rules-based order designed by clown for clowns......

One might actually be willing to consider that there might be some value in the “rules based international order” being promoted by the Joe Biden Administration if such a thing actually existed and was applied equally to all transgressors. Of course, in reality, the “rules” being referred to are neither agreed upon nor driven by any broad international consensus and are merely a trick that is exploited to further the interests of the United States and its closest allies.

In fact, the “rules”, such as they are, are most frequently ignored to give a pass to the bad behavior being exhibited by the US and its friends.

BY Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D.

If the “rules” were actually intended to place limits on violent interactions among nations, consider for a moment the actual record of the United States in that regard. Recent opinion polls demonstrate that the US by a large margin is considered by other nations to be the most dangerous country in the world. That judgement is based not only on historic memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki but also the Vietnam War and the overthrowing of alleged “leftist” regimes in places like Iran, Chile and Guatemala. Armed interventions on a greater or lesser scale have been a regular features of US initiatives throughout the Caribbean and Latin America ever since the Spanish-American War.

More recently there has been the global war on terror, unleashed on the entire world based on US condemnation of countries that were not perceived to be toeing Washington’s red line on what constitutes terrorism. This has led to pointless and ultimately failed interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Somalia in which, by some estimates millions of civilians have died directly or indirectly, and the US itself has sustained the war-making through the printing of trillions of dollars in essentially fiat currency and running up enormous debts, a chicken that will come home to roost before too long. In Afghanistan, and also in Yemen and Iraq, the US has engaged in targeted assassinations as well as profile killings of civilians using drones.

The most troublesome aspect of all the violence that the US has initiated is that there are no actual rules in sight, apart from the Blinken-Biden-Austin clowns in Washington citing unsubstantiated threats coming from countries incapable of actually doing any harm like Iran or countries like Russia and China that had previously no intention of confronting the American military colossus.

So Washington is the beating heart of policies that have created turmoil worldwide while also moving the Doomsday clock closer to the finality that might well come with a nuclear war. And all the posturing is literally for nothing, for a bad cause supporting a corrupt, autocratic regime in a country that is no democracy with no visible off ramp. The hypocrisy of those in the White House and in Congress, as well as in the media, who are so reckless with the lives and fortunes of their fellow citizens literally defies belief.

If Washington is the first of the three cities that I am considering, Moscow must certainly be number two as it is on the receiving end of the US hypocrisy, being accused of having deviated from the “rules based” international order by invading Ukraine one year ago. Russia, however, sees things differently. The Kremlin has argued that it has repeatedly sought to negotiate a settlement with Ukraine based on two fundamental issues that it plausibly claims threaten its own national security and identity. First is the failure of Ukraine to comply with the Minsk Accords of 2014-5 which conceded a large measure of autonomy to the Donbas region, an area indisputably inhabited by ethnic Russians, as is Crimea.

Recently former German Chancellor Angela Merkel has let slip that there was never any intention to comply with the Minsk Agreement, implying that it was all a charade to enable strengthening Ukraine to join NATO and, if necessary, fight Russia. In fact, the Accords were ignored right from the beginning, with Ukrainian militias and other armed elements using artillery to shell the Donbas, killing an estimated 15,000 mostly ethnic Russian residents, a number which appears to be confirmed by independent sources.

The second vital national security issue for Moscow was over plans to offer NATO membership to Ukraine, which would place a possibly superior hostile military alliance at its doorstep. Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly observed that the issues were both negotiable and that Zelensky only had to agree to maintain his country as “neutral,” i.e. not linked to any military alliance, and to honor some reasonable autonomy for Donbas. Reportedly it was the United States and Britain that pushed Ukraine into rejecting any and all of the Russian demands in a bid to initiate a war of attrition using Ukrainian lives to destabilize Putin’s government and reduce its ability to oppose US and Western dominance.

