Yes, that's the narrative they want to spread. They want us, the western middle classes, to identify with the Palestinians, and not as we actually are, the people who enable Gaza and other genocides with our continued lifestyle support for US based interests in oil, animal ag, pharma, media, tech, entertainment, finance and arms.
These interests already watch everything we do and could kill us if they wished. But they don't; they want us alive and buying their products.
They flatter us that the robot dogs they place on social media, not to normalise them but to get us raging at them, are in case we might develop 'revolutionary consciousness' that they fear. They don't. We're right where they want us; tilting at windmills.
Thanks, Caitlin. Good catch on how these are being normalized. I can't imagine The Times doing that with the more obvious and brutal manifestations of growing neofascist control in this country, but it's amazing how the surveillance, data-gathering, and censorship can be normalized or expanded under the radar.
And, of course, as you say, it's not a giant step from surveillance robots to robotic killing machines--just look at what happened with drones.
Yes, let's look at what's happened with drones in modern warfare. Let's focus on where this technology is already being used shall we, before we hypothesise of what could be? If we're in the UK and EU; let's do everything we can to avoid being drawn into the US led proxy war with Russia and protest against increasing military spending, call out Russophobia and highlight the realities of war and the 100,000s of Ukrainians and Russians being fed into the meat grinder. If we're in the Antipodes the same applies to war with China.
There's also the race we’re all in with accelerating climate crisis. The US interests in oil and arms create it, use it and distract us from it; to their advantage.
Let's not allow ourselves to be distracted by these deliberate attempts, not to normalise police robots, but to stir us up and get us raging and fearful of them and the state. Dreams of revolution play into US based interests in oil and arms who already watch everything you do, could already kill you in a heart beat, but actually want you alive, revolutionary or not, flying, driving, eating animals and sleepwalking into climate breakdown and war.
More than 60 years ago, I was a fan of “Magnus, Robot Fighter”. The story takes pace circa 4000 AD. The authors probably didn’t think that autonomous attack robots would come into existence in the 21st Century.
These current batch of "robot dogs" are about as overrated as AI tech (at the moment). The cute little dogs could be disabled with a can of spray paint.
That doesn't mean however, that some technologies haven't already proven to be a significant danger to humanity - from drones to atomic bombs.
Caitlin is right: it's a race between evolving our consciousness and the self-destructive tendencies of the morons in charge of the world right now.
Caitlin, I hate to admit it, but it seems like we are heading into a world similar to that portrayed in the dystopian TV Series "Black Mirror". The TV Series was supposed to be a WARNING, but instead TPTB have been using it as a blueprint...😡😨
But it is possible for an everyday American with about $9500 lying around to buy their own robot flamethrower dog.
That might be a disincentive for the police state.
For around the same money, any American can purchase a .50 caliber sniper rifle that will take a helicopter out of the sky, so there are options.
To be clear, though, not good options. A citizens army is going to come up short against the Brownshirt ICE forces who have billions in funding, legal immunity, and access to military hardware.
"You don’t have to worry about the robot army siding with the people, or refusing to fire upon their fellow citizens."
This is exactly why we can't wait any longer to take out these robots and all the surveillance cameras, data centers, and whatever other technology they will use against us. It's us or them and I say that robot dogs don't feel pain. Take them out.
A visit to a school in Phnom Penh a few years ago - attended by some friends in the 1950s and 1960s had me find myself across the street from a truly ugly industrial compound - it's corner fenceposts (all fences topped by coils of razor wire) bristled with technology which I realised were cameras - surveillance cameras - it was the US Embassy. What was such a disgusting presence doing in the land it had helped destroy with its American War in Viet Nam bombing - allowing the rise of Pol Pot, I wondered. I didn't have to wonder very long - on my long walk back to my hotel (around the corner from the Tuol Sleng infamous torture centre/genocide museum) I was intercepted en route by a tout on a little motor bike. Except he wasn't a tout - he was policeman - wanting to ask me what I was doing taking photos of the US Embassy -(inside my head: What the ***!). I opened up my my SLR camera download to show I had not taken any photos - the vision of the US Embassy and surveillance cameras - however - now seared forever into my memory by this police-state intervention moment. That was June. 2023.
While US and Chinese robot dogs are armed with machine guns, the robot dogs in Mexico are unarmed. They were used for crowd safety . Mexico has no plans to arm robots. I will take an unarmed robot dog any day over an armed cop.
