerous times before, but I still think it bears repeating: WikiLeaks is based on one underlying principle above and beyond anything else: trust; which means uncompromising honesty. WIthout that, no-one would ever again offer them any files. WikiLeaks doesn’t reveal sources, and it doesn’t redact things out of files other than to protect people’s lives.

In that sense it’s interesting that even with the Vault7 CIA files, after Comey had betrayed Assange, the latter still held back from publishing certain pages, just so CIA operatives wouldn’t be exposed. If Assange is caught in just one lie, be it about rape or about Russia, WikiLeaks is done, and so is he and his life’s work. So what do you do about someone who doesn’t lie? You spread lies about him.

But, again, that’s not what people see, because that’s not what their media report. Papers like the New York Times and the Guardian, who were more than happy to share, and profit from, WikiLeaks files before, have turned on Assange with a vengeance. Journalists are more than willing to throw a fellow journalist under the bus and then turn around and accuse Donald Trump of endangering journalists when he says they spread fake news. Well, they do, that’s what Assange’s case proves without a doubt.

That brings us to Trump, a ‘case’ that has much in common with Assange -even if the men themselves don’t-, but is also very different. Trump doesn’t seem to shy away from the odd white lie or embellishment. And sure, that may be putting it mildly. But both journalists and their viewers and readers need to keep one thing in mind: their work does not consist of spouting allegations. They need to provide proof.

And in the 18 -or 24- months since Trump prominently rose upon the Washington scene, precious little has been proven. Robert Mueller has alleged plenty, but proven next to nothing. It’s fair to say after all that time that he’s fishing. Sure, Paul Manafort will likely go to jail, but his case has nothing to do with Russia collusion, at least not in any way that Mueller has evidence for (we would have known if he did).

And you know, if you spend so much time, and resources, trying to find something, trying to find proof, and you have failed to find it, you have to acknowledge just that. Maybe not halt the investigation entirely, but go public and state that you haven’t been able to find what you thought you would or could. The country deserves that, The American people deserve it, and yes, Donald Trump does, too.

But the whole country now lives on a narrative. Media left and right profit from it, each to feed their audience the ‘latest’ 24/7. And there’s nothing really, so they have to make it up in order to continue profiting from the whipped-up attention. One side tells you how evil Trump is, the other how great he’s doing. The truth is always in the middle, but America has no middle left.

I said before that Donald Trump is portrayed as an anti-semite, a rapist AND a Russian agent. As for the first bit, I covered that a few days ago in “Globalist”. Does Trump hate Jews? Even if he does, he hides it pretty well. He’s always done business with Jewish people (hey, this is New York!), there are plenty Jews in his government, and in his own family. Calling someone an anti-Semite is a very serious thing, not a detail to be thrown around at will. Prove it or hold your tongue.

Is Trump a rapist, like what Assange is accused of? You can certainly find no shortage of people willing to state that in both cases. But again, no evidence. And with the fame and glory awaiting anyone who does prove it in either case, you would think by now someone would have found something. Again, prove it or hold your tongue.

Thirdly: is Trump a Russian agent? Look, if Robert Mueller hasn’t been able to prove that he is after two years and tens of millions spent, at least get off your high horse and focus on something else for a bit, if you want to be taken serious as a journalist. Russia, and Putin, are America’s favorite bogeyman today, and about the only thing that still unites the country.

So find something instead that unites you that is not your enemy. Find common cause. Find what makes you proud to be America. Are you all going to be proud if Assange is dragged into some place like Gitmo? Then you have completely lost what it is that should make you proud citizens of the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Because no matter how you may twist it, Julian Assange is braver than any of you, and braver than all of you put together too. But no, he’s not free. He gave up his freedom so you would know what it means to be free. Free from manipulation, free from people making up your minds for you, free from indoctrination, free from the forces that take more of your freedom away every day.

You see, Julian Assange is not free. But neither are you. He’s a prisoner of the very people who are taking your freedom away, day by day, step by step. That’s why you should stand up for him. And of course, it’s not just your freedom that’s at stake, it’s your humanity, it’s the very essence of what makes you human, the difference between a life worth living and a life wasted by complacency and cowardice.

Anything else is just narrative. It’s not life.