And there is of course the back story, that the United States had long been meddling in Eastern Europe in spite of a pledge not to take advantage of the break-up of the Soviet Union to expand NATO eastwards. The US had brought about “regime change” in Ukraine in 2014 to remove a government friendly to Moscow. But in this case, the increasing involvement of the US and NATO in the fighting has been an extremely dangerous development because it has escalated the conflict and turned it into what might become a devastating nuclear exchange. One would like to see an immediate truce initiated to stop the fighting followed by serious negotiations to come to a settlement of the territorial dispute. But, of course, the United States, which has provided Zelensky with more than $100 billion in aid, has made it clear that it is not interested in a negotiated settlement unless Putin is willing as a confidence building first step to withdraw from all occupied Ukrainian territory, including Crimea. In other words, he must surrender.

So whether Moscow has broken with the “rules based international order” depends very much on how one defines threats. Certainly, at a minimum, Washington has behaved far worse than Russia over the past twenty years, which rather confirms that the “rules” are essentially a convenient fiction. And finally, my third city to consider is Jerusalem, the claimed capital of the state of Israel. As the Jewish state is arguably either Washington’s closest ally or, as many believe, the tail that actually wags the White House dog, it is instructive to look at its behavior to examine whether the US applies a uniform standard to friend and foe alike when it doles out punishment to accused rule breakers.

If the United States is considered by the world community to be the most dangerous “superpower” country, Israel has to be considered the leading pariah among smaller, more regionally focused nations. And its control over the White House, the Congress and the national media in the US is such that it is never held to account for anything. Most recently, there was an attack by Israeli soldiers on a Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin on the West Bank in which ten Arabs were killed. In retaliation, a Palestinian gunman subsequently shot dead seven Israelis in Jerusalem before being killed himself. Speaking from the Oval Office, President Biden only saw fit to mention the Palestinian counter-attack, saying merely that “This was an attack against the civilized world.” The initial Israeli attack which killed ten was not even cited, suggesting that Israeli atrocities killing Palestinians do not bother the civilized world that the Bidens live in.

In another White House demonstration of where its priorities lie, last year’s shooting dead by an Israeli soldier of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh led eventually to a milk-toast call for an inquiry by the White House, even though Biden and company openly bought into the Israeli government lie that it was an accident, likely triggered by a lot of Palestinian terrorist shooting in the area, which was not true. And don’t expect any real pushback against Israel’s policy of shoot-first from Congress, which only last week removed Congresswoman Ilhan Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee because she was “antisemitic” due to her criticism of Israel’s behavior.

The Israeli Defense ministry indicated that it would not cooperate with any inquiry into its behavior and the Abu Akleh story has since disappeared. Israel has also killed other American citizens without any consequences, including Rachel Corrie and 34 sailors on board the USS Liberty naval vessel in 1967. Never before has a government killed Americans only to be rewarded with a $3.8 billion gift from the US taxpayers every year. The Jewish state’s government has also recently indicated that its free-fire policy against Palestinian civilians and their foreign supporters will not be modified. Israeli soldiers and policemen who kill Palestinians, who are routinely described as “terrorists,” are almost never investigated or prosecuted and have been, in some cases, praised in the media and promoted.

And Israeli control over major parts of the US federal government appears to be tightening. In a press conference last week, the United States State Department refused to confirm that Israel is in illegal occupation of large parts of Palestine, nor will it acknowledge that Israel has a nuclear arsenal.

Israel’s track record vis-à-vis its neighbors is somewhat similar to the American pattern of rules enforcement, though it rarely even bothers to excuse its behavior. It even started a major war, having attacked all its neighbors, after complaining falsely that they were “threatening,” in 1967, after which it illegally seized and occupied their territory. It is currently bombing Syria on a regular basis and has also attacked Iran, Lebanon and the Palestinians in Gaza. It has assassinated Iranian scientists and technicians.

Israel has invaded and occupied southern Lebanon and facilitated a massacre of Palestinians settled in camps there. Neither Syria nor Iran has ever attacked Israel or even threatened to do so, but Israel persists in claiming that it is threatened and is trying to convince Biden to join it in attacking the Iranians. The new, extreme racist right-wing government of Prime Minister Benajmin Netanyahu is in particular stepping up the pressure on Palestinians through actions that are illegal under international law without a squeak coming out of the White House. Home demolitions, property seizures, checkpoints and other round the clock harassment of Palestinians also are increasing in frequency as the Israelis expand their occupation of the West Bank. And Israel even sponsors actual terrorists in the form of the weaponized settlers who beat and destroy Palestinians at will with no consequences even when they kill an unarmed Arab or a child.

