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China Unveils ‘World’s Largest’ Quadruped Military Robot

China has introduced what it claims to be the world’s largest electrically-powered quadruped robot to assist the military on logistics and reconnaissance missions.

With a “yak-like appearance,” the four-legged robot can reportedly carry up to 352 pounds (160 kilograms) of payload and run at six miles (10 kilometers) per hour.

The platform’s structure is designed to withstand challenging off-grid military missions and conquer a wide variety of terrain, including cliffs, trenches, grasslands, fields, deserts, snow, and muddy roads.

Despite being reported as the heaviest and largest quadruped robot, the hi-tech unit can run, jump, turn, and walk diagonally.

According to state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV), the platform has 12 modules and state-of-the-art sensors, allowing it to collect tactical battlefield information and perform logistics.

Potential military uses include all-weather operations in high-risk combat zones, remote border areas, and complex environments that have proven too challenging for soldiers.

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Post Office’s Law Enforcement Arm Is Expanding Its Surveillance Powers

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has announced plans to provide its law enforcement branch with access to its vast trove of customer data, raising concerns among privacy activists about the organization’s expanding surveillance powers.

The USPS came under scrutiny in 2021 when it was revealed that its law enforcement arm, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS), was monitoring both left- and right-wing protest groups on social media. Multiple nonprofit organizations sued the USPS, seeking internal records about its surveillance program and questioning the legality of such activities.

Those lawsuits haven’t stopped the Postal Service from seeking additional surveillance powers. On Dec. 17, 2021, the USPS announced that it intended to provide customer data to USPIS investigators.

“USPIS will collect and aggregate eight data elements—Name, Address, 11-Digit Delivery Point ZIP Code (ZIP 11), Phone Number, Email Address, Tracking Number, IP Address, and Moniker,” the Postal Service stated.

According to the USPS, the influx of new data will allow postal inspectors to conduct “link analysis,” using data analytics to discover patterns and trends in criminal activity.

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NATO as Religion

The US/NATO/Ukraine/Russia controversy is not entirely new.  We already saw the potential of serious trouble in 2014 when the US and European states interfered in the internal affairs of Ukraine and covertly/overtly colluded in the coup d’état against the democratically elected President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, because he was not playing the game assigned to him by the West. Of course, our media hailed the putsch as a “colour revolution” with all the trappings of democracy.

The 2021/22 crisis is a logical continuation of the expansionist policies that NATO has pursued since the demise of the Soviet Union, as numerous Professors of international law and international relations have long indicated — including Richard Falk, John Mearsheimer, Stephen Kinzer and Francis Boyle.  NATO’s approach implements the US claim to have a “mission” to export its socio-economic model to other countries, notwithstanding the preferences of sovereign states and the self-determination of peoples.

Although the US and NATO narratives have been proven to be inaccurate and sometimes deliberately mendacious on numerous occasions, the fact is that a majority of citizens in the Western World uncritically believe what they are told.  The “quality press” including the New York Times, Washington Post, The Times, Le Monde, El Pais, the NZZ and FAZ are all effective echo chambers of the Washington consensus and enthusiastically support the public relations and geopolitical propaganda offensive.  I think that it can be said without fear of contradiction that the only war that NATO has ever won is the information war.  A compliant and complicit corporate media has been successful in persuading millions of Americans and Europeans that the toxic narratives of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs are really true. We believe in the myth of the “Arab Spring” and “EuroMaidan”, but we never hear about the right of self-determination of peoples, including the Russians of Donetsk and Lugansk, and what could easily be called the “Crimean Spring”.

Often I ask myself how this is possible when we know that the US deliberately lied in earlier conflicts in order to make aggression appear as “defense”.  We were lied to in connection with the “Gulf of Tonkin” incident, the alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.  There is abundant evidence that the CIA and M15 have organized “false flag” events in the Middle East and elsewhere.  Why is it that masses of educated people fail to take some distance and question more?  I dare postulate the hypothesis that the best way to understand the NATO phenomenon is to see it as a secular religion.  Then we are allowed to believe its implausible narratives, because we can take them on faith.

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Finnish Government Puts Christianity On Trial, Calls The Bible ‘Hate Speech’

Two Christian leaders in Finland stood trial in Helsinki on Jan. 24 for publicly stating the Bible’s teachings on sex and marriage. Longtime Member of Parliament Paivi Rasanen and Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola defended in court their decision to write and publish, respectively, a pamphlet explaining Christian teachings about sex and marriage.

In the trial’s opening arguments, which will resume on Feb. 14, Finnish prosecutors described quotations from the Bible as “hate speech.” Finland’s top prosecutor’s office essentially put the Bible on trial, an unprecedented move for a secular court, said Paul Coleman, a human rights lawyer with Alliance Defending Freedom International who is assisting in the Finns’ legal defense and was present during Monday’s trial.

“The prosecutor began the day by trying to explain that this case was not about beliefs and the Bible. She then, and I’m not kidding, she then proceeded to quote Old Testament Bible verses,” Coleman said in a phone interview with The Federalist after the trial concluded for the day. “Trial attorneys, Finnish trial attorneys who have been in and out of court every day for years, said they didn’t think the Bible had ever been read out like that in a prosecution.”

Never before has a Finnish court had to decide whether quoting the Bible is a crime. Human rights observers consider this case an important marker for whether Western governments’ persecution of citizens for their speech and beliefs increases.

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