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Iran Protest Deaths Reported Ahead Of Monday’s Renewed Sanctions

As we predicted last week, protests have continued across multiple Iranian cities through the weekend fueled by general dissatisfaction over a collapsing economy, runaway inflation, and a sharp hike in prices on imported products, all of which has made life miserable for many Iranian citizens.

However, it is unclear the extent and frequency of the protests as multiple international reports have called the protests, now in their sixth day, “scattered” and sporadic.

With pressures continuing to mount ahead of renewed US sanctions set to snap back into place on Monday — the first wave of which will primarily target automobiles, currency, and gold — there are new unconfirmed reports of deaths after protesters clashed with police. 

A cleric speaks to a crowd of protesters demonstrating in Mashhad, in the Khorasan Razavi province, on August 3rd. Via Nasim News Agency

Demonstrations involving hundreds in each location were reported over the weekend in the nation’s capital, Tehran, and in the cities of Karaj, Shiraz, Mashhad, Isfahan, and Qom — the latter city especially notable given it’s considered by Shia Islam to be the holiest city in Iran. 

US state-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports that a man was shot and killed on Saturday during a protest in Karaj, west of Tehran, citing Iran’s semi-official Fars. Details remain sparse, but the man was reportedly fired at by an unidentifiable assailant in a passing car. The same report included mention of about 20 protesters in Karaj detained by security forces. 

And on Sunday unverified reports on social media, mostly from opposition activist accounts, say heavy clashes continuing in the cities of Karaj and Qom have resulted in multiple deaths. 

 

However, there are conflicting accounts regarding the actual intensity and momentum of the protests, with activist along with a number of MEK-linked accounts (the controversial Iranian opposition group in exile, “Mujahideen e Khalq”) claiming that deliberate power outages and state blockage of the internet have prevented more footage and images depicting oppression from riot police and security services from reaching the outside world. 

US funded and state-run broadcasters like VOA News and Radio Free Europe have also featured regular reporting of the protests over the past week, especially through Farsi language sources. 

On Monday, the following sanctions will be re-imposed according to a US Treasury Department official statement:

“Sanctions on the purchase or acquisition of US dollar bank notes by the Government of Iran; sanctions on Iran’s trade in gold or precious metals; sanctions on the direct or indirect sale, supply, or transfer to or from Iran of graphite, raw, or semi-finished metals such as aluminum and steel, coal, and software for integrating industrial processes; sanctions on significant transactions related to the purchase or sale of Iranian rials, or the maintenance of significant funds or accounts outside the territory of Iran denominated in the Iranian rial; sanctions on the purchase, subscription to, or facilitation of the issuance of Iranian sovereign debt; sanctions on Iran’s automotive sector.” 

Furthermore, according to the US Treasury, this includes a ban on Iranian-origin carpets and foodstuffs, and notably (and dangerous for civilian air safety) export or re-export commercial airplanes as well as services and parts.

Likely, with the economic noose about to tighten even further on Monday, we could be witnessing just the beginning of more sustained unrest to come as external pressures make the Iranian economy implode. 

And meanwhile at the White House…

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Pro-ISIS Media Outlet Signals Imminent Biological Attack On The West

Authored by Pamela Geller via GellerReport.com,

This too will be ignored by the complicit, sharia-compliant Western press. A biological attack is the intentional release of a pathogen (disease causing agent) or biotoxin (poisonous substance produced by a living organism) against humans, plants, or animals. An attack against people could be used to cause illness, death, fear, societal disruption, and economic damage.

EXCLUSIVE: Pro-ISIS Media Outlet Publishes Posters Calling For Biological Attacks In The West, One Of Which Depicts San Francisco

Over the past week, a pro-Islamic State (ISIS) media group has published a series of posters encouraging biological attacks on Western targets.

Excerpt from the transcript (MEMRI):

PRO-ISIS MEDIA OUTLET CIRCULATES VIDEO CALLING FOR BIOLOGICAL ATTACKS IN THE WEST

This transcript was prepared from the original English subtitles of the video

Narrator: “While the world is watching silently! The European governments are developing satanic chemical attack systems to be brutally tested on the cities and peoples, which refused humiliation and humiliation so the Muslim countries in Africa and Khorsan turned into testing fields of phosphorus bombs and toxic gas. The crusader alliance continues bombing Mosul, Raqqa, Al-Anbar and others… with various types of chemical bombs and incendiary gases. And similar to the enemies of God! We invite you, oh Muwahid [monotheist] who lives between the Mushrikeen [idolaters] that you clean the dust of humiliation and to renew the fatal nightmare in the land of the devil worshipers with a silent destructive weapon. It can not be detected or tracked it can not be escaped or avoided with simple equipment, extract the most harmful viruses and infection bacteria then release them safely by following these simple steps: First, try to find the most severe epidemics to treat.”