And some Israelis are also thinking of something grander, in the form of genocide, when it comes to their Palestinian neighbors. A prominent right wing Israeli member of parliament has perhaps suggested what he and many of his colleagues would like to see done to the remaining Palestinians. Zvika Fogel, a member of the governing coalition has called for a “final war” against the Palestinians to “subdue them once and for all”, following international condemnation of security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s incursion into Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem, an additional illegal move intended to assert total control over access to Muslim holy sites. Fogel responded to the criticism, saying in an interview that Israel’s policy of going to war with Palestinians “every two or three years” was no longer good enough and that there should be one last war to “subdue them once and for all. It would be worth it because this will be the final war…”

So, it is a tale of three cities. Moscow is engaged in a war that at least has a rationale, even as one should and must oppose armed interventions between two neighboring countries. The Russian operation has been opposed by the United States, which has heedlessly escalated the war and produced a situation that can be devastating for all life on the planet. Washington is also the grand hypocrite in the game in that it has behaved far worse than Moscow over the past twenty years. And then there is Jerusalem, or if one prefers, Tel Aviv. A monstrous Israel is preeminent in how it wins the prize for being the absolute worst in its inhumanity and war crimes, without a rebuke from Washington or Joe Biden ever about “rules based international order” violations.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected].

https://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/a-tale-of-three-cities/

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By Gus Leonisky at 8 Feb 2023 - 6:39am
Gus Leonisky's blog
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yellow face....

BY EKATERINA BLINOVA • FEBRUARY 9, 2023

National Security Adviser to President Biden Jake Sullivan played a prominent role in plotting the September 26, 2022, sabotage against the Russo-European Nord Stream pipelines, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh has revealed. So, who is Jake Sullivan: “the cat’s meow,” “once-in-a-generation intellect,” or a reckless hawk?

“I have great respect for Hersh and his reporting and believe that Sullivan could certainly have been instrumental in pushing for and carrying out this deceitful campaign that likely has inflicted monumental damage on citizens worldwide while also sapping America’s remaining national prestige,” Wall Street analyst and investigative journalist Charles Ortel told Sputnik.

In December 2021, Jake Sullivan, acting with Joe Biden’s blessing, convened men and women from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, and the State and Treasury Departments to come up with a plan on how to destruct Nord Stream 1 and 2 designed to pump Russian natural gas to Europe, according to Seymour Hersh’s recent bombshell.

In early 2022, the CIA told Sullivan that they knew how to blow up the pipelines. The group decided to keep the risky plot on a hush. The US Congress wasn’t informed. The US military and intelligence operatives did their best to conceal Washington’s role in the sabotage. As per the investigative journalist, the team had concerns about the legality of the plot and was well aware that it could quickly morph into a foreign policy nightmare.

After the pipelines had been destroyed, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and, later, Undersecretary for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland openly praised the development.

“When any crime is committed, the immediate question to ask when seeking suspects is ‘to whose benefit?’ Not only did it benefit the US, US officials made comments before and after the pipeline’s destruction virtually confirming their role and the benefits derived,” Brian Berletic, geopolitical analyst and former US marine, told Sputnik.

For his part, Jake Sullivan stated laconically on September 27, 2022, that the US was supporting efforts to investigate the “apparent sabotage” and “will continue [it’s] work to safeguard Europe’s energy security.”

“Hersh’s reporting on the Nord Stream bombing is completely convincing and I know for a fact that he has reliable sources, mostly in the intelligence community, but I would rather regard Sullivan as the implementer of the attack on the pipeline by virtue of his position rather than the driving force behind it,” Philip Giraldi, former CIA station chief, now an executive director of the Council for the National Interest, told Sputnik. “To be sure, Joe Biden would have had to promote and endorse the project.”

Clinton’s Golden Boy

Jake Sullivan, 46, has long been praised as a “golden boy” by the US mainstream media. Having graduated from Yale in 1998 Sullivan became an advisor to then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2008 and later, after Hillary dropped out from the race, he advised Barack Obama during his general election campaign.