Where did you learn that Chinese surveillance robots are armed with machine guns, I wonder? The US - well - of course. Their oligarchs/Epstein buddies/WMD corporations - hate their citizens/residents. That's not actually the situation in China, though - unless you read Peter Hartcher and other Murdoch presstitutes!
Well, aren't you the trusting one... What would it take for a Cartel-controlled government or region in Mexico to arm their K9s I wonder...Not much I'd suggest...
I have a feeling that there will be pretty big awakening in the next few weeks or so when the western world feels more of the consequences of Trump's attack on Iran, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and its effects on the economy.
Hopefully people will adopt a revolutionary consciousness and not go full on fascist.
Meanwhile the Nazification of the West continues, with the Court of Justice of the EU ruling that the ban on disseminating content from Russia Today (RT) applies also to private citizens and the European Parliament voting to extend a temporary exception from EU privacy rules that allows online platforms to read and scan private chats and e-mails: https://geopolitiq.substack.com/p/nazification-of-the-west
Positing, as you do more fully in your linked essay, that the corporations that are ruining us are *the* problem and that oppressive government actions (other than war) are a deliberately-created distraction is based on a false dichotomy. As you do note there, elites that own and run the corporations control the major government entities as well, and use them in their interests.
I believe that building a massive nonviolent movement that can take down and replace both parts of the interlocking political/economic systems, i.e., the revolution you belittle, is the answer, not some kind of useful-idiot distraction that plays into the hands of the elites.
And while that is not an easy project or one that can be carried out quickly, I think it is a far more practical solution than urging us as individuals to somehow opt out of our consumerist lifestyles while still living under advanced capitalism and it's state. And hoping that enough people can and will respond that the climate crisis will be alleviated and the billionaires will stop reaping profits and, somehow, stop creating wars.
Thank you for the wake-up call. Gaza is the demonstration ground for surveillance and assasination drones. What goes around comes around.
Yes, that's the narrative they want to spread. They want us, the western middle classes, to identify with the Palestinians, and not as we actually are, the people who enable Gaza and other genocides with our continued lifestyle support for US based interests in oil, animal ag, pharma, media, tech, entertainment, finance and arms.
These interests already watch everything we do and could kill us if they wished. But they don't; they want us alive and buying their products.
They flatter us that the robot dogs they place on social media, not to normalise them but to get us raging at them, are in case we might develop 'revolutionary consciousness' that they fear. They don't. We're right where they want us; tilting at windmills.
Exactly as Antony Lowenstein described several years ago in his first-rate book/later video documentary: The Palestine Laboratory.
Thanks, Caitlin. Good catch on how these are being normalized. I can't imagine The Times doing that with the more obvious and brutal manifestations of growing neofascist control in this country, but it's amazing how the surveillance, data-gathering, and censorship can be normalized or expanded under the radar.
And, of course, as you say, it's not a giant step from surveillance robots to robotic killing machines--just look at what happened with drones.
Yes, let's look at what's happened with drones in modern warfare. Let's focus on where this technology is already being used shall we, before we hypothesise of what could be? If we're in the UK and EU; let's do everything we can to avoid being drawn into the US led proxy war with Russia and protest against increasing military spending, call out Russophobia and highlight the realities of war and the 100,000s of Ukrainians and Russians being fed into the meat grinder. If we're in the Antipodes the same applies to war with China.
There's also the race we’re all in with accelerating climate crisis. The US interests in oil and arms create it, use it and distract us from it; to their advantage.
Let's not allow ourselves to be distracted by these deliberate attempts, not to normalise police robots, but to stir us up and get us raging and fearful of them and the state. Dreams of revolution play into US based interests in oil and arms who already watch everything you do, could already kill you in a heart beat, but actually want you alive, revolutionary or not, flying, driving, eating animals and sleepwalking into climate breakdown and war.
https://jowaller.substack.com/p/they-want-us-raging-at-big-brother
🎯💯
Years ago I saw a video of a cheap drone burning a wasp nest with a flamethrower. It as they say "gave me pause."
I wonder if there will be robot hackers in the near future.
More than 60 years ago, I was a fan of “Magnus, Robot Fighter”. The story takes pace circa 4000 AD. The authors probably didn’t think that autonomous attack robots would come into existence in the 21st Century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus,_Robot_Fighter
What a fantastic if already becoming true forecast of the robotic/AI future. Thanks for the link, CK.
These current batch of "robot dogs" are about as overrated as AI tech (at the moment). The cute little dogs could be disabled with a can of spray paint.
That doesn't mean however, that some technologies haven't already proven to be a significant danger to humanity - from drones to atomic bombs.