On Screen: “Hantavirus, derived from the feces and droppings of rats that carry the plague of the most serious plague at the moment. The Cholera virus is extracted from the patient’s waste. Typhoid bacteria, found in human and animal wastes in general and frequent in the dirty areas.”

Narrator: “Second, spread the bacteria extracted by type as follows.”

On Screen: “Sprinkle the liquid substances or the basics of bacteria with drinking water to take effect automatically. Sprinkle the crushed material on exposed fruit and public foods or scatter them in the air in crowded places – with caution.”

Narrator: “Third, try to be safe and avoid any danger that may affect you during the preparation of harmful substances.”

On Screen: “Work in a room with natural and industrial ventilation. Wear gloves and blouses during work. Put the goggles and goggles – according to chemical process requirements. Do not touch or inhale the materials. Isolating the workplace from the rest of the house. Wash your hands with sterile soap and water after each test.”

Off-Screen Voice: “To our brothers in Aqidah [creed] and Iman [faith] in Europe, America, Russia, Australia, and elsewhere, your brothers in your lands have absolved themselves of blame so leap onto their tracks and take an example from their actions and know that Jannah [paradise] is beneath the shadows of swords.”

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Secret Service Slams “Irresponsible And Inaccurate” Guardian Report On Russian Spy In Moscow Embassy

The US Secret Service has refuted what they claim is an “irresponsible and inaccurate” Thursday report by The Guardian, in which the UK paper claims that a suspected Russian spy had been working “undetected in the heart of the American embassy in Moscow for more than a decade.” 

According to the Secret Service, they provided The Guaridain with “background information clearly refuting unfounded information.” 

The Guardian report reads in part: 

US counter-intelligence investigators discovered a suspected Russian spy had been working undetected in the heart of the American embassy in Moscow for more than a decade, the Guardian has learned.

The Russian national had been hired by the US Secret Service and is understood to have had access to the agency’s intranet and email systems, which gave her a potential window into highly confidential material including the schedules of the president and vice-president.

The woman had been working for the Secret Service for years before she came under suspicion in 2016 during a routine security sweep conducted by two investigators from the US Department of State’s Regional Security Office (RSO). –The Guardian

The paper then claims that the woman was having “regular and unauthorized meetings” with members of Russia’s top security agency, the FSB, and that the RSO sounded the alarm in January, 2017 – which the Secret Service reportedly ignored until letting her go several months later, “possibly to contain any potential embarassment.” 

According to the Guardian, her firing was purposefully concealed by US officials amid the mass removeal of 750 US personnel from its embassy staff of 1,200.  

“The Secret Service is trying to hide the breach by firing [her],” the source said. “The damage was already done but the senior management of the Secret Service did not conduct any internal investigation to assess the damage and to see if [she] recruited any other employees to provide her with more information. –The Guardian

The Secret Service hit back shortly after publication, writing in a statement: 

On Thursday, August 2, 2018, The Guardian published an article by Nick Hopkins entitled, Exclusive: suspected Russian spy found working at US embassy in Moscow. The article is wrought with irresponsible and inaccurate reporting based on the claims of “anonymous” sources. Prior to the Guardian publishing their article, the U.S. Secret Service provided their editor with our official statement as well as background information clearly refuting unfounded information. 

The agency goes on to note that it was the woman’s duty to interface with the Russian government, “including the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), the Russian Ministry of the Interior (MVD), and the Russian Federal Protective Service (FPS) in furtherance of Secret Service interests. 

The Secret Service then cites a factual error based on US protocols: 

In the article, Hopkins and The Guardian claim the “Russian is understood to have had full access to secret data during decade at embassy.” FSNs working under the direction of the U.S. Secret Service have never been provided or placed in a position to obtain, secret or classified information as erroneously reported. -US Secret Service

The agency also asserts that the Guardian‘s claim that they “failed to act on information provided by the U.S. State Department is categorically false,” along with the timing of the woman’s termination aren’t true. 