Sullivan was just 32 when he was sworn in as Hillary Clinton’s deputy chief of staff for policy at the US State Department. When Clinton left the State Department in early 2013, Obama promoted Sullivan to the position of national security adviser to then-Vice President Joe Biden.

In 2015, Sullivan married Margaret Goodlander, onetime advisor to well-known hawks Senators Joe Lieberman and John McCain, who used to previously work for the Council on Foreign Relations and the Center for a New American Security. (Goodlander is currently Counsel to Attorney General Merrick Garland).

Sullivan is known for being a quiet but prominent member of the Clinton-Obama team. According to the press, he was part of the “exclusive” team working on resuming relations with Cuba and striking the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal. He is also said to be Hillary’s close confidante in the Libya plan, which was developed months before the 2011 NATO invasion of the North African state and brutal killing of its leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Sullivan and his boss, Clinton, adhered to the concept of “smart power,” which encompasses the use of military threat, force, and sanctions and the soft-power levers favored by foreign policy doves, which includes humanitarian aid and negotiations.

The aide was reportedly called “the cat’s meow” and a “potential future president” by Hillary, while Biden lauded him as a “once-in-a-generation intellect.”

In 2015, the sandy-haired Minnesotan joined Hillary on her 2015/2016 election cycle as a foreign policy adviser and eventually returned to the US administration as Joe Biden’s national security adviser in 2021.

Sullivan Lacks True Sense of Right Versus Wrong

However, there’s another side to Sullivan’s stellar career. “Sullivan is clearly drunk on power and lacking a true sense of right versus wrong,” according to Ortel.

“Sullivan is a fiercely partisan globalist who achieved numerous high honors in academic life so he is supremely self-confident and, sadly, often grievously wrong,” Ortel told Sputnik. “One way to get a sense of the way he operates is to look through the State Department and Podesta WikiLeaks files and the FBI Vault files on Hillary Clinton where Sullivan is frequently involved. Like the Clintons, Sullivan thrust himself into contact with powerful Democrats and operated well above his experience level early on. But unlike the Clintons, Obama, and Biden, Sullivan has yet to hold elected office.”

One might wonder why Sullivan rose to prominence so fast even though he had relatively little experience in government affairs. Hillary herself admitted that Jake wasn’t the most experienced diplomat when it came to foreign policy.

“Jake was not the most experienced diplomat at the State Department I could have chosen, but he was discreet and had my absolute confidence,” Clinton wrote in her memoir Hard Choices while describing her decision to tap Sullivan to kick off negotiations with Iran in 2012. “His presence would send a powerful message that I was personally invested in this process.”

According to US media observers, Sullivan’s primary secret is that he mastered himself in delivering on his boss’s wants and needs even when it went contrary to rules and ethics. The US press quoted a senior Obama aide as saying that Sullivan was ready to do “everything” for then-Secretary Clinton.

Unsurprisingly, Sullivan had no scruples about Hillary’s unsecured email server use for classified and top secret government correspondence. He was bullish on Washington’s Libyan and Syrian interventions which spiraled out of control, completely ruining the North Africa state and leaving the Syrian Arab Republic in tatters.

“Under Obama and Biden, Sullivan is connected to train wreck after train wreck, from the Arab “spring”, to Benghazi, ISIS*, the Iran ‘deal’ and more. He seems to be a huge fan of secret negotiations that are never subject to oversight,” Ortel noted.

Sullivan got mired in Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi scandal revolving around the former secretary of state’s failure to prevent a brutal slaughter of US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other US nationals in Libya on September 11, 2012. During the investigation into the matter, the House committee stumbled upon Sullivan’s letter in which the official emphasized that “we need to live in a world of risks,” while touting Washington’s decision to oust Gaddafi which opened the door to chaos in Libya.

Trump-Russia “Collusion” Hoax

“In the 2016 campaign, he had every motive to hide the misdeeds of the Clintons, including corruption and tax fraud involving The Clinton Foundation and many other charities,” said Ortel, who has been conducting a private investigation into the Clinton Foundation’s alleged fraud for several years. “Here it will prove interesting to see what [Special Councel] John Durham has to say about Sullivan, including his likely role pushing the Russian Hoax, for Trump’s impeachment and for electing Joe Biden.”