Caitlin is right: it's a race between evolving our consciousness and the self-destructive tendencies of the morons in charge of the world right now.
Caitlin, I hate to admit it, but it seems like we are heading into a world similar to that portrayed in the dystopian TV Series "Black Mirror". The TV Series was supposed to be a WARNING, but instead TPTB have been using it as a blueprint...😡😨
But it is possible for an everyday American with about $9500 lying around to buy their own robot flamethrower dog.
That might be a disincentive for the police state.
For around the same money, any American can purchase a .50 caliber sniper rifle that will take a helicopter out of the sky, so there are options.
To be clear, though, not good options. A citizens army is going to come up short against the Brownshirt ICE forces who have billions in funding, legal immunity, and access to military hardware.
"You don’t have to worry about the robot army siding with the people, or refusing to fire upon their fellow citizens."
This is exactly why we can't wait any longer to take out these robots and all the surveillance cameras, data centers, and whatever other technology they will use against us. It's us or them and I say that robot dogs don't feel pain. Take them out.
A visit to a school in Phnom Penh a few years ago - attended by some friends in the 1950s and 1960s had me find myself across the street from a truly ugly industrial compound - it's corner fenceposts (all fences topped by coils of razor wire) bristled with technology which I realised were cameras - surveillance cameras - it was the US Embassy. What was such a disgusting presence doing in the land it had helped destroy with its American War in Viet Nam bombing - allowing the rise of Pol Pot, I wondered. I didn't have to wonder very long - on my long walk back to my hotel (around the corner from the Tuol Sleng infamous torture centre/genocide museum) I was intercepted en route by a tout on a little motor bike. Except he wasn't a tout - he was policeman - wanting to ask me what I was doing taking photos of the US Embassy -(inside my head: What the ***!). I opened up my my SLR camera download to show I had not taken any photos - the vision of the US Embassy and surveillance cameras - however - now seared forever into my memory by this police-state intervention moment. That was June. 2023.
The US embassy in Tokyo is a little fortress. I felt as though I was in a maximum security prison. I couldn't wait to get out of there.
Terminator 3 RISE OF THE MACHINES
Robocop. 1987. Though back then the cops were still the Good Guys.
While US and Chinese robot dogs are armed with machine guns, the robot dogs in Mexico are unarmed. They were used for crowd safety . Mexico has no plans to arm robots. I will take an unarmed robot dog any day over an armed cop.
Where did you learn that Chinese surveillance robots are armed with machine guns, I wonder? The US - well - of course. Their oligarchs/Epstein buddies/WMD corporations - hate their citizens/residents. That's not actually the situation in China, though - unless you read Peter Hartcher and other Murdoch presstitutes!
Well, aren't you the trusting one... What would it take for a Cartel-controlled government or region in Mexico to arm their K9s I wonder...Not much I'd suggest...
I have a feeling that there will be pretty big awakening in the next few weeks or so when the western world feels more of the consequences of Trump's attack on Iran, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and its effects on the economy.
Hopefully people will adopt a revolutionary consciousness and not go full on fascist.
Yes...more or less. Mostly we're are behind the curve. Not to sound alarmist. We still have a choice to participate or bail out.
Police robots are not, of course, all over the media to normalise them, but to stir you up and get you raging at the wrong machine.
?
Meanwhile the Nazification of the West continues, with the Court of Justice of the EU ruling that the ban on disseminating content from Russia Today (RT) applies also to private citizens and the European Parliament voting to extend a temporary exception from EU privacy rules that allows online platforms to read and scan private chats and e-mails: https://geopolitiq.substack.com/p/nazification-of-the-west
Positing, as you do more fully in your linked essay, that the corporations that are ruining us are *the* problem and that oppressive government actions (other than war) are a deliberately-created distraction is based on a false dichotomy. As you do note there, elites that own and run the corporations control the major government entities as well, and use them in their interests.
I believe that building a massive nonviolent movement that can take down and replace both parts of the interlocking political/economic systems, i.e., the revolution you belittle, is the answer, not some kind of useful-idiot distraction that plays into the hands of the elites.
And while that is not an easy project or one that can be carried out quickly, I think it is a far more practical solution than urging us as individuals to somehow opt out of our consumerist lifestyles while still living under advanced capitalism and it's state. And hoping that enough people can and will respond that the climate crisis will be alleviated and the billionaires will stop reaping profits and, somehow, stop creating wars.
Yep, I realized this years ago. Robot armies and police. Total obedience. And the people pay for it all via taxes.
Revolutions in the past often occurred when the police and army went over to the revolution. No more of that. Nosirree.