The U.S. Secret Service Moscow Resident Office closed in August of 2017 due to lack of cooperation from the Russian government – entirely unrelated to the termination of the FSN in question. Reports the Secret Service attempted to minimize or deliberately not disclose the U.S. State Department’s findings are categorically false. -US Secret Service

Lastly, the Secret Service said that any questions of a potential security “breach” of U.S. Secret Service systems, information or reporting ” is unfounded as FSNs work on, and support, only projects with the intent of providing and/or sharing the information with the Russian government in furtherance of Secret Service and USG interests.”

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Paul Craig Roberts: Americans Live In A World Of Lies

Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

The US government and the presstitutes that serve it continue to lie to us about everything.

On Friday the Bureau of Labor Statistics told us that the unemployment rate was 3.9%. How can this be when the BLS also reports that the labor force participation rate has declined for a decade throughout the length of the alleged economic recovery and there is no upward pressure on wages from full employment. When jobs are plentiful, people enter the labor force to take advantage of the work opportunities. This raises the labor force participation rate. When employment is full – which is what a 3.9% unemployment rate means – wages are bid up as employers compete for scarce labor. Full employment with no wage pressure and no rise in the labor force participation rate is impossible.

The 3.9% unemployment rate is not due to employment. It results from not counting discouraged workers who have ceased to search for jobs because there are no jobs to be had.

If an unemployed person is not actively searching for a job, he is not counted as being in the labor force. The way the unemployment rate is measured makes it a hoax.

The government tells us that there is essentially no inflation despite the fact that prices have been rising strongly – the price of food, the price of home repairs, the price of drugs, the price of almost everything. Two years ago the American Association of Retired People’s Public Policy Institute reported that the average retail drug price has been increasing “at a worrying pace of 10 percent a year, and about 20 drugs have astoundingly had their prices quadruple since just December. Sixty drugs doubled over the same period. Turing Pharmaceuticals, headed by Martin Shkreli, is one of the most pronounced examples of this kind of behavior. The company bought a lifesaving cancer medication only to increase its price from $13.50 to $750 per pill.”

Incomes, of course, have not doubled. In real terms incomes have declined. Moreover, expenditures on medicines are a huge percentage of the budgets of the elderly and those on Medicare. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the average annual cost of prescription medicines for the elderly accounts for three-fourths of the average Social Security pension and for about half of the median income of peope who receive Medicare benefits.

Real jobs have also declined. The jobs that the financial presstitutes report to be unfilled are not jobs that provide a living. The BLS reported that the number of Americans working multiple jobs rose in July by 453,000, bringing the number of Americans who hold multiple part-time jobs to 8,072,000.

Looking at July’s payroll jobs report again we see the Third World complexion of the US work force. The alleged new jobs are concentrated in lowly paid domestic services: temporary help services, health care and social assistance, waitresses and bartenders.

There is scant sign of a vibrant economy, but high debt is everywhere. Debt is growing faster than the income needed to support it. The US government is on course for another $1 trillion annual budget deficit. The federal, state, and local tax base has been decimated by the global corporatons’ export of high productivity high value-added manufacturing and professional skill jobs. In the name of “free trade” the tax base for Social Security, Medicare, and public pensions has been given away to China and other Asian countries where labor costs are low. The US global corporations make higher profits by shrinking the US tax base. Neoliberal economists defend this absurdity as “free trade” that benefits Americans.

The millions of Americans whose jobs were given away to foreigners know full well that they have not benefited. They know the story told by neoliberal economists and financial presstitutes is a lie.

The lies, of course, go far beyond the economic ones.

Russiagate, which has dominated the print and TV media and NPR since the last presidential campaign is a massive lie that continues day after day. On August 3 the NPR presstitutes, for example, were smacking their lips over the prospect that Paul Manafort was on trial and might give special Russiagate prosecutor Robert Mueller a conviction that could lead to Trump’s removal from the White House. The presstitutes speculated that a convicted Manafort would tell on Trump in exchange for a lighter sentence.