Sullivan appeared to have no scruples about actively spreading the Trump-Russia collusion narrative and keeping the myth alive even after the allegations about Trump were proven null and void. Later, Durham’s investigation shed light on Clinton campaign operatives’ role in peddling a fake Trump-Alfa Bank story and uncorroborated “dirty dossier” by ex-MI6 agent Christopher Steele.

However, when testifying under oath before the US House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in December 2017, the Clinton confidante denied any knowledge of the plot or people involved in it.

US investigative journalist Paul Sperry alleged that Sullivan was well-aware that the Trump-Alfa Bank story was “cooked-up” and personally spearheaded a “confidential project” to link Trump to the Kremlin.

Sullivan was also the one who personally promoted the Trump-Russia collusion story prior to the 2016 elections. Thus, during the July 2016 Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Philadelphia, Sullivan met with a number of mainstream media producers and anchors to tell a story “that Trump was conspiring with Putin to steal the election.”

Around that time, the CIA intercepted Russian intelligence’s “chatter” about a Clinton “foreign policy adviser” who allegedly proposed a plan to vilify Donald Trump by linking him to the Kremlin in order to distract public opinion from Hillary’s emailgate scandal. Some US observers believe that the foreign policy adviser in question was Jake Sullivan.

According to Ortel, Sullivan could well be aware of many other “dirty” secrets of the US Democratic establishment, including the Clinton’s alleged pay-to-play schemes, Joe and Hunter Biden influence peddling and Team Obama’s efforts to undermine then-sitting President Donald Trump through a string of dodgy investigations and leaks.

“Simply put, Sullivan has no choice but to cover up the disasters connected to Biden, Obama and Clinton and likely cannot accept the grave errors (and high crimes) that seem to have been committed. In this effort, he will believe he is secure because his wife is a close advisor and friend of Attorney General Merrick Garland,” the Wall Street analyst remarked.

Nord Stream Reporting Not Done

When it comes to the Nord Stream sabotage, “in a just process, Sullivan and his co-conspirators would swiftly be charged, convicted and incarcerated if it is proven that he orchestrated an undeclared war against Russia,” argued Ortel.

According to Ortel, by fanning the flames of proxy war against Russia, Team Biden both pursues vested interests and seeks to cover up and obscure political misdeeds involving Biden, Clinton and Obama in Ukraine and other nations from 2009 to date.

Still, it appears that one could soon hear more about the Biden administration’s secretive and risky plot. Hersh indicated to Sputnik that more investigative pieces about the Nord Stream explosion were forthcoming, but declined to provide further details.

* ISIS/Daesh/ISIL is a terrorist organization banned by Russia and many other states.

https://www.unz.com/article/whos-jake-sullivan-the-man-who-reportedly-assembled-dream-team-to-destroy-nord-stream/

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HE'S YELLOW FACE IN THE CARTOON AT TOP..... HE IS A NASTY NASTY CHARACTER WHO WOULD FIT WELL IN HITLER'S ENTOURAGE....

welcome to Sydney......

SYDNEY — The wife of a former U.S. military pilot accused by the United States of illegally training Chinese aviators said Monday her husband was being held in inhumane conditions as he fights extradition from Australia.

Saffrine Duggan said her husband Daniel Duggan had already been kept 115 days in a “tiny cell” in Sydney’s Silverwater Correctional Complex because of U.S. charges that had yet to be heard in court.

“He is suffering the harshest possible prison classification in Australia as an ‘extreme high risk restricted inmate’ despite having no prior (or current) convictions,” she said in a statement.

“This is unprecedented and an affront to Australia’s rule of law and manipulation of the Australian legal system by the United States, at the expense of the Australian taxpayer,” she said.

Having already filed a complaint with Australia’s Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, Saffrine Duggan said a further complaint would be filed with the United Nations Human Rights Committee.

“The manner and circumstances behind this prosecution of Dan are something you would expect to find in an authoritarian country, but not in a democratic Australia where its citizens expect a more fair and balanced equal application of the law and the overriding principle of a ‘fair go’ for all,” she said.

Daniel Duggan, 54, was arrested in October last year near his family home in Orange, in New South Wales state, and was accused of providing military training to pilots working for China.

He has denied the allegations, saying they were “political” posturing by the United States, which unfairly singled him out.

His wife said the treaty under which the FBI had attempted to extradite her husband was not being used properly.

“The treaty specifically states that alleged crimes under its provisions should not be of a ‘political character,’ should require dual criminality — which is not the case in this instance — and should be in Australia’s national interests,” she said. Dual criminality means illegal in both Australia and the United States.

The case is proceeding through Sydney courts where a magistrate will decide whether the husband is eligible for extradition. A hearing is scheduled for March 20.

Daniel Duggan’s lawyer, Dennis Miralis, told reporters outside Sydney's Downing Center Local Court on Monday that Australian and U.S. government agencies had been reluctant to hand over documents critical to Duggan’s defense.

“Regrettably, to date, we haven’t been getting the cooperation that, in our view, would be essential to ensure that Mr. Duggan’s rights are properly protected," Miralis said. "Government agencies, perhaps unsurprisingly, are refusing to produce documents on the basis of secrecy provisions.”

Born in Boston, Duggan served in the U.S. Marines for 12 years before immigrating to Australia in 2002. In January 2012, he gained Australian citizenship, choosing to give up his U.S. citizenship in the process.

A 2016 indictment from the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., was unsealed late last year. In it, prosecutors say Duggan conspired with others to provide training to Chinese military pilots in 2010 and 2012, and possibly at other times, without applying for an appropriate license.

Prosecutors say Duggan received about nine payments totaling about 88,000 Australian dollars ($61,000) and international travel from another conspirator for what was sometimes described as “personal development training.”

The indictment says Duggan traveled to the U.S., China and South Africa, and provided some training to Chinese pilots in South Africa.

https://www.stripes.com/theaters/asia_pacific/2023-02-13/pilot-china-australia-wife-9124944.html

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By Gus Leonisky at 14 Feb 2023 - 6:10pm
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more bang for bucks......

By DOUG G. WARE

WASHINGTON — The top Air Force commander in the Middle East said Monday that the service will have to lean more on innovation to secure the region now that U.S. forces are out of Afghanistan and the Pentagon is focused on Russia and China.

Lt. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, the commander of Air Forces Central, or AFCENT, said the Ninth Air Force is having to make do now with fewer resources in the region with more pressing threats in Eastern Europe and the Indo-Pacific region.

“We want to make sure we are keeping enough pressure on violent extremist organizations so they can’t carry out an attack on our homeland,” Grynkewich said during an interview with the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think tank funded by several defense contractors including Northrop Grumman. “That would have the potential to derail our focus on China.”

The Pentagon’s National Defense Strategy and President Joe Biden’s National Security Strategy were issued in the fall and identified China as the top U.S. competitor and “pacing challenge” — with Russia and North Korea not far behind. The strategies still place importance in the Middle East, but the region now garners less attention after the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan in 2021.

“Iran is the other one we have to keep an eye on,” Grynkewich said.

He said all U.S. commands are having to adjust their strategies, and for the Air Force in the Middle East that means relying more on brain power than traditional firepower.

“Where we are trying to shift our focus is thinking about how we reshape the region over the longer term,” Grynkewich said. “That means a lot of partnering … that means a lot of collaboration, that means a lot of longer-term thinking about what is it that we’re doing on a daily basis.”

Several months ago, the Air Force established Task Force 99, a unit dedicated to developing a “culture of innovation” to do more with less. Known as the Desert Catalysts, the unit is based in Qatar and since its formation, TF99 has tested drones, rockets and other technology experiments that it hopes will streamline capabilities.

Putting new emphasis on experimenting and inventing is a direction other military branches are also exploring. A few weeks after TF99 was created, the Army established its version of the unit — Task Force 39, which has also been charged with creating innovations that give the Pentagon more bang for its buck.

https://www.stripes.com/branches/air_force/2023-02-13/air-force-mideast-china-russia-9130271.html

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NOT ONE TO SHY ABOUT WAR MACHINES BEING USED TO ANNOY PEOPLE, ONE CAN SEE HERE THAT THE AMERICAN ARMY IS BEING PROPPED UP TO PISS ON CHINA, RUSSIA AND NORTH KOREA — AND IRAN, AND THE WHOLE WORLD... MAKING SURE THE AMERICAN EMPIRE IS BOTHERING AND IRRITATING EVERYONE OUTSIDE ITS CLASP. MEANWHILE THE BEST WAY TO DEAL WITH THIS IS TO IGNORE IT, THOUGH THE AMERICANS BLOW UP PIPELINES AND "SHOOTS BALLOONS" IN A DIPLOMATIC EFFORT TO MAKE FRIENDS WITH SAID NATIONS.