The NPR presstitutes did not reveal that Manafort was not on trial for anything related in any way to Russiagate. Manafort is being tried on income tax evasion charges dating from a decade ago when he was a consultant to Ukrainian politicians. There is no doubt but that these are false charges whose purpose is to coerce Manafort into protecting himself by making false charges against Trump. If Manafort is convicted it will not be on the basis of any evidence. Manafort will be convicted by the presstitute media which will convince jurors that Manafort is “one of those rich who don’t pay taxes.”

That President Trump permits this witch-hunt to continue, a witch-hunt that far oversteps Mueller’s Russiagate mandate for which not a shred of evidence has been found, shows how the presstitutes working hand-in-hand with the military/security complex and DNC have disempowered the President of the United States.

While Americans sit there sucking their thumbs, the coup against the President proceeds before their eyes.

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Saudi Arabia Suspends Diplomatic, Trade Ties With Canada Over “Blatant Interference”

In a world turned upside down by Trump’s unorthodox approach to, well, everything, replete with trade wars and diplomatic scandals, we now have one more, and this one was out of the blue. Late on Sunday, Saudi Arabia unexpectedly unleashed diplomatic hell against Canada when it announced it had suspended diplomatic ties and halted new trade and investment dealings with Canada in a dramatic escalation of a dispute over the kingdom’s arrest of a women’s rights activist.

Saudi Arabia also recalled its ambassador to Ottawa and ordered the Canadian envoy to the capital Riyadh to leave within 24 hours, according to a foreign ministry statement cited by the Saudi Press Agency.

The reason behind Saudi Arabian fury and the collapse in relations appears to have been a recent instance of Canadian virtue signalling: the Saudi foreign ministry cited remarks last week by Canadian foreign minister Chrystia Freeland and the Canadian embassy in Riyadh, criticizing Saudi Arabia’s arrests of women’s rights activists including Samar Badawi. Badawi is a Canadian citizen whose brother Raif Badawi, a blogger who was critical of the Saudi government, was already in jail in the kingdom.

Freeland said in a tweet Aug. 2 that she was “very alarmed to learn that Samar Badawi, Raif Badawi’s sister, has been imprisoned in Saudi Arabia,” and that “Canada stands together with the Badawi family in this difficult time, and we continue to strongly call for the release of both Raif and Samar Badawi.”

Canada’s Foreign Policy echoed the statement on twitter one day later.

According to the Saudi statement, “the kingdom views the Canadian position as an affront to the kingdom that requires a sharp response to prevent any party from attempting to meddle with Saudi sovereignty.”

The statement also noted clear that the arrests “were in line with Saudi laws, and those detained have been provided with due process during investigation and trial.”

The loonie slipped as much as 0.2 percent to 1.3019 per U.S. dollar in early trading, following three straight weeks of gains in Canada’s currency – the longest such winning streak since January.

That said, neither Canada nor Saudi trade will be crippled by the decision: according to Bloomberg, there was a trade flow of $3.23 billion between Saudi Arabia and Canada in 2017, with Saudi Arabia exporting $2.14 billion, or 1%, of its products to the North American nation, and as Bloomberg’s Javier Blas said, “I don’t see how this is going to put much pressure on Ottawa.”

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US GDP Turbocharged After Record Saving Rate Revision: Why That Could Be A Problem

Last week, the US Bureau Economic Analysis unleashed some statistical goalseek magic that would make Beijing thoroughly fabricated economic “data” blush for days: as part of the comprehensive GDP revision carried out every five years by the Commerce Department’s BEA, US economic history was rewritten and in a shocking development, the annual saving rate was revised higher by 1.6% on average since 2010, with the 2017 US savings rate doubling overnight, from 3.4% to 6.7%.

Putting these revisions into context, the last comprehensive revision conducted in July 2015 only produced an upward revision of 0.3% per year. In fact, this revision to the saving rate over the prior 6 months is the largest on record, according to real-time data available from the St. Louis Fed since 1997.

Major revisions to national income (and consequently the saving rate) came from 3 sources of income: proprietors’, dividend and interest income, as well as a tiny increase in employee compensation.

As BofA notes, the BEA incorporated the tabulations of sole proprietorship and partnership tax returns for 2016 which included new research by the IRS showing significant underreporting of income by nonfarm proprietors over time, causing a sizeable upward revision for proprietors’ income starting in 2010. It wasn’t immediately clear if this also meant a sizeable upward revision in tax audits by the IRS.