MEANWHILE, THE MARCOS DYNASTY IN THE PHILIPPINES HAS BEEN REVIVED, POSSIBLY BY A SLANTED VOTING SYSTEM OR A MEDIA HEAVILY INFLUENCED BY AMERICA AND HOLLYWOOD. ONE COULD SEE LLOYD AUSTIN III SMILING SARCASTICALLY AFTER HAVING MADE A DEAL TO INSTALL THREE AMERICAN BASES THERE TO ANNOY THE CHINESE SOME MORE.

SO WHAT'S THE FUTURE? CHINA WILL GO ABOUT ITS BUSINESS QUIETLY AND TAIWAN WILL EVENTUALLY JOIN THE MOTHERLAND. RUSSIA ON THE OTHER HAND WILL GET WHAT IT WANTS, DESPITE NATO NATOING WITH CLOWN POSTURING. AND THE REST OF THE WORLD WILL TRY TO IGNORE THE AMERICAN ARMY, NAVY AND AIRFORCE DOING IMPRESSIONS OF TOP-GUN-LUNATICK.

YES WE KNOW, BEING AN AMERICAN SOLDIER, ONE CANNOT COPE WITH BEING IRRELEVANT. ALWAYS SOMETHING TO INTERFERE WITH BECAUSE THAT'S THE EMPIRE'S DESTINY: PISS ON PEOPLE WE DON'T LIKE.

MEANWHILE DO SOMETHING POSITIVE:

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By Gus Leonisky at 14 Feb 2023 - 6:41pm
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murdoching......

By Caitlin Johnstone

In the latest escalation in Australia’s increasingly forceful campaign to manufacture consent for war with China, the Murdoch-owned Sky News Australia has aired a jaw-droppingly propagandistic hour-long special which advocates a dramatic increase in the nation’s military spending.

Australians are uniquely vulnerable to propaganda because our nation has the most concentrated media ownership in the western world, the lion’s share of it by Rupert Murdoch, who has well-documented ties to US government agencies going back decades. The propaganda campaign against China has gotten so aggressive here in recent years that I’ve repeatedly had complete strangers start babbling at me about the Chinese threat in casual conversation, completely out of the blue, within minutes of our first meeting each other.

The Sky News special is one of the most brazenly propagandistic things I have ever witnessed in any news media, with its opening minutes featuring footage of bayonet-wielding Chinese troops marching while ominous cinematic Bad Guy music plays loudly over the sound of the marching. In its promotional clip for the special, Sky News Australia tinged all footage pertaining to China in red to show how dangerous and communist they are. These are not decisions that are made with the intention of informing the public, these are decisions that are made with the intention of administering war propaganda.

The first expert Sky News brings on to tell viewers about the Chinese menace is Mick Ryan, an Adjunct Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which is funded by military-industrial complex entities like Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, and is also directly funded by the US government and its client states, including Australia and Taiwan. Sky News of course makes no mention of this immense conflict of interest while manufacturing consent for increased military spending, calling Ryan simply a “former major general.” This is on the same level of journalistic malpractice as running an article by Colonel Sanders on the health benefits of fried chicken but calling him “Harland David Sanders, former fry cook.”

The next expert Sky News presents us with is Australian former major general Jim “The Butcher of Fallujah” Molan, who oh-so-sadly passed away last month. I’ve written about Molan previously specifically because the Australian media love citing him in their propaganda campaign against China, last time when he was pushing the ridiculous claim that China is poised to launch an invasion of Australia.

The other experts Sky News brings in are former CIA Director and US Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta, Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu, Taiwan’s Director of Chinese Affairs Dr Lai Chung, Japan’s ambassador to Australia Yamagami Shingo, Australian Shadow Defence Minister Andrew Hastie, and John Coyne of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a virulent propaganda firm which is once again funded by US-aligned governments and military-industrial complex war profiteers.

So it’s about as balanced and impartial a punditry lineup as you’d expect.

At the 8:15 mark of the special, Sky News repeats the unevidenced propaganda claim that former Chinese president Hu Jintao was politically purged during the 20th Communist Party Congress last year.

At 19:15 Jim Molan talks about the need to fight and die with our allies the Americans while patriotic cello music plays in the background.

At 21:30 we are shown images of Australia being bombed alongside the Chinese flag (very subtle, guys).

At 24:25 Sky News accidentally does a version of the “look how close they put their country to our military bases” meme with a graphic display of all the US war machinery that surrounds China. The US would never tolerate being encircled by the Chinese military like that and would immediately wage war if China tried; it’s clear that the US is the aggressor in this conflict and China is reacting defensively.

“The United States plays a major strategic role in the Indo-Pacific,” says Sky News anchor Peter Stefanovic as the screen lights up with graphics showing the military presence surrounding China. “With 375,000 personnel, there’s a vast network of operations that extend from Hawaii all the way to India.”

At 26:30 we are shown a digital representation of China’s satellite systems in space, with the Chinese satellites coloured red to help us all appreciate how evil and communist they are.

At 27:45 we are shown illustrations of how much smaller Australia’s military is than China’s or America’s to help us understand how important it is to increase the size of our nation’s war machine, ignoring the fact that Australia’s total population is a tiny fraction of either of those countries.

At 32:45 we are told that the AUKUS pact will “beef up America’s military presence in the north of Australia,” and that “America has long used Australia as a key strategic outpost,” showing images of Pine Gap and other parts of the US war machine which dot this continent. “Now, there’s more to come,” says Stefanovic, with US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin describing the surge in US military presence we’re to expect in Australia.

At 34:10 the Australian Strategic Policy Institute guy explains why the US is so keen to use Australia in its planned confrontation with China, saying the continent’s geography puts it in “the Goldilocks location” of being close enough to China to be meaningful but far enough away that its war machinery can’t be easily struck.

At 35:15 Stefanovic warns that “our nation could quite literally be brought to its knees” if a war to the north sees shipping lanes cut off since Australia is so heavily dependent of imports. You would think this is an argument about the importance of maintaining a peaceful relationship with China, but instead it’s used to foment fear of China and argue for the need to be able to defeat it in a war.

And at 45:50 we finally get to the real purpose of this Sky News special: the need to “dramatically increase” the Australian military budget, and the need to manufacture consent for that increase. Australia currently has a military budget of $48.7 billion, a little less than two percent of the nation’s GDP. The late Butcher of Fallujah tells Sky News that “we need to at least double our defence expenditure” to four percent, and the special’s pundits openly discuss the need for Australians to be persuaded to accept this using narrative management.

“The Australian government needs to talk to the Australian people about the kinds of threats it faces,” says Mick Ryan. “It needs a more compelling narrative to convince the Australian people that they need to spend more on defence.”

“I think it is important that we are having a conversation with the Australian people which makes it clear that we live in a world which is more fragile than we have for a very long period of time,” Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles tells Sky News. “And what that is going to require is a defence posture and a defence force which is in truth gonna cost more than it has in the past. We’re gonna need to increase our defence spending.”

To be clear, this is not just a call to increase military spending, this is a call to propagandise Australians into consenting to more military spending. It’s not very often that the propaganda comes right out and explains to you why it is propagandising you.

I always get people complaining that I focus too much on the US war machine when I live in Australia, but anyone who’s paying attention knows the behaviour of the US war machine is as relevant to Australians as it is to Americans. They are beating the drums for a future war of unfathomable horror all to please a dark god known as unipolarism, and it threatens to destroy us all.

The time to start resisting is now.

First published by Caitlin Johnstone February 16, 2023

Caitlin Johnstone is a reader-supported independent journalist from Melbourne, Australia. She now lives in the US. Her political writings can be found on Medium.

https://johnmenadue.com/murdoch-propaganda-pushes-australia-to-double-its-military-budget-for-war-with-china/

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