In addition, newly available IRS income data boosted dividend income in 2016 and 2017 by roughly $113bn and $143bn, respectively, shifting savings from corporations to households while the entire interest income series was revised higher due to changes in the way BEA calculates state and local employers’ contribution to pension plans. Last, the saving rate got an additional boost in 2017 due to the integration of revised employment and wage data from QCEW which added $98bn to wages and salaries.

Unfortunately none of these statistical revisions actually mean anything, because both before and after the BEA revision, some 50% of Americans still don’t have a single dollar in savings, and the only ones affected are those in the top percentiles of US society which means that – you guessed it – the rich get richer again.

And yet, at the statistical level, which is the only one that matters for the Fed, the latest numbers suggest households have been thrifty with their money during the recovery, and with one flick of an excel switch, the secular decline in the US personal savings rate was halted.

There are two implications from this:

  • Moving forward the higher saving rate should be a boon for the consumer BofA’s economists wrote on Friday: in good times it should provide room for the consumer to spend without breaking the bank or levering up and in bad times, it should provide a buffer for the consumer against a negative income or employment shock, helping to extend the business cycle. Even so, BofA did not revise its consumer spending forecast higher significantly post revisions as the bank understands the money was never actually saved, but merely served as a plug in some big picture equation.
  • The other implication is that if the Fed was concerned about hitting an economic ceiling sometime in 2019, as a result of the roughly $500BN in incremental savings “discovered”, the rate hike cycle could be far more aggressive than the market thinks.

And while BofA kept its outlook unchanged, one bank did revise its forecast as a result of the dramatic paper increase in personal savings.

In a Saturday note, Goldman chief economist Jan Hatzius quantified the implications of the higher saving rate for the consumer outlook and wrote that “taken at face value, our model implies that a declining saving rate could deliver a boost of as much as 0.8% to annualized real PCE growth over the next two years.” Even under more conservative assumptions—which Hatzius writes may be warranted given the uncertainty around saving data, Goldman “now expects real consumption growth to slow more gradually than before, from 2.7% over the past year to 2.4% over the next year. “

What does this mean for GDP? Simple: it is revised sharply higher, with Goldman throwing in the towel on its warning of a sharp slowdown in economic growth in 2019 and 2020, and instead now expecting substantially higher growth as we continue drifting ever deeper into the second longest economist cycle in history.

As a result of the consumption and federal spending upgrades, we nudge up our GDP growth forecast by 0.25pp for 2018H2-2019 and lower our unemployment rate path. We still expect 3.3% growth in Q3, but now look for 3.0% in Q4 (vs. 2.5% previously), and 2.0% in 2019 on a Q4/Q4 basis (vs. 1.75%).

We now expect the unemployment rate to decline to 3.5% by end-2018, and to bottom at 3.0% in 2020. We maintain our end-2019 forecast for core PCE inflation of 2.3%.

But while Goldman’s forecasting track record is just as abysmal as, well, any other economist’s, the key implication is what this savings revision means for the Fed’s rate hike timetable: here’s Goldman’s take.

We continue to expect the Fed to hike once-per-quarter until the policy rate reaches 3¼-3½% by end-2019. While the Fed is very focused on containing economic overheating, our standing forecast of quarterly rate hikes already incorporates a significant labor market overshoot. This quarterly pace seems to be largely “locked in” barring a bigger acceleration in core PCE inflation beyond 2.5%, which is a risk but not our baseline forecast. 

Our higher growth and lower unemployment projections therefore moderately reinforce the upside risks to our Fed call.

In other words, the risk to more, and faster, rate hikes is now on the table as a result of a revision in the simple calculation of how much money Americans managed to save, when in reality the vast majority of Americans have just gotten poorer no matter what the BEA’s excel model says, even as “the 10%” have never been richer.

That said, it will be up to Jay Powell to decide if for the first time in 10 years, he will do the right thing, and let the market drop as a result of the Fed’s tightening cycle, wiping out a substantial portion of the 10%’s net worth, when the next recession hits, or if the Fed will immediately proceed with QE4.

For now, however, the only chart worth watching is this: at what interest rate will the Fed finally cause the market to crash.

